Growing up a comic book fan in the 1970s was to grow up innocent in a way. It wasn't a hobby that sought validation from other mediums. It was its own thang, with its own logic and sense of fierce integrity.

Comic book geeks of my era didn't expect any respect and we didn't get any. When we went to comic book conventions in New York, Cleveland and Philadelphia in the 1970s, we didn't think of our humble medium as a glorified farm team for Hollywood.

All we cared about was scoring that elusive copy of "Savage Tales" No. 1 and losing our virginity to one of the wild girls who used to run around those conventions dressed like Red Sonja. We were once a subculture that knew it wasn't "cool," but didn't care.

Things have changed. With "The Dark Knight" grossing $158.3 million over the weekend for the biggest film opening ever, movies based on comic book characters now have a license to print money.

That's why I'm more nostalgic than ever for an era when comic book fans hated seeing their favorite comic book characters tackled in another medium. Something always gets lost in translation.

Like film, the comic book is a sequential art form with a sophisticated visual history and aesthetic values that run parallel to and overlap with movies.

There was plenty of reason for our wariness in the 1970s. Comic book characters had been staples of radio programs since the 1940s with mixed results. Characters meant to be seen couldn't transcend the limitations of radio.

The Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman live action series of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were marginally entertaining, but did little to advance the dignity of the comics they were based on.

The Superman shorts created by Max and Dave Fleischer during World War II warmed the cockles of every fan boy's heart. Every other animated adaptation from Hanna-Barbera's "Super Friends" to Ralph Bakshi's "Fritz the Cat" generated suspicion and dread.

The great exception of that era was "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze," a 1975 movie starring Ron Ely that had the virtue of being fun without imposing the threat of a sequel.

Trying to market a movie about a nearly forgotten pulp character was confirmation that Hollywood would never be clever enough to scavenge the medium's sacred canon for the good stuff.

Of course that conventional wisdom changed with "Superman: The Movie" in 1977. Director Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve made a truly glorious superhero film that didn't compromise the source material.

Every now and then, a made-for-TV series based on a Marvel character like Captain America or Doctor Strange would appear for a few episodes. A live action Spider-man series debuted on CBS in 1977, but I never saw it.

In 1978, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno debuted as alter egos for a half-decade run on "The Incredible Hulk" that wasn't as terrible as it could have been.

Still, every comic book fan could see that the industry's seduction by Hollywood was as relentless as Ragnarok's looming shadow in the pages of The Mighty Thor.

The bad Superman sequels began to appear with depressing regularity throughout the 1980s. There was a terrible "Swamp Thing" movie in 1982 and a forgettable one in 1989. There was even a Man-Thing movie in the '90s. George Lucas put Steve Gerber's "Howard the Duck" on the big screen in 1986 to everyone's regret.

But it took director Tim Burton's visionary "Batman" in 1989 to make the Faustian deal between comic fans and Hollywood irrevocable.

Never mind that movies based on comic book characters are generally dreadful. Disasters like "Daredevil," "Ghost Rider," "Superman Returns," Ang Lee's "Hulk," "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Elektra" are more typical of what happens than the successes Hollywood trumpets.

Still, the recent Batman films, "Iron Man," "Ghost World," the X-Men and Spider-man franchises along with the frenetic adaptations of "300" and "Sin City" have whet this generation's appetite for big-screen conquest.

Now Alan Moore's brilliant "Watchmen" is being prepped for a 2009 movie release despite the author's vigorous objections. Marvel has announced dates for the "Iron Man" sequel along with Captain America, the Avengers and a Thor movie though scripts haven't been written.

As Ben Grimm would say: "What a revoltin' development this is." Am I the only aging fan boy who wishes we could get back to a time when we could see movies in our heads?