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.

Can't get enough of that wonderful Duff!

My reading at the moment is swapping between Green Lantern and Duff Cooper's diaries. They read like a parody of aristocratic life in the early twentieth century, or like this guy:

A typical day would be something like 'got up at 12, strolled into the Foreign Office, lunched with the Duchess of Wherever, loved her in the pantry, played tennis with the King of Portugal, loved his wife in the car, put in another hour at the FO, chatted to Winston [Churchill] about who hates the poor most, dined with the Crown Prince of Serbia who made a pass at my wife, the bounder, had his servant in the hallway, wrote a sonnet about my wife who I love very much, remembered all my friends were dead in the war, ordered more suits while drinking a '78 Pommery'.

Names are dropped like clocks tick. He knew everybody and, while not being overburdened with brains, he had a certain ratlike cunning and will to succeed which led him to the highest offices. His entire class seem to have spent their time shooting birds, having sex with each other's wives and husbands, and losing money in the casinos. They all have very silly names too: 'Kakoo' springs to mind.

In their spare time, they ran the country. Badly.

I'm having a very highbrow day: teaching King Lear for two hours, then straight into another couple of hours on Kantian ethics. 

Man Ray (LaMontagne)

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ray LaMontagne, of whom I'd only read in Word magazine. (Thanks, by the way, for your comments). Why do all American musicians have beards at the moment, except Kelly Deal? Talking of Kelly Deal, she really is the perfect woman: she's designed her own font and it's free! Her band The Breeders have a site called Breeder's Digest, which is rather brilliant.

I went because Christine and James had managed to book an extra ticket in a different area of the venue - so I ended up on my own, in the balcony, directly in front of the singer - brilliant. Less brilliant was sitting next to a yummy mummy and her daughters Portia and India (I'm guessing). Clearly Mr. LaMontagne and his support act, Radio 2-friendly Josh Ritter, are approved objects of middle-class desire. After they sneered at the scruffy fat singleton in a Green Lantern t-shirt, I sipped beer and read my Shakespeare commentary during the intervals. That showed them.

So anyway, the music. It was odd. I'd heard of LaMontagne and Ritter, and assumed that they were middlingly well-known sensitive folk-country artistes, and so they are. I didn't realise that Mr. Lamontagne is the object of freakish devotion - a mostly full hall (probably 2500) at £25 a go in Wolverhampton is truly astonishing. They whistled, stamped and cheered like Mormons at Joseph Smith's resurrection (don't write in - I've no idea if Mr Smith is expected to rise again, though I imagine the Church would like to know the whereabouts of the golden tablets detailing the Semitic origins of America's ancient peoples he 'received from the prophet/angel/time-traveller Moroni' and then 'misplaced' or 'returned to the angel' before anyone else got a look. Actually, Some Chilean Woman could enlighten us). But I digress. LaMontagne's music was good. It was country-folk-blues and the later the set got, the more impassioned he became. The band was beautifully lit in pools of liquid, varying light, and they stood on rugs, which added to the 1970s atmosphere.

Actually, they reminded me of the post-Slowdive band Mojave 3 but more country, which is high praise from me (listen to some here)!

Then home for the glorious, ambiguous and complex ending to The Wire… Here's LaMontagne on somebody's crappy mobile phone from a couple of years ago, in Wolverhampton. There's nothing up yet from last night's gig.

We're all going on a summer holiday

Well, that's it, comrades, until Monday afternoon at the earliest. I'll take my iPod to All Tomorrow's Parties in case there's wireless access, but it seems unlikely. I'm particularly looking forward to Teenage Fanclub, Bon Iver and The Breeders, but I'm sure others will be brilliant too. I'll be the one in cherry red Doctor Martens, a Green Lantern t-shirt and bad hair, in case that floats your boat. What book shall I take as a prop? I was wondering about On Deconstruction but I've read it several times now, so perhaps a Moomins volume might be more fitting.

Now I'm off to see In the Loop again to top up my epithet levels.

Shazam! Pow!

I'm not really one for comics. Or even graphic novels, other than Alan Moore and Green Lantern, but I thought Bostin' Heroes deserved maximum respect, simply for being set in the Black Country (not a racist term, foreign readers) and for having a decent sense of humour.

Friday I'm in Bed

Well, it's almost the end of a very long week, but one in which I think I've mostly been a force for good, even though I didn't wear my Green Lantern t-shirt at all. I've done some extra-kind counselling and tutoring, marked some essays, been to some great lectures and hauled my carcass up and down the pool even though I have a cold. So to reward myself over the weekend, I'm going to be waiting at a motorway junction in the West Midlands at 6.00 a.m. for a lift to London for a training day on taking sports teams on trips abroad. Deep joy.

Oh, and Stoke are going to beat Everton on Saturday. Ahem

The Plashing Vole to the Rescue

The Green Lantern t-shirt is already working. Pausing only to remove my disguise, I leapt into action to help a young lady who fell heavily from her bicycle this morning, aided by my trusty sidekick, The Green Cruiser. Tomorrow: Plashing Vole picks up some litter and the world is saved.

My secret identity revealed

I am now complete. The long walk to the post room was worth it: I am now the proud owner of a Green Lantern t-shirt. It's not quite like the leotard-style one above.

"In brightest day... in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship evil's might beware my power--Green Lantern's light!"

Even more excitingly, it's the first Medium t-shirt I've bought in years! I'm not going to be mistaken for Comic-Book Guy!