In brightest day, in blackest night

Yes, there's a Green Lantern movie coming out in June.



Will it be any good? I doubt it. Will I go to see it? Oh yes. It's now traditional. Hollywood picks whichever comic characters are left over and dumbs them down. They get the costumes right, but strip out the mythology and tension, replacing them with bad banter and overblown special effects. If you don't believe me, try Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I actually like Watchmen and V for Vendetta, but only because they act as homages to the originals: they look perfect but are largely hollow at the core. V for Vendetta is a good film because it dares to make a positive case for terrorism - but it's not emotionally or intellectually a patch on the Alan Moore comic.

What you get instead is an affectionate, nostalgic pastiche, because the people running Hollywood now are mega-rich former nerds (hence the delightful but utterly shallow remake of Star Trek): they can indulge their fantasies with $200m budgets, losing the soul of the original texts in the process.

I'm a devoted fan of Green Lantern because I always had a soft spot for the slightly boring or overlooked superheroes - The Atom, Green Lantern, Supergirl - the also-rans. Green Lantern's so boring and reactionary that in the 1970s he was given a hippy sidekick (Green Arrow) to loosen him up and show him the difference between law and justice. Then he got a whole universe and massive, ever-extending story which largely detracted from the core. Why do I like these characters? Partly because I have a natural affinity for the underdogs, the heroes who don't show off all the time or have slightly lame powers, and partly because comics were banned in my house. There was no regular stream of Superman, Batman or Spiderman: instead, I smuggled in whatever I could, and it just so happened that Lantern and the Justice League of America comics were amongst the few not found confiscated by Customs at the front door. I was kind of lucky: this was the 80s and the comics had largely ceased to be reactionary propaganda and were knee-deep in a reassessment of their politics and literary qualities. If only someone had told me about Alan Moore then. So there was no quality control. If it was contraband, I'd read it

The same thing happened with science fiction and all the other books I brought home a few years later. My mum doesn't know a lot about  literature, but she knows what she doesn't like. The same goes for popular TV: there was a blanket ban on ITV. Looking back, she was right on that one. And in any case, Channel 4 was where all the filth art was. No longer…

We all know what we'll get with superhero films: CGI and an explosion every four minutes, while in between heroes and villains explain to each other exactly how they feel in unconvincing prose: exactly what a lonely 14-year old boy might want. But I'll still go because the Nerd Moment, although it's actually a cynical appropriation of nerd culture, still feels like a victory for me and those like me. We're cool. Fezzes are cool.