It's almost a rule of comic-book adaptations: with each great superhero movie there must follow great amounts of bitching. With each 2008 summer release, there's a new editorial from some frayed writer, tired of the whole POW-SMASH-BOOM of it all. io9 is eagerly anticipating the end of the trend, while Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty bravely declared his hatred of all things superhero. I can understand their frustrations; I even share a little of the weariness. Try as I might, I can't wind myself up for Thor or Ant-Man.

But I still find myself defending the genre, albeit lamely, as my mom exclaims "Not another comic book movie!" every time she reads one of my stories. I champion it because there is one boon of the superhero surge that goes largely unnoticed: it's becoming the A-list springboard for male actors. Is your career languishing? Land a comic book lead! Think about it. Some of the most avidly buzzed-about names of late owe their status to a two-dimensional illustration.

I fear this may be another weak installment, due to external suffering. As I mentioned in last Tuesday's column, this past weekend was the start of our Renaissance Faire. It is a punishing affair here in Colorado due to our heat and elevation, and there were many moments where I wished I was watching The Incredible Hulk instead of hiking mountainous terrain in a very small corset. And I didn't even particularly want to see Hulk, but felt compelled. After all, my job here is to write about movies, and every week I am given a platform to chatter about geeky topics. The Incredible Hulk is like a midterm exam for me, a requirement to keep my geek credibility. And that became a perfect subject for this week's column.

Oh, geek cred! Speak it aloud and it vanishes, it is so fragile. My geek cred is, at the moment, more valuable than my college degree. I am delighted when someone salutes it. (By the way, thanks again Rick Marshall.) Few people will ever care whether I remember the events leading to the 100 Years War, but my entire online life could unravel if I don't go see The Incredible Hulk. You don't know how I live in terror that, someday, I will be asked something Green Arrow related and not know the answer. My reputation will be in tatters. I had a chill of this earlier, when I Googled Cowboys and Aliens and discovered everyone had read it but me. (Which is easy – the entire thing is available online. I am horrified I missed even that.).

My thoughts are regrettably circling around one genre this month, as I'm in the middle of last minute Renaissance Faire scrambling. I swear, this happens every single year – I realize it's June, and that I have a week to procure buccaneer boots, or a new bodice. (Other girls need swimsuits for summer, I need pirate boots. Go figure.) In between (and inspired by) the fabric and hat shopping, I finally cracked open Children of Hurin for the first time. Revisiting Middle Earth made me nostalgic, not just for the recent years when we were eagerly awaiting each Lord of the Rings installment, but for fantasy in general. Specifically, '80s fantasy.

Someday, there will be a cultural study that reveals why there was a renewed fascination with dragons and chicks in chainmail in the '80s. I have always suspected it was the debut of Dungeons and Dragons, but an RPG played in basements could hardly inspire Hollywood to tackle the genre so eagerly. Perhaps it was the medieval styling of Star Wars, which led movie directors to declare "Jedi knights? Hey, let's do a movie with real knights!" Maybe it was all spawned by the gigantic Excalibur, or it was a delayed reaction to the hippies' rediscovery of Tolkien.

This week's column is about George Lucas, a long absent figure in the Geek Beat. If you find your blood pressure easily raised by even the slightest mention of his name, then skip reading this week. However, be assured that I'm not going to trot out any of the old Lucas clichés; tell you he raped my childhood, or bring up that cringe-worthy site that analyzes his neck size. But I am going to examine one of his lesser known sins: the 1996 sequel to Willow.

Thankfully, it was consigned only to bookshelves and not foisted on an unsuspecting movie audience. If you've never heard of it, be glad. And you're not alone, as it seems to have come and gone under the radar for most geeks. Which is a shame; it could have warned us that trouble was ahead -- like Lenin's letter warning against Stalin, or the iceberg warnings sent to the Titanic.

Ah, Willow. I didn't see it on its initial release, but rediscovered it as a pre-teen. I was enchanted by it in those days, when I was all about dragons, crystals, swords and the Renaissance Faire. (I've matured in my medieval tastes, though I still admire a well-made sword from time to time. I still have one hanging on my wall, actually.) Though I had read The Hobbit, I had not yet tackled Lord of the Rings, and so Willow struck me as relatively original. Now, of course, I realize it's a blatant rip-off of Tolkien ... but oh, the folly of youth. Plus, Val Kilmer was really handsome in the flick.

