All comments about Watchmen - the film - will invariably be preceded by "based on the greatest graphic novel of all time." And... it's fair to say that that Alan Moore's piece will take quite something to be supplanted for that honour... Much of Moore's success with it is because he weaves a story of incredible complexity and density, using the medium to the fullest extent possibly. Which is why many people were worried about the film. Adaptations are a tricky business at the best of times and Watchmen was very specifically written to be a comic, not merely a story TOLD in a comic... SPOILERS AHEAD!

That said, Watchmen (the film) does a FAIRLY good job. Rorschach sounds rather too much like Christian Bale's Batman... but the wonderful effects of his mask make that a forgiveable offence... and the film uses a lot of the dialogue and iconography from the comic pretty much verbatim. The entire intro monologue is pretty much directly in line with the book.

The issue of course becomes one of time. There are just a lot of elements that had to be dropped for this film to be of an acceptable length. That's a given of the change of medium. They do however manage to cover the backstory of each character rather well... but the ENDING... the ending is where it all falls apart.

Moore spent considerable amounts of time hinting at some plot beyond the mere mask killings and that while Rorschach might rabidly obsess about it - the reader especially has plenty of incite to the fact that there is something more afoot and that it's not going to be pretty... of course, what this turns out to be is the fact that Adrian Veidt - former superhero - has come up with a plan to SAVE the world from nuclear armaggedon. Which involves manufacturing a threat of alien invasion by teleporting in (thanks to Dr. Manhattan tech) a giant alien which explodes (because teleporters work about as reliably as they do in Star Trek) and also, psychically imprinting images of cosmic horror on the survivors... basically, to make humans do what they do best, unite in fear of something different to them! It's also explained that The Comedian stumbles upon the island where all this is going on and that this is what breaks his spirit...

Some fans of the graphic novel got very upset about the squid... as some fanboys will. Really, what it was... was no big deal. It just had to be a threat to unite the world against an external threat by introducing the outside context problem. Hence pulling humanity BACK from the brink of destruction - albeit it at the cost of millions of lives.

Now... the ending in the FILM... They kind of ignore the advanced tech that Dr. Manhattan made possible and have "free energy" as a recent development... which Veidt uses as a means to simulate an attack by Dr. Manhattan - essentially to the same end as the alien attack. Except... this doesn't really make any sense, although - he never actually says "I'm Off To MARS!" in this... it's fairly clear that everyone knows he has fucked off... so, why would he come back just to sucker punch New York? It might seem trivial but it's FURTHER exacerbated by the fact Nite Owl sees Dr. Manhattan waste Rorschach, does a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"... and then goes to bitch slap Veidt and declares the terrible perversion of humanity this constitutes.

Which might be somewhat acceptable if it wasn't for the fact about 30 seconds earlier, he was saying "Yeah, I'm down with keeping this secret." Part of the CRUX of the film is the moral greyness of the actions of Veidt and the obvious similiarities to the Tale Of The Black Freighter. He is a man GUIDED in his own eyes by right at every turn and yet, in the end - he has become a murderer but feels entirely justified. This pretty much slaps us in the face - almost as much as with Dr. Manhattan's genitals - and says "THIS IS BAD!"

For some people, this will not be a big issue for others it will be. It doesn't really mesh with the overall story. It's kind of hammered in and a number of compromises - beyond those required to compensate for the different mediums - are made in terms of continuity for no other reason than... uh...

The ending aside... For those that pay attention, Zack Snyder (the director) gives you a little hint of his previous film - 300 - by having The Comedian's flat be... 300! Don't worry, if you miss that little tipoff... you'll probably manage to work it out from the repeated and gratuitous use of the slomo/speedup action cuts the made seems to have a raging hardon for - and also the overly long, rather awkward sex scenes. If you don't mind the stylistic slomo of the action scenes, they're fun... although, there are a few more added in but that makes sense - this IS a long film... and the book is not particularly action packed. So, it's an understandable compromise.

Much like the dropping of the Tales of The Black Freighter comic and the newstand owner and not really having the detective involved in The Comedian's murder do much outside the first five minutes. Or reducing Rorschach's running around and beating people up... or his backstory... You could have made Lord of the Rings in its entirety seem short if you'd wanted to FULLY explore the backstory of every character in the same depth as the graphic novel.

It's really... just OK. About as good an adaptation as one could really expect. Nowhere near the same level as the graphic novel... and certainly not the kind of film you want to see if you're expecting a brainless superhero action film... but... just... OK.

Hellboy 2 was never going to spend a whole lot of time in the lime light, sandwiched between a film that had been hyped for over a year... and one that had been hyped since the instant its predecessor hit the box offices... Even The Incredible Hulk dwarfed Hellboy 2 in terms of presence...

So, Hellboy 2 was always going to have to take a stand against the box office monsters of Ironman and Batman on merit, rather than marketing and hype... which seems rather a shame because it doesn't really compare favourably to any of these films... That's not to say it's bad - there's some visuals in this that are far too original and funky to make their way into the far more mainstream of Marvel and DC films - and that's part of the charm of the film.

Sadly though, it doesn't really grab the attention... The Bureau comes off as MiB on a shoestring... and whether that's true to the comic or not, it doesn't feel particularly compelling. In fact, that's the entire problem with the film. The world is in danger... but that danger never feel particularly pressing. Abe falls in love... but it's never particularly evocative... Hellboy feels torn about trying to defend a world that doesn't love him but who cares... even he doesn't seem to spend more than a few minutes on it... ditto

And it's not really helped that they telegraph the ending... Was there any necessity to have as LITERALLY the first scene in the film being the one that explains how the good guys are going to win... ok, it means that we don't have someone just going "Oh, I know how we can win." out of the blue but... eh, it just means that there's the gratuitous action scene before the final fight... and no particular reason for it.

