There Goes My Hero

The recent onslaught of comic book adaptations coming to the big screen occasionally makes me wish I'd been a little boy as a child. I envy the unbridled excitement my male nerd counterparts feel when they see their childhood superheroes come to life. Sure, I grew up with Kristy and the rest of the Babysitters' Club and SV Twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, but at best they get the weekday afternoon television series treatment. If I'd been a comic book kid, I'd look forward to all these hero movies instead of rolling my eyes disdainfully and jumping on the bandwagon months later partly because I have a crush on the male lead (see: Iron Man). I'm sick of hearing about cool-sounding new projects like The Watchmen or The Avengers and having to immediately whisper to a guy friend, “Who're they?”

It's definitely not that I want Hollywood adaptations of my little-girl interests. For one thing, some of them already exist, and you don't see me shelling out $8.50 for Barbie-brand movies. Somehow, things that appeal to little boys seem to carry over and appeal just as much to those little boys as adult men. Moreover, they have more universal appeal-- Iron Man piqued my interest with Robert Downey, Jr., but it held it with a genuinely cool, fun film. Girlier pursuits don't seem to have the same ability to translate into something for grown-ups, male or female. The things we girls were into, like The Babysitters Club, are these days best left to gentle nostalgic mockery.

Still. I don't think I'll be running out and buying mint-condition copies of old X-Men comics just to keep up. As long as there are guy friends to explain to me why a certain superhero is cool and as long as there are rather attractive actors signing on to play them in big screen versions, I'll stick to reading more adult fare-- you know, like the Harry Potter series all the way through. Again.