Over the past couple of decades, movies based on Marvel and DC comic books have taken over the box office and promptly lost their dominance. The MCU doesn’t have the draw it once did (Spider-Man notwithstanding), and even a well-received DC movie like Superman still can’t set the world on fire.
But, while Marvel and DC movies have been flailing lately, those properties have been thriving on the small screen for decades. From Legion to Watchmen to Batman: The Animated Series, these are the greatest Marvel and/or DC shows.
13
The Spectacular Spider-Man
Although it only lasted for two seasons, The Spectacular Spider-Man is arguably the best Spider-Man cartoon of the 21st century so far. It captures the spirit of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original comics, but also brings in elements of more modern Spider-Man stories, and teams Spidey up with all kinds of fellow heroes.
Josh Keaton gives one of the definitive voice performances as Peter Parker, and the series’ writing achieved an emotional maturity that you don’t see in many superhero shows. It’s a shame the show was cancelled so soon.
12
Loki
Although it got off to a rocky start with a so-so pilot and a lot of wheel-spinning and a last-minute pivot to becoming The Kang Show, Loki culminated in one of the greatest endings to a TV show I’ve ever seen. That series finale was powerful enough to make up for two seasons’ worth of unresolved storylines and pacing issues.
Seeing Loki become the God of Stories, realizing his own worst fear to make sure the friends he never thought he’d have would be okay, was heartbreaking. It was a rare glimmer at the unrealized dramatic potential of the MCU’s multiverse.
11
Spider-Noir
When it was announced that Nicolas Cage’s P.I. Spidey from the Spider-Verse animated movies was getting his own live-action TV series, it seemed like a terrible idea. It was a gimmick that might’ve felt stretched thin at eight episodes.
But then, Spider-Noir came out and blew us all away. The gimmick is the hook that gets you in, but after that, it’s just a solid story. Cage gives one of the best performances of his career as a jaded alcoholic who reluctantly gets his groove back, and both the black-and-white and color versions of the show yielded some gorgeous visuals.
10
Batman
After Tim Burton injected some darkness into the property, Adam West’s Batman became a laughingstock. But, more than half a century later, West’s Batman show still holds up.
It’s a lot of campy fun. We’ve gotten used to darker, grittier Batmen, thanks to Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder and Matt Reeves. But, arguably, the more realistic you make a billionaire dressing as a bat to fight crime, the more ridiculous it seems. West went the other way, and leaned into the ridiculousness.
9
X-Men: The Animated Series
The best way to describe X-Men: The Animated Series is a superhero soap opera, and I mean that as a compliment. The show has plenty of comic book action, but it has just as much intimate interpersonal drama between the human beings behind the masks.
At their best, X-Men comics use typical superhero stories to explore universal human emotions and timely social commentary. X-Men: The Animated Series may have struck that balance even better than the comics it was based on.
8
WandaVision
Marvel Studios’ foray into making its own TV shows for the MCU has been a mixed bag, with a lot more misses than hits, but it started off on a great foot with WandaVision. WandaVision arrived as a breath of fresh air, throwing the Marvel formula out the window for a refreshingly small-scale, low-stakes story.
Stylistically, WandaVision is a throwback to sitcom history, covering every era of the genre with its own affectionate homage. But underneath that tongue-in-cheek genre trickery, WandaVision is also a deeply involving emotional journey charting Wanda’s harrowing experiences with grief.
7
Batman Beyond
By launching us into a dystopian future version of Gotham, Batman Beyond put two really cool twists on the Bat-formula. It introduced us to an older, grizzled, retired Bruce Wayne, living out his twilight years in a city that’s just as crime-ridden as when he first donned the cowl, and it put a cyberpunk spin on the familiar Batman mythos, too.
Batman Beyond sees Bruce taking a young ward under his wing and training him as his replacement. It’s a gritty, neon-drenched detective noir, just like any Batman show worth its salt, but this one is a futuristic Blade Runner-style neo-noir.
6
Legion
After he turned Fargo into a TV show but before he turned Alien into a TV show, Noah Hawley turned the X-Men comics into a TV show. Rather than focusing on Charles Xavier and his school for gifted youngsters, Hawley built his series around a more obscure mutant: Xavier’s schizophrenic son, David Haller, played brilliantly by Dan Stevens.
Legion is less a traditional action-adventure series and more of a mind-bending psychological thriller. With its unreliable narrator and surreal reality, Legion feels more like Fight Club or Jacob’s Ladder than a standard superhero show.
5
The Penguin
When it was announced that Colin Farrell’s side villain from The Batman was getting his own TV series, it seemed completely unnecessary. But in the hands of showrunner Lauren LeFranc, The Penguin turned out to be a sobering criminal character study along the lines of The Sopranos.
Farrell was able to dig much deeper into this Gotham gangster than he could in his handful of scenes in the original movie, and he’s backed up by Cristin Milioti giving one of the best TV performances of the decade. The Penguin seemed like a pointless franchise offshoot, but it turned out to be one of the best crime dramas in recent memory.
4
X-Men ’97
Plenty of classic TV shows from the 1990s have been rebooted in the streaming age, but those reboots have rarely turned out as well as X-Men ’97. X-Men ’97 picked up where X-Men: The Animated Series left off and perfectly recaptured its signature blend of eye-popping comic book spectacle and soapy interpersonal melodrama.
In X-Men ’97, just like in X-Men: The Animated Series, we see plenty of fights between superheroes and supervillains, but we also get a sense of the vulnerable, three-dimensional human beings underneath the colorful costumes. X-Men ’97 might pull this off even more effectively than its predecessor.