The visuals are the strength... but the story is weak and it's far too much of the generic A to B to C stuff... which is probably why it's rather unengaging... that and it tries to cover a multitude of topics in a rather short space of time and so, never covers them with sufficient depth that one might actually be interested. It seems like a classic case of numerous ideas having been pitched and rather than thinning them out and just working on a few, they just all got tossed in and everyone hoped it would work.

It's enjoyable enough for a comic book film but not really that good compared to its mainstream rivals.

The Ultimate Universe... It can be looked upon in one of two ways.

The first - as an attempt to make high quality comics that are easily accessible to new comers to comics, not requiring a vast amount of reading of back issues to understands characters, events and so on.

The second - a cheap way of pumping more money out of the same characters, stories - with the added bonus that the comics can now be hipper and edgier!

As with most things, the truth doubtless lies somewhere in between... but the fact remains that as a concept, it has been popular... but it seems that in many ways it has already betrayed the ideals of its inception.

The Ultimate Universe (UU) started out as a "back to basics" style. Character origins were to come from more realistic sources than radiation, magic rings or such. They would come from genetic engineering and other more probable causes. No aliens or other worldly beings... at least, this was the idea behind Ultimate Spiderman and for the most part, it worked.

Naturally though, all good things must come to an end and the success of Ultimate Spiderman spawned many more titles... including but not limited to: The Ultimates, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four - to name a few. All of which did their part to erode the (relative) realism of the UU. This isn't to say the UU doesn't have enjoyable stories... it does but for a while, it was refreshing to have heroes who weren't slipping off to other dimensions or battling foes from other worlds

It's worth asking if - with the massive success of Heroes - the powers that be at Marvel are kicking themselves. While the Ultimate Universe - at its beginnings - was still very much a classic comic book universe, the parallels are obvious. It was far less contrived than the mainstream DC or Marvel universes... that's not to say that this approach hasn't been attempted before... it has... it's simply never met with such success as Heroes.

She-Hulk fans were always deeply divided over Dan Slott as the writer on the third incarnation of She-Hulk's solo title... some found his joking, verging on fourth wall violating, slapstick anathema... otherwise couldn't get enough of his humour driven stories and wackiness but love him or hate him, he's now moving on to pastures new. Clearly some people approve of the work that Mr. Slott has been doing, as he's getting to play with Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spiderman... which is probably the comic book equivalent of getting promoted from pencil pusher to management.

Putting aside the oft criticised artwork... just how did Slott's run fair? In terms of sales? Quite well, consider She-Hulk is a second stringer and considered by many fanboys to be a derivative character - probably not helped by the fact she was expressly created for the purposes of securing a copyright on a female Hulk type character... although, it's hard to judge objectively as (especially in recent months) there have been a great number of tie-ins and guest stars. Not least, Civil War and the build up to World War Hulk... which inevitably will have had a beneficial effect on sales.

The comedy certainly wasn't to all fans taste and in many ways, that's understandable. It was often over the top, almost showing off... and in may ways, didn't help the image of She-Hulk that Byrne created... a comedic character, not to be taken too seriously. Dan didn't make that mistake though, in between the kooky there were many moments where Jennifer Walters is forced to evaluate her life as She-Hulk and introspection on duality.

In fact, Dan was rather apt at plumbing this source of angst and creates the circumstances that force Jen to try and understand and come to terms with her powers in a way she hasn't ever had to before. Not least, she had to deal with some of the fallout of the events of "Search For She-Hulk" and "Avengers Disassembled" - most poignantly in "Bone". Which clearly demonstrates that Dan has more strings to his bow than just humour.

For all the flaws that might be perceived in Dan's work, it's undeniable that he has firmly established She-Hulk as more than just a female Hulk. Jennifer's duality is very much the focus of the comic and how she deals with - and sometimes denies - it. The fact Jennifer is forced to be human to work at the law firm does make for more interesting results and her transformation anxiety is an interesting aspect.

That isn't to say that the tile under Slott didn't have action... it did. Just not a great deal of it. This was further hampered by the subpar artists who really didn't do justice to what action there was there. With the possible exception of Paul Pelletier, no one ever really managed to nail the infrequent action scenes... and of course, most of them managed to make She-Hulk look pudgy... hardly fitting for one of Marvel's strongest heroes - male or female.

Other complicating factors were that sometimes, Dan got a trifle bogged down in the minutiae of the comic books in comic books. It was a pre-established fact that events occuring in the Marvel universe are in fact put into comic books but at times, it seems that Slott almost goes out of his way to make sure that this comes into play in plots - even going so far as to have a little cast of comic book geeks who tend to the comic books of Jen's law firm (they're legally admissible as evidence, you know).

So, a somewhat mixed bag... opinions on it will be greatly shaped by what you think She-Hulk should be... Dan does somewhat walk the line at times but it would be wrong to say that he ever really strayed too far from the comedy... now that his run is almost up... what can we expect?

PAD has taken over as the main writer and he has left the future of the title suitably vague but it seems that the out and out comedy approach will be dropped in favour of something more serious and that the courtroom drama will be dropped in favour of something more action orientated.

In any event, Dan Slott certainly raised the profile of She-Hulk and probably increased her fan base. He has also taken on the honour of penning more She-Hulk comics than anyone else (taking the title from Byrne). Whatever you think of the title under Slott's auspices, as a character She-Hulk is probably in a much better place now than she was when he took her on and that should elicit some respect, from even the most grudging of fans.