Comic Book Heroes: Paper to Pixel!

The world at large and the movie-world in particular are quivering with excitement at The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's "dark, brooding, mysterious" tale - 5th Batman movie, 2nd in its new avatar. The worldwide takings on the opening weekend are expected to be the biggest Hollywood has ever seen, bigger than current leader - Spiderman III!
Which brings me to - do superheroes leap from books to cinema, just as easily as they jump buildings, lift cars and rescue people? What guarantees everlasting silver-stardom to a few? Is it dependent on the movie or the character? Director or creator?
In an America threatened by new forces - political, revolutionary and economic - superheroes seem to be just what the paranoid public wants to cling to. Susan Faludi, writes about DC comics came up with a whole slew of superhero stories after 9/11 - white knights endorsing firefighters, rescuing women from burning towers, and make heroes of ordinary people.
After all, wouldn't anyone want to be superhero? Imagine wearing a cape, using cool gadgets, getting your (most times) woman and flying through the air (wearing tights is a minor price to pay for all this)...that rocks! The most delicious part is that we all have to suspend disbelief and accept that Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker et al are just regular guys, when they step out of their pantsuits. Ok...Bruce Wayne...is filthy rich, but hey! cut the guy some slack - he's an orphan. The step from hero to super hero is just as easy as shrugging out of a shirt - isn't that a delicious thought.
But the transition from paper to movie is not so smooth. Agreed, comic books are easy for studio execs to understand, relate to - being storyboards themselves. But, comics leave much to our imagination while detailing much else that cinema cannot aspire to. There are extremes of facial expression that real human beings (non Jim Carrey) cannot match. Cinema demands continuous delineation of a story, comic books can make a transition from act1 to act2 with a few lines of text! The same "strong, silent" hero of the comic turns into a "taciturn, boring, inarticulate" hero of the movie - hardly endearing. Sometimes, the sheer weight of buries the franchise - Superman 1 & 2 rode on Christopher Reeves, but geeky charm can only do so much to prop a poor script.
The women fare even worse, the only kinds of women that seem to catch the public's imagination are house-trained witches who twitch their noses and ensure their hubby's success - why am I surprised.
In recent times there seems to have been a re-boot for many all-but-dead franchises, thanks to fantastic special effects, some tight scripts, extensive publicity and a hugely interested, younger audience in emerging markets.
Superman returning has had a mixed response with many probably viewing him as anachronistic - we all love to see our angst in our heroes. The undoubted success has been Spidey, captivating old and young with an endearingly geeky Tobey Macguire, appropriately contrite James Franco and enough special effects to annexe the next planet! But methinks they have outlasted their streak - Spidey 3 felt like Peter Parker 3* and there is no Tobey in the next one though the studios are threatening us with atleast 2 more!!!
Batman, the old favourite, who never quite seems to have gone away, is back, and as a hero quite close to the original comic and closer to evil than ever before. A posthumous Oscar for a painted face in a film with a hero dressed in tights - who knows? More power to Christopher Nolan!!!