Duuude.

According to these avid fans, today’s blockbuster superhero movies are only just catching up with the derring-do dynamics of the comics they grew up with. If you’re talking bums on cinema seats, superhero heroics are a sure-fire, bankable hit. This year alone there will be four major releases, with Australia’s Chris Hemsworth fronting Thor in May, the space-heroics of Green Lantern, filmed in Oz with the hunky Ryan Reynolds, and X-Men First Class in June, followed by the defrosting of Captain America in July.

Next year we will get the third and final instalment of both Christopher Nolan’s wildly popular Batman franchise and the Robert Downey Jnr-helmed Iron Man series, as well as reboots of previous franchise juggernauts Spiderman and Superman.

You’d think the world’s greatest heroes were unstoppable with all this silver screen exposure, capable of selling everything by the truckload, from posters to lunch boxes. This might be true of film-related merchandise, but the reality remains that the so-called ‘‘funny books’’ they are derived from don’t shift anywhere near as many copies as the movies do tickets.

Why is it that while cinema-goers flock to superhero movies in their millions, even the best-selling comic books fall far short?

Larry Boxshall and Joe Morris, presenters of the weekly Non-Canonical podcast, which debates – often quite colourfully – the merits and failings of the latest comic books, have a fair inkling.

larry the rock star . com

Photo by Rich K from the first HST shoot and Larry is a good friend of mine who will be doing the video for the next HST shoot on April 11th.