Great, Scott

I believe violence is the refuge of those who lack the imagination or wit to resolve problems through negotiation and reason. However, when I read something like this excerpt from former Mouth of Sauron White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s upcoming book:

The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

–Quote from Mr. McClellan’s book, as cited by Glenn Greenwald

I am forced to reconsider.

So basically, according to Mr. McClellan, the fault lies not with the lies propagated by administration for which he served as a public face, but rather with the failure of the fourth estate to call him and the masters to whom he was a willing lapdog on their blatant lies. While this argument contains a kernel of truth, it obscures a far more basic principle:

Don’t. @#$%ing. Lie. It’s practically a big-C Commandment (depending on whether you choose to construe the prohibition against bearing false withness as a narrow ban on legalistic lying [and it doesn't get more legalistic than the hair-splitting, obfuscation, qualification, and meticulous word choice in which press secretaries regularly engage] or a blanket injunction against lying on general principles). It’s one of the creation myths of our republic (see cherry trees, G. Washington and). It’s something that most parents attempt, with greater or lesser degrees of success, to instill in their children.

If we lived in a remotely sane society, or even just a society where critical thinking was seen as a virtue, Mr. McClellan’s shambling public resurrection trying to peddle the line of nonsense he’s reportedly got going in his new book would be met by an angry mob wielding torches and pitchforks.

[On second thought, the Frankenstein's monster analogy is too kind. In a sane society, Mr. McClellan world be placed in a pillory in the public square, and the parents, partners, and children of all those killed or injured in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans, and all those who have been otherwise...inconvenienced by this administration and the policies which he daily championed would have the opportunity to walk up to him, spit in his eye, and kick him squarely in the gonads. Hard. While wearing steel toe boots. Spiked steel toe boots. Rusty spiked steel toe boots. Rusty spiked steel toe boots doused with salt, lemon juice, and flaming isopropyl alcohol. And the only relief he should be allowed would be to drink from a plastic water bottle manufactured using BPA.]

Your bosses lied? You knew it, and you did, what, precisely? You repeated their lies, you presented their lies as the truth, you belittled and castigated the people who called you on your lies.

And that’s the truly mind-boggling part; the media you bamboozled, the same cowardly, deferential, docile, and uncritical press you conned? They’re giving you free publicity. Instead of ensuring that you fade from the public eye, and the minds of all but the historians and scholars who relegate you to what you truly are — a minor footnote in a tragic history — they’re promoting you. They’re helping you to sell your book, and to profit from the fraud you helped perpetrate.

So now you get to cash in, pretending all the while that the scales were miraculously lifted from your eyes, you cut-rate Saul of Tarsus? You’re culpable. You’re responsible. And there is no truth you can tell now, no self-serving rationalization you can spit out, no self-justification you can sputter on Larry King or Charlie Rose or for the hometown crowd on Fox News that makes you any less than guilty.

The late Joseph Welch said it best: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Meal of oat (oatie, oatie, oat…)*

While I enjoy oatmeal – both as a breakfast option and on a purely existential level – it’s not the most…exciting meal in the world. You can dress it up with apples, bananas, cinnamon, brown sugar, almonds, dried cranberries or coconut all you want, but eventually, oatmeal gets boring. Eating it becomes an exercise in conspicuous virtue rather than enjoyment. The prospect of yet another bowl of the stuff becomes increasingly daunting.

It was while in the grip of this state of mild aversion and incipient loathing that I hit upon an idea: fried oatmeal. Instead of heating up a pot of oats and sticking them a bowl, I decided to carve off a slice or two of leftover oatmeal and cook it up in a skillet. As with the beefy beans recipe I mentioned a while ago, thinking about this basic recipe in a slightly different way yielded an interesting – and tasty – result.

Fried Oatmeal
(serves 4-5)

1 recipe steel cut oatmeal (1 cup steel cut oat groats, 4 cups water, 1/2 cup half and half [optional] hefty pinch of salt; bring to a boil, then simmer 35-40 minutes, or until all the liquid has been absorbed by the oats), transferred to a rectangular storage container and allowed to set up overnight into something with a loaf-like consistency.

For each serving, you will need:

1/2 apple, diced

1/2 banana, quartered and sliced

1t butter

1t brown sugar

cinnamon to taste

Slice the oatmeal loaf into two 3/4-inch sections per person.

