The Screengrab

Marvel's recent forays into the world of superhero films have been dynamite.  With the Spider-Man franchise more or less held up as the gold standard of super-action, the X-Men movies still holding up strong despite the disastrous third installment, the recent Iron Man film reminding everyone of how much fun comics are supposed to be, and even the Hulk reboot carrying with it the perception of success even though it basically matched the box office numbers of its unfairly vilified Ang Lee predecessor, it's easy to forget they're plenty capable of super-duds.  The 2003 adaptation of Daredevil is one of Marvel's few notable duds (the less said about the Elektra spinoff the better); a lukewarm lead performance by Ben Affleck, a morally and technically confused plot, and uncertain direction by Mark Steven Johnson were largely to blame.

Still, for comics fans, the character has a lot of life to give, and most devotees of the comic -- particularly of the so-called "Born Again" plot arc of the 1980s, with its stark religious imagery, sense of moral atonement, and brutal, noirish crime elements, all of which were present in the 2003 movie but ineptly handled -- would be more than willing to give a chance to a potential remake.  And while there's nothing official in the works, according to Geoff Boucher, proprietor of the L.A. Times' genre-driven "Hero Complex" blog, if a remake ever gets made, it may benefit from an infusion of a much more dynamic, enthusiastic and charismatic lead actor in the person of Jason Statham.

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Frank Miller, writes Kevin Scanlon in The New York Times, "exudes comics cred." This week, Miller will be at the opening of the San Diego Comic-Con International, where comics professionals will be honored with the presentation of the annual Eisner Awards, named for the legendary writer-artist Will Eisner. According to Scanlan, "few outside fandom have any idea" who Eisner-- who died three years ago at the age of 87, though he seemed to have been around for much longer than that and to have been active in his field for most of that time--was, and I will take his word for it, since I've spent most of my life in the company of people, myself not excepted, who were more likely to be able to recite Eisner's bibliography chapter and verse than to know how to add fractions. As the creator of the urban detective strip The Spirit (and, later, one of the first producers of a "graphic novel"), Eisner was always hailed for his "cinematic" style, his way of bringing the mood and feel of an action-packed film noir to the four-color page. So was Miller, when he first made a splash with his own take on the crime comic disguised as a superhero comic, Daredevil. (It was to humor those publishers who thought that a comics hero had to be a costumed crimefighter that Eisner drew two horizontal lines across the Spirit's face and called that a mask.)

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A long time ago when the world made sense, there were two kinds of comic books: DC comics and Marvel comics. And while Marvel reigned supreme at the comics shop, the company dearly wanted to break into the lucrative and ego-stroking business of licensing it characters for major motion pictures, and it was there that DC pantsed Marvel and took its lunch money. While DC was the home of Superman and Batman, Marvel was the home base of Howard the Duck. For years, Marvel's role in the Hollywood fod chain was epitomized by the 1994 Fantastic Four movie, a cheesy, cheap-looking affair that Marvel put into production without bothering to inform the people who worked on it that they had no intention of releasing it to theaters or even home video but were contractually obliged to make something if they wanted to hang onto the film rights to their own characters. All that started to change in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men, whose success the director was unable to duplicate with his later stab at rebooting Superman. A couple of years later, Sam Raimi's take on the Marvel flagship hero Spider-Man launched a major franchise and proved that Marvel could sire a blockbuster movie without Singer or Hugh Jackman modeling a haircut that could open bottles and cans.

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