When Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer opens next week, it will introduce one of the most spaced-out creations in the comic-book pantheon, one famously immortalised by Quentin Tarantino in an exchange of dialogue blatantly shoehorned into Crimson Tide (1995) to give it pop-cultural kudos. Still can’t quite place the Surfer? A lonely emissary of Galactus, Devourer of Worlds, he journeys the limitless void on an indestructible surfboard, readying planets for destruction, until the humble people of Earth tug at what’s left of his silver heart.

Like, wow. Cosmic, man. No prizes for guessing which decade the Silver Surfer was dreamt up in. The film won’t be shown to the press until just before release, but regardless of its quality, it will prove two things: one, that no matter how many critics and even cinema-goers think a film is a dull dud, if it makes more than $300 million (£150 million) worldwide – as Fantastic Four(2005) did – it will have a sequel; two, that the current vogue for CGI-enhanced films made from comic books is far from burning itself out.

So confident is Marvel, the publisher of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and X-Men comic books, that last year it tired of pocketing just 2 to 10 per cent of profits from the film adaptations and set itself up as a film studio, borrowing more than $500 million to do so. The first of the new breed will be Iron Man next year, with Robert Downey Jr in the title role, closely followed by a reboot of The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton, with Captain America bringing up the rear alongside the lesser-known Ant-Man (written and directed by Edgar Wright, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame).

And therein lies the problem. According to Rob Worley, who this week celebrates his tenth year of running the website comics2film.com, “When I heard Marvel’s plans I thought, that’s risky: the crown jewels have been plucked, the best-known characters such as Spider-Man and X-Men have been done. But then, when even Ghost Rider can make $225 million, you begin to think that maybe they have something.”

To those who decry the further dumbing down of an already dumb and desperate Hollywood, its reliance on comic books to compete against the internet and video games seems a retrograde move. But look a little more closely, and an interesting pattern emerges. The comic-book movies that do best have conflicted and imperfect heroes: the Spider-Man who turns to the dark side and battles between duty and lust; the X-Men who turn terrorist, but only to protect themselves against humanity’s brutal xenophobia. The relatively poor performance of Superman Returns, from Marvel’s rival, DC, shows that audiences have moved on from square jaws and moral certitude – particularly after comedies such as Mystery Men have rendered them ridiculous.

The action producer Joel Silver, temporarily shelving Wonder Woman to work with the Wachowski Brothers on Speed Racer, an adaptation of a Japanese cartoon, puts it succinctly: “Marvel Comics have been kicking DC Comics’ ass.”

This may be why DC is dusting off the two graphic novels that in 1986 changed the face of comics, Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The former is a dazzling deconstruction of the superhero genre cum meditation on quantum physics that is usually regarded as unfilmable, not least by its writer, Alan Moore. But since this is what Zack Snyder wants as his next project, you can bet it will start filming this year. Snyder, you see, directed the abs-fab sword-and-sandals flick 300, and, even though his chief contribution was to reproduce the original graphic novel frame by frame, the movie made $440 million. When that happens, you tend to be indulged.

As to the next Batman film, the director Christopher Nolan promises that it will be even darker and more morally ambiguous than Batman Begins (2005).

It’s enough to make you worry for the forthcoming Tintin series, even though the team behind it are cinema’s own super-heroes – Steven Spielberg and Kevin Jackson. Can the clean-cut, asexual boy reporter make it in an antiheroic age? Perhaps Captain Haddock will come to the rescue. Another, slightly less innocent icon of the past, Barbarella, is also due a remake, at the hands of Robert Rodriguez – as long as the flop of his Grindhouse does not threaten this project as it has Sin City 2.

All of which makes it a pity that Britain’s uniquely dark comic-book heroes have struggled to get big-screen recognition. The weekly science-fiction comic 2000AD is famous for its cynical humour and anti-establishment smarts. According to its CEO, Jason Kingsley, “most of our heroes are heavily flawed, or odd, or different. It can be hard for American producers. They’ll say things like: ‘So what powers does Judge Dredd have – can he fly?’ ”

The mood is changing, though, and in addition to the constant stream of producers optioning the film rights to 2000AD characters, negotiations on two of them are now so sensitive and advanced that Kingsley cannot reveal which ones they are.

But he is very protective of his properties and will walk away if producers won’t allow creative input. Thank goodness.

I interviewed the producer of the then forthcoming Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd film in the early 1990s. At the end of our meeting, when I had switched off the tape recorder, he said: “Confidentially, none of our scripts work. Can you suggest any writers we should be looking at?”

What about John Wagner? I suggested. Was he no good?

“Who’s he?” asked the producer. My jaw dropped. Wagner is only the person who had invented the character and had written it weekly for the previous two decades!

Wagner had his graphic novel A History of Violence made into an excellent film by David Cronenberg in 2005, and his Button Man has recently been picked up by DreamWorks, so he is finally having his day. Both are thrillers rather than superhero strips, and many viewers won’t even know that they were once comics. But graphic novels are popular with studios since time-pressed executives who hate reading can look at one of them as an instant storyboard.

Other non-superhero graphic novels slated to appear on the big screen over the next few months include Neil Gaiman’s charming fairy-tale romance Stardust, the vampire flick 30 Days of Night, and the thriller Whiteout.

But in the meantime, we have the Silver Surfer, adding moral complexity to the simpler pleasures of Jessica Alba in a figure-hugging one-piece superheroine costume. If this ultimate troubled outsider finds a warm reception in the multiplex he could get his own series. And, in the current climate, that seems as safe a bet as investing in spandex.

Comic-book heroics: the fans speak out

Gabriel Pac “I didn’t like Daredevil and Elektra seems terrible. Iron Man should be quite cool and I would like to see more stuff along the lines of Sin City and 300 which aren't from mainstream comic book series but are very dark and visual.”

Rhys Davies “As soon as it gets to Hollywood they go too far and change things, like they did with Spider-Man. The Frank Miller ones ( Sin City, 300) were the only good adaptations because they pretty much copied it word for word from the comics.”

Carl Widgers “The X-Men movies are too family-friendly and don’t stick to the original comics, which are more violent.”

Adam Cumberbatch “I'll be interested to see Watchmen because I can’t imagine how it will come across. Chris Nolan, who made Batman Begins, studied the comics more than any of the previous directors and that was why Batman Begins wasn’t as clichéd.”

Interviews by George Wyndham

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer opens on June 15

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