RDU Neil

I really tried to like this, but I'm not allowed. Apparently there is not enough like in the world to go around. Here's me just trying to eke out a little more.

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

Yes please! Holy crap that looks good. The first season is my favorite of all the Marvel shows (just edging out Daredevil Season 1) and this looks just as strong. Here's hoping.

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

With respect, none of those movies were actually serious examinations of Black culture. Meteor Man and Blankman were both comedies and the others were more vehicles for their stars/action comedies than serious superhero movies. Black Panther is  important to not only Black culture but also to the history of diversity in the comics industry itself. He was the first and was never an Angry Black Man(John Stewart) or a Blaxploitation  character(Luke Cage) but an African prince with a scientific background. He adventured alongside the FF and Avengers as an equal from the beginning. If this movie lives up to even half the hype it will affect the Black community(my community) as profoundly as Wonder Woman did women. 

Supergirl
Eon Flux
Ultraviolet
Resident Evil
Catwoman
Elektra
Atomic Blonde
Ghost in the Shell
 
Just the fact that a person from a particular category is the lead in a movie, isn't a counter to the other points already raised about what kind of movie it is. Plus, much of what both you and I cited were predominantly comical or campy. And no few were, objectively speaking, crap.

Well, I (and others) have repeatedly stated reasons why Black Panther is quite different from those movies.  Not sure how else to say it at this point.  If you really see a close comparison between Men in Black and Black Panther,  oh well.

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

I see another parallel between the "representation" in Wonder Woman and Black Panther. Sure, there have been plenty of strong women in movies, even leads in recent decades. But almost always those women have shown strength the way men have traditionally shown it: by being tough, hard, shutting down the "weakness" of their emotions. WW portrayed women as strong as any man, whose strength came from their emotions. Diana didn't sacrifice any of the qualities that women have always valued -- kindness, compassion, love -- to be heroic. Those qualities are what make her a hero.
 
For a very long time, black protagonists in movies have defined themselves in relation to white society. Either they act in opposition to oppressive features of it, or they co-opt its conventions for themselves, and excel at them, to become "as good as" white people. For the Wakandans the expectations of European-descended culture are irrelevant. They built their unique civilization entirely on their own terms, and in doing so have achieved greatness, in some ways even exceeding the accomplishments of white-dominated Western society.

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

If I may, I'd like to add to this with my own personal anecdote...
 
I've been a comic book fan for nearly fifty years. I've been collecting reading, trying to write them, and certainly playing out superhero fantasies for close to 40 of those. This current wave of superhero pop-culture dominance is something I couldn't have imagined even ten years ago, especially having been a kid who had his comics torn up by a "friend" who thought they were silly, and was punched in the mouth for liking Star Wars in 1977. To have us comic nerds having "won the culture war" in this way still baffles me... but I can say that when I sat through Winter Soldier for the first time, I felt an inkling of what others might say about representation. I finally saw on the screen everything I'd seen and felt in comics since I was a kid. Here was a couple of serious movie makers, taking classic characters, and doing them right on nearly every level, while telling a serious spy-movie, with serious actors taking everything I'd ever enjoyed... seriously.

I certainly didn't need to see more white guys on film to feel represented, but I did feel a touch of "Yes... they get it. They understand why this can be so damn cool" type of validation. It felt good.
 
My wife, her own type of nerd, enjoyed it, but didn't really get why I was so enthused.
 
Then she saw Wonder Woman.
 
Both of us went in a little leery... me because DC movies suck (usually)... and her because she understood the stakes of WW being good or not. At the end, I was happily, very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable WW was.
 
Beside me, my wife was weeping openly. So were many women in the theater. She looked at me and said, "We have to see that again. Right away."  The movie was a religious experience for her. I'd bought her GNs of the classic Perez' run (she hates reading floppies) and she'd begun enjoying them... now she devoured them. We've seen the movie several times, and she and her friends have watched it. We don't buy movies, but I bought her WW for Christmas. She devoured the Perez' issues, read the current YA Wonder Woman novel (loved it) and is in the middle of Rucka's first run on WW, and can't get enough. She has read and shared every article about the movie. It moved her. It inspired her. It meant something to her sense of self, far beyond being an enjoyable superhero flick.
 
Obviously it did the same for many others, and that is why Wonder Woman is important.
 
It has been fascinating to be so close, and get to experience (second hand at least) what "representation" means and looks like, and how it really affects someone.

To Lord Liaden's point... it doesn't have to effect me the same way to be a great movie... and certainly the impact on me is not the judge of its importance. I can at least understand now, on a more visceral level, not just intellectually... how Black Panther "means" something way beyond what I can personally experience, and that my opinion of the "meaning" of that movie is correctly and deservedly "less" than other people's. I have a feeling I will love Black Panther in my own way... Coogler's "Fruitville Station" and "Creed" are both tremendous films, and I've been reading Black Panther since Jungle Action and the Avengers in the '70s. (Sadly, do not have a FF #52 in my collection.) I also understand that this movie means WAY less for me than for a lot of other people, and that's ok... good in fact. Important things have meaning on many different levels.
 
My wife and I bought tickets within twenty minutes of pre-sale, and we'll see it on the 15th, and hopefully enjoy it. We'll discuss it, pick it apart, and debate it, like we always do.