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Coat the pan with a quick hit of nonstick cooking spray. Add the oatmeal slices to the hot pan. Cook 5-7 minutes on a side, or until toasted brown in color. Remove the cooked oatmeal slices to a serving plate.

Return the pan to the heat and add the butter. Once it has melted, add the apple and banana, followed immediately by the brown sugar and cinnamon. Saute 2-3 minutes until the fruit has heated through and softened. Serve this warm “compote” over the top of the oatmeal slices.

The result is something a bit like a flourless bannock or a thicker and moister oatcake. The pan-frying treatment browns and crisps the surface of the slice, which gives it a toasted, nutty flavor. The sautéed fruit provides traditional oatmeal accompaniments, and serves as a way to add a little sweetness to the otherwise neutrally-flavored oatmeal.

*Someday, The Kid will hear the song “Jungle Love” by Morris Day and the Time, and she will be terribly confused.

I resemble that remark

Recently, someone referred to me as a heckler. That reminded me that this…

…was a fun comic that was canceled too soon. Granted, it was no Ambush Bug, but then what is? Aside from, you know, Ambush Bug?

“With moderate power comes moderate responsibility”

Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick is one of my favorite web comics.

It’s funnier if you are now or have ever been involved in a dungeon-crawling based fantasy role-playing game, but aside from the occasional meta-reference it also scans well as an epic fantasy adventure story.

This strip encapsulates a philosophy of life I can get behind:

And so I’ve come to realize that I have a duty to use my limited competence to have a partial effect on the world, from time to time.

Well played, Mr. Burlew. Well played.

Full, but not sinful

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re trying to eat healthier here at the Modern manse. One reason for this is pure (if tautological) common sense; healthy foods are healthier than unhealthy foods. Unprocessed foods are, in the main, better than processed foods, satisfying as those processed foods may be. We’re not being fanatically zealous in our commitment, but the balance of items in our grocery cart has definitely tipped heavily in favor of the foods on the perimeter, rather than the center, of the market.

Another reason is that eating better helps support other lifestyle changes. I’ve been trying to get more exercise lately, both for the baseline benefits of exercise, but also because increasing my activity level supports my goal of droping a few (dozen) pounds over a reasonable period of time.

So, part of our recent commitment to better eating has involved eating better. That is, our desire to eat fresher, healthier, less processed foods has also resulted in our eating food that tastes better. It has also led me to do more actual cooking, using recipes that actually take time, thought, and effort to prepare.

Sometimes, all our schedule really allows for is throwing together a meal that is quick and nutritious. There’s nothing wrong with a simple meal of baked chicken, roasted potatoes (or rice, or some equally nutritive but uninspiring starch) and steamed broccoli. It’s healthy and balanced, if entirely unimaginative. Recently, I took the opportunity to stray off the path of convenience. The other night, I made a roast chicken (okay, so I stayed in chicken territory, which I’ll admit isn’t exactly walking on the wild side, but it takes a bit more effort than just opening the package of chicken parts and throwing them on the baking sheet) with a cornbread stuffing (thanks, Chris Kimball). Roast chicken is still a pretty simple dish, but throwing a bunch of aromatics into the roasting pan (apple, lemon, onion) gives the meat a really nice flavor, with the added bonus of roasted onions as a side dish.

Making the stuffing required bacon, which lead to leftover bacon. Leftover bacon became the impetus for making a coq au vin the following night. Again, this is hardly the most complicated meal in the world — the greatest investment lies not in ingredients, or culinary skill, but in time — but the result is rich, and flavorful, the sort of meal that leaves you looking for one more piece of crusty bread to mop up the last of the sauce.

Indeed, the only problem with indulging in my love of cooking is that it makes me want to (over)indulge in my love of eating. With baked chicken and rice, there’s not much of a desire for seconds, or a need to exercise moderation. Coq au vin on the other hand, requires one to summon some restraint.

But. Just because I’m trying to eat better, exercise more, and, ultimately, weigh less as a the result of making changes to established habits and behaviors (replacing them, over time, with different habits and behavioral patterns that are both healthy and sustainable) doesn’t mean I want to stop finding pleasure in good food. The trick, I think, is to stop conflating that pleasure with moral judgements, stop framing enjoyment of a good meal with sin, and exercise with expiation.

