His mum bought him a Spider-man Comic with a free Spider Gun and that was that. Inside the comic were mini-posters of Spidey and other Superheroes and I remembered that years ago I used to cut out figures from comics (probably footballers) and paste them on to card so that they could stand up. Well with the help of an empty Coco Pops box and using my best Blue Peter skills Spider-man, Captain America, the Torch, the Thing and Wolverine were suddenly displayed in their 2D prime
Being made from paper and card they are not going to last long in Ben's World but he appreciated the effort just the same
During lunch with my brother this week we were discussing Superhero Comics and growing up you tended either to be a DC Comics fan or a Marvel Comics one. He is a bit older than me and was always a DC man but I embraced the brave new world of Marvel Comics with open arms
In the interests of fairness I will give you my Top 5 Superheroes from both camps and you can make up your own mind
TOP 5 DC SUPERHEROES
1. Superman........the Man of Steel who wore his underpants outside his trousers and hid his real identity with a pair of glasses is probably still the most famous Superhero of them all. Christopher Reeve famously played Superman in four movies in the 70s and 80s and Brandon Routh played him in 2006. There was also the long running TV series Smallville in which Tom Welling starred as the young Clark Kent. My favourite Superman adversary was Mr Mxyzptlk from the Fifth Dimension (the place not the 60s pop group). He could only be stopped by tricking him into saying or spelling his own name backwards. This always intrigued me as most of us could not even say his name forwards never mind backwards
2. Batman..............The Caped Crusader is currently having a massive resurgence as The Dark Knight played in the cinema by Christian Bale but I best remember him from the 60s TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward and featuring wonderful villains like The Joker, The Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman and Mr Freeze
3. Only at Number 3 and already I am struggling....The Flash....he could run very fast. I guess that makes Usain Bolt a modern day Superhero
4. Aquaman......if any wrongdoings were happening at sea then he was your (Aqua)man but as brilliantly portrayed in Family Guy any misdeed on dry land would result in him being only a water treading spectator
5. Green Arrow/Green Lantern.....really scraping the barrel now. Take your pick....one had a bow and arrow, the other had a lantern but they were both green
TOP 5 MARVEL SUPERHEROES
1. Spider-man......."with great power there must also come great responsibility"...after Peter Parker was bitten by that radio-active spider things were never quite the same again. Tobey Maguire played the webslinger in three Spiderman movies and Spidey is played by Andrew Garfield in 'The Amazing Spider-Man" released earlier this year. My own favourite villains in Spider-Man were Doctor Octopus, The Green Goblin and Sandman
2. The Fantastic Four.....the Beatles of the Superhero world consisted of The Human Torch (a flying fireball), the Invisible Woman (I am not sure what she could do), her husband Mr Fantastic who could stretch all parts of his body into incredible lengths and shapes which was a huge bonus for Mrs Fantastic and my personal favourite The Thing, a sort of grumpy Mr T with stone-like flesh
3. Iron Man....he has been brilliantly brought to the big screen by the excellent Robert Downey Jr who has almost single handed managed to turn this somewhat run of the mill Superhero into a major player
4. The X-Men....the X-Men have had more changes to their line-up than Fleetwood Mac but the ones I remember from my early comic buying days were Cyclops/Iceman/Arch-Angel/Beast and Marvel Girl (obviously less PC back then or they should have been called the X-People)
The X-Men have now become a major movie franchise and the 2000 movie starred Halle Berry as Storm, so nothing bad to say about that one whatsoever
5. The Hulk....."Don't make me angry.You wouldn't like me when I'm angry"....the not so jolly green giant with the heart of gold was supposedly inspired by the story 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and somehow Bruce Banner's trousers always seemed to still fit the mighty torso of the Hulk. The TV series always seemed to end each episode with Bruce Bannerwalking along some country road with suitably depressing accompanying music. On the big screen he has been portrayed in recent years by both Eric Bana and Edward Norton
Captain America, Thor and The Silver Surfer don't even make the Top 5 so I do believe the strength in depth shown by Marvel outweighs the contribution of the undoubted talents of Superman and Batman
As Robin would have put it..."Holy Superheroes Batman! I think we have a winner!"
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