DC Entertainment and Marvel Studios delivered Christmas to comic book fans in October by announcing 19 new superhero films for release between 2016 and 2020. To those impressive numbers, add promised offerings from Fox (which holds the licence to Marvel's X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises) and Sony (with rights to Spider-Man).
The surge in comic book-based movies sits on a proven track record: four of the top 10 grossing films this year at the US box office - which also have huge audiences abroad - are based on comics including Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy.
What is striking about the upcoming slate is that it is finally bringing gender and racial diversity to the big screen after a nearly decade-long absence: Wonder Woman will receive a feature film in 2017, joined by Black Panther, and Marvel's female powerhouse, Captain Marvel, in 2018.
In 1997, former NBA player Shaquille O'Neal broke the race barrier in bringing comic book character Steel to movie life, and was followed by Wesley Snipes' Blade vampire hunter trilogy. Helen Slater was the first female headliner with Supergirl in 1984, but it was another two decades until Halle Berry played the lead in 2004's poorly reviewed Catwoman. Yet almost none of the movies since then - including the two dozen comic book films of the past two years - has had a woman or non-white man as a leading character.
The struggle to portray the full diversity of the US is nothing new for the source material for these adaptations, the great American comic book. Will Eisner gave the lead in The Spirit (1940) an African-American sidekick named Ebony White. But with his pronounced lips and thick accent, Ebony embodied offensive stereotypes already thrust upon the black community in vaudeville, film, and radio.
Eisner' peers largely decided to avoid depicting people of colour. But no representation may be as bad as misrepresentation. And although superheroes had arrived on the scene with Superman's debut in 1938, it would be another quarter of a century before a hero of colour would appear with the Black Panther's premiere in 1966.