As I said before,

Best superhero movie ever. Hands down. Saw it on a semi-big screen for the second time, bad projector, flickering light, sticky floor and all, and I still found myself holding my breath. I don’t know if Tobey Maguire really understood Peter Parker that well or if it’s just dumb luck, but it doesn’t matter. And the movie thought to explain some things that, as far as I know, the comic books never really quite bothered with (like how he could stick to a wall – Marvel always had him take his shoes off, but he could stick through his socks. How? We were never told. We were never told!). It was much easier to watch destruction of NYC sitting in a theater in East Greenbush than it had been when I was sitting in a theater across from Lincoln Center, and I walked out into the twilight glad to see the city was still there, calm and going about its business. A more intense experience than I had expected.
Someone asked the question of when it was going to be The Fantastic Four’s turn. Geez, that’s a tough one. I was an FF fan for years, but I think it was because you HAD to be. It was part of the Marvel universe, you didn’t want to be seen as a DC weenie, and there was enough crossover with other books that you ended up buying FF to complete storylines. I went in and out of it, but never really loved the characters. It was good in the Jack Kirby days, but The Thing was the only remotely interesting character there. Reed Richards – stretches. Big yawn. Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl, such a useless power that they had to give her the ability to create invisibility bubbles that could move objects. Sheesh. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Should have been cool. Wasn’t. The sheer physics was just such a pain to figure out. How did he walk on asphalt without melting it? Was he giving off fumes? Carbon monoxide? And all that space in the Baxter Building – how the hell did Richards pay for all that? He never had time to do any research, he wasn’t holding any patents. It was just the opposite of what Spider-man stood for – he was an average guy with average problems who also had a secret identity he could take or leave, and a heavy weight on his conscience. Reed Richards had a few floors of a skyscraper, interdimensional portals (locked, usually), a hot chick 20 years younger than he was (well, she would have been hot, but man was she whiney), a brother-in-law who was mostly out flying around, and a bodyguard made of stone. Please. They can make that movie, I’m not watching it.