Movies like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance scrape the bottom of the comic-book barrel, but often in recent memory that's led to more interesting superhero flicks.

Stop reading this article and ask the next person you meet to name a superhero. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Was it Superman? Batman? Spider-Man? Maybe (if they were thinking creatively) Wolverine or The Incredible Hulk? Whatever the case, they probably didn't say Ghost Rider. the flaming-skulled stunt motorcyclist played by Nicolas Cage in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which opens in theaters today. But Marvel Studios just bet $75 million dollars that the niche comic character has enough mass appeal to turn a profit.

To be fair, it's a bet they've made before (with the first Ghost Rider, in 2007, for a whopping $110 million)—and a bet they won. How did ­Ghost Rider—the story of a daredevil who traded his soul to a demon, and a second-tier superhero comic at best—become the subject of not just one, but two big-budget, blockbuster superhero films? To find the answer, we need to delve into Hollywood's history of comic-book adaptations and the industry's unrelenting attempts to keep its latest, hottest cinematic trend alive.

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The first seven comic-based superhero movies to reach movie theaters were built around DC's two biggest icons: Batman and Superman. (For the record: 1966's Batman, 1978's Superman, 1980's Superman II, 1983's Superman III, 1984's spinoff Supergirl, 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and 1989's Batman). For decades, Batman and Superman have been the "chocolate" and "vanilla" of the superhero world, but for comic book fans, that's like ordering from a Baskin-Robbins that serves just two flavors of ice cream. Hollywood did, admittedly, make occasional attempts to branch out. Early versions of Spider-Man and Watchmen spent decades in development hell, and early stabs at comic-based movies include 1991's The Rocketeer, 1994's The Shadow, and 1996's The Phantom. But these fledgling attempts to build a superhero franchise around a comic-book character that didn't already have a massive mainstream fan base were also, invariably, box-office disappointments.