The Ol' Ball Game

So, Jim Lee is throwing out the first pitch at the Orioles' game tomorrow to kick off the Baltimore Comic Con. This is a really great idea. I'm not really a huge fan of Lee's work or anything, I mean he's cool but maybe too cool. It's idea of combining comics and baseball that's exciting. Comics and baseball have always sort occupied the same sort of space in my brain. This sort of vision of America where kids play backyard baseball and talk about super heroes along the way. They invoke sort of this quintessential feeling of America, of innocence, and childhood. When you are a kid you look up to sports players the same way you would a super hero. You memorize positions, powers, stats, teams, and super teams.

It's no coincidence that when Superman Returns showcases the Superman-saves-plane scene that he sets the plane down in a baseball stadium. It's a classic scene in comics, and by using baseball the movie shows us that they are playing with the classic myths of Superman and not trying to update him entirely. The roar of the crowd for Superman is the same feeling people have when they cheer their favorite player. The movie uses it sincerely and it gets at the heart of what makes Superman a great character.

There was also this cover on Sport Illustrated during the summer. It's a weird joke to make because it's making the assumption is that most of the readers know Bizzaro Superman. At the very least it's comfortable that they will safe in the connection between baseball players and super heroes having something in common in our minds.

Also...

and...

Kick Ass #4

Issue #4 picks up where #3 left off, with Kick Ass in that room with the gangster and his cronies, crouching in terror as the sword-wielding prepubescent pipsqueak ("Hit Girl" [I'm not making that up]) hacks the gathering to pieces, Kill Bill style. It turns out the girl is the sidekick to an enormous masked bruiser ("Big Daddy") and these two have been waging a campaign of terror against the associates of a major gangster ("Johnny G").

So basically, the comic has evolved into a more or less run of the mill vigilante versus gangster story. It's not that the issue is bad, per se. I actually think it was stronger than the third, though there is still the whole subplot of Kick Ass shamming that he is gay to get close to the class hottie. The problem with the issue, and thereby the series as a whole, is that the first two issues intimated that the series may actually have been an intellectually interesting examination of youth and media culture through the mechanism of the superhero comic. YouTube references notwithstanding, this most definitely is not.

Another sort of irritating factor is all of the talk at the back of the issue(s) about the forthcoming Kick Ass movie. If i am not mistaken, it appears that the ink was dry on the movie contract before the first issue hit the shelves. I mean, I guess these people know what they are doing, but this somehow rubs me weirdly.

Another problem I have with the issue is with Romita Jr.'s illustrations. Romita's art tends to be pretty detailed and very line-intensive and it was certainly one of the things that made the first couple of issues so intriguing. There are a number of panels that seem to have a Romita pencilled figure in the foreground with considerably less detailed (perhaps digitally generated) backgrounds. The effect is actually not terrible, but it gives the book the feeling of its being a rush job--as though Romita couldn't be bothered to pencil entire panels.