My mother was once reduced to tears over a paint job.
For one to realize how unusual this was, one has to realize that Mum was the last child of a first-generation American who’d been raised by parents who’d come over from the Old Country, been forced out of their first home due to hysteria over their willingness to tend smallpox victims, and settled in Western Pennsylvania around the time of one of the 19th century’s periodic economic panics. Whining, complaining, and above all crying were simply not acceptable, ever, and Mum was raised almost from birth that no matter what life threw at her, she had to suck up and deal.
This stood her in good stead in some ways; she had a pain tolerance a football player might envy, as she learned many years later rehabbing a knee injury, which is why
her physical therapist nicknamed her "The Iron Lady" after she merely grunted while a football player undergoing the same treatment shrieked, sobbed, and begged for his mother. In other ways, her stoicism was definitely a problem. I nearly lost an ovary to a strangulated hernia in 1973 because she simply refused to believe that the lump in my groin was that bad, at least until I threw up just before Secretariat won the Preakness.
She did cry when overwhelmed – her grief at my father’s death was gut-wrenching to see, never mind how it must have felt – but the normal vagaries of life simply did not provoke the stereotypical feminine reaction. She had been trained not to “turn on the water-works,” as she used to say, and she was none too happy with anyone who did, no matter how stressful the situation.
This is why the Great Arabian Beige Incident was so memorable.
We had moved back to Pittsburgh earlier that year after two years of exile in Blacksburg, Virginia, and it was time to make some changes to the modest little pre-war brick colonial we’d bought a short walk from the local library. The house itself was in good condition, with a rock garden, a one-car garage, and plenty of room for the family, but the carpeting was shot and the paint in the living room was dingy. Something had to be done, and soon, before the house would feel like home.
The carpeting was one thing – I may have written about the travails we underwent once we discovered the day before the new rug was due to be installed that the foam rubber pad had basically fused itself to the varnish on the hardwood floors – but it was comparatively easily remedied. Mum’s furniture was all nice neutral fruitwood with earth-toned upholstery, just like everyone else in the early 1970’s, and a rich persimmon broadloom with bronze undertones was a vast improvement over the threadbare beige sculpted loop a previous owner had slapped down at some point. The house looked ten thousand percent better once the carpet was down, and if the paint hadn’t been quite so drab Mum and Dad probably would have called it a day.
Would that it had been so.
Choosing new paint turned out to be surprisingly complicated. First one had to acquire samples of the upholstery and carpeting. Then one had to take those to the paint store to see how they looked with various paint chips in the desired color range, all of which looked disturbingly similar under fluorescent lights. One would then take the paint chips and fabric samples either to the plate glass window at the front of the paint store or out onto the sidewalk to get an idea of what one’s selections looked like under natural light.
Finally, once one had narrowed down one's selection to a dozen or so from the
several thousand one had considered while one’s spouse had a cigarette and checked his watch at very short intervals, one would go home and tack up the paint chips at various locations in one’s living and dining room, moving them occasionally to see what the colors looked like as the hours passed and the light slowly faded. It was much more involved than what other members of the family suggested, which was pick out a couple of paint chips, bring them home, see how they looked on the piano, and call the paint store to arrange for a few gallons to be picked up after the weekly grocery run.
Only my mother could turn choosing living room paint into a daylong ordeal, but it was what it was.
Eventually Mum, with input from my aunt Betty (of course) and a few terse “yes, Martha, that looks fine, just like the first ten you showed me” comments from Dad, decided that we would go with Arabian Beige. This was a richly toned sand color with the merest hint of rose that would bring out the equally rich hues of the carpet and sofa, yet avoid clashing with the paler curtains Mum had hung over the summer. If the samples were to be believed, Arabian Beige would be the perfect accent to tie together our new carpet and existing furniture to make to the modest little pre-war brick colonial Our Home.
If only it had been so easy.
We didn’t find this out until Dad had called the paint store on Saturday morning, placed our order, and ventured out to pick up the five or six gallons we’d need for the living room, dining room, and entry hall. The furniture had been moved away from the walls, the drop cloths were in place, and the dog secured in an upstairs bedroom lest we end up with an Arabian Beige Cairn terrier. Mum and I wore grubby old clothes, brushes and rollers and trays in place and ready to go, and Mum’s brother Lou had promised to stop by later that day. We were as ready as we were going to be.
