Review blurbs taken from comic book character autobiographies?

As anyone can read from my full profile, my favourite band (by a long way) is Keane, followed by Coldplay and The Killers and maybe My Chemical Romance or Snow Patrol. So, you can see that my tastes fall firmly within the cluster of musical genres of alternative pop rock / synth rock / modern punk rock.

Occasionally, I’d see a television ad for a band that has been on the periphery of my music radar. Such was the case the other day, when an ad for Muse graced my eyeballs.

Like another periphery band, Kings of Leon, the little I heard sounds promising. However, it is Muse’s review blurbs that have really got me curious, because they read like superhero self-promotional dialogue or excerpts from the autobiographies of comic book characters:

‘The best live band in the world...’

Wow! That’s hyped and not too original. Still, it reminds me of the Hulk saying, “Hulk is the strongest one there is!” Probably untrue, but who cares? Someone said it. It’s out there now and just maybe you’ll gain an extra fan or two as a result of it.

‘If only more bands had this level of ambition...’

If you replaced the word ‘bands’ with the word ‘leaders’, you would have a line from Lex Luthor’s future autobiography, Bald Eagle: How Lex Luthor saved America from Superman (written by Lex Luthor).

Of course, ‘Muse’ didn’t write these blurbs themselves, so I’ll cut them some slack...Besides, they seem to fall into the Alternative Rock + Symphonic Rock subgenres and they like toexperiment with Electronica as well as Classical music.

Still, does anyone remember the time (a decade and a half ago) when a movie studio invented a reviewer/critic? I think he was called ‘Paul Wonder’ or something benign-sounding. Every comedy got a ‘hilarious!’ from Mr. Wonder. Every thriller got an ‘electrifying!’ Every drama got a ‘riveting!’ The best part, as I recall, was the studio head’s reaction to this when the critic’s non-existence was confirmed. The studio boss said something to effect of “Wow...don’t know how that happened,” with the perfect ‘heck if I know...must’ve been an accident’ facial expression and body language.

I’m sure if I looked hard enough, I could find other review blurbs for albums, movies, and books that would remind me of some superheroes and villains. How about you?