Word: x-men
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...early 1960s, when Marvel Comics was introducing Spider-Man, X-Men and The Fantastic Four, the cold war had complicated America's optimism. Marvel's characters embodied the atom angst of the day: the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the Hulk owed their powers to radiation. (In the movie, the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker is now bioengineered, perfect for the age of anthrax and cloning.) More important, Marvel characters had psychology. They were conflicted and were driven, like Peter Parker, by guilt (Peter is haunted by having inadvertently caused his uncle's death) rather than simple revenge...
...X-MEN...
...X-MEN, A TEAM MADE UP OF SOCIETY'S SUPER-POWERED OUTCASTS, APPEAR...
...crossbreeding of Spider-Man with new film technology--part of Marvel Comics' adventure in big-budget movies, which began with the hit Blade and X-Men entries--seems a natural. On the printed page, comic-book action hero is an oxymoron; a man can fly only in the reader's complicitous mind. Films make the fantastic real; they are, after all, called motion pictures. In the new Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood arachno-human can execute some cool moves as he trapezes above New York City. In these aerial scenes (a combination of acrobatic stunt work and digital derring...
...boot Spidey off a skyscraper, and he'll still end up on top. The same applies to Marvel, the company that created him. Four years ago, it was in Chapter 11, but three hit films based on Marvel comics--1998's Blade, 2000's X-Men and this year's Blade II--have made it a Hollywood hulk, with studios hustling to put its characters onscreen. Marvel earned $19 million in the last quarter of 2001, its first in the black since the bankruptcy. "There's an instantaneous awareness of Marvel properties among a lot of people, and that translates...