The Pocket Essential: Superhero Movies

• 1st Apr 2011

Author: Liam Burke

In case you didn’t notice – we have an active long term retrospective on Comic Book movies, so it seems apt that we take a peek at The Pocket Essentials book of Superhero movies!

Yes over 150 pocket size pages on and you may find yourself a bit more enlightened on the many different contexts of the super hero be that man, woman or mutant!

Can’t help but think that the author is perhaps too big a fan of the genre as his POW ratting suggests that most films are worth more in his eyes than they may be by the general public.  Hell even Buffy the Vampire Slayer got 2 Pows!  In fact the only films that get on the receiving end of a single POW! are LXG and Batman and Robin (no argument there).  But having said that the likes of Howard the Duck and Barb Wire are not covered.  Instead we get a segmented book looking at areas such as Superman, Supermen, Vigilantes, Wonder Women instead of doing a straight forward look at as many films as possible.

As we know here at Filmwerk there are well over 100 of them, so to do every one justice might have been a tall order, so it’s a novel approach to see thematic covered instead with some of the prime examples of films used. Each section has a prolonged introduction before various films go under the microscope.  A nifty little guide for Comic Book Movie fans – but ultimately you end up wanting more.

Steven Hurst

http://www.pocketessentials.com/