Continuing to adjust to life in the big city and absolutely uninterested in Adam Sandler's latest anyway, it's been a couple weeks since I've seen a film. Until then, I thought I'd address an issue I know is on everyone's minds these days: the Cinematic Marvel Universe.

For the uninitiated, the Marvel Universe refers to every character, plot, and setting owned by Marvel Publishing Group, the comic book publishers who own such familiar characters as Spider-Man, The X-Men, Iron Man, Captain America, etc. These characters live in a contiguous (fictional) reality and several of them know each other. This makes for not just good marketing ("Spider-Man # 1, Guest-Starring The Fantastic Four!") but for a vivid, layered world rich with storytelling potential. The concept of a comics "Universe" is one of the main reasons comic books kick so much ass. Imagine, for instance, if the characters from Lost showed up on 24. Or if this week's episode of JAG had a direct impact on the events of NCIS (OK, that one would be pretty lame). This crossover appeal has been attempted on television shows before, but the many different networks and production houses make crossovers on the scale of the Marvel or DC Universe impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive.

So far, this weakness of television has been a weakness of the modern superhero film. In early 2003, after I saw Daredevil and was still in the middle of Spider-Man-movie mania, I said to myself, "Boy, that movie was pretty bad. But wouldn't it be awesome if there was an SM/DD crossover movie? That will never happen, though, because Fox licensed DD and Sony licensed SM." But with the release of this summer's twin films Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, Marvel is beginning to overcome this obstacle. Fed up with making small potatoes by licensing their products while Sony, Fox, and New Line sat on the fat wallets which had been filled by two Spider-Man films, three Blade and X-Men entries, a Fantastic Four movie, and yes, even Daredevil and Hulk (they were hits, even if everyone hated them), Marvel borrowed $550 million in 2006 - chump change in the blockbuster movie industry - to begin producing films based on their properties themselves.

Marvel, now called Marvel Entertainment to let us know they don't just do comics anymore, invested the money in two films: the sure hit Iron Man and the much, much riskier reboot/sequel of the Hulk franchise. Iron Man has been more successful than anyone could have been predicted, well on its way to earning back Marvel's entire investment after barely a month in wide release. Incredible Hulk could be a flop and Marvel would still be secure financially, able to move ahead with further film projects. And once it did look like Incredible Hulk would flop. Despite casting a reputable actor as Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) and emphasizing the upcoming film's departure from Ang Lee's befuddling but interesting mess of a first film, early previews for the film left a sour taste in many a fanboy's mouth. Add that to a very public feud between Edward "Smoochy" Norton and the film's producer's over the film's final cut, and Marvel had a potentially stillborn $150 million picture on their hands.

Incredible Hulk's prospects began to turn around after everyone saw Iron Man. This film buff/comic nerd was not as impressed with Jon Favreau's take on the coolest member of The Avengers as everyone else was, but I did appreciate that Marvel, better than most movie studios before it, managed to negotiate very well between being faithful to the comics and appealing to a mass audience. (And it makes sense; we are talking about a company that has been appealing to people for 45 years. It seems Marvel's strategy in this regard could be summed up in the following phrase: "just be faithful to the comics." A unique approach, indeed.)

More than its apparently massive appeal, however, Iron Man laid the groundwork for something that got the fanbase excited about the still-drab looking Incredible Hulk: the Cinematic Marvel Universe. If you haven't seen Iron Man yet, you may not want to read ahead, but if you can't guess that Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego, played by Robert Downey, Jr) survives until the end of the film, you probably shouldn't be watching superhero films anyway. After the credits Samuel Jackson has a short cameo as the Marvel character Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD. Nick tells Stark about "The Avengers Initiative," an implication that there will be not only sequels to Iron Man, but multiple spinoffs as well.

The implications continued. The Avengers, you should know, are a major superhero group in the Marvel Universe, the original line-up of which was Iron Man, Thor, and the Incredible Hulk, with Captain America joining them soon afterwards. Word soon was circulated that Downey, Jr would have a cameo in the Incredible Hulk film as Tony Stark, establishing the two characters explicitly as existing in the same universe. With the announcement that Marvel has not only Iron Man 2 in the works, but Captain America, Ant-Man (another Avenger) and The Avengers as well, fanboys like me, even if we didn't absolutely love Iron Man, almost peed our pants with delight. Favorable early reviews and a stepped -up ad campaign for The Incredible Hulk has its prospects looking up, but Marvel had this geek at "Avengers Initiative." Now Marvel's just got to cross its fingers and hope that superhero films are still en vogue when the rights Sony still has to Spider-Man lapse.

A major question, though, is whether superhero films will ever go out of style. Sure, it seems like they've only been here for a few years, but people have been trying and occasionally succeeding at translating comic book material into box office success since the early 1940s, soon after the superhero was invented. The reason we've seen such a flurry of them recently is multi-faceted, but the main factor is special effects. Until Spider-Man and The X-Men could use their powers convincingly, superhero properties were mostly languishing in effects-and-stories mediocrity.

As effects get better and the film industry continues to need something spectacular to compete with home entertainment systems,  there's no reason not to think that the superhero film will be around for several more years, even more than a decade, especially if DC and other companies (there are other companies) follow Marvel's innovative lead.