Coq au vin (or Spaghetti alla Carbonara, or whatever your favorite indulgence happens to be) is something to be enjoyed, not something to atone for. Thinking about this or that dinner in terms of the amount of time one has to spend working off, or paying back, the calories, is entirely the wrong mindset for sustainable change. The goal should be to have diet (in the sense of what one puts in one’s body, rather than in the sense of a branded Diet Program [tm] complete with books and prepackaged meals, television exposure and celebrity advocates, seasoned with just the slightest hint of snake oil) and exercise balance each other out as part of a healthy lifestyle. In that way, the occasional indulgence can be seen (as it should be seen) as a source of pleasure.

A good meal should not be viewed as a debt to be paid off in sweat, but a credit redeemed by dutifully eating all that @#$%ing baked chicken the rest of the time.

Lit Graphic

Richly visual and intimately understood, graphic novels — with their anti-heroes, narrative appeal, and storylines sometimes off-limits in other modes of expression — may be prepared to usurp the role that novels currently play.

I call bull%$#@.

Didactics are an important component of the museum experience. Good wall text provides museum visitors with background, context, and history. It illustrates something about the relevance of a particular artist or work in their medium or relative to their position in the history of art. It also explains how a given artist or work reinforces the theme of they exhibition in which they appear.

But oh my; didactics also become a channel for curatorial excess, overreaching, and pretension. Case in point: the above text from one of the introductory didactic panels included in the Lit Graphic: The World of the Graphic Novel exhibition currently on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Comics (or “sequential art” if you prefer) are (or is it “comics is?”) a wonderful storytelling medium. The form is dynamic, flexible, and capable of rendering everything from the birth of an idea to the death of a god, and all stops in between.

But “storylines sometimes off-limits in other modes of expression?” What the heck does that mean? The melding of word and image creates a singular vehicle for exploring all manner of stories, but comics are no more boundary-breaking than any other medium. The closest comparison to comics is film, which is also about presenting visual ideas sequentially. But as with any comparison between print and film, there is a level on which reading is always the more active process, watching the more passive. Regardless of how the information gets into our brain, however, the fact is that neither comics or film (or poetry, or painting, or sculpture, or any other creative endeavor) is constrained by storylines.

Anti-heroes? Narrative appeal? Is there a form of storytelling that can’t include anti-heroes? I’m hard-pressed to think of one, and that’s a good thing. Anti-heroes are usually more interesting than heroes. Is there some sort of narrative that isn’t, or at least can’t be, appealing? That’s a qualitative issue, and not one related to the inherent nature of comics, or any other narrative medium. Some stories are appealing. Some stories aren’t. Good storytellers can take the most mundane story and make out of it something that makes the audience reevaluate the very nature of the world around them. Bad storytellers can take great ideas, strip them of all originality and vitality, and regurgitate them in a way that makes the audience feel debased and insulted.

A mode of expression is a box. Whether that box contains diamonds or dog%$#@ says something about the skill of the creator, not about the structural limits of the box.

And usurping the novel? What the actual hell? Again, any comparison that assumes an absolute scale of comparison between two narrative forms is misguided at best. If cinema has not entirely usurped the novel, comics won’t be the ones to knock the novel off its perch either.

Grandiose and unsupportable claims notwithstanding, there is a lot to like in this exhibit. There was also much that I found either flawed or frustrating.

The gallery featuring pages from Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner was simply amazing. Looking at these selections, there is no doubt why two of the biggest awards in the comics field are named after these creators. The Will Eisner Spirit story on display in the gallery is a revelation; The Spirit barely appears in the story but his absence creates the suspense that drives the story.

Then, the scale of many of the pieces on display was impressive. As a comics reader, I’m used to seeing art on the typical comic book sized page, or smaller. Many of the pieces in Lit Graphic were original art, rendered on illustration paper. When published, the camera-ready art is reduced to the appropriate size. As with any reproduction, the process eliminates some of the texture and detail of the drawn work. Seeing it as the artist intended showed off the skill, and the effort, and made these works all the more impressive.

Case in point, the selections from Dave Sim and Gerhard’s Cerebus. In particular, the cover illustration from the collected Church and State I is phenomenal when seen in a larger scale.

As anyone who has read Cerebus knows, Gerhard’s backgrounds are terrifically detailed, with intricate cross-hatching and meticulous shading, while Mr. Sim’s characters are designed down to the last wart and unfortunate hairdo. The reduced image on the “phone book” collection of the story simply can’t do justice to the amount of effort it takes to produce a piece like this, or the level of detail it contains.

