Once again, super heroes are sexy.

From Spider-Man to Superman, larger-than-life planet-saviours are back in a big way, leaping from the faded pages of the comic book to the bright lights of the silver screen.

Brandon Routh as Superman in 'Superman Returns'

With this summer's blockbuster release of Superman Returns, the Man of Steel is the latest in a

phalanx of well-known superheroes who are testing out their film-skills. Also in the running: The X-Men and Ghost Rider and more obscure legends like the masked revolutionary from V for Vendetta.

So what's driving the migration from page to screen? Is technology finally ready to realistically adapt these heroes to the screen? Is it the lure of the millions of dollars to be made at the box office? Or does the trend, instead, illustrate a new fascination with what has historically been the closely guarded domain of the geek?

Is it, now, more than ever, hip to be square?

Todd McFarlane believes it's a little of each.

A legend in the comic book world, the Calgary-born McFarlane drew The Amazing Spider-Man during the late 1980s and early '90s, and he's got comic book street-cred in spades.

McFarlane, now 45, is one of the all-time top-selling artists to render the web-slinger, and gave him the large, spider-like eyes and wiry limbs that have helped define Spidey ever since.

He also created the popular villain Venom, the iconic Spawn comic series and a TV show based on it, directed the film adaptation of The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys and owns his own company called Image Comics.

He told CTV.ca the fact that pop-culture has embraced comic book characters comes as sweet revenge for people like him.

"I'll tell you a true fact," McFarlane said during an interview from Victoria, B.C. where he was vacationing with his family.

"Where we used to have to hide our geekiness in the closet, now you can actually say it out loud and people won't think of you as mentally arrested."

"We're finally getting our emotional revenge. We were ahead of the curve. We've been collecting this stuff for 30 years. You guys are jumping on the bandwagon because a couple of big movies have come out. See what you've been missing?"

But McFarlane counters the notion that comic book films are a brand-new trend. As far back as the 1950s the Adventures of Superman with George Reeves was igniting imaginations on television. Adam

West came along later with a cheesy TV version of Batman in the 1960s, and Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter debuted in the '70s.

And the Superman and Batman film franchises have been drawing fans to the cinema since 1978, when Christopher Reeve first donned tights and a cape as the Man of Steel. Tim Burton's version of Batman arrived in 1989.

But, those TV series and films had none of the drawing power of today's blockbuster adaptations. This summer's X-Men: The Last Stand took in $120 million US on its opening weekend alone, making it the single highest holiday weekend gross of all time, and proving there's still big bucks to be made in super hero films.

Comic-concepts have gone mainstream

McFarlane says the fantastic concepts that drive many comic books have now become more acceptable forms of storytelling in film-format, allowing for a shift from the fringe to the mainstream.

"A lot of action movies have a lot of fantasy elements to them," he says. "If you watch Star Wars or James Bond, you have to suspend reality to go along with the ride. I think comic books tie into that same sort of thing -- big dramatic fantastic worlds with fantastic characters doing these sort of extreme acts.

"When I was collecting comic books people would look at me and say 'You collect comic books, what a geek,' but at the same time they were standing in line for Star Wars or James Bond. I think we've just found the fantasy of comic books become a little more mainstream in the past two decades."

Undoubtedly, technology has also played a big role in bringing strange heroes and villains, and the fantastic worlds they live in, to life in a realistic way, McFarlane says.

"All that big cosmic stuff they do, it's now easily able -- as long as you have the money -- to be put on the screen, and it's not a bunch of guys in rubber suits running around, which was the limit they had when I was a kid."

Dr. Rocco Versace, a professor at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, has developed a course that explores the comic book as a form of literature.

He agrees that computer-generated graphics and other emerging technologies have helped fuel the movement.

"I think part of the reason is that the special effects people in film are finally catching up with what's been happening in comic books. So now they can really bring to the screen what has been happening in the pages of comics," Versace tells CTV.ca.

The early efforts to adapt comics to screen or television often fell far short of the mark, failing to draw

Chris Evans as The Human Torch, in 'Fantastic Four'

the audience into the imaginary world that comic readers were used to, Versace says. He lists the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four television series' as unsuccessful attempts.

Now, however, a number of comic book characters, and the science-driven, fantastical creations of Marvel Comics especially, have been rendered more realistically than ever before. Film studios are taking advantage of new technology and carving out a legitimate place for superheroes in Hollywood.

Good and evil are defined

But Versace is adamant that there's more to it than that. He believes it's the same attraction that draws legions of dedicated fans to follow comic books with religious zeal -- they long for a world where good and evil are clearly defined.

