Loved your DC vs Marvel rant, Reed.

You're more or less spot on as well, and that is coming from a self-confessed 'Marvel Zombie' back in the day.

However, I do plead mitigating circumstances. In my hometown Marvel comics were freely available in most newsagents. DC stuff was rarer than hen's teeth.

At the zenith of my Marvel Zombie phase I was collecting every title they published, even crap like Rom and Alpha Flight.

Of course the other mitigating circumastance was that I was only about 12, plus I had been brought up on British reprints of Marvel's 60s silver age. It took me a while to distinguish between the good 60s reprints I was reading and the crap that was coming out in the 80s. I was never a real X-Men fan though. Avengers, Spidey and Daredevil were more my thing.

A year or 2 later I'd discovered proper comic shops and was therefore exposed to the wider world of comics - DC and the independent comics companies.

Although I've read a shedload of DC stuff since then, I suppose you always feel more comfortable with the universe you read when you first starting reading comics. At least that's how it is for me and so I hold my head up high and say Make Mine Marvel!

It turns to junk after the first twenty-five minutes.

Downey Jr sparkles but the one-liners have by then started to lose power. When the Downey glint disappears behind the tacky helmet the movie plummets.

The last third is boring in the way that only those things that make no sense whatsoever can be.

Iron Man was pretty cool. Forget the Dark Knight, this fella had a perma-hangover, the battery life of a boombox, Richard Nixon's world-view and Ziggy Stardust's medicine cabinet. And it was always raining.

It was, now I realise, the seventies. He was DI Gene Hunt wearing his own Cortina.

I saw it again last night at the Uptown and stayed until the end when Samuel Motherfucking Jackson reveals himself to be Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and offers to fill Stark in on...wait for it...THE AVENGERS.

I was never a big Avengers fan, because, like most superhero groups, for every cool character, there are usually one or two crap ones, but a film with Iron Man and Captain America could be pretty sweet.

Saw it yesterday (the wife went to see Mamma Mia, the perfect opportunity).

I liked it, the only problem being unable to stop drooling whenever Gwyneth "Pepper Potts" Paltrow was on screen.

Yum

She was gorgeous in Iron Man. I'm not a big fan of hers, but I thought she played the role of Potts pretty well.