Rescuing the Heroes.

With supermovies booming, the aging Spider-Man and friends seek a rebirth in comic books

Jessica Vasquez, 17, flies by shoppers at a video store in New York City to grab the last X-Men DVD, then sighs with relief. "My X-Man-wannabe boyfriend has been fiending for this DVD since it came out," she says. "I would have tried to get him some of the comics, but it's just too weird being in those stores."

That's the two-faced state of comics today. The spin-off movies are hot, attracting a mainstream audience like Jessica and her boyfriend. On the flipside, comic books themselves have been foundering, attracting mainly the kind of hardcore, hero-worshipping collectors typified by The Simpsons' creepy Comic Book Guy.

When X-Men took in $157 million at the box office, ranking as the No. 6 movie of 2000, Hollywood took notice. A powerful film lineup is now taking shape. Tobey Maguire is currently web-slinging in red-and-blue tights with co-star Kirsten Dunst on the set of Spider-Man, a big-budget movie to be released next May. Ang Lee, the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has signed on to make a big-screen Hulk incredible. AOL Time Warner, parent company of DC Comics, is reviving the Batman movies with a planned Batman: Year One and Batman Beyond. And a list of other movies, including X-Men 2, are in the works.

But the comic book itself, a medium that has endured for nearly 70 years, has fallen into more peril than its fictitious heroes. Overall sales have slipped drastically, from $850 million in 1993 to $265 million in 2000. With most newsstands and bookstore chains phasing out comics, the best place to get them is at comic book stores, the "weird" ones that Jessica won't go into. Those outlets have hit hard times, too. There were about 10,000 stores in 1993; only 3,400 remain.

Why the downward spiral? "In the mid-'90s, the expected wave of new teen readers never showed," says Cliff Biggers, editor of Comic Shop News. "Those readers chose video and computer games as their first choice of entertainment, not comic books."

Marvel Comics, the industry leader, admits to another problem. "Marvel made some mistakes during the 1990s," says Bill Jemas, the company's publisher who is helping Marvel rebuild after filing for bankruptcy in 1996. "Our teen idols all got older, got married, got kids of their own, and lost their appeal to kids and teens." That aging was most notable with Marvel's Spider-Man, as well as Cyclops and Jean Grey of the X-Men.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

Both Marvel and DC are working to be a mainstream medium again. Hoping to tap into the movie magic, DC snagged Kevin Smith, who wrote and directed Chasing Amy and Dogma, to save the day by writing the new adventures of superarcher Green Arrow. Smith's first issue, released in February, was a top seller.

Marvel is now putting modern-day spins on its well-known characters in new series called Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man, which launched with No. 1 issues this past winter. Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, is a teen again and Webmaster of an online newspaper. The new leather-clad X-Men more closely resemble their movie counterparts. Each issue has sold out, and in an industry first, Marvel's Web site is posting the back issues for free.

The rejuvenation may keep comics off the endangered list. Rob Worley, who runs comics2film.com, is confident about the future of comics and the films that they inspire. "Comics will never fade as long as there is a medium that is imitating or retelling them," he says.

But if comic books want to win the battle for relevance, it's ultimately up to them. "The three keys to the comic industry's abililty to survive and succeed are good stories, good artwork, and good entertainment value," Biggers says. "They've never changed."