Well, I’m just back from seeing Iron Man.

That was easily one of the best comic book movies to date. Robert Downey Jnr *is* Tony Stark in the way that Christopher Reeve was Superman. The film wisely kept itself centred around his performance as we see his decadent lifestyle (the scene on the private plane was a classic), followed by his drive to correct his mistakes.

The script stays faithful to the tone of the comics while chopping and changing some elements to work as an origin story. Obidiah Stane is reinvented as a life-long friend of Tony’s father, who runs Stark International alongside Tony. This change works well, as the character stays true to his comics-self, while the changing of his relationship to Tony allows them to spend time on other parts of the film.

The key thing about this film though, is that its fun. There were so many sequences where I was killing myself laughing (the scene on the private plane, the various boot-jet tests). But the humour doesn’t undercut the characters. There’s a great balance going on between the humour, the character work, and the action.

This summer’s off to a great start with Iron Man.

The Apprentice this year is getting increasingly uncomfortable viewing. And not just in the usual “Gah! How can they be making such a mess of this?” kind of way.

The end scene with everyone ganging up on Sara was painful viewing. Granted she may (or may not - I missed the first 5/10 minutes) have stuck to the sidelines this week, but as Claire pointed out, that had nothing to do with Kevin getting fired. I think everyone knew Kevin going was the right decision. He’d allowed himself to be led along by Jenny’s flawed environmentalism idea (really, bringing up the amount of rubbish generated each year during a sales pitch for greetings cards is probably not a great idea), and then in the boardroom, hitched his wagon behind Jenny’s move to pin the blame on Sara (despite it obviously being her flawed idea, coupled with Kevin’s disasterous pitches that had cost them the task).

In fairness to Kevin, once Claire had pointed out that he was becoming too aggressive in his pitches, he did tone it down a lot, but by then the damage was done.

And then in the final scene, the only one who came out of it looking good was Raef. Well done that man for standing up for Sara and trying to defuse an unpleasant situation.

I do think Sara and Lucinda are out of their depth on the show, however there’s no way they’ve earned the grief they’ve both been taking. To be honest, I think Jenny marked Sara’s cards back in the second episode, when Sara stuck up for Lucinda.

At this point, Raef’s surely got to be a contender for the job. He’s the only one who’s come out of the series looking good so far. Although I think Claire’s quite saavy, and she seems to have taken her dressing down from two weeks ago onboard, so I’m currently thinking her and Raef for the final.

If the leaked spoiler for next week’s episode is true, then it should be very interesting viewing indeed.

Well, the spoilers are out, and the big news from DCU #0 is the hinted return of Barry Allen.

Granted, there’s very little conclusive in the issue itself.   But the signs certainly point to Barry Allen, and if it was anyone else, I think it’d be a bit of a nasty fake out on DC’s part.  Of course, if we assume its Barry coming back, then there’s nothing to say it will be permanent, or even as The Flash.

However, given that its being hyped like this, I would lean towards it being a permanent resurrection.   He could just turn up for the third worst day in Wally’s life, but again, I think hyping it like this would be a bit of a nasty tease to the Barry fans.

So, if we assume that its Barry coming back, and its permanent, I can’t see why it would be in any other role than that of the Flash.  To do otherwise would be to just repeat the “Hal as Spectre” mistake (ok, so I quite liked Hal as the Spectre, but generally its considered to have been a failure).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Wally’s out of a job.  Barry could be placed in a specific role in the DCU which would allow Wally to retain the main Flash book and title, with Barry occupying a position similar to Jay.  He could be in a team book (JLA probably, with Wally in Titans) and be a supporting character in Wally’s book.   However, with the hype his return will generate, I think its unlikely he wouldn’t end up headlining the main Flash book (however, GL-style I wonder if we’d get 2 Flash books a month).

I’m kind of torn over this reveal.   Barry Allen was one of the few remaining comic book deaths that could be held up as being important, and having stuck.  By bringing Barry back, death in the DCU becomes even more meaningless.   DC’s also stuck by it for some 23-odd years, so in that regard, I’m bit dissappointed in the idea of another silver age resurrection (lord knows it’ll give the “DC Silver Age Fanboy” conspiracy theorists even more ammunition.

My other gut (if probably unfair) reaction is that it feels like a desperate move.   The Flash title has suffered badly since the decision to kill off Wally in Infinite Crisis.  The book went from a high under Geoff Johns to forgotten about pretty quickly.  Being fair to DC, they’ve tried their best to fix this (bringing back Mark Waid) but it didn’t work.

So an automatic reaction is that bringing back Barry could be seen as a desperate move to revitalise a failing book.

However.  Setting aside the slight feeling of disappointment about this, I actually think Barry being back could be very interesting.  There’s no doubt that the Flash book has been suffering badly, and in that regard Barry Allen: Rebirth will invariably be a big boost to the book.  Early rumours point to Geoff Johns co-writing the book, another good sign.  If nothing else, while obviously being a big fan of the silver age characters, Geoff Johns has proven with GL that he wouldn’t turf Wally in the bin just because Barry’s back.  And Johns has a proven track record of writing Wally well.

Plus, bigging up Barry’s forensic job could give us a mix of The Flash and CSI: Central City.  And I think that could be a pretty interesting angle for the book.

There seems to be a hint that Barry’s resurrection will be tied to the multiverse.  I find that idea interesting as well.  Given that Barry died, and converted to energy during the original Crisis, while destroying the Anti-Monitor’s big anti-Multiverse energy doohickey, perhaps Barry’s energy got tied to the multiverse in some way, and now that its back, its opened the door to his resurrection.

And talking of the Multiverse, I think its fair to say, that with the return of the Multiverse, Earth-2, Kal-L, Kara Zor-El, the Anti-Monitor etc over the last couple of years, its pretty much only fair that Barry comes back as well.  Must of the meaningful changes made by that story have now been undone to some degree or other in current continuity, so in that regard there’s not much meaning left by his death.

So colour me slightly dissappointed, but intrigued.  And I’d almost certainly be interested enough to pick up any new Flash relaunch with Barry and co.  Which I guess would be the point of the exercise.