Heroic Measures Marvel Comics Redesigns Main Characters In An Effort To Increase Interest, Sales

So, Batman is suspended above a boiling vat of tortilla dip.

Joker stands at the controls, giggling his way through the destruction of Gotham City. Robin, also bound, gropes for his utility belt.

And it’s holy guacamole! In this hot-sauce situation, will the chips fall where they may? Or will the dynamic duo avocado the area? Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.

Of course, in the next episode, Batman burns through the ropes with a vial of acid, manages to Pow! Bam! Boom! the bad guys, and the whole drama resets itself for the next call from Commissioner Gordon.

Today, though, that’s not good enough. When Robin is blown up by the Joker, he dies. When Batman’s back is broken, he spends the next year in a wheelchair, watching an avenging angel take his place on the streets.

Same story down the block, where Superman spent a year dead and battles domestic issues with Lois. And Spider-Man, who figured out he’s been a clone for the past 15 years.

To generate interest in the waning comic-book industry, plot twists have become events, story lines soap operas. At Marvel Comics, where comic books have shrunk from 75 percent to 20 percent of its business in five years, officials are looking to shake up well-known characters to attract a navel-ring generation. If that means something drastic, like starting over, so be it.

In the studios of local artists Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, four stalwarts are getting makeovers. Captain America, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and Iron Man are going under the X-acto knife and pen, redrawn and reconceived, on shelves now.

“Sometimes you have to reinvent the wheel,” Lee says. “You have to make the characters hipper, contemporary again, to appeal to a younger demographic.”

And so, several weeks ago, some of Marvel Comics eldest characters fought an archvillain named Onslaught to a cataclysmic defeat. In the process, they were thrust into a parallel universe, where they begin their lives again with amnesia. Steve Rogers, nee Captain America, is a 1990s family man, slowly discovering his roots as a supersoldier. Meanwhile, four characters fly into space and are granted fantastic powers by some strange force.

Eager to follow DC Comics heroes Superman and Batman onto the big screen, Liefeld’s redrawn Captain America is shopping studios. The issues - which start over at No. 1 - are expected to be the highest-selling Marvel titles in five years.

“The comic-book market is very fickle,” says Phelps Hoyt, an analyst with Vermont-based KDP Investment Advisors. “Anything Marvel can do for publicity is good for the company, good for the industry.”

Marvel controls about 35 percent of the $500 million comic-book market, but that business is shrinking. The company quickly finds its book business overrun by licensing, merchandising and television and computer products.

To reinvigorate Captain America and others, which lag behind Marvel’s X-Men and Spider-Man in sales, the company took the unexpected step of reconciling with Lee and Liefeld, who left in 1992. The duo, along with four others, had departed over disagreements about creative freedom and licensing rights. They started Anaheim-based Image Comics, the third-largest comic-book company. Liefeld is the president.

After a year of negotiations, the artists signed an agreement with Marvel in December and have been working on the books since. The Fantastic Four and Captain America premiered earlier this month.

“It was a surprise to work with them again,” says Liefeld, 28, who will get an undisclosed salary and rights to spinoffs from Cap. “But I thought it was a really smart move on their part to unite our two efforts.”

For the artist, it’s a chance to work on a legend. “I’m having the time of my life,” he says. “This is stuff I grew up reading.”

Liefeld, a blond, broad, intense entrepreneur, isn’t changing the basic story: Captain America originated as a soldier in World War II and was given a special serum and shield to help him fight Nazis.

Steve Rogers returned, unaged, in the 1960s after being thawed from the Arctic Sea. In Liefeld’s remake, however, he’s a construction worker unaware of his former life, slowly uncovering the government conspiracy that took his identity while battling the World Party, a neo-Nazi group attracting American youth.

“A lot of this is working through what I think of America in 1996,” Liefeld says, digging through a crowded drawing table. “I got married a year ago, and the day before my honeymoon, the Unabomber published that stupid manifesto. We had to decide whether to get on a plane - it affected everybody’s lives.

“I don’t know anyone who trusts the government,” he adds, then mutters, “Uh-oh, here comes the audit.”

A poster on the wall sums it up: “Whitewater,” “Oklahoma City,” “Freemen,” superimposed on a picture of a bulked-up, sleek-looking Captain America. The caption: “He’s come back to save America from itself.”

After a decade of superheroes with inner conflicts and gray morals - of which Liefeld admits Image has a lot of - he’s happy “to wrap myself in the flag.”

Lee also stresses a back-to-basics approach. He isn’t changing much about the look of Mr. Fantastic (an elastic man), the Human Torch (a flying flame), the Thing (a big, orange monster) and the Invisible Woman (guess), except for better haircuts and slightly different costumes.

Lee says he’s trying to make the characters more accessible to today’s youth. That means the atomic accident that turns the characters fantastic is instead some sort of cosmic anomaly (aliens?), and each superhero is younger, without the baggage of 40 years of history.

So will Captain America live out a new life in a parallel universe? Or will he discover it was all a dream? Marvel, Liefeld and Lee hope fans tune in to the same captime, same capchannel to find out.

MEMO: See related story under the headline: Surrender!