Dark Knight, the Batman movie starring Heath Ledger, did boffo box office: $158.3 million, according to Defamer. But this blockbuster will not just benefit Warner Brothers and DC Comics, which share parent Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) with BloggingStocks. There are at least six companies that will benefit from Dark Knight's success. According to Seeking Alpha, these companies include:

• Time Warner -- through its Warner Brothers and DC Comics subsidiaries are profiting most directly.
• Comcast Corporation (NYSE: CMCSA) partnered with Warner Bros. to offer "behind-the-scenes footage, trailers, and mini movies on demand"
• Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ) and Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK) collaborated in creating the Nokia6205 The Dark Knight Edition. Seeking Alpha reports that "This batphone targets superfans, with bat wallpaper, voice tones, screensavers, and the film's trailer pre-loaded."

Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) ownership of Superman is no longer absolute.

Some 70 years ago, Superman co-creator Jerome Siegel sold the rights to the hero to Detective Comics for $130. Detective Comics is now DC Comics and is owned by Time Warner unit Warner Bros.

Superman has been the subject of much legal wrangling over the years, a brief summary of which can be found on Wikipedia. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Siegel's heirs were entitled to share of the copyright, but left Time Warner's international rights intact. How this will effect the future of Superman remains to be seen, as there is still much more legal wrangling to come.

It gets more complicated. According to the New York Times, "A similar ruling in 2006 allowed the Siegels to recapture their rights in the Superboy character, without determining whether Superboy was, in fact, the basis for Warner Brothers's 'Smallville' television series. The decision was later challenged in a case that has yet to be resolved, said Mr. Toberoff, who represented the family in that action."

If you're interested in learning more about the legal issues involved in comic book cases, check out this story from The National Law Journal.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses the efforts of some comic book publishers to reach out and attract female readers. Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) are among the industry leaders looking to find growth by targeting the 50% of the population that's been overlooked by publishers for decades. They're finding great success with sales of manga, a Japanese genre of animation.

The strategy of targeting women is brilliant, and very similar to what Nintendo has done with Wii, allowing it to thrash Sony's (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 in the video game wars. While video games are wildly popular, it's still a relatively small percentage of the population that plays them fanatically. For years, game makers have been targeting that hardcore group and making little in the way of progress in attracting new gamers. With Wii, Nintendo essentially told Sony, "You can have those hardcore, graphics-obsessed video game geeks" and focused on developing a product that would have massive appeal, especially to those who probably wouldn't even consider buying a PlayStation.

Rather than battling Sony for market share with the the small fraction of game buyers, Wii went and expanded the market, bringing in new gamers. They kill Sony, essentially by not competing with them directly. It's a great strategy, and it will probably lead to great growth for the comic book industry as well.

Regardless of how Time Warner's (TWX) movie division fairs overall this summer, The Man of Steel has been a boon for Imax (IMAX). Choose your metaphor: "Superman Returns" either soared with, flew away with, or as Sandy Brown of TheStreet.com says, "lifted" Imax this week when the movie took in $6.83 million during its first seven days as an "Imax 3D Experience." This special 3D-enhanced version of the film is currently showing on over 70 Imax screens in the US.

In recent summers movie-goers have shown themselves to be more the up to the challenge of craning their necks for recent Hollywood blockbusters such as "Batman Begins" and whatever they called the last Matrix movie, as opposed to just the forty-five minute glacier, coral reef, or mountain adventure odysseys that still dominate the big big big screen.

 A little 3D Imax buzz can only help Time Warner, which has seen the decent revenue taken in by this lynchpin film in its summer schedule overshadowed amidst repeated reminders in the media that, yes, other superhero movies have opened stronger -- and that is without even mentioning the decidedly mixed reception the movie got from critics.

[Disclosure: I have seen "Superman Returns" once, on the regular-sized big screen, liked it, and will probably see it again.]

(You can read more about Superman breaking a box office record from Christopher Campbell at Cinematical).