Greetings loyal airmen, hope all of you had a great 4th of July vacation and are enjoying this glorious summer. As promised, I finally got to see SUPERMAN RETURNS last Friday and I liked it a whole lot.  Enough to give it a big thumbs up and recommend it to you.  Now I fully realize half of you are not in agreement with me on this and that's fine.  Art, more than anything else in this world is subjective and it truly becomes a matter of taste in the end.  If I may use a food analogy; two people can sit down and have the exact same dish and walk away with totally different reactions; one thinking it's the best meal they ever ate, the other thinking it's the worst.  And that's been the feelings of most viewers to this particular film.

I don't feel I have to justify or defend my liking the movie, but since several of you, whose opinion I do value, made a point of telling me why you didn't like this film, well, now it's my turn.   First up I think the action was top-notch. The opening plane/space shuttle sequence is one of the most intense I've ever seen up on that big silver screen.  For the most part the action stuff was extremely well handled.   Acting-wise, I was totally impressed with Brandon Routh's Superman/Clark Kent and thought he played both exactly as had the late Christopher Reeve.  And since this movie was intended from the very start to be a continuation of Reeve's first two outings, I thought this interpretation was perfect.   Kevin Spacey was by far the scariest Lex Luthor I have ever seen.  Now I did like Gene Hackman's comedic take, which Spacey aped beautifully, but he took the pyscho factor up a notch, which is what was always missing from Hackman's version.  I truly saw Spacey's Luthor as a sociopath capable of killing thousands of people and not shedding a tear.   I liked Frank Langella's Perry White and the cameo's by Jack Larson and Noel Neil were precious.   And lastly, I loved John Ottman's continuation of the John Williams score.  Hearing that opening fanfare in the theater was like welcoming back lots of great memories.  It told me I was about to see old friends again and it didn't lie.

Of course there are things wrong with the movie. That can be said for every single movie ever made. My most annoying moment was the ridiculous lapse of common sense on Lois's part when she goes out to investigate wrong doing and brings her child along.  What kind of Mom is she?  For a woman who supposedly won a Pulitzer, she's not all that bright where her child's safety is concerned.  Duh.  And the entire rebirth of Krypton real-estate plot was muddled a best.  Then again hard science has never been a strong factor in comic book based stories, ha.

Lastly, one more food analogy before we leave this subject.  If you go to somebody's house and they are having a frosted cake for desert and you ask them, “Gee, what flavor is it?”  And they reply, “Vanilla.”  And you don't like vanilla, then cutting into that cake, take a bite and then yelling foul is totally not fair.  Why the analogy?  Because director Bryan Singer has been telling the world that he was making a Richard Donner Superman continuation movie right from the start.  That was no secret.  Yet, of all the criticisms leveled at this movie, this one continually comes up and it drives me nuts!!  Oh, I didn't like it being a Donner/Superman movie people say as if it was a surprise to them.  To which I reply, if you didn't want to see a Donner/Superman take, then why did you bother to go see the movie in the first place?  Did you think Singer was just making this up?  That is an unfair critique on anybody's part.  In the end, those people who love this character and were dissapointed by the movie, I sincerely feel for them.  I do.  I don't like knowing my friends were let down and dissappointed.  But I wasn't.  I was entertained.   This time around I was the lucky one.  Maybe next movie it will be your turn.

On other fronts, this past week I, and my writing partner, Martin Powell, wrapped up our new Captain Hazzard novel, CITADEL OF FEAR.  It is now off to my publisher, Wild Cat Books.  Rob Davis has nine spot illustrations to add, as well as our old amigo, Tom Floyd providing a brand new painted cover.  Once published, hopefully within the next couple of months, it will be the very first all new Captain Hazzard adventure in nearly 70 years!!  Now that's something worth shouting about.  Ha.

Finally, I've been enjoying the new BLADE TV series based on the hit Marvel movies.  It's a new cast, but the same all vampire action that made the films popular.  It runs on Spike TV at 10 PM on Wednesday nights and is really worth catching.  I'm very impressed with the movie-like-level of action in this series and hope it keeps up.

That's it for another week, loyal airmen.  Thanks as ever for stopping my.  I truly appreciate it.  Ron, over and out.