Once again, tomorrow marks the annual Free Comic Book Day. If you live near a participating outlet (and you can find out whether or not you do by clicking here), take the chance to sample the delights of Ninth Art for no charge.

In the year when America celebrates the 75th anniversary of the modern comic (Japanese and European dates differ), the art form finds itself in strange shape. Internally, the medium is suffering-like all print media- from the encroachment of digital alternatives. Comics readers are getting progressively older, and the market itself is increasingly propped up by expensive hard cover albums and spendy ancillary merchandise (much of which appears absurd to all but the most woefully addled and obsessive collectors). Comics magazines of the the kind that Funnies on Parade inaugurated are an ever-dwindling portion of what constitutes "comics"; the cost of paper and the shipping of such small items has made individual comics close to prohibitively expensive, especially when one considers the extent to which the mainstream publishers pack a monthly comic with advertising.

And yet, while commercially speaking comics appear to be in trouble, artistically they are in the rudest of health. The perceived saviour of mainstream comics is branding and adaptation onto other media platforms, the main thrust of this post being three such endeavours. Yet the inevitable focus of these is on super-heroes, the majority of these originating from the forties, fifties and sixties. This masks the richness of 21st century comics (cast an eye over the nominations for this year's Eisner Awards- the Oscars for things with staples in the middle- and you'll find recognition of less then 20 conventional capes and tights books among almost 150 choices) and confirms the outsider's worst prejudices about the industry; that it's nothing but adolescent power/revenge fantasy and Freudian technicolour wet dreams.

Fewer people than ever are reading comics, but a larger audience than ever is consuming the fruits of comics artists and writers' labour. This summer, movie-goers will be given the opportunity to sample five comicbook movies (eight if you include the spoofs Hancock (good) and Superhero Movie (dire) and the animé inspired Speed Racer). God knows I'll probably see all of them, but there's three I'm specifically excited by: today's release of Jon Faverau's Iron Man, based on Stan Lee and Don Heck's 1962 creation; Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the second collaboration with creator Mike Mignola, now in his fifteenth year of illustrating HB's adventures; and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, his sequel to Batman Begins and a film that looks like it'll owe as much to Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Frank Miller, Denny O'Neill, Neal Adams, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale as Bob Kane, the man whose name has been most readily associated with the character since his first appearance in 1939.

These three characters have all, at one time or another, been favourites of mine and it's interesting to compare and contrast them. Both Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are super-heroes bereft of super-powers, made extraordinary by their intelligence, their bravery and their wealth. Hellboy is super-powered, supernatural in fact, yet has a resolutely blue-collar demeanour. Iron Man and Hellboy seek redemption; one is a hawk turned into a dove, the other a demon trying to be a man (an angel's probably too much to ask). Batman is motivated by pure vengeance, often positively embracing the darkness that enveloped him as a child. Also separating him from the other two is his apparent distaste for sensual pleasure; he pretends to be a playboy billionaire to better conceal his personal war on crime, whereas HB would much rather kick back with a six pack than fight the forces of evil, and Stark is positively self-destructive in his vices. Indeed, it's impossible to point to a less healthy hero. Depending on which books you read, he's ravaged by shrapnel wounds, alcoholism, gunshot wounds, paraplegia, quadriplegia, nano-technological viruses and terminal cancer. Of late, certain comic book writers have been emphasising a streak of fascism in the character that was barely perceptible in the beginning but slowly emerged as he was portrayed as an ever-more wealthy Reaganite technocrat in his double life. In this respect he is again comparable to the vigilante Batman and unlike the resolutely anti-authoritarian and generally put-upon Hellboy.

All indication's point to an Iron Man film made with genuine affection by all involved. As previously written, Robert Downey Jnr is insanely appropriate casting for Tony Stark, and all the visuals have been superb. Reviews indicate a severe case of "first in a speculative trilogy" syndrome; once the character origin is well and entertainingly told, the film has nowhere to go in the remainder of its running time. Some form of partial resolution must be provided, yet aces must be held for future instalments. Cue big, noisy, shallow fight. On that point, I think the film will suffer too from the absence of a villain that's anything more than a bigger, badder version of the hero (ditto Spider-Man 3 last year and Incredible Hulk later this summer). The film makers can't be blamed for this entirely; Iron Man lacks a rich gallery of rogues and his main "big bad" is an embarrassingly outdated racial stereotype. Never the less, I think this film will be a much stronger stab at the Marvel Comics vibe than recent woeful efforts such as Electra or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, thanks in no small part to the fact that its the first production from the publishers own and newly-established studio.

The Dark Knight arrives in cinemas in July, unshackled from the burden of franchise building or "rebooting" mentioned above. Christopher Nolan remains tight-lipped about whether he intends to weave further tales in Gotham City. This is perhaps due to the untimely death of Heath Ledger, his Joker, that has inevitably cast a pall over the film's publicity campaign. The movie's official web site remains little more than an obituary for Ledger, even at this late stage of the game. Warner Bros have instead invested in one of the most lavish poster campaigns and complicated and obtuse "viral" strategies ever mounted for a movie, climaxing in flash-mob events around the globe triggered by puzzle-based web sites. This strategy would seem more appropriate for a film featuring the Riddler than Joker, two characters often confused in the public mind. Nolan has gone on record to say he won't include outlandish villains like the Penguin. Perhaps the Riddler is too flamboyant for his tastes too, and so he's cherry-picked his penchant for clues but jettisoned the rest. We'll know more after the long-awaited trailer materialises tomorrow. As much as I enjoyed the first of the series and am eagerly anticipating the second, I think Nolan's films are far from perfect. Despite his attempt to rationalise every aspect of every character, he's missed a few tricks. To cite just one example, and like Burton and Schumaker before him, he tells a story about a man with a definitive and pathological aversion to hand guns who nevertheless makes liberal use of explosives and ballistic weapons. Check out the "Bat-pod" for example. What the hell are those on the front? Rolls of architect's drawings for the new Bat-cave?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army brings up the rear in August. Guillermo Del Toro is hot to trot right now, critically lauded on an international scale for Pan's Labyrinth, hand-picked to succeed Peter Jackson as the director of the prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Again, I've harped on before about the questionable albeit author-approved tinkering that went on the first Hellboy film, especially turning the character from perennially middle-aged to an over-grown adolescent and the recasting of the FBI-like Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a sub-MIBs secret organisation. However the trailer looks like it will all but dispense with the BPRD and instead fling the main characters into a mash up of the European folklore that has entirely captured Mike Mignola's imagination recently, the kind of non sequitur weirdness that made seventies vintage Star Wars such a joy and the fever-dream visuals that where Pan's Labyrinth's hallmark, to whit:



Jaisus, I could barely sleep after seeing that for the first time.

I'll return to these films, and others, as I see them, but with a trip to San Diego in the offing I simply wish to declate the Summer of Ultimate Geekery officially: OPEN!