Pow! Kitz! Zorp!

Ah, superheroes. They've given us so much. So many nerd fantasies, fufilled in ink and imagination. Scores of bad movies (and a few good), cartoon series, and the campiest English speaking TV show in history. NANANANANANANANA BATMAN!!!!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is having a special exhibition entitled "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy". I love going down to the Met (its free!), so I took a walk through Central Park on a beautiful day to check it out.

The exhibit was a combo of good and bad. At the beginning is a row of classic comics, featuring the origin comics for superheros including Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk and the Punisher. The crown jewel of the Collection is the issue of Action Comics No. 1 from 1938, which features the first appearance of Superman and is regarded as one of the great collectibles, not just for comic lovers but in the world of pop culture memorabilia.

Its clear that the Met decided simply showing comic book art and memorabilia was beneath them and their standards, so they had to "art" things up a bit. To do this, they included some crazy fashion designs were were apparently "inspired" by comics. Basically they have a series of "themed" displays which each feature an authentic superhero outfit from the movies or TV, surrounded by 4-6 crazy fashion designs which have no practical, aesthetic or artistic value.

For example, one area had "The Armored Body". The centerpiece was the actual Iron Man suit from the recent movie, which was cool. Surround it was a bunch of eccentric "fashion" featuring half suits of armor and frills and god knows what else. Fashion is not my department, and certainly not "high" fashion which is often so weird and impractical. I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of a rail thin supermodel walking down the runway in Milan in a bogus suit of half armor.

The authentic outfits in the exhibit were Iron Man, Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman suit, Christian Bale's Batman Suit, Chris Reeves's Superman get up, Toby McGuire's Spiderman suit, Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman get up, and the Mystique outfit from X-Men. These, plus the comics, are worth going to see. The rest ranges from silly to ridiculous, but I realize that the curators were probably horrified at the idea of just having authentic, interesting comic book props there and I'm sure they felt alot better with the real "art" there to compensate.

Another, better exhibit at the Met has items crafted from "hardstones" and collected from the Palaces of Europe. Go see it. It blew my mind how awesome some of that stuff is. Its good to be the king.