Does this sound familiar? As a youth, you had an immediate identification with Superman -- not because of the swell suit or the ability to fly or even the idea of just how intensely cool it'd be to cook microwave burritos with your eyes. No, your admiration for the man of steel rose from his shining principles, his clear sense of justice in an unfair world (okay, the flying thing is admittedly a perk). He was a beacon of hope in the pages of Action Comics, and you ceaselessly devoured his adventures. So it was with great trepidation that you plopped down six bills for a ticket to a new film adaptation entitled Superman Reborn. Hey, you figured, what could they possibly do to mess up Superman? Five minutes into the flick, you discover just how bad things can get.

Not only is a leering Nicholas Cage assaying the role of a Brooklynized Clark Kent, he's saddled with neurotic Julia Roberts as love interest Lois Lane. For no reason at all, Old Red and Blue faces off against a gaggle of garishly-garbed martial artists only to meet his match in a zany version of Brainiac, overplayed by an exuberant Jim Carrey. But Brainiac's not alone -- oh no -- he's ably assisted by his trusty sidekick: a gay, alien, robot dog. Two hours later you emerge from the darkness of the theater, shaking uncontrollably as you try to hold back the tears.

Smell that? It's the malodorous stench of hundreds of Hollywood moneymen having healthy bowel movements all over your childhood dreams. And before writing the idea of Superman Reborn off as farfetched fantasy, you might as well know that it came within a mere micron of going before the cameras only last year.

Though the trend of adapting comic books into major motion pictures has long been a staple in Hollywood, the past decade has seen the largest number of big budget attempts in history. Warner Brothers kickstarted the comic/film subgenre with Tim Burton's lush noir version of Batman, and although it featured the controversial casting choice of Michael Keaton in the role of the Caped Crusader, this film above all others provided the measuring stick for every other comic book film made in the nineties. A mere eight years later, Warner plumbed the depths of lowest common denominator filmmaking with the abysmal Batman and Robin. The fall came remarkably soon, and for every success like Blade, for every moderately faithful opus like The Crow, there were just as many abject failures along the lines of The Punisher, Spawn or the nearly unwatchable Captain America. Is it any wonder that the average theater patron rolls eyes at the mention of another comic book movie?

The appeal of comic books and the movies that portray them well really lies in simplicity. In a viciously complicated world, it can be rewarding to glimpse a world in which the boundaries between good and evil are clearly delineated -- not to mention the, uh, cerebral thrills found in seeing vile baddies pummeled into submissive gobs of quivering jelly. Lines of demarcation are few and far between in reality, and comic fans often wish that there existed an organization like the Justice League to give real life villains like Slobodan Milosevic the pounding they truly deserve (NATO may be fine for international squabbles but is generally not prone to punching someone through the nearest wall).

So why do comic book films continue to be produced? The simple fact is that we need heroes. The real question, though, is why so many of these films fail. The best way to get to the bottom of this is by looking at several projects presently on the horizon.

THE X-MEN

Long in development, The X-Men is finally set to hit the screen in June of 2000. Though rumors swirled about for years, denoting a parade of directors and actors attached and in various stages of production, the film only became a reality when Bryan (The Usual Suspects) Singer came onboard. Casting began even before scribes Christopher McQuarrie and Ed Solomon had completed the script, ranging from coups that included Patrick Stewart as Professor X and Ian McKellen as Magneto to the "what the hell were they thinking" caveats of Rebecca Romjin-Stamos as Mystique and James Marsden as Cyclops. While comic fans are slavering over the very thought of this one, culling through blurry press shots of Aussie Hugh Jackman in Wolverine garb, some unsettling news is being leaked.

Reports of Singer's disdain for comics have been widespread, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and admitted comic junkie Joss Whedon is slinging mud as well. It seems that Whedon, called in for some script polishing, found that major elements of the comic (the Danger Room, the interplay between team members) had been all but ignored, and although he attempted to restore some of the book's dynamic, he soon found that every sentence in his rewrite had been thrown out. Publicly vocalizing his disgust, Whedon has stated that the movie will indeed disappoint the majority of anxious fans.