Costumed Adventurer Week Wrap-Up

So I finally finished my first themed week. From the very earliest beginnings of this blog back in 2006, it's been my plan to do themed weeks. And, two and a half years later, I finally got around to doing one! And it only took about a week and a half to do. Ah, so I didn't quite cram it all into a real week. Oh well. At least I finished. (I have so many scraps of unfinished theme weeks littering my computer!) In the future, I'll be sure to have everything written in advance of starting such an event. In this case, trying to tie it in with the opening of Watchmen precluded that... but then again, it did force me to actually do it! And I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out. For those who came in late (and for the sake of posterity, and easy linking in the future), I'll briefly recap.

In my introduction to Costumed Adventurer Week, I attempted to situate the Sixties European superhero subgenre within the broader Eurospy framework with the help of a pair of posters for Fantastic Argoman, one marketing the picture as a superhero movie and the other as a spy flick. The posters are worth checking out.

Fantastic Argoman was the first movie I watched for Costumed Adventurer Week, and it turned out to be a great beginning! It's still my favorite of the cape-and-tights set.

Of course, there's a whole other kind of costumed adventurer prevalent in this era, one who prefers masks and all-black bodysuits. For my second entry, I examined the granddaddy of this breed, and could hardly stop writing about Danger: Diabolik, one of my all-time favorites.

On the other hand, I could barely write anything about Fenomenal And The Treasure Of Tutankaman, it was so convoluted.

I thoroughly enjoyed Flashman, though, in a beautiful new transfer courtesy of Fin de Siecle Media...

Then I suffered through Satanik, which didn't even really qualify for the Costumed Adventurer label...

...before ending things on a higher note with a double review of Kriminal and Mark of Kriminal, whose awesome conclusion made the ideal finale to the week.

If you watch only one of these movies, make it Danger: Diabolik. If you've already seen that (which hopefully you have!), then try Fantastic Argoman. Avoid Satanik and Fenomenal unless you're a hopeless completist or an unrepentant masochist. In any event, thanks for bearing with me on my little exploration! I hope you've enjoyed it.

If you did enjoy the premise, there's good news: Costumed Adventurer Week lives on! Jason Whiton over at Spy Vibe is going to focus on the Costume part all this week (fashion fans, do not miss this!), and in two weeks Armstrong Sabian will wrap things up with an examination of the Adventurer part at Mister 8. (No, don't worry; I don't mean Gene Barry; I mean comic book heroes!) In the middle, David Foster at Permission To Kill will offer his own highly entertaining and informative opinions of some of the same films I covered, and probably some different ones as well. Then sometime in the distant future, I hope to revisit the concept myself, seeing as there are so many intriguing entries I didn't get to this time, from Mister X and Superargo to 3 Fantastic Superman and the Fantomas saga... It will be fun. In the meantime, shoot on over to Spy Vibe!