Indeed, this may be the most meaningful contribution exhibitions like Lit Graphic make to the comics field. It’s not that showing comics in museums legitimizes this art form and allows people to play the “Comics aren’t just for kids!” card. Rather, these showings demonstrate that comics are (comics is?) art. Comics don’t need to be legitimized, they merely need to be seen from a different point of view. By displaying these works at the scale at which they were created, by showing every pen line and brush stroke, Lit Graphic demonstrates beyond any doubt the artistry of comic book art.

For me, this great strength was also part of Lit Graphic’s greatest weakness. While the artistry of the creators exhibited is diverse, taken in the aggregate the show feels like overkill. Howard Cruse and Jessica Abel, to pick two names from the exhibition group, are both wonderfully talented, incredibly engaging storytellers with unique artistic styles. Put them side by side (or in the case of Lit Graphic, in the same gallery) and the work of each creator remains distinctive and recognizable. Put them in a gallery with other (and in some cases, lesser) artists whose work encompasses slice of life narratives and the unique style of each artist begins to give way to a certain sameness of convention and form. Taken collectively as representative examples from larger works, these individual panels and sequences become, if not repetitive, then at least somewhat familiar. The similarities start to overshadow the differences in a way that does not happen with a collection of, say, portraits.

But no exhibition is perfect, especially those organized around a particular theme. Large group shows invariably include things that will resonate with some individuals, and leave others unimpressed. What I like may not appeal to everyone. What someone else likes, I may loathe. That’s part of the museum going experience. So long as the these works revolve around a curatorial idea that has the gravitational pull to hold the pieces together, the exhibition can work, regardless of the subjective preferences of any given visitor.

By presenting comic book art as art first and comics second, Lit Graphic does a great service to this unique and important art form. It is both interesting and appropriate for the Norman Rockwell museum to present an exhibition like this. Mr. Rockwell’s career and reputation embody the often dismissive tension between the respect afforded to the artist by the elite, and their dismissal of art with commercial appeal as mere illustration. Just as the museum (rightly) insits on Mr. Rockwell’s artistic legitimacy, so too Lit Graphic helps to legitimize comics.

That’s achievement enough without attempting to stake out exclusive narrative territory for comics alone.

Lit Graphic is on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum (9 Glendale Road, Route 183 Stockbridge, Massachusetts 01262; 413-298-4100 ) through May 26, 2008.

Would you like to buy an O? Toward an economic and lexographic analysis of the letter as commodity.

Among the few prized possessions of childhood that I haven’t chucked in a fit of unsentimental aceticism or austerity over the years is my copy of The Muppet Alphabet Album.

I randomly had the song “Would you like to buy an O?” pop into my head this morning. It’s a great song, but I found myself wondering: if it cost Ernie a nickel to buy an O in 1971, what would it cost to buy one in 2008 dollars?

In order to work this out, we have to first determine the value of comparable commodities to Ernie and the other denizens of Sesame Street. This requires that we first make a general determination of Ernie’s. On the one hand, he is old enough that he is able to live independently, or at least cohabit with a roommate. That suggests he has reached his majority. On the other hand, Ernie seems quite childish/childlike.

It is not necessary that Ernie’s age remains constant over time; what matters is his age in 1971, which is when the song appeared on The Muppet Alphabet Album. Beyond that, age isn’t the primary issue; it’s more a question of both buying power and type of products bought.

So, if an O cost a nickel, how does that compare to other things Ernie might have bought? A five-cent O was the equivalent of half a ten-cent soda (or one-sixth of a 30-cent malted) at Mister Hooper’s store.

To put this in some context, let’s consider the comic book as an example of Ernie’s consumer interest. In the real world, Action Comics sold for fifteen cents in early 1971, and shot up to a quarter by the end of the year. Thus, Ernie’s O was worth anywhere from one-third to one fifth of an issue of Action Comics. This makes sense, since there are two Os in the title Action Comics alone.

When you factor in the Approved by the Comics Code Authority, the O in the issue number [No. 400], plus any Os in other cover text ["The Duel of Doom"], it seems likely that DC comics must have negotiated some kind of volume discount, or at least purchased an unlimited use license for the right to use the O. Otherwise, where would Wonder Woman or Doom Patrol have been?

The reader must also remember that when you buy an O, you get not one, but two O sounds (long and short). On reflection, it seems the O purchase must be more of a licensing deal than a straight up purchase.

