As a kid, Roy Thomas could leap tall buildings, vanquish the villains and get the girl, all by flipping through the pages of comic books.

Today's youth, though, don't escape from reality with a dime and a trip to the drugstore. Video games and movies have sapped the energy from comic serials, Thomas, a local comic book legend, said.

For decades, comic books were unique because "only in comics could you find what comics did," Thomas said. Images of Spiderman soaring above the New York skyline, or Nightcrawler of "The X-Men" vanishing into blue smoke "never could have been done convincingly" in film until recent years.

And now, as movies gain the ability to portray fantastic images, some of them pulled from the pages of comics, the books themselves will lose their ability to be a unique escape, Thomas said.

Thomas and friend Jean-Marc Lofficier, another comic book industry insider, will share their opinions about comics Wednesday at the University of South Carolina.

Thomas will appear in Columbia as part of a symposium on comic books and culture, which was created by Dr. Freeman Henry, a professor of French literature at the USC.

Henry occasionally consults with Thomas regarding the topic. Thomas, Lofficier and his wife, Randy Lofficier, will present The Comics: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow at 4 p.m. today in the Graniteville Room of the Thomas Cooper Library.

Thomas, 62, of Calhoun County, moved to the area about 10 years ago after semi-retiring from the world of comics. He continues to edit a monthly magazine, Alter Ego, which focuses on the history of comic books from the 1930s to the 1970s.

As a writer and editor, Thomas helped to shape the comics' landscape of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He is responsible for literally thousands of books. His credits include work on "Spiderman," "The Incredible Hulk," "Thor" and both films featuring "Conan the Barbarian."

Thomas was a high-school English teacher in Missouri when he entered the field of comics in the 1960s. He gained a foothold in the industry by writing letters to editors, and, most importantly, by publishing three issues of Alter Ego in 1964 and 1965.

After entering the field, Thomas served in many roles, including editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics from 1972-74, and he created many memorable characters and books.

It wasn't a trip to the zoo that spurned Thomas to create Wolverine of "The X-Men;" it was real world practicality.

"We had a lot of Canadian readers," Thomas said, so, over lunch, he suggested that a short, feisty Canadian named Wolverine or Badger might be a good idea.

Now, because of the difficulty in getting creative and commercial ownership of characters, Thomas said he prefers to take characters from the 1940s and change them around to create a new character.

This is the approach he took with the female character Red Sonja, who appeared in "Conan" and has dotted the comic landscape since then.

Comics book super-heroes grabbed a hold on pop culture in recent years due to the big screen success of "Spiderman," "The X-Men" and others, but Thomas does not share an unbridled enthusiasm for the movies' successes.

Big bucks at the box office haven't translated into an appreciable bump in comic book sales, he said, and he thinks that the comic books themselves are not accessible to the movie-going audience.

Because most comic book authors are in their mid-20s and write for their own age group, he feels comics are "more adult, than (they) used to be." For instance, this prevents "Spiderman" moviegoers from becoming new "Spiderman" comic book readers.

And few children-aimed comics, such as "Archie Comics," remain. Instead, Thomas said, most comics focus on a "bunch of people who are hyper."

Despite his criticism of their content, Thomas said he thinks comic books will have a market for a number of years and hopes that "something ... other than video games" will replace them.

It is perhaps ironic that a comic icon such as Thomas rarely reads the current offerings from Marvel and DC Comics, but Thomas remains entrenched in the history of comics. Although he feels today's comics are "too vile," he cannot help but note that there is "still good work" produced.

He retains his zeal for the genre's history and said he hopes to do work for "The Escapist," an upcoming project creating a fictional comic book to match the character created in Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay."

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