Let me preface this by assuring you that while I am indeed a total nerd, I am not a comic book person. I never got into them as a kid, and I don’t look at them now (except for MAD, which I still enjoy glancing at from time to time.) I have never been much of a superhero guy either, and I only wind up at the blockbuster comic book movies because I like watching things get wrecked, even if it is clearly a cartoon. Now, my son is four and he loves Superman. My wife was at Target with him, and he found a couple of Superman DVD’s that were on sale. She neglected to check the rating, which was PG-13, assuming that because it was a cartoon it was meant for kids. But it wasn’t. My son found it too intense, and my wife was mortified…and I was in love. I immediately sent them out of the room and engulfed myself in the inappropriate magic! If the live-action stuff were this much fun, I’d be much happier at the multiplexes.

Superman Batman Public Enemies is brief, just over an hour, but provides some classic cartoon action mayhem, tailor made for a nerd like me. Lex Luthor in this story is the damn president of the United States and declares our heroes to be public enemies! Hilarious! And sad, too, because if Lex Luthor was real I wouldn’t put it past my country to actually elect him into office. The colors pop, the violence is plentiful, and the cartoon chicks kind of give me a boner, which I realize is completely stupid, but whatever. And there are a bunch of these animated features from both the DC and Marvel camps, and I’m enjoying all of them. I especially recommend looking at these things on Blu-ray, because animation just pops in high def (all of it does, The Princess and the Frog is just amazing to look at.) As an action movie junkie who feels like modern action pictures have abandoned me with their frenetic camera work and jumpy editing, it’s nice to see stuff that I can follow visually. Even if it is just a cartoon.