Back to Ernie, it would seem that even at a nickel, the O was a pretty good bargain, if Hooper’s sodas and comic books are reliable indices. What I have no way of knowing is what the going rate was for other commodities Ernie acquired (delicious pizza and yummy grape juice, as a way of illustrating the concepts of more and less; a mess of modeling clay for making a noseless bust of Bert, the better to steal Bert’s nose; a banana to stick in his ear) might have been, in the micro-economy of Sesame Street.

But, again, if we project based on what we know, we can start to make a pretty good guess. A 15-cent comic book from 1971 would cost $3.00 today, a twentyfold increase. Similarly, while a soda at Hooper’s would have cost 10 cents in 1971, it’s not unheard of for someone to pay $2 for a fountain soda as part of a restaurant meal. Again, twenty times more expensive.

If this comparison holds out, it would seem an O would fetch $1 in today’s market.

But consider that other factors contribute to price. On the one hand, the O is a static commodity. There haven’t been any significant innovations in its production or application over the past three and a half decades. Aside from routine maintenance, the manufacturer has not needed to make any significant capital investments on the production side. Granted, the number and variety of fonts has proliferated over the years, which gives the O a whole range of different looks, but these are aftermarket modifications rather than factory specifications, and should not affect the base cost.

Indeed, inflation notwithstanding, the only significant pressure on the manufacturing cost should be the cost of the raw materials used to produce the O. According to my best estimate; it takes 14 component parts to make an O; for the sake of convenience, let’s refer to these as parts A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and N. Logically, any price increase among any of these materials (based on either scarcity or increased demand) must get passed on to the consumer. Consider that Apple alone has driven up the market price for I since the introduction of the first iMac, to say nothing of the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and iMovie. Then there are is the degree to which the personal computing era and the whole internet age has increased demand for E: e-mail, e-commerce, etc. Finally, consider how language has evolved over the years, especially in youth culture; when Ernie bought his O, “lame” as a physical condition, and few people, if any, said “def” or “feh.”

On the other hand, as you rightly note, the O, like most other products, has become increasingly commoditized over the years. Back when Ernie was buying bananas to stick in his ear consumers might get one banana per bunch with a sticker on it.

Today, nearly every piece of loose produce one buys in the market carries a label. Taken by themselves, the marginal cost of these stickers is negligible. The larger issue is the branding and marketing costs that go into designing and developing a promotional campaign. Again, that’s a cost that gets passed on to the consumer.

Then, as you rightly note, the O has become identified with one of the most widely known and wildly successful celebrities around, Oprah Winfrey.

Given how lucrative the celebrity endorsement market is, her use of the O for her magazine, and other trademark ventures, must cost a pretty penny. Does the manufacturer eat this cost? Of course not. They recover the expense by charging the consumer more.

The marketplace of ideas has also evolved significantly since the early 1970s. While newspaper readership continues to fall, it seems like the number of magazines and niche interest publications increases every year. Then there is personal computing, word processing, the internet, blogging and text messaging; each has led to an explosion of content generation, which contributes significantly to the number of Os the average person uses in a given year. At previous licensing rates, the manufacturer must be losing money. Since the goal of business is profit, the only way to stem that loss is to increase the licensing fee.

Materials, marketing, endorsement, and licensing; each of these factors drives up the cost of the O beyond the rate of inflation. When you factor in all of these real and incidental costs, as well as shipping costs and retail markup, the going rate for an O could climb to as much as $2-$3, if not higher.

That said, the retail marketplace has evolved over the years in ways that may be detrimental to the retailer, but which may ultimately benefit the consumer.

The example of superstore retailers like Wal*Mart and Target, as well as wholesale clubs like CostCo and BJs provide economies of scale that result in savings to the consumer. At the same time, if the manufacturer is outsourcing production overseas or over the border, the reduction in labor costs should also put downward pressure on prices.

The unfortunate consequence of these savings is that independent retailers like Lefty the salesman cannot compete on price, and must compete on service if they are to remain in business. Available evidence suggests that by and large Lefty has a keen grasp of a service-oriented sales philosophy. He takes time with his customer. He describes the product in memorable terms (“round and neat;” “tidy and complete;” “circular and sweet.”). He points out key features and functionality (“You can sing a pretty song with it like so;” “you get two sounds for the price of one.”), and makes those features seem appealing by describing them with words like “catchy.”

