Just so you know, I’m way too busy to get any reviews written today.  Early next week.  Perhaps.

Don’t forget that there’s a podcast this weekend, which you’ll find a couple of posts further down.  Or, hey, just click here if you can’t face the arduous scroll.  This week, Al and I talk about the first issues of Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors, Morning Glories and Captain America: Forever Allies.

If you’re one of the readers who was disappointed that I skipped the last WWE pay-per-view, well, you’ll be pleased to hear that my Summerslam preview is already up.

And now, comics!

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With England out of the World Cup, it’s a safe bet that the football singles will be clearing the chart in the not too distant future.  Actually, most of them were on their way out anyway.  But perhaps it’s fortunate that Dizzee Rascal and James Corden’s “Shout” single didn’t hang on for a third week.  It would have been announced only an hour or so after England lost.  That would have rubbed salt into the wound.

As it happens, the single was never going to manage a third week.  It’s current at number three, behind the all-purpose World Cup single “Wavin’ Flag” by K’Naan.

He, on the other hand, has reason to feel aggrieved, because he was on course for a number one single until Virgin rush-released this…

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You have to listen to the lyrics to appreciate this one. It’s been dragged through a Latvian/English dictionary. And a mincer.

If you doubt the evidence of your ears, the lyrics are here.

No reviews this weekend, because I haven’t got this week’s books yet.  That’s partly because of the usual Diamond UK delays from last weekend’s holiday, and partly because I use mail order.

We’ll probably get to the X-books and any other major releases in the course of next week.  If not, I suppose you could always ask the Queen to step in.

Fortunately, we do have a podcast, and you’ll find it just one post below.

Incidentally, I’ve just been taking a look at the spam folder.  Naturally, there’s still plenty of generic compliments from suspicious blogs.  But my heart goes out to the bot which came up with a vaguely coherent observation about Diana Vickers… and then submitted it under the name “Viral Submitter Pro.”  It’s always the simple things you overlook, isn’t it?

Remember The X Factor?  Remember how I spent the better part of last autumn explaining how half the chart was connected to it?  Well… it’s time for the reprise.

(And if you can’t see that one, here’s the YouTube link.)

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The Kick-Ass movie opens in America tonight.  It’s been out in Britain for a couple of weeks, and I went to see it yesterday.  Largely, to be honest, because it’s the sort of film I’m obliged to have an opinion about, so it might as well be an informed one.

And do you know what?  It’s good.  It’s really good.

As you must surely know by now, the basic idea goes like this.  Teenage boy decides to become a superhero, despite completely lacking any qualifications for the job other than good intentions and a willingness to wear stupid clothes in public.  More by luck than talent, he ends up crossing paths with actual bad guys and proper vigilantes.  Beyond that… well, they’ve changed the plot somewhat from the comic, though they’ve stuck to the same basic story.  But I won’t go into the spoilers.

What’s interesting, if you compare the synopses of the comic and the film, is that the film has actually reined in Millar’s more egregious tendencies.  This probably doesn’t come across from reading the reviews.  But the film has dialled back the levels of cynical nihilism from “prohibitively toxic” to merely “black comedy.”  So the film, for example, is much more willing to embrace Big Daddy and Hit-Girl as real, proper superheroes inexplicably bleeding into Kick-Ass’s otherwise more-or-less real world.  It resists the temptation to undercut them.  It just goes with the idea that an eleven-year-old ninja is inherently cool.  And because they’ve somehow migrated into Kick-Ass’s world from a different film, their total lack of realism ceases to be a problem.

Once you get rid of those bits in Mark Millar’s writing that make you roll your eyes and go “Oh, Mark…”, and once you impose a bit more structure on what remains, you end up with a really entertaining film.  (By the way, the film does manage to include John Romita Jr’s art as the basis for Big Daddy’s animated origin sequence.)

And yes, Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage are excellent as Hit-Girl and Big Daddy.  They’re the best thing in the film.

Now, you can argue that the film doesn’t work as a satire because it’s still trying to have it both ways – being a superhero is manifestly unworkable and incredibly cool at the same time.  The result is moral bankruptcy, albeit ironic.  There’s a lot of truth to that criticism.  Frankly, the film is entertaining enough that it doesn’t matter whether it has a coherent worldview to offer.  But I think it works because we’re never asked to accept the two genuine vigilantes as remotely realistic.  They’re don’t belong in the real world (which isn’t really the real world, of course, but which otherwise plays by the rules of black comedy rather than John Woo movies) and the story warps to accommodate them.  It’s funny because it’s a collision of elements that don’t belong in the same film.  Is this making a point?  Probably not, but it’s an enjoyable thing to watch.

I’m away for the weekend, so no podcast and no X-Axis.  I’ll pick up on the reviews some time next week, and we’ll hopefully do a podcast next Friday.

Meantime, you might want to check out Glasgow’s pop culture podcast TheThumbcast.com, since we’re planning to do something for their show in the not too distant future.  Here’s their latest episode.

No reviews tonight – I haven’t received this week’s comics yet, and besides, I wouldn’t have had time to read them anyway, for various reasons.  Chances are I’ll end up doing two weeks’ worth of comics next Sunday.  In the meantime, check below for this week’s podcast.

Rich Johnston is reporting at Bleeding Cool that SWORD, by Kieron Gillen and Steven Sanders, is to be cancelled as of issue 5. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a state of affairs that would be unfortunate in the extreme if it came to pass.

So! What are people going to do about it? Well, you could do a lot worse than go here – there are materials there that can be printed off and used to show Marvel your appreciation for one of their sharpest and most interesting books, should you be so inclined. If you’re buying it, keep buying it, and tell your comics-reading friends. Email Marvel too – it might accomplish something, it might not, but it can’t hurt either way. SWORD’s a great book, and it would be a shame to lose it.