Watching this movie really makes me wonder why James Robinson isn’t still working in movies. Robinson wrote and directed ‘Comic Book Villains’ (2002) and followed that up by writing ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (2003), which I really enjoyed. I know it got some negative criticism and was a box office failure, but the movie itself was entertaining and, in my opinion, succeeded at being the kind of movie it was meant to be. Unfortunately, the audience that would truly appreciate this film is a relatively small percentage of the overall movie market.
So, I take a cyber-stroll over to IMDB to see what else he’s done and find that ‘TLOEG’ was his last project. Why? The damned Hollywood studios probably blacklisted his ass, blaming Extraordinary Gentlemen’s failure on the writer, instead of blaming the director Stephen Norrington, who should take any blame that’s to be given. Or, maybe he just didn’t like working in “the biz”… who knows?
Regardless, I finally got around to watching ‘Comic Book Villains’ this weekend. It’s been sort of ridiculously hard for me to get my hands on, but now that I have I’m probably going to add this one to my collection. Yep, that’s how much I enjoyed this little sleeper film that most people haven’t heard of. The film is a dark comedy about two rival comic book store owners that enter into a hot and heavy battle royale over a massive collection of pristine comic books worth megabucks. The problem is, the old lady who controls this collection isn’t the least bit interested in selling, so the comic book store owners find themselves getting creative to win an edge over each other, hoping that Mrs. Cresswell changes her mind.
WARNING!!! Spoilers Beyond This Point: Continue reading In case you missed it … ‘Comic Book Villains’