Word: x-men
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...X-men, The Matrix and an angry green giant - all year long, pixel-pushing superheroes have been smashing their way across cinema screens. In Ireland, a quieter kind of crime fighter is pulling in the crowds: Cate Blanchett as Veronica Guerin, the Irish reporter who went head to head with Dublin's drug barons in the mid-'90s and paid for it with her life. Veronica Guerin - the second film about the iconic journalist - follows her as she digs for the source of the city's drug supply. Hardheaded and hungry for a story, Guerin is threatened, shot...
These days, movie superheroes come in two models: the burly and the boyish. Hugh Jackman in "X-Men" is the butch type, slathered in testosterone, ready to pick a fight with the world. Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man" is the fretful schoolboy, high-strung as a bluegrass fiddle, aching for the hormones to kick...
That was the notion behind X-Men: a school for mutants, run by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), mind bender and father figure. Director Bryan Singer's first XMen, a hit from summer 2000, was basically Men in Black from the point of view of the humanly challenged: sure, the earth is overrun by odd creatures, but we must nurture them and harness their strengths, not send out the feds on an ethnic-cleansing orgy...
Having served its dual function of introducing the X-folk--saber-clawed Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), telekinetic Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), weatherwoman Storm (Halle Berry), etc.--and earned $300 million worldwide, X-Men has spawned the requisite sequel. Singer saw the first film as a primer; now he has eyes for an epic. X2 is half an hour longer, miles more ambitious and a bit better than the wowless original...
...Growing up in Quebec (the book first appeared in French as "Paul a un travail d'été") Michel Rabagliati had more exposure to French comix than American ones. Consequently his style looks more like Tintin than the X-Men. Called "bandes dessinées," or the "clear line" style, he uses big, simple outlines with a minimum of chiaroscuro shading -- perfect for a bright, outdoorsy story. Rabagliati has a wonderful knack for caricature. Paul, for example, is distinguished mostly by thick brush strokes over each dot of an eye, and three vertical lines of "scruff" on his chin...