Hollywood agonized for years, trying to dream up the perfect storyline for “Superman Returns.” But don’t feel sorry for the strange visitor from another planet; he didn’t spend all that time as a lowly – and mild-mannered — newspaper reporter. Even though he’s been off the big screen, he’s been working steadily in the crime-fighting business.

In a single art studio at the edge of downtown Des Moines, you can find two comic artists who have helped the Man of Steel through all kinds of adventures. Comic book artist Ron Wagner was drawing him for DC Comics back in the 1990s. Animation artist Adam Van Wyk worked on one episode of the “Superman” TV series and the first two seasons of the “Justice League” TV series, which regularly featured Mr. Clark Kent, and right now he’s starting on a “straight to video” cartoon version of Superman along the lines of last year’s “Brainiac Attacks.”

So true-blue-and-red Superman fans have had plenty to keep them occupied. But Norwalk’s own Brandon Routh came along, and once again it’s the masses, not just the nerds, who are walking around thinking, “Man, if only I could project laser beams out of my eyes. Then I could have amounted to something.” It might be another shot in the arm for the franchise – shots in the arm are out of the question for Superman himself, of course, because the needle bends – but then, this is a franchise that apparently will never die.

“It’s wish fulfillment for a lot of people,” Wagner noted, and it looks like we’re never going to stop wishing.

Wagner had his own fortress of solitude for six years in the Art 316 building on Southwest Fifth Street, but last week the population tripled. Van Wyk, a Pella native who worked in Los Angeles for 14 years before returning to Central Iowa, moved into Wagner’s fourth-floor studio the same day as Tyler Walpole — fantasy illustrator, comics artist and co-owner of the Cup O’ Kryptonite comic book store.

“I’ve been working in a vacuum,” Walpole said. Remember that when you fantasize about starting your own business at home.

Van Wyk saw the new movie on its first weekend and thought it was great. “I’m a big fan of the Christopher Reeve movies,” he said, “and this is like a love letter to them.”

Walpole saw it too, and enjoyed the new material. The stuff that was reworked from the earlier movies, not so much. His 8-year-old son gave the whole movie a thumbs down. “He was bored,” Walpole reported. “There wasn’t a whole lot of ‘Supermanning.’” You know — breaking things, stopping bullets with one’s eyeballs, things like that. Not drifting pensively in space.

These guys understand why it’s so hard to get a big-scale motion picture rolling. “They have a lot of people to please,” Wagner said. “DC Comics wants it to be done a certain way, and you’ve got to have licensing agreements with McDonald’s and Wal-Mart …” With comic books, it’s more a matter of constantly feeding the readers’ hunger.

Wagner hadn’t seen the movie yet, but planned to. More important, he has a new and surprising set of customers to keep happy. He’s working for a publisher in Kuwait, drawing superheroes who are part of “The 99,” a concept based on Islamic culture. According to one source, these are “ordinary teenagers and adults from across the globe who each come into possession of one of the 99 mystical Noor Stones and find themselves empowered in a specific manner.”

On his drawing board were sketches of Soora the Organizer and Jami the Assembler. Maybe this will be the Islamic world’s equivalent of the Superman franchise, maybe not. But his drawings looked great.