Superman, as we all know, first appeared in Action Comics #1 in the year 1938. The first true superhero, Supes paved the way for a veritable army of comic book superheroes in the decades which followed. Quite naturally, it wasn’t long until the screen beckoned, and ever since 1941, when Superman again led the way in the classic Fleischer Studios cartoon series, superheroes have been a common feature on TV and cinema screens everywhere.

Over the years, most of the more popular heroes have appeared in one form or another, played by a huge amount of actors who, it must be said, are all brave for taking on such iconic roles. Some have done better than others, but who are the definitive actors who have played the characters we all know and love? That’s what I aim to look at in this series of columns. Each week, I’ll take a different, well loved character from comics and have a look at five of the actors who have played them, ranking them in order of my own personal preference. I’m also throwing it open to everyone else to tell me who their favourite is before I begin on my Twitter account.

For this week, let us begin with the greatest comic book character of all time, Batman! When I asked on Twitter who everyone’s favourite Batman was, Adam West just beat Christian Bale by a single vote, but does he top my list?

I tried to pick my five favourite actors to ever take on the part of the Caped Crusader, but I couldn’t pick between the last two. So you’re getting six. Let’s go!

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So I've been pretty depressed looking at all the cool stuff you lucky people that were at San Diego International Comic Con 2009 got to see and do. I could only sit here in rainy Wales and console myself by watching the many clips and trailers that came out of the show. I thought I'd share those now with the Sidekick Massive.

The first two are the teaser trailers for the Japanese Marvel animation products we talked about on the last episode of the Sidekickcast. They're coming from esteemed Japanese animation studio Madhouse and will be shown on Japanese TV before hopefully making their way over here. This first one is for the Wolverine flick and I'm not sure about this one, they seem to have taken some big liberties with the character design, totally Mangafying (I'm coining that term, you heard it here first) Logan into a teenage pretty boy warrior.

This next one is from the same animation studio but much more in keeping with the source material and suited to Japanese stylings, The Invincible Iron Man makes his Anime debut.

This next one is my favourite and something I've been looking forward to for...well the last 25 years, it's the teaser trailer for Disney's Tron sequel: Tron: Legacy. It was all up in the air as to whether this was going to be a sequel or a remake or whatever, it seems this teaser puts all that talk to rest and put's it firmly in the awesome sequel category, I am seriously excited for this one.

I couldn't let this pass without also mentioning the super-sweet bit of promotion Disney had for Tron: Legacy live at the show, a real life replica of Flynn's Arcade just like the one shown in the movie. According to Joystiq.com there were many perfectly preserved retro arcade games on display aswell as the fictional game from the film Space Paranoids and a kick ass full size light cycle, every fanboy's wet dream.

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Looks pretty cool huh? I hope this is fantastic but I'm getting a Chocolate Factory feeling about this one, at least Depp won't be the main focus of the story in this one.