Every rule that Smallville – the successful small-screen adaptation of Clark Kent’s Wonder Years – made in order to become a mainstream hit – sort of like Dawson’s Creek with superpowers – Birds of Prey totally ignored, to its detriment. In fact, the TV series was more of a traditional “comic book” than the actual comic book it was based on, of the same name.

Birds of Prey is a comic book that features the wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon as Oracle, a computer genius, as well as Black Canary – also known as Dinah Lance. In the comic, both are 30-something heroines who play hero but also address midlife issues and not being “sweet young things” anymore.

So what is the show like? Well… not much like the comic, as it turns out. Oracle is there and well-cast, but Black Canary is transformed into a teenage rookie hero whose biggest concern is finding a solid natural acne treatment and who doesn’t even appear in every episode, and the star of the show quickly becomes Huntress, the alleged offspring of Batman and Catwoman, forcing the show to exist in a weird, post-Batman universe at a time just before Warner Brothers was about to launch … Batman Begins. Huh?

Aside from ignoring the comic book, and changing the character of villain Harley Quinn considerably, each episode was full of in-costume heroes (Smallville’s cardinal rule was no cape, no blue tights and no flying) and was mired in comic book terminology (demi-humans, for example) that left the mainstream audience confused.

Then, of course, there’s the whole issue of Huntress being considered a demi-human when neither Batman nor Catwoman possessed superpowers of any kind. Huh? In fact, “Huh?” is a word that’ll come up a lot while viewing this four-disc, complete series collection of Birds of Prey. Add in the occasional “what were they thinking” and you’ll begin to wonder just how Mark Millar and Alfred Gough struck on the right formula the first time around with Smallville, but were so off-target this time.

Still, Birds of Prey isn’t completely lacking in appeal; there are some nice commentaries, a half-decent collection of special features, and a handful of episodes that indicated the seeds were there for the show to really find itself and become watchable, if given enough time. Unfortunately, Birds of Prey never quite found itself in time and died an early death without the “back nine episodes” ever being approved for airing on The WB.

Birds of Prey isn’t a terrible DVD collection, but it does stand as a testament to just how difficult it is to get a superhero-based show to play well to a mainstream audience. If Smallville is the handbook on “what to do,” then Birds of Prey is the user’s manual on “what not to do.” This was a show that would have benefited quite a bit from the presence of Joss Whedon.

Even the undead can’t bring down The Dark Knight; that’s the lesson to be learned from this week’s box office results as the Caped Crusader stayed atop the weekend box office like pool floats, drawing $42.6 million to arrive at a new total of $393 million domestically. Add in an additional $202 million in foreign box office and The Dark Knight sits at an impressive $596 million in just 17 days.

Still, the Brenden Fraser vehicle, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was not exactly blown over by The Dark Knight, earning a respectable $40.4 million for a strong second-place showing. That’s far more than last week’s challenger, X-Files: I Want to Believe, will probably gross at the box office at the end of its run. X-Files fell all the way to the ninth spot this week, drawing only $3.38 million in the crowded field and topping only $17 million in 10 days, far below expectations and marking the film as the biggest disappointment of the summer since Speed Racer.

Step Brothers was third with $16.5 million ($63.1 million to date), Mamma Mia! was fourth with $12.6 million ($87.4 million to date), and Journey to the Center of the Earth’s $6.6 million ($72.9 million to date) edges the Kevin Costner starrer, Swing Vote, for the fifth spot. The improbable political comedy struggled to earn $6.2 million in its debut, earmarking it as yet another bomb at the box office for the once-potent Costner.

Meanwhile, aside from Batman, this summer may have helped Brenden Fraser’s career more than any other; with two movies in the top five this past weekend, grossing a combined $47 million this weekend and a combined $113.3 million domestically to date, he’s proven himself to still be bankable.