This past spring, a number of comic and geek-oriented websites went dark with predictions of genre doom. Two offbeat comic adaptations loomed on the horizon -- Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World -- and they were destined to kill the fledgling genre in its cradle. These two films were destined to dismantle every trope that made superhero movies cool. No one would be able to take Batman seriously because of Kick-Ass' teenage vigilantes. Iron Man and Wolverine would be relics when contrasted against the slick and self-aware antics of Scott Pilgrim. It was all over. Sure, we had said it would be over the previous spring as Watchmen threatened to deconstruct vigilante heroics, but this time was different. This was a one-two punch, and audiences were finally ready to be in on the commentary.

As persuasive as those Cassandras were, a glance through the movie sites show the headlines haven't changed. Darren Aronofsky is helming a Wolverine sequel. Christopher Nolan is casting The Dark Knight Rises. We wait with bated breath for Zack Snyder to announce who will be playing Superman. Eager eyes scan RSS feeds looking for rumors and scoops, and we're impatient to see the Thor trailer. Why? Well, because nothing but sheer oversaturation is going to kill superhero films. General audiences have just discovered the rakish man known as Tony Stark, and they're hungry for him and all his friends.

Frankly, it's also because Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim failed, though I don't like to say it so baldly, especially when Edgar Wright was responsible for one of them. Both films pushed genre boundaries and conventions, and it's disappointing to see that stumble with general audiences.

Fans of these two films are going to bitterly disagree with me regardless. They'll give me numbers, show me pictures of Halloween costumes, and tell me secondhand stories about friends, classmates, or cousins that hated Iron Man 2 but loved Kick Ass or Scott Pilgrim, and point to this as proof of their success. But if you're being honest and reasonable, you know what a really big film looks like. It's one that excited the majority. It's a movie like Inception or Toy Story 3that makes piles of money, and continues to be discussed and analyzed by fans and critics for months to come. It's a film that won over that elusive general audience to became an instant reference point. Sneer at that how you like, but if I say, "The hotel looked like something out of Inception!", you'll know precisely what I mean. My relatives at Thanksgiving would know what I'm feebly describing. Whereas if I say, "And I really felt like Scott Pilgrim in that moment!" over the holiday pie, I'll probably draw blank looks.

For Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim, I think the glib answer is marketing. Kick-Ass looked like a corny kid's film in every television spot. It wasn't sold as the raunchy and violent movie it was. The Hit-Girl hysteria barely made it off the blogs and into the mainstream press. We all thought it would -- we prepared for it and spilled ink on it -- but it failed to generate the kind of controversy that really sells tickets. As for Pilgrim, I think the trailer was messy and confusing to the uninitiated -- Love? Superhero fights? Music? What? -- and just didn't sell any of its quirks very well. Fans remain divided as to how it should have been sold (straight-up love story, or as a fantastic adventure) and Universal probably did the best they could.

Ultimately, I think time and distance was what Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim needed to be hugely successful. While I firmly believe audiences will see anything that's original, good, and marketed well, I also think that the comic book phenomenon is too new and rocky to be banked on. Studios keep trying to bank on it as a style and a concept, and it just doesn't translate because it's still a hard sell beyond geeks. We wonder aloud if audiences will be able to buy something as earnest as Thor or Captain America: The First Avenger, and then rail at them for not flocking to the movies that heavily reference these same superheroes. Like Watchmen, Kick-Ass doesn't make a lot of sense as a critique or an arc unless you're in tune with the vigilantes it's sending up. The joy of Scott Pilgrim doesn't come across unless you've really lost yourself in the heightened world of capes and game controllers.

I don't think either film was meant for a particular generation (if so, it would have hit this one hard), but I do think it was intended for a zeitgeist that hasn't yet reached past "unwashed geek" in the mainstream yet. I do think it's on the way, though. We will be bombarded with superhero movies in the next two years, and they will either burn out or become as commonplace as gangster or Western movies were to previous audiences. When the dust settles on the trend, I suspect Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim may be seen as ahead of their time, and high points of the genre. It's hard to say how things will be remembered in our increasingly disposable age of entertainment. But I wouldn't be surprised if someday, critics are analyzing them as having retroactively killed superhero movies -- or desperately wishing they had.