At first glance, Comic Book Villains would appear to be aimed squarely at a comics-reading crowd. James Robinson (best known for his Eisner-award winning work on both DC Comics's Starman in the '90s and his creation Leave It to Chance) wrote and directed this 2002 film that begins with a series of close-ups on panels from vintage comics. Accompanying the comic book images is a heated exchange between two unseen speakers, one challenging the other to prove his expertise in comics by naming the issues that featured the first appearances of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the like. Robinson does hint at how intense the story will become with the closing lines of the exchange: "Are you just trying to get yourself killed? Because if you're doing that, you're doing a very good job." The prologue closes with a fade to black, the click of a gun, and a gunshot.
A Cast of Four-Colour Characters
The story proper begins inside a smallish comic book store in an unnamed American town. As the camera slowly drifts through the shop, Archie Lake (DJ Qualls from TV's My Name is Earl)—in a voiceover—introduces himself and "the cast of four-colour characters". Archie focuses on the comic shop owner, Raymond MacGillicuddy (Donal Logue from TV's ER), a pipe smoker who is very much at home talking about which Golden Age superheroine would be the best to sleep with and why. Archie also points out his personal nemesis, Conan (Danny Masterson from TV's That '70s Show), a comic book collector with deep pockets and undisguised disdain for the not-so-well-off Archie.
It is Conan who triggers what Archie calls "all the craziness" when he innocently asks Ray if he has heard of David Cresswell. According to Conan, David is a recently deceased comics fanatic whose collection dates back 40 or 50 years. Knowing the potential value of such a collection, Ray is intrigued.
Unbeknownst to him, though, Conan had, earlier in the day, told the same story to Ray's crosstown rivals, Norman Link (Cop Land's Michael Rapaport) and his wife Judy (Everyone Says I Love You's Natasha Lyonne). Ray has little regard for the Links because he feels they treat comics only as a business and have no real love for the medium. Norman and Judy, meanwhile, have dreams of expanding their business and do indeed view David Cresswell's collection as a means of attaining that dream.
The Mother's Lode
Ray and Norman each manage to convince David's less-than-co-operative mother, Mrs. Cresswell (Clue's Eileen Brennan), to allow them a look at her late son's comic book collection and confirm that it is the gold mine that they hoped it would be. Neither man, though, is able to persuade Mrs. Cresswell to sell the collection as she is adamantly opposed to parting with anything that belonged to her son.
What follows is a series of transparent attempts by Ray and the Links to ingratiate themselves to Mrs. Cresswell. With each party sabotaging the other's efforts, a feud develops in short order and escalates to the point where attempted vehicular homicide gets into the mix.
Archie, meanwhile, befriends Mrs. Cresswell and finds her stories from her youth and travels much more interesting than comics. With Archie taking Mrs. Cresswell's side and no end in sight for his feud with Norman and Judy, Ray becomes desperate and tracks down an old high school bully to help out. The bully in question, J.C. Carter (The Princess Bride's Cary Elwes), is a loner who is as comfortable around a nail gun as he is a handgun. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Carter's addition to the already ugly situation is like gasoline poured over an open fire.
A Niche Audience
Comic Book Villains is a rather odd film. On the one hand, the movie is riddled with references for comics and genre aficionados: for example, Archie notes that Conan only calls himself Conan because he claims to be Robert E. Howard's nephew. In another instance, Conan asks for "the recent Neil Gaiman hardcover...the British edition, not the American." The San Diego Comicon and Mile High Comics also get name checked while Archie and Conan sport various T-shirts featuring the likes of Hellboy, the Fantastic Four, and Grendel.
While Robinson liberally peppers the story with these comics references, he also spends a fair bit of time on the increasingly outrageous and disturbing behaviour of both Ray and the Links. These people do really like comics, albeit for different reasons, but they are not the ones Robinson wants his audience to cheer. In fact, the main characters who want to have and obsess over comics are the reason movie is called Comic Book Villains.
The Good Guys
Robinson very clearly presents Archie and Mrs. Cresswell as the voices of reason in the film. Archie hints to his change in outlook in his opening narration when he talks about "the real world, where parents paid bills and kids worried about football tryouts." Mrs. Cresswell, meanwhile, refers to comics as "the funny books" and regrets her son wasting his life on them.
All of this is very odd considering that a general audience not familiar with comic books (such as those who do not know that the Golden Age Flash was a different character than the Silver Age Flash) may not find the subject as interesting or accessible as those in the know about comics. At the same time, comic book fans may not like the movie because it preaches in a very heavy-handed fashion about the dangers of taking collecting too seriously and only treats with affection those who either outgrow comics or did not like them from the start.
Robinson's exploration of obsession over comics is a cinematic curiosity and really needs to be either more light-hearted or over-the-top to convey its message effectively. In short, it needs to be more fun. If Comic Book Villains had comic book-loving characters that were appealing and did not come off as dangerous psychopaths in training, it would probably find a much wider audience than it has.
Anthony Sin - Anthony Sin has been writing a while now, since The Beatles abandoned the clean-cut look in fact. Much to his surprise, he made it out of ...
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