Then Dad came home, carefully placed the first can of Arabian Beige on a drop cloth, and pried it open with a paint stick to reveal our glorious, freshly mixed sand-with-rose undertones paint.
Which was pink.
Not a vivid pink, thank God. This was an odd color reminiscent of the washed-out tones of calamine lotion, with a dash of slightly stale Pepto-Bismol lurking just below the surface. It was not pleasant, clashed badly with our furniture, and was most emphatically not beige, Arabian or otherwise.
Mum stared at the paint. So did I. So did Dad. None of us said a word for several seconds.
Finally Mum broke the silence. “Walt? Did they give you the wrong order?”
Dad scrutinized paint chip we'd used to compare the serial number for Arabian Beige to that on the receipt from the paint store. “It doesn’t look like it. Huh.”
“This is – this is – “
“Weird,” I said, articulate as only a twelve-year-old can be.
Mum and Dad stared at each other, then at the can of not-Arabian not-Beige. “I’ll call them,” said Dad after a few seconds of that mysterious non-verbal communication that married couples so often share.
“That’s a good idea,” said Mum, setting down her paintbrush and shaking her head.
And thus it was that Dad got in touch with the paint store, schlepped the cans he'd just purchased back to the car, and hied himself off to find out why Arabian Beige was actually Skin Lotion Pink. Mum and I may have had a cup of tea – glaring at the walls is thirsty work, you know - and we probably walked the dog, and we waited.
Forty-five minutes later Dad came back, grim of face and burdened with a single can of paint. He dropped it on the floor, shucked his coat, and pursed his lips.
“You aren’t going to like this,” he said to Mum, and pried off the lid of the can to reveal –
Skin Lotion Pink.
Mum’s jaw just about landed on the drop cloth. “Wait. That’s the same – “
“This is Arabian Beige.”
“That can’t be! It’s pink!” Mum cried, a distinct edge in her voice. She might have been getting a migraine. "Walt, that can't - "
“Martha. They mixed a new batch in front of me. This is Arabian Beige.” Dad put his hands on her shoulders. “The clerk said it’ll look fine once it’s dry.”
Mum gaped. “Are you certain? This doesn’t look right.”
“I know,” said Dad. “But the clerk swears this is the right formula – he even showed me the color mix in the book. Let’s give it a try before we give up, okay?”
“I suppose,” said Mum, in a voice that was pretty much the dictionary definition of “dubious.” She rubbed her forehead, squinting slightly in a way that spoke of "throbbing veins" and "auras." "Go ahead."
Dad nodded, then took a deep breath. and poured out a tray of brand spanking new Arabian Beige. He then carefully ran a roller through it and applied it with his usual fastidious care to a bare section of the living room wall.
Where it still looked pink.
Mum hissed but didn’t say anything as Dad covered a yard-square section of plaster with the paint. It was slightly paler on the wall than it looked in the can,and a little beiger, and for about twenty terribly hopeful minutes it looked as if the clerk was right, that Arabian Beige simply looked pink(ish) in the can but would be perfectly fine once it dried.
Alas, alack, and well-a-day, the clerk was wrong.
Oh, so very, very wrong.
Arabian Beige not only did not look beige once it had dried, it did not even look like paint. “Mutant offspring of Clinique Foundation, Estee Lauder lipstick, and a whole lot of blackboard chalk” comes close to describing the texture and color, but one still has to factor how it looked with the brand-new persimmon-bronze carpet and Mum’s carefully maintained fruitwood furniture. “Cosmic horror” may be a bit too strong, “really ugly” too weak – perhaps we should simply say it was “hideous” and leave it at that.
Even so, it was still a shock when my stoic mother, who had last shed a tear at her mother’s funeral a few years earlier, let out a despairing wail, burst into tears, and buried her face in Dad’s shoulder as she railed about perfidious paint store clerks. It wasn't just a few tears, either - this was a true, full-blown, "sob till you can't breathe at least until you blow your nose on something that isn't your husband's sweatshirt" crying jag, and I think I may have fled the room, or possibly the house, until it was over.
Such was the mystical power of Arabian Beige.
