Wham! Boom! on the brain

SO FAR this summer, I've had my brain pummeled by Robert Downey Jr. flying around in a techno-suit, Adam Sandler as an invincible (and priapic) former Mossad agent, Steve Carell as a nerdy indestructible super spy, Harrison Ford as a Teflon 60-year-old archaeologist, Edward Norton as the incredibly angry green dude -- which I admit I missed but saw the ads. However, I did catch an early screening of Will Smith as a hung-over but still unbeatable superhero. And I still have "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" to go.

I don't know how many more superhero movies I can take.

Some were good superhero movies. Some were bad superhero movies. Yet, they're all beginning to merge together as a very long series of whammies, and fireballs, and ironic quips. In my mind, which might have been addled by the decibel level in the theaters, Hancock is taking down Indiana Jones. Zohan canoodles and karate chops Agent 99. My butt is kicked. Your butt is kicked. Sigh.

With "Hancock," which zooms into theaters next week, Hollywood has gone all meta, giving us a superhero -- Smith -- who's lost his mojo, a drunken power ranger having an existential crisis. No fear, here's a sunny P.R. guy (Jason Bateman) to the rescue. I laughed at Hancock's politically incorrect dismissal of superhero couture, and did fall sway to the cosmic time-twisting conundrums of superhero love. As superhero dramas go, I'd give it three capes.

But the pure boom-boom factor of the genre made me feel bludgeoned. Again.

OK, MAYBE it's just me. I'm not a 14-year-old boy; so all this superhero firepower isn't hitting me in the solar plexus. But I did take my 5-year-old son to Target last weekend and bought him a whole array of superhero underpants. He really likes wearing Hulk on his butt. Sometime he wears his underpants backward so he can just look down and see his jolly green friend more easily. Maybe it comforts him on some level. Empowers him.

I've been told by a bevy of pop culture watchers that my son is more in tune with the collective unconscious than me. Author Peter Biskind, who's written books about movies and culture in the '50s, '70s, and '90s, assures me that superheroes return with bad times. Superman reached iconic status during World War II. The gas crisis and economic malaise of the Carter years begat Superman again -- with the Christopher Reeve incarnation. And now, well, given the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the morass in Iraq and oil prices, we need Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Iron Man, all at once.