Then we'll go home and watch Wonder Woman again... most likely.  

There are, arguably, better-made superhero films than Wonder Woman. But that movie wasn't just an entertainment, it was an event. It was a cultural touchstone that connected with much of its audience, particularly women, in ways no movie in its genre ever had before. Just from the responses I'm seeing from the people who have viewed Black Panther so far, I expect that to do the same for black audiences.
 
You're right that a movie only needs to be entertaining. But if it has a deeper impact than that, then it becomes an important movie. And not having that impact for everyone won't make it less important.

Phhh.  Winter Soldier is far better than those films.

Philistine! 
 
Well Citizen Kane may have been a trifle overlong, but Casablanca?!?! 

Jackie Chan's New Police Story (2004) 1) Is not very funny 2) Has plenty of gunplay 3) Is one of like six Police Story films Jackie Chan stars in 4) Hinges on the rapid reassembly of a handgun.

There's some decent gun fu/gunslinging here and there in the Kingsman films.
 
The sniper character was the best part of the terrible '90s Navy Seals movie.  Hurt Locker and American Sniper need to be included in any sniper movie list, though they hardly glorify the violence. 
 
 

Golden Age Champions
 
Zoltan the Magnificent: I didn't know there were rules to car bowling.

I recently gave a character PS: Cook and KS: Herbs.
 
I'll admit that was largely for flavor.
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary says it's   a  matter of taste

No, of course you could do that!
It's just that when you calculate DCV or see it in previous supplements you will be adding 10 every time, it just seemed easier to us to clarify we'd be adding ten every time.  
On the other, that's us being path dependent again, we were using lots of previous stat blocks. And you're right, when we asked what DCV was we used to say either "6+10" or "16".
So actually writing 16 on the sheet makes sense :- )

Just a question about implementation of this and making it "more elegant" in some ways.
 
Is there any reason (I can't see one) where with this system, you just automatically make every DCV score just 10+ whatever you paid for? Just have DCV flat out 10 points higher than normal... so when you say, "Ok, I'll hit a DCV 18..." everyone has a DCV like that already written on their sheets.   Normal Man doesn't have a 3 DCV... he has a 13 DCV. Bouncey Spider doesn't have a 10 DCV... he has a 20 DCV. 
 
Basically take that calculation out of the combat roll, and put it during character construction. You could even program Hero Designer to list DCV that way, right?
 
Anyway, just wondering if I'm missing anything on that.

I agree with your implied assumption that Supers vs. Heroic campaigns have a different level of skill use. It has tended to play out that Supers would have less skills, more general skills and be fine with that, and Heroic level characters have more skill, and more detailed levels of skills. I think that comes down to differentiation of PCs. In Supers, the defining characteristics that set you apart are powers, or high level combat skills like martial arts, stealth, etc. In Heroic games, where everyone might be a version of ex-military private ops guy... then skill specialization is what makes one character different from another.
 
That being said, I basically follow the rule, "If it is important and you want it to factor into the game, then pay points for it, and it is my job as GM to make it relevant. If it is merely background, don't worry about it." It is really about what kind of story you want to tell. If you are playing Daredevil-esque character, the fact that Murdock is a lawyer and has multiple skills and knowledge areas reflecting that could be really important, if the game tends to end up in law offices and court rooms the way the comics often do. If the lawyer bit is more, "Explains why I'm around the cop station and have contacts with bail bondsmen, cops, etc." then that is different.
 
I agree with Doc's comments on skill fetishizing... if push came to shove, I would gladly go back to a single, generic "Science" skill, rather than detailing out 27 flavors of Physicist specialization, the way it tends towards today.

As the GM, I try to give the villain NPCs skills that are appropriate to their backgrounds, even if they're not so likely to be used much in game.  However, in one adventure, Kid Bronze used his tech skills to figure out how to operate the Dynatron (see Dean Shomshak's excellent Shared Origins products) and create superpowered agents for the Heavy Metals supervillain team.
 
The PC heroes in my game tend to get use out of at least some of their non-combat skills.  One example that stands out in my mind was when Terror Inc. launched a nuclear missile at Belgium.  The PC gadgeteer, Maker, used her VPP to catch up to the missile and latch on.  She then opened an access panel and used Electronics, Navigation, Security Systems, and Systems Operation to figure out how to re-direct the missile into orbit.  She'd have tried to disable the warhead, except she didn't have Demolitions skill.  (She does now.)
 
Malarkey has used his Computer Programming and Security Systems skills to hack into the city's traffic cameras to track kidnappers. 
 
Shadowboxer frequently uses his KS: Paranormals to narrow down the list of potential suspects when superpowers have been used in a crime, or to figure out potential tactics to use against foes. 
 
Circe even used her PS: Fashion Designer to converse with a supervillain (A-Bomb) and keep him from participating in a fight.  (It was actually one of the funnest exchanges I've had in game, as the two of them commented about their teammates' costumes, about A-Bomb kidnapping a noted designer to create his costume, and Circe's attempts to get her teammates' outfits more fashionable.)
 
IMO, it's part of the GM's job to make sure PCs have opportunities to use their skills (as well as unusual non-combat powers).  And the players' jobs to try to find ways to use their skills and odd powers to solve crimes and turn plot twists their way.