X Sells

You know, it's not that I'm a comic book geek. I mean, I was once... in my youth. My mom would drop me off at the comic book store on the strip in Knoxville while she went next door to Davis Kidd Booksellers. I would come find her when I had picked up my monthly supply of Batman, The Incredible Hulk and Spider Man books.

The X-Men was never a favorite of mine, but I concede its importance in the comic book canon in that its stories of a group of mutants as originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and later re-imagined by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum tapped into the notion of alienation that was a prevalent theme in pop culture in the 60's (see movies like The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy). As the Wikepedia article outlines, the X-Men, became metaphors for other real life issues that would have been either taboo for younger audiences or just too hard to present without being cloaked in the guise of adventure stories. Of course, I was just a kid and didn't get all that stuff until much later... you know, after I quit being a comic book geek.

Anyway, the third feature film in the X-Men series is due out next summer (May 26th, to be exact), and you can click on Wolverine's muttonchops above to watch the first trailer for it in glorious Quicktime HD.