NORMAN, Okla. — Even the so-so ones seem to make a ton of cash.

I’m talking about comics movies. The bad ones — think “Spawn” or “Tank Girl” — usually don’t bring in the big dough, but if a film is even mildly entertaining, and this year’s “Ghost Rider” certainly falls under the mildly category, and it has a comic-book character in it, it’s almost certainly going to earn a serious profit.

The Nicolas Cage film, almost universally panned by critics, has pulled in $115.8 million in the U.S. and $227.8 million worldwide and has achieved a successful DVD launch as well. And it only cost $110 million to make.

And then there’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” which is a more family-friendly comic-book adaptation than most recent films of the genre, and it wasn’t exactly loved by critics, either.

But it owned the box office last weekend with $58 million.

“I watched ‘Ghost Rider’ on the plane back from London (last week), and it wasn’t a good movie,” IDW Comics Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall said. “But it made a ton of money here. And it’s the perfect kind of movie to do well overseas.”

So even when Hollywood puts secondary characters in their own films, they seem to do well.

And the comic-book genre hasn’t ever been this popular.

Think of the success of the CW’s “Smallville,” NBC’s “Heroes,” Sci-Fi Channel’s “Painkiller Jane,” and Stan Lee’s reality show, “Who Wants to be a Superhero?” and the plethora of other supernatural, sci-fi and superhero films and television shows. Why are there so many? Why are they making so much money right now?

One of the first things that comes to mind is escapism. Since 9/11, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, people around the world have embraced the science fiction and supernatural genres more than ever. With so much bad going on in reality, there’s a natural progression toward that escapism adventure.

“I think that may be part of it,” Ryall said. “People like to be entertained. But I think the main reason is just that comics have such strong characters and stories.”

Part of that is thanks to new super-team creative staffs. Comics are no longer printed on inferior paper, and each artist seems to have a pretty distinctive look right now. Comics are even drawing, no pun intended, artists in from the legitimate world of art to graphic novels. Artists like Ben Templesmith and Ashley Wood bring their distinctive style to the books they’re involved in.

“They’re real artists, and I’ve asked Ashley Wood before why he does it when he can make a lot more money selling prints,” Ryall said. “I think they just grew up on comics and they genuinely enjoy working in the medium.”

So the comics are better quality now, the stories are more smartly written and even broach political and societal problems, making them more relevant to a larger audience.

How did comics go from “Bang! Boom! Smack!” to genuine works of artistic integrity?

A lot of today’s comic writers can thank Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

Moore’s breakthrough “Watch-men” and Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” showed comic book heroes could be taken seriously. That graphic novels could be just as relevant and sincere as regular novels. And those two books opened the door for the flood of comic book popularity in the 1990’s.

The medium’s popularity has even made it possible for serious graphic novels to find their way to the silver screen. Books like Moore’s “V for Vendetta” and “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” have been successful films, and Miller’s “Sin City” was the basis for a critically acclaimed, and highly profitable, film starring Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba.

Other dramatic graphic novels that have been made into films are “Road to Perdition” and “A History of Violence,” both critically acclaimed.

“(Miller and Moore) really showed that the genre could appeal to a wide audience,” Ryall said. “I think Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’ film in 1989 really opened things up, too. He really showed you could make this dark, gritty and realistic film about a superhero and it would work. And technology has really helped bring these characters to the big screen, too. In ‘Superman’ in the ’70s, they said, ‘You will believe a man can fly,’ but then you watched the movie, and you really didn’t. Now, they can make it look so real, like ‘Superman Returns,’ and it really looks like the guy is doing everything they have him doing.”

Better art, better stories, escapism from the real world, better technology and strong characters to build from.

Anything else?

“My son and I have talked about it, and he brought up the idea that it has a lot to do with the guys making movies in Hollywood right now,” said Jeff Mariotte, writer and creator of the graphic series “Desperadoes” and author of the recently-released novel “Missing White Girl.” “Guys like Bryan Singer, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi and others have grown up reading comic books, and now they’re in a position to do something like make movies about those characters and books they grew up on.”

Almost any popular young Hollywood director has been involved in a comic-book based film at one point or another. Along with Nolan (“Batman Begins”), Raimi (the “Spider-Man” films) and Singer (“Superman Returns,” “X-Men,” X-2”), directors like Brett Ratner (“X-Men: The Last Stand”), Robert Rodriguez (“Sin City”) and Mark Steven Johnson (“Daredevil”) have also made significant money-making comic-book films.

And it seems to be cyclical. The more films that are made based on comics, the more people read comics. The increase of bodies in the shops turns into more interest in the genre. That turns into more butts in the theater seats when a comic is turned into a film.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily turned into great sales for comics, but there is that interest in the books,” Mariotte said.

But every wave has a trough to go along with the crest. Right now, the genre is riding high on top, and every time a new movie comes out, critics around the world sound the death knell and say it’s only a matter of time before public interest wanes in the graphic-novel medium.

“It’ll happen,” Ryall said. “There’s always an end to trends. Right now, it’s working really well and it’s extremely popular, like westerns were in the 1960s. It’s lasted a long time, but there’s bound to be an end to it sometime.”

Until then, enjoy it, comics fans. There’s a graphic interpretation of almost every television show out there right now (Mariotte has even written a graphic novel of the CBS show “CSI: Miami”), and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Nolan’s sequel to “Batman Begins” is due out next year, and Singer’s sequel to “Superman Returns” is scheduled for 2009. There also are films based on “Iron Man,” “Green Lantern,” “The Flash” and other iconic superheroes in the works right now, along with films based on “Watchmen” and IDW’s “30 Days of Night,” a supernatural horror film due out this fall.

And even the bad ones seem to do well at the box office.

“It doesn’t hurt really when one of the bad ones comes out,” Ryall said. “When one of those smaller characters gets a movie based on it and it fails, I don’t think it matters much. What would matter more, I think, is if a larger character like Superman or Spider-Man failed at the box office, that’s when you’d start seeing the end of the trend.”

Next Week: Is the “Lone Ranger” worth hitching a ride with?



Jeff Johncox writes for the Norman (Okla.) Transcript.