The hype surrounding Indiana Jones' return is beginning to subside; now come the recriminations and fanatic defenses of the movie, but the thrill is gone. And before Lucas and Spielberg get bored and confirm a fifth Indiana Jones movie, I'd like to take this moment to offer up another reboot to Paramount.

It is time to bring back Lara Croft.

Last week, she came up again and again on the list of Indy rip-offs, which is a sad state of affairs. She's come down in the world since her 1996 debut. Croft used to be everywhere – magazine covers, t-shirts, posters; she may have originated as a blatant borrowing of Indy, but she quickly took on a pop culture life of her own. From her aqua tank-top to her twin automatics, Lara quickly escaped her progenitor's shadow, and very nearly approaches the iconic status of Indiana himself. While much of it was undoubtedly due to her impressive, er, attributes, I would also like to believe that people flocked to embrace her because she is cool and revolutionary. Marion Ravenwood and Indiana Jones combined, but with better weaponry.

With the fourth Indiana Jones film arriving in theaters this week, a single debate seems to be raging across the Internet; it rages even now over at my favorite geek haunt: Which is better, Temple of Doom or Last Crusade? I had to stay out of it because I've been pondering this Indy Week piece for too long to risk ripping off someone else's ideas. (So, Phantom Zone, consider this my two cents – and I will see you shortly!) I hope you will crave my indulgence with this piece, and not just dismiss me as that girl you hated in Old English, or rip out my heart and show it to me.

I'm a Last Crusade girl. All the way ... and it's partly nostalgia. The movie came out when I was in the best year of grade school. We all discussed it over lunch, and the best ways to reenact it on the playground. Oddly, while I got to be Kim Basinger when we played Batman, it never occurred to the boys to make me be Elsa Schneider. We were all our own versions of Indy. I remember the "name of God" scene to be one of our favorites, and we all came up with horrible creatures to be under each letter, collapsing in laughter when we decided J should be "Jack in the Box."

In the glorious aftermath of Iron Man, Marvel announced the dates for who was to follow in his titanium alloyed footsteps, and not surprisingly there's nary a superheroine among them.

I'm a little late to this conversation – even Defamer was calling for a superchick movie last week, but we all know you're stylish if you arrive late to the party. And frankly, as a geek girl, I'm given a pass and can talk about this stuff whenever the mood strikes me. Plus, if I had done it last week, we wouldn't have gotten to talk about all those cool comic books.

It's a surprising fact, but the comic book world is a lot more accepting of tough women than mainstream Hollywood. There are no doubt loads of men and women who disagree with me, pointing to Frank Miller or the unrealistic body expectations. No doubt there are a lot of damning storylines and panels ("Quiet, or Papa spank!"), but I find much of it easy to shrug off. I'm as staunch a feminist as you can find, but I've never been able to completely shake my fist at the industry because, dammit, there was Wonder Woman and Jean Grey. From the start, comic book heroines were strong individuals, capable of action. A glance through Marvel or DC titles show plenty of women who kick ass as heroes, villains, and all the ambiguity in between.

And they've been doing it for years! Wonder Woman was battling villains when women were still being run out of the workplace – and sporting a mini-skirt while women were still unusual in pants. Of course, they show leg, of course they are extremely pretty and curvaceous, but so what? The men are all cleft-jawed and ripped like gods, so we're hardly seeing a fair shake for either gender there.

This was a tough week to write a beat. It's the periphery of summer coolness, which leaves me little to really dig into. But as this week brings us the big screen debut of Iron Man, it seems inevitable that we talk comic books today.

Frankly, I bet most of you out there thought there would never be an Iron Man movie -- just from the technological standpoint. Imagine if this had been done in, say, 1985. It looks pretty grim, doesn't it? For some reason, this image led me to wondering about all the comic books we've read up till now, thinking: "This could never be done! It's insane!" So, that's what this week is about -- those over-the-top comic books that could never be made in a million years.