Those of you who’ve been with me for a while may remember what happened last year, when Disney released “Tron Legacy” and a snarky young writer for NPR spent several paragraphs trashing it while spouting inaccuracies and making it clear that he’d never even seen “Legacy or the original “Tron.” I thought, “Why you little…” and it was on. Guess what kids? Somebody rang that bell again.
In a story posted on NPR.org last week, writer, graphic novelist and (wha-wah-what?) University of Houston creative writing teacher Mat Johnson felt the need to sound the death-knoll for movies based on comic book superheroes, citing – among other things – “lukewarm reactions” to this summer’s bumper crop of super-flicks. And while he was at it, Johnson thought he’d demonstrate his superiority to us plebs who still cheer for superheroes as pedestrian as Superman or Spider-Man by rattling off some reading suggestions that he feels might up our cool factor.