Metal masters are Jonn Penney's superheroes

Kerpow! Bam! Phwump! Kerrching! That'll be the sound at the cinemas tonight as the marvelous Captain America sees its UK release and everyone gets to marvel at yet another Marvel marvel,

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Call the Guinness Book! The highest concentration of marvels in a sentence . . .

I know, I know – this is supposed to be a music column isn't it? Well, yes, OK. But these comic book heroes have inspired a plethora of musicians over the years, if not just the comic book imagery we see in so many videos then the outrageously bad fashion that has so regularly transmuted itself onto the bodies of so many men and women of rock. Or should I say superheroes of rock?

Talking of rock superheroes . . . those original iron men, Iron Maiden will be annihilating another host of innocents at the NIA on Sunday with songs like Run To The Hills and Tailgunner, hopefully bringing their comic-book horror icon Eddie along too. Iron Maiden fans will have seen the band's long enduring skeletal mascot grace their stage a gazillion times – doesn't 'gazillion' sound like a Marvel-inspired quantity? No? Oh well.

In any case the hard rock and metal masters of this world have certainly been the greatest harvesters of comic book hero (and villain) spectra down the decades, and none more dramatically than Black Country boys, Judas Priest. It was with unbridled pleasure that us Civic Hall peeps were able to induct three of 'the Priest's' local heroes into our Black Country Wall Of Fame last week just as they were taking to the stage. Something struck me about the occasion that I thought worthy of sharing.

As the official home of metal, the Black Country and its titanium-plated sibling Birmingham have spawned some of the very biggest names in the history of rock music.

Do I need to list them? Just Robert Plant, John Bonham and Black Sabbath should suffice for the point, but there are so many more big names and lesser-knowns too. People like Robert Plant are rightful owners of that over-used accolade 'living legend'; they live in some people's dreams as well as in their record collections, yet there's something so incredibly Black Country about these people that to my mind makes them all the more credible and worthy of superhero status.

They are humble. They walk amongst their worshippers without an ounce of ego to set them apart. They just get on with the job of creating great music without the sort of paparazzi -feeding type of shenanigans we are used to getting from most A-list musicians.

I guess they fall into the same superhero category as Clark Kent, Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne. They don't feel a need to milk the adoration for their acts of musical heroism in the real world – they get their highs from the license that the stage gives them, and believe me, the adrenaline that pumps through you when you're standing in front of a huge audience makes you feel nothing short of superhuman.

We Black Country folk are not in the habit of talking things up unnecessarily. You might say. . . We dow meck a fuss, but we do meck a bloody good racket!