"I think the vast majority of people are drawn to seeing the world in unambiguous ways. It makes living a little bit easier when it's clear there are good guys and there are bad guys," he says.

But it's not just super heroes who are making the transition to celluloid. Less-likely concept comics such as Ghost World, Art School Confidential and American Splendor, which deal with ordinary people doing ordinary things, have also become successful film adaptations -- albeit on a much smaller scale.

People are attracted to these films for very different reasons, Versace says.

"I think when someone reads something, they search for some of themselves in what they read," Versace says.

"Harvey Pekar (creator of American Splendor) is great at capturing that. He takes ordinary things like serving on jury duty or buying a loaf of bread, and he shows how there's a story there, how there's something heroic about that. I love reading his stories, and in so much of his work nothing really happens, but we see ourselves in there."

McFarlane takes a slightly different position. He's currently in the midst of working to adapt Torso, a graphic novel that follows the life of Eliot Ness, the leader of the famed 'Untouchables' after he busted Al Capone, into a film.

The Torso project, along with Ghost World and American Splendor and others like them, work well on the screen because first and foremost they're good stories, and secondly, because we see our own flaws projected back at us, he says.

"I don't know if it's necessarily the heroism we relate to, I think it's the flaws," he says.

"We understand that our life is completely imperfect, and these guys are completely imperfect, but somehow they're getting along and it's just called life at the end of the day and it's not meant to be perfect."

Hip to be square

Jeddiah Richardson, a 30-year-old Toronto engineer who grew up on Batman, Spider-Man and Wolverine comics - and is a self-proclaimed nerd -- has developed his own theory about the recent

upsurge in comic-book character-driven films.

It revolves around the notion that geek is the new cool.

"My feeling is that the trend is a testament to pop culture becoming more accepting of fringe elements, particularly geeky or nerdy elements," Richardson told CTV.ca.

"The comic book trend is part of a revenge of the nerds that may ultimately come to define pop culture this decade," he said.

He believes the trend penetrates deeper than the world of comic books.

"In a world where once-geeky past-times like weblogging and podcasting now drive pop culture, and science fiction epics like Lord of the Rings are box office successes, and Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan can become media icons, nerd culture is an indomitable force in pop culture," Richardson says.

The trend, as he sees it, has created the perfect vehicle to bring the Wolverines and Incredible Hulks into the mainstream.

"The ideals they are built upon speak to an inner geek in all of us whether we acknowledge it or not," Richardson says.

"Comics, despite massive followings over the generations, have always been the ground where accepted norms were challenged. Even beyond that, the comic formula celebrates the outcast and speaks to the fantasies of the uncool."

The Hulk, he said, is a perfect example of a mild-mannered, nerdy type who develops super human qualities when he gets angry -- that's every geek's fantasy, he says.

Another common theme in comic books -- and in the films they have inspired -- is the geeky guy who can't get the attention of the girl until he assumes his super hero persona.

This concept also resounds in the hearts of many who are outside of the 'cool crowd,' Richardson says.

McFarlane still isn't convinced, however. He firmly believes people care more about the super hero than the geek.

"I know (Spider-Man creator) Stan Lee, and I know Stan likes to use that theory. And I'm sure there is some of it there, but it doesn't then explain Batman, who's a rich white guy who's an elitist. He's as far away from being a geek as there is. He's corporate America, and you know what, Batman sales do pretty well too.

"At the end of the day I think it's less about who they are before they put the costumes on and more about who they are after they put the costumes on."

No end in sight for the phenomenon

Like Richardson, McFarlane uses the movie version of The Hulk to illustrate his argument, though to a different end. He claims our eyes glaze over with boredom until the moment David Bruce Banner begins to turn green, taking on his powerful alter ego.

"It took too long to get to the Hulk. Everyone wanted to see The Hulk," McFarlane says.

Regardless of what's driving the phenomenon, comic-book film adaptations appear to be here to stay. Even now, new Spawn, Spider-Man, and Ghost Rider films are in the works, and the trend is likely to continue at least until all the A-list characters have been mined by Hollywood producers.

And even then, there are likely to be years of sequels and spin-offs as popular characters like Wolverine venture out on their own to bring their signature brands of vigilante justice to the world.

According to McFarlane, there's a simple reason for this. Regardless of our age, we are all fascinated with the idea of doing super-human things.

Comic book adaptations just help us to imagine we really can, he says.

"I was walking with my six-year-old son yesterday, and he said to me 'Dad, wouldn't it be awesome to be a bird for one day?' So he understands the concept of wanting to do things he'll never be able to do."

"So all of a sudden the guy running at an extreme speed, the guy flying, the guy dressed as a bat, the guy climbing up walls and swinging on webs -- you know, that all becomes kind of cool."