“The Dark Knight,” with its hundreds of millions of dollars in box-office monies, is easily the hit of the summer. And don’t think the suits at Warner Bros. and DC haven’t taken notice!

Displeased with the lukewarm reception for Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” a couple summers ago, Warner Bros. has decided to kick that continuity to the curb and start anew.

Says Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov as per the article above: “Had ‘Superman’ worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009, but now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman. We’re going to try to go dark to the extent that the character allows it.”

Hooold it right there, bucko. Dark? Superman? No. That’s not what the character is about. And though “Superman Returns” had its troubles and shortcomings — it was kind of boring and not much happened — they weren’t related to its moral shading.

Let’s get something clear here: “The Dark Knight” has not succeeded simply by virtue of its darkness. It has succeeded because it is the single best rendition of the core of the character, his environment, and his friends and foes that has ever been put to celluloid.

The bleak tone of the movie is a necessary means to that end — Gotham is the sort of place where a scar-faced lunatic can use a talk-show phone call to whip up such a state of public panic that its citizens become willing to murder each other in a frenzy of self-preservation, and where Batman himself must wrestle with whether or not to put the Joker out of everyone’s misery at the cost of his own soul.

Metropolis is not that sort of place, and Superman is not that sort of character. He has already conquered his demons — he is a virtual god walking upon (well, soaring above) the Earth — and he uses his power to protect all that he can, not destroy and despoil. That’s what the character is about.

Besides, “Superman III” already explored the unpleasant aspects of the Last Son of Krypton, with Clark Kent splitting into good and bad versions of himself thanks to synthetic Kryptonite. But hey, the good Clark managed to strangle his doppelganger to death, so everything was OK in the end! Yeah, it was really dumb.

But making the next “Superman” movie dark for darkness’ sake — well, that’s downright dim.

(Image from Movieweb.com)

It has been nearly eight years since the release of Blizzard Entertainment’s mega-popular computer game “Diablo II.” (Blizzard is the same company that created “World of Warcraft” and “Starcraft.”) Now, after an expansion, numerous revisions and a whole series of spinoff novels, the next chapter in the series has been revealed.

And true to Internet form, some people are already complaining. Addressing them: The game you’ve been wanting for nearly a decade is finally announced and all you can do is carp about how the art design isn’t as dark and dank as you’d like? Seriously? Geez, get a grip.

Anyway, the rest of us “Diablo” fans are looking forward to another habit-forming adventure in the demon-infested world of Sanctuary. Over the weekend I reinstalled my copy of the game at home and started playing, and was quickly reminded why it’s so compelling.

On its face the game doesn’t sound that special: You create a hero, selecting from several different character classes like Barbarian, Necromancer and Paladin, then journey out into the world to kill monsters, pick up the loot they drop, move on and repeat. It’s a simple formula.

What makes “Diablo II” work so well is its nearly infinite replayability. The base game has five character classes; two more were added by the expansion. Each of these classes has its own specialties, with a variety of abilities divided among three distinct skill paths — a Druid, for example, can learn skills in Elemental, Summoning and Shape Shifting disciplines.

As a player player monsters and finishes quests he or she earns points to spend on skills in these trees, but there are only so many to go around and they can’t be regained once spent. How a character’s skill set is customized is as important as the weapons they wield. Add to this a huge array of equipment and items, area layouts that are randomized each time you start a new game and an interesting story, and you have a recipe for a killer time sink.

The complete “Diablo” package is pretty cheap these days —it can be found for as low as $30 or so online — and with the sequel in development now would be a good time to check this classic out.

(Image courtesy of Blizzard.com)