Eventually she calmed down – it was only paint, after all, not a nuclear war – and we gathered up the paint to take it back to the store for a full refund. Mum brought along her beloved paint chips, alternate choices circled, and asked for something called “Mushroom,” then watched as it was mixed to avoid another gruesome surprise. This time we bought only a single can, which we slapped on to a different section of the wall to make sure it really was Mushroom and not Rotting Forest Floor once dry.
It was, thank God and the angels, which meant we were spared the unnerving sight of Mum having a second meltdown before lunch. Mushroom proved acceptably neutral with the carpet, furniture, upholstery, and even the curtains, and so Dad went back to the paint store for the fourth time that day and came home with enough for the entire job.
He also brought a small can of extra-strength primer to cover the Arabian Beige, even though an initial swipe of Mushroom looked as if it would cover. This time we weren’t taking any chances.
The moral of this story, such as it is, is not "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." That would have worked only if my parents had been willing to redo the house in Arabian Beige-compatible colors and styles, which would have been unpleasant for one and all.
No, it's probably "if your first plan doesn't work, go with something else, and if that doesn't work, fall back and punt." My folks did eventually give up on Arabian Beige and go with Mushroom, and if it wasn't as warm or soothing as the paint chip had suggested Arabian Beige might be, it was good enough. They weren't stupid, either of them, and after two failures and my mother acting completely out of character, they knew when to quit.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the makers of the films that are the subject of tonight's diary.
There have been a lot of truly awful Superhero Movies So Bad They Make Jack Kirby's Ghost Hulk Out and Dismember the Production Staff, but the quartet based on Kirby's first collaboration with Stan Lee have been unusually poor. There's no real reason for this - the FF comic book lasted for over fifty years and 600-plus issues - and there are far, far worse super-teams than Dr. Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (super genius who can stretch his body to insane lengths), his old war buddy Ben Grimm/The Thing (stalwart rock-like creature who yells "It's clobberin' time!" before beating his opponents into the floor), his wife Sue Storm-Richards/The Invisible Woman (devoted wife and mother who can disappear and create all but unbreachable force fields), and his brother-in-law Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (feckless youth who can light himself on fire, fly, and burn stuff to a cinder).
There are also far worse villains than their chief antagonist, Victor von Doom/Dr. Doom (mad scientist who wears plate armor and a cape, speaks of himself in the third person, and is the dictator of the small Eastern European country of Latveria). Bad luck and bad scripts factor in, but there definitely seems to be something about this particular property that keeps it from achieving the same heights as, say, the Avengers or the average Bat-flick.
It's a long strange trip indeed, and that's why tonight I bring you not books, but a look at the cinematic history of the Fantastic Four, aka "Marvel's First Family," aka "The Team that Launched the Silver Age," aka "The Adventures Stretch McGillicuddy, his transparent wife, her obnoxious brother, and their pet rock pile." Some of these movies are worse than others, but all are prime examples of Films So Bad They're Good:
The Fantastic Four (1994), wasting Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab, and Michael Bailey Smith - this film was reportedly made by schlockmeister Roger Corman for a German production company in an attempt to keep the film rights from reverting to Marvel. The script might or might not have made a decent film - it's actually pretty faithful to the comics - but it's hard to tell since Corman made the entire film for around a million dollars, tops.
Regardless, the unintentionally hilarious result includes the following gems:
- A Thing costume that looks like it was rented from an eager but not overly skilled cosplayer.
- Shiny silver spacesuits that seem to have been constructed from fabric purchased at the local Jo-Ann's.
- Johnny Storm sporting the Worst Bleach Job in Hollywood History until Colin Farrell in Alexander the Great.
- Special effects that bear a startling resemblance to early 1980's video games.
- Dr. Doom lounging on a throne that looks like something out of Cobra Woman or another Maria Montez effort, only without the snakes or slinky costumes.
- A Dr. Doom costume that looks to be made out of molded vinyl and cheap green sheeting.
- Some really, really bad acting from the actors who played Dr. Doom and the Human Torch, which is a damned shame since Rebecca Staab (the Invisible Woman) and Alex Hyde-White (Mr. Fantastic) aren't bad.
- Music that may or may not have been cribbed from early Star Wars knockoff Message from Space.
- Cinematography so blurry the lenses seem to have been dunked in a vat of Vitamin A&D Ointment.
