Thunderbolts* / *New Avengers

As I wandered off into town to watch whatever this film is called today, my wife was reluctant. Neither of us know anything about Marvel. We don't hate it. We don't know it. We were like lost souls trying to reclaim our Anlaby childhood by watching someone we both know who has actually made something of themselves. Unlike me. I'm just here trying to make you laugh. Hannah can do that even when she is asleep. God she's good.

We had our eyes opened yesterday. We're both converts now to this Avengers sequence. I re-activated Disney+ to get down to business later this morning. It has everything. Not too heavy on the effects but the character studies absolutely fascinated me. I was perplexed by the character of Bob, a hopeless loser in a hospital gown who has no idea how he got where he is. The butt of all jokes, a laughing stock, he presented like a Tech Bro's drug addict youngest son. He reminded me of me.

I can't even pretend to have a crush on Hannah Dominique John-Kamen. She's out of mortal reach. Where Hannah and I come from she is royalty, like the Princess of Wales perhaps. She's that lovely girl in John Turnbull's newsagent buying a birthday card for her mum or some Haribo. She's the girl next door. Literally. Not literally. She lived about 40 houses down from me in Anlaby. She's so perfect I could cry. I am crying with pride. She brings Anlaby superhero energy to every role. And yet this is the very first time I have seen her at work. Hannah will return next year in Avengers: Doomsday and (we hope!) in Secret Wars. Thank the lord above!

I know Florence well of course. I know her as The Little Drummer Girl. Nothing girlish or little about that role. She stole the show, as she did in that odd sci-fi thing called Don't Worry Darling which seemed more realistic to me than my actual life. Florence is from Oxford, from where I live now. Flo is my today. Hannah my yesterday. [Why not just stick W. H. Auden in here and fuck off? Ed.]

So Bob reminded me of me mostly because he has somewhat significant mental health issues and is drugged up past his eyeballs most of the time. He has all kinds of women fighting for his attention, which is obviously a lot like me as well. However it turns out they're not interested in his charisma (he has none) but his special properties. He is the result of a presumed failed experiment that to everyone's surprise actually worked. Flo's lovely sort of Russian Steppe Yelena Belova notices something in Bob, a darkness let's say, that she shares. We know how deep her darkness is quite early on but Bob's is on a different plain or planet. She coaches him off the window ledge of life and settles him in her orbit early on. We sense that this matters. He occupies immortal space in another galaxy altogether such is his genius. Yes, he really is me.

I find film reviews difficult because the only safe presumption is that you have not seen it. I won't spoil anything but Bob is a fuck sight more talented than he looks. He becomes the most super superhero out of this whole talented clan.

This film is hilarious in places and not always at Bob's expense. I was reminded several times of the Bob in Blackadder whose mere name elicits hysterical mirth. Like Paul, Bob is a funny name if you say it a hundred times. Yelena and Ava will always be ravishing, never funny. You can't giggle over women like this, you just have to stand up and succumb.

The story has something for everyone of course, Hollywood grub has to. But this is a properly good film with some very serious things to say about depression, anxiety, finding your niche and your place in a lonely world. In the final analysis, of course, we are all very much alone. But sometimes we can be alone together and that is what these beautiful souls represent, these New Avengers. One or two people have reached a hand out in my direction recently. Bob needed that. He doesn't know which woman he can trust and which of us do? Thank fuck they are coming back next year because we cannot get enough of them, Anlaby or not.