Indeed, the only potential downside to the Lefty’s technique is that he may come off as too pushy for some customers when he tries to close the deal. As online research makes it possible for customers become increasingly informed consumers, the “Don’t ask any questions. Just buy the O and take it home tonight” approach must necessarily give way to a more persuasive, and less imperative sales strategy.

The author is deeply indebted to the groundbreaking work of Professors Henson, Oz, and Raposo of the Sesame Institute for Humor, Language, Numerical, Quantitative, and Ethical Development in guiding the creation of this presentation. Thanks also to Visiting Lecturer B. Bird, whose lyrical speech “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ” was an invaluable research resource. Finally, Professor Herbert Birdsfoot, author of the definitive exegesis on folkoric lexography, “The Tale of Tom Tattertall Tuttletut,” served as faculty advisor during the preparation of this work.

This post has been brought to you by the letters O and P, and by the number 12.

Bart’s Beefy Beans

So a few years back, we started making what may be the world’s simplest slow cooker meal: package of chicken breasts (with the packaging removed, natch), can of black beans, drained, jar of salsa. Cook all day on low (high if you start with frozen chicken). Shred the cooked (poached, really) chicken with a couple of forks, spoon into a pre-cheesed tortilla, roll up and enjoy. If you like your tortilla a little crispier, you can always put it seam side down in a skillet over medium heat for a minute or two, then flip to crisp up the other side. Simple, easy, pretty darn good, and comparatively healthy if you don’t get crazy with the cheese.

Then, a few years after that, we found ourselves stuck for what to have for dinner, without time to wait for the slow cooker. In a quick adaptation, I browned some ground turkey, tossed in the black beans and salsa, and created a ten minute version of the all day dish, one that has become a staple in our household. For some reason, we’ve taken to calling this recipe “beefy beans” despite the fact I’ve never once made it with beef.

A few days ago, after some early morning exercise, I was looking for something with protein in it for breakfast. I cracked out some of the previous night’s beefy beans filling, heated it up, and threw it in a bowl. In doing so, I realized I not only had a really basic burrito filling, but also the most basic homemade chili imaginable. Three ingredients, ten minutes. Sure, it’s only one small step removed from opening up a can of mass market chili, but there’s a world of difference contained in that small distance.

Once I started of thinking of this as a chili, I started thinking of other ways to use it: thrown into a chili cheese omelet; served over spaghetti as chili mac; spooned over tortilla chips, covered with cheese and turned into nachos. There’s a whole range of uses for this recipe, this idea, that never occured to me until I happened to look at it from a slightly different angle.

There’s probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

Iron Man (2008)

First things first: If you have not seen the film yet, and if you style yourself any sort of geek at all, stay through the credits. You will thank me. Of course, if you truly style yourself any sort of geek at all, odds are this little public service announcement is wholly unnecessary, as you wouldn’t dream of not staying through the credits.

Those post-credit thirty seconds? Best part of the movie, hands down, and a great setup for both a sequel and a spinoff. The leadup to the Big Reveal at the end was well telegraphed throughout the film. And while I personally prefer the classic version of the thing revealed I appreciate the sheer coolness of the parallel version chosen for this film.

I’ve drifted in and out of Iron Man over my thirty-plus years as a comics fan. More out that in, but the character has always been one I’ve generally liked. The film version of Iron Man does justice to the essential core of the character — wealthy industrialist weapons manufacturer forced by circumstance to confront his mortality, and his morality. Robert Downey, Jr. is note perfect in the lead role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Beyond Stark, the supporting cast is solid, with Jeff Bridges the strongest of the bunch. That’s hardly surprising as giving a great actor a nice juicy villain role usually works out well in comic book movies.

As with any comic book movie, the man behind the mask is only half the equation; the mask — or in this case the armor — that defines the heroic persona is just as important. The Iron Man suit presented in this movie is easily one of the most note perfect translations of comic book gadgetry to the big screen. It helps that the core concept of the Iron Man armor over the decades has been almost constant revision and redesign (and the film plays with this convention very nicely, with Tony Stark suiting up in three different armors over the course of the origin story. It would have been easy enough to design something kinda robotic looking, paint it crimson and gold, and call it Iron Man, but Stan Winston and his crew did that one better; they created a believable translation from comic page to film. The models are terrific. You will believe a man in a cybernetic exosuit can fly.

In a summer movie season targeted at great geek expectations, including a new Hulk, a new Batman, and a new Indiana freakin’ Jones fer the luvva Pete, Iron Man started things off on a high note.