Ultimately the film was never released, depriving comics fans of a chance to see one of their favorites filmed for less than the cost of vaccinating a village of Latverian children against a Skrull infestation. It's available on YouTube, though, and I highly recommend it for the curious and the masochistic.
Fantastic Four (2005), starring Ioan Gruffudd, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, and Jessica Alba - this film, directed by Tim Story for a real studio (20th Century Fox) on a generous budget ($100 million) has a few things to recommend it: a handful of good performances (see below), some nice special effects, a couple of genuinely funny moments, and the gorgeous Marine Building in Vancouver doubling for the FF's Midtown headquarters, the Baxter Building.
Those weren't enough to overcome the problems:
- Ioan "Horatio Hornblower" Gruffudd imitating the mast on a British ship of the line as Reed Richards in what has to be the single least convincing performance of his career.
- Jessica "What is this on my head?" Alba struggling with a sexist script, skimpy costumes, and a bleach job that clashes with her olive skin and dark eyes. She also is supposed to be related to Chris Evans, which would work beautifully if the two actors looked anything alike, had similar accents, or had the slightest trace of brother/sister chemistry.
- A thick, heavy, 100% real and authentic Thing costume that looks totally out of place alongside the computer-generated Human Torch, let alone Mr. Fantastic turning his body into spaghetti (no, not literally THANK GOD).
- Dr. Doom spontaneously generating armor plates through his skin, which is every bit as disturbing as it sounds.
- Several "she's invisible so all you can see is her bra" jokes directed at Jessica Alba.
- A "romance" between Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman that might be sweet if the actors had any spark, which they don't.
There are a few good things in this movie - Stan Lee's cameo as Willie Lumpkin the Postman, a luminous Kerry Washington as Ben Grimm's girlfriend Alicia Masters, Christ Evans stealing the entire film as Johnny Storm, Super-Powered Douche Canoe - but they aren't enough to overcome a mediocre script, bad casting, and several long, boring stretches where nothing much happens. This version of the Fantastic Four is a huge improvement on the Roger Corman version, but fantastic it ain't.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) , starring all of the above plus a puffy little cloud of evil and doom - the first Tim Story movie about Stretch Armstrong Reed Richards and his amusingly dysfunctional relatives made enough money that this inferior sequel was rushed into production and released upon the less than eager public two years later. Once again Ioan Gruffudd is far too reserved (even when grieving Sue during her supposed death), Jessica Alba is saddled with a lousy wig/bleach job, and the best thing in the whole mishmash is Chris Evans doing a splendid impression of a frat boy who finds that all those beer busts have left him the coolest dude in the world.
Among the non-highlights:
- Johnny whining that using his powers will incinerate his brand new tuxedo.
- The River Thames draining thanks to a huge sinkhole.
- A Silver Surfer who sometimes looks liquid, sometimes looks matte, and sometimes looks like the Terminator only younger, and slimmer, and sans the Austrian accent.
- Johnny's powers destabilizing, meaning that if he touches another member of the team he'll turn invisible, or stretch, or suddenly look like he's made of orange rocks.
- The American military capturing the Silver Surfer and imprisoning him in Siberia, which is either a subtle comment on extraordinary rendition or a huge continuity error.
- Mighty Galactus, a humanoid who's normally around 30 feet high and dresses in red and purple, is a giant cosmic cloud that looks like a jazzed up CGI version of the planet killing wax paper cone from an old episode of Star Trek.
- Jessica Alba wearing what appears to be two very small dead minks on her eyelids in lieu of mascara.
- A Dodge logo on the Fantasticar, the team's hypersonic flying vehicle, and a line about it being powered by a Hemi.
- Michael Chiklis once again weighted down with a foam rubber suit that makes him looking stumpy, not super.
Throw in a really bad script, some less than fantastic special effects, mixed reviews, and the universal derision of comics fans who could not deal with Galactus the Evil Weather Pattern, and the resulting mess not only failed to make back its production budget, but was nominated for two Golden Raspberries (Worst Actress for Jessica Alba and Worst Screen Couple for her and Ioan Gruffudd). Plans for a third film were scrapped, Michael Chiklis and Ioan Gruffudd went back to television, Jessica Alba concentrated on her family and business, and Chris Evans became Captain America.
