I'm a simple country lad, brought up in a quaint Irish village, with fond memories of summers spent blackberry picking in golden wheat fields, picking forest wildflowers for the teacher before school, watching H R Puffinstuff and Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men on black and white TV -- and pouring for hours over Michael Deveraux's collection of Marvel Comics.

Mick had a massive collection of comics in boxes under his bed, in the bathroom cupboard, in the attic -- everywhere -- and when we weren't climbing in the quarry or exploring the bog or watching the gogglebox we spent hour after fantasy-filled hour following the exploits of our favorite superheroes.

The Incredible Hulk was always mine. Imagine my child-like excitement when they made a TV series based on the character.

Imagine my excitement now, despite my age, when they go and make a big-budget movie of the X-Men. WOW! The excitement. The memories.

X-Men the movie is pure fantasy -- brilliantly filmed with no expense spared.

Only some of our favourite characters are here (leaving plenty of scope for the inevitable sequel or three) in full, magical, giant-sized, colour.

In the blue corner Wolverine (Jackman), with his super, regenerative, healing powers and deadly blades; voluptuous Storm (Berry), able to control the weather; and Cyclops (Marsden), with his laser-like optics are among those to do battle for the good of mankind.

Of course, every heroic team needs an (almost) equally powerful nemesis. In this case there's the all-powerful super villain Magneto (McKellen), master of magnetism, and his band of renegades; Sabretooth (Mane) with superhuman strength, agility, fast healing and razor-like claws; shape-shifting Mystique (Romijn-Stamos), prancing round half naked all the time (hold me down); and, Toad (Park) with super agility, paralysing spit and a tongue to die for.