It has taken nearly 40 years but, at last, I feel vindicated. No doubt countless numbers of boomer dads-and maybe even some moms-feel the same way.

Flashback to the late 1950s and early ’60s, when two comic book giants ruled the earth. In one corner was DC Comics, the reigning champion, with its stable of stars that included Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Flash and Green Lantern. In the other corner was the upstart Marvel Comics, with its own band of neurotic heroes, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Thor and the X-Men.

Believe me when I tell you that the battles that raged on comic book pages between super heroes and super villains were no more fierce than the verbal sparring that went on among pimply-faced preteens who would argue vehemently over which comic book company was more hip. Of course, to be in the debate at all meant you had to know what you were talking about, which meant we all sunk most of our allowance each month into buying as many of the 10 cent books as we could. (Quick aside: Unlike the kids of today, who are taught to buy things and store them in a protective package because they might have collector value someday, my generation wasn’t that astute. I remember buying, reading and eventually discarding first issues of most of Marvel’s biggest name heroes. If, to quote the great philosopher Cher, I could turn back time, I’d be a millionaire.)

We’d read, we’d study, and we’d debate, all to the chagrin of our parents, who saw comic books as detrimental to our educational development. If only, they no doubt would reason, we kids would spend the same time pouring over our history or algebra text books, we could all go to Harvard and maybe someday be president. Just like John Kennedy–who history later would show preferred not to read comic books in favor of Playboy.

Flash forward four decades. Few of us aspire to the White House; we’re too busy trying to pay our bills and raise our families. Try as we might to relate to our children, like generations before them, they’re going their own way, swimming in their own culture, and thinking their parents are from squaresville. (Of course, when we use terms like “squaresville,” “I can dig it,” “far out,” or the ever-popular “groovy,” it doesn’t help our cause much.)

But lately we are getting large doses of parenting help from, of all places, Hollywood, where they have discovered a financial mother lode in producing films based on our old comic book heroes, and most notably the Marvel gang. They’ve cast hot young actresses like Halle Berry, Jennifer Garner and Kirsten Dunst along with actors like Toby McGuire, Hugh Jackman and Ben Affleck, poured them into skin-tight superhero outfits, and thrown them into special effects-driven backdrops the likes of which producers of the old Batman TV series could only dream.

And here’s the best news: with rare exception, they’ve stayed true to the story lines about these characters written so many years ago. (Okay, we all know Spider-Man’s webs do not come from his skin; Peter Parker developed a wrist device to spew the sticky stuff when he needed it. By why quibble?)

All of this has made me a sought-after source of information for my kids and their friends, a veritable guru of comic book lore, whom they can approach whenever they need to seek clarification regarding the origin of a particular hero’s powers, settle an argument with a friend, or even glimpse into what the future might hold in “X-Men III”, “Spider-Man II”, or the rumored-to-be-in-the-works “Mighty Thor”.

See ma? See pa? Your little boy wasn’t wasting his time on those comic books. In my kids’ eyes, I have relevance. In a way, I’m like a super hero myself. Look there, sprawled out on the couch, it’s … Boomer-Man!