As for Galactus, he was last seen grubbing for wind gusts and trying to become a typhoon somewhere in the Coral Sea. Rumors that the Silver Surfer actually was the Terminator in a clever CGI disguise cannot be confirmed at this time.
Fantastic Four (2015), possibly killing the careers of Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell - This latest, and by all accounts worst, version of Reed Richards 'n Pals was made for exactly the same reason as the Roger Corman cheapie: to prevent the film rights from reverting to Marvel. This may or may not be an excuse for the comparatively modest budget and non-star casting, but it in no way excuses the following howlers:
- Reed and Ben are childhood buddies from Oyster Bay, Long Island, not war buddies from Korea (or Vietnam or Desert Storm or Afghanistan). Not only that, Reed is smart enough to build a teleportation device for his middle school science fair.
- The adult-sized version of the teleportation machine is built in a Super Secret Military Installation that has no problem with employing Super Genius Teenagers. Not only that, the Super Secret Military Handlers decide that one test on an animal is proof that the thing works well enough for human tests.
- Reed, Ben, Johnny, and Victor decide to test the machine themselves after they get drunk out of their skulls. It does not end well.
- Sue is continually ignored, belittled, and treated like a junior tag along instead of an actual team member in a display of sexism that makes the "animated bra" jokes in the earlier films look NOW-approved.
- The Thing is used as a covert assassin despite looking like, you guessed it, a giant pile of rocks - and somehow this never once makes it onto YouTube, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Facebook, Breitbart, Drudge, Instagram, Snapchat, or anywhere else.
- Victor is trapped for a year on an evil planet called, imaginatively enough, "Planet X" and not "Latveria." He prefers this place to Earth despite the lack of food, water, shelter, or any clothing except his armor (which is fused to his skin EW EW EW EW), which makes him look like Tron, and a cloak (????), which makes him look like an extra from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. There's also a complete lack of the alcoholic beverages that led to him and his bros deciding that coming here while shit-faced was a good idea, which is so not cool!
- NO WHITE SIDEBURNS ON REED RICHARDS. Then again, he's supposed to be eighteen (even though Miles Teller is pushing thirty) so it's all good.
- No attempts at humor except a subplot that assumes that no one but geeks reads Jules Verne these days.
- Stereotypes about Johnny being an Angry Young Black Man Who Is Good At Manual Labor (or, how he's recruited to the team in the first place since they need someone to build their teleportation machine in the first place).
- What appears to be an entire missing reel that would explain most of the gaping holes in the script.
- A director, Josh Trank, who spent the shoot trashing his rental house (and got sued for the damages, outcome pending), acting so erratically he was fired from a gig directing the eighth Star Wars movie, and generally behaving so badly the studio snatched the final cut away from him and attempted to do their own version. Trank responded with a snippy tweet a few days before the premiere about how his cut was a thousand times better.
- Everyone being held prisoner for a year in an underground bunker (except Victor, who's off chillin' on Planet X in his stylin' Tron/Skeletor fusion cosplay).
- No Stan Lee cameo, which pretty much says it all.
Needless to say, this latest version of the Fantastic Four opened to abysmal reviews (8% favorable on Rotten Tomatoes, yo!), dismal box office (less than $30 million on its opening weekend), and universal screams of pain and anguish and betrayal and a whole lot of other terrible things from the fanboys. It opened strongly in a few places, including Ireland, Mexico, and Malta (three countries that presumably know from giant rockpiles), but has as much chance of making back its production cost as George Pataki has of being the 45th President of the United States.
In spite of all this, the studio has announced plans for a sequel, tentatively set for 2017. Just why they're doing this is not clear, although "sticking it to Marvel even as Marvel laughs its way to the bank" is a possibility. Either way, expect this one to clean up at the Razzies next spring, big time.
