Iron Man versus Made of Honor? No contest.

Paramount's comic-book knockoff blasted Sony's romantic comedy at the box office: $101 million to $16 million.

The unexpected success of Iron Man is a big win for Marvel Entertainment, which produced the film itself rather than sign over the rights as it has done in the past.

The question now is what the first blockbuster of the summer says about the rest of the season: Overall ticket sales on what Hollywood considers the first weekend of summer were off 15 percent from a year ago, according to figures from Exhibitor Relations Co., a Los Angeles-based entertainment-research firm.

While more comic-book heroes are on the way—The Incredible Hulk and Hellboy II: The Golden Army from Universal, and The Dark Knight from Warner Bros.—there are many more movies starring man-boy comedians: Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, and Eddie Murphy each star in comedies to be released from May to August.

"The comedy kings are on tour," says Jeff Bock, an analyst with E.R.C.

Sony in particular has tripled down on the genre, releasing Sandler's You Don't Mess With The Zohan, Ferrell's Step Brothers, and Rogen's Pineapple Express. But saturating the market with comedies could backfire for Sony if audiences tire of the genre—particularly with Sex and the City, What Happens in Vegas, and Made of Honor competing for female viewers and further fracturing the comedy audience along gender lines.

Sony is going farther out on a limb with Hancock starring Will Smith, who is usually stellar at the box office. This time, however, he is playing against type, as an alcoholic superhero who sleeps on the street and is—gasp!—mean to kids.

Smith has made the Fourth of July weekend his territory, releasing Independence Day, Men in Black, and Wild Wild West close to that holiday over the past several years. With an estimated budget of $150 million, Hancock, which comes out on July 2, is expected to do decently, but not to be one of the summer's big movies.

Hancock does, however, fit into the second large theme of the summer: the superhero.

Universal should do fine with Hulk and Hellboy, both of which are sequels with budgets that were kept in check (unlike last summer's bloated Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean follow-ups).

Universal may have hurt the box office of Hulk by opening it up against The Happening, an M. Night Shyamalan movie from 20th Century Fox: Executives fear the movies could cannibalize each other's audience.

Warner Bros., meanwhile, faces its own difficulties, particularly in promoting The Dark Knight without appearing to minimize or exploit the death of its star, Heath Ledger, while the movie was being edited.

Wanted, with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and James McAvoy, could prove poorly positioned too, opening as it does the same weekend as Disney's WALL-E and coming a week before Hancock. But Universal is betting that a strong overseas turnout for Jolie and Freeman could more than make money for the movie, whose budget is rumored to be low for an action movie.

"Hollywood's dirty little secret is that every film makes money," says Bock, once you factor in overseas distribution and ancillary markets like DVD, pay-per-view, and airline sales.

A final theme for this summer, not surprisingly, is family movies. Disney's Narnia follow-up Prince Caspian, and Pixar release WALL-E, are both in contention for slots in the summer's three top-grossing films, with an assumed minimum gross for WALL-E, which stars a robot that critics are comparing to E.T., of $200 million.

On less sure footing is Speed Racer, a Warner Bros. film with stars like John Goodman, Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, and Christina Ricci. With a budget said to be between $100 and $200 million, Warner Bros. is hoping the movie is one that can get families to the theater together—and repeatedly.

But for Hirsch, coming off of a good run after Into the Wild and Alpha Dog, starring in a big-budget movie that misses with audiences could be career cyanide. Best-case scenario for the star and the studio? Speed Racer turns into a franchise, with movies two and three coming out next.

Warner Bros. also has this summer's only 3-D film, Journey to the Center of the Earth, which is based on the Jules Verne novel and another potential family favorite. To hedge its bets, the studio is also releasing a decidedly non-family film, Sex and the City, which naysayers fear may have too much of a niche audience to become a summer blockbuster.

Still, "women's comedies are exploding," says David Poland, the man behind the industry blog MovieCityNews.com. "After The Devil Wears Prada, the industry realized that people want to see comedies in the summer. There are probably too many."

Just don't tell that to executives at most of the major studios this summer.