Such is the sad, sad, cinematic history of the Fantastic Four. And they aren't the only ones to get the "my God, what were they thinking?" treatment from the studios; for every The Dark Knight, Superman, or The Avengers that's not only a fun popcorn flick but a genuinely good movie, there far many more like the following quartet of Comic Book Adaptations So Bad They Don't Get a Sequel, Oh No, Not a Chance in the WORLD:
Captain America (1944) - this first attempt at bringing the Sentinel of Liberty to the screen features the following: pudgy district attorney Grant Gardner (not scrawny artist Steve Rogers), who fights crime wearing a less than convincing Captain America costume for reasons that remain obscure; a lot of very dim lighting; a rash of mysterious deaths involving an Egyptian scarab;a "Purple Death" chemical; a "Dynamic Vibrator," which is a piece of mining equipment and not a super sex toy; a singular lack of Captain America's Mighty Shield, Mighty Helmet Wings, and Mighty Pirate Boots; and not the slightest clue that the writers had ever so much as read the Captain America comic books that American kids had been mainlining for over three years. Worse, the out of shape star, Dick Purcell, pushed himself so hard during the filming that he dropped dead a few weeks after filming, making this not only silly and pointless but tragic.
Jonah Hex - Josh Brolin's enthusiastic performance can't save this short (81 minutes) and exceptionally incoherent attempt at adapting DC Comics' grim, violent Western about a scarred and traumatized bounty hunter. Psychic powers that involve raising the dead, a badly miscast Megan Fox, an even worse cast Aidan Quinn (as President Grant, who offers to make Hex "Sheriff of the United States" for favors rendered), a super weapon designed by Eli Whitney, and Tom "Luke Duke" Wopat running what is either Thunderdome or Fight Club...this one has all of this and so much more, and I swear to God even a 15 year old Latverian fanficer coming off a week-long pocky high and a binge-read of Kamala Khan's Avengers/My Little Pony crossover epic could not produce something worse.
The Spirit - Will Eisner's brilliant newspaper strips about a presumed-dead crimefighter, Denny Colt, were one of the true pinnacles of mid-century comics, with superb art, excellent scripts, and vivid, memorable characters. Eisner is so revered for The Spirit and later works like A Contract with God that the comics equivalent of the Oscars are named in his honor, and deservedly so. Alas, all the imagination, talent, and heart Eisner put it into his work are wasted in this ugly mess by Frank Miller, who applied the same motion capture technique he used in Sin City to Eisner's magnificent art and characters. The result, which is about as emotionally deep as a sidewalk puddle, is rife with gratuitous sexism, hideous violence, really inappropriate humor, severed fingers, gratuitous cats, and a complete absence of the Spirit's buddy Ebony. Why Eisner, who took his work very seriously, didn't rear up out of his grave and drown Miller in a vat of India ink while stabbing him in the eyes with a tech pen, is not at all clear.
Elektra - this spinoff of the 2003 Ben Affleck Daredevil casts rosy cheeked, milky skinned, brown haired Jennifer Garner as Daredevil’s former girlfriend Elektra Natchios, a top assassin and martial artist from a wealthy Greek family. Garner kicks plenty of ass and wields a mean sai in her fight scenes, but she's about as Greek as a plate of souvlaki sauced with Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup. Worse, her character had been killed off the original film, so the producers had to throw in a great deal of mystical hand waving and invoke the Ben Parker Rule* to forestall the inevitable head scratching. The script is incoherent, Garner barely raises her voice above a whisper for the entire film, love interest Goran Visnjic has nothing do, his daughter is a Generic Plot Moppet, there’s a great deal of mist for no good reason, and the mystical subplots about resurrection and avatars and chosen ones simply do not make sense. Even a baddie whose super power involves tattoos that he can bring to life and use to spy on/attack Elektra can’t save this one, which pretty much killed any chance Jennifer Garner had of being an action star in her own right.
*The Ben Parker Rule, named for Peter Parker's murdered uncle, states the character cannot be resurrected in the main continuity for any reason because his reappearance will mess up Spider-Man's motivation beyond repair. It was formerly called the Gwen Stacy Rule (for Spidey's first girlfriend, who died and stayed dead until a version from another part of the Marvel multiverse proved so popular that Spider-Gwen was incorporated into the newly rebooted timeline), or the Bucky Barnes Rule (for Captain America's World War II sidekick, who died in 1945 and stayed dead until it turned out he was actually the Winter Soldier).
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Do you have a favorite comic that was ruined by Hollywood? One that you fear will be ruined by Hollywood? Did you actually pay your hard earned to see any of these films? Did you demand your money back? Did you mourn the news that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner broke up? Do you even know what I'm talking about? It's a steamy summer night, so crack open a wine cooler and share....
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