When #1 Action Comic hit newsstands in June 1938 and readers met Superman, Krypton’s number one son, it was a big bang event that launched what would become the Great American Superhero Obsession. Naturally, the films also wanted to participate in this craze. Thus, a few years later, soap operas like The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Batman (1943) and Captain America (1944) have become morning staples; even the Man of Steel would get his own 15-part adventure in 1948. Later, these comic book characters would be co-opted by this revolutionary invention called “television”, and you could watch George Reeves move faster than an excess of speed. ball, Adam West and Burt Ward zap-blam-pow their way through a who’s-who of Bat-villains and Bill Bixby goes from mild-mannered wanderer to rampaging green hulk. Don’t even get us started on Saturday morning cartoons.
By the time superheroes began to return to the big screen in the late 1970s and 1980s, these defenders of truth and justice had become universally recognized icons – you didn’t need to. be a comic book reader to find out what that black-and-yellow bat insignia meant, or understand that a red mask with white eyes and a web design matched your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And when the double of the first X-Men film and Sam Raimi’s first Spider Man hitting theaters just a few years apart, the stage was set for the early part of the 21st century to spawn what is now a golden age of superhero movies.
So after navigating multiple cinematic universes and traveling across a multitude of multiverses, fighting infinity wars and playing endgames, riding a shotgun with webslingers and prowling alongside dark knights and hooking up with so many supergroups as we practically became founding members, we ranked among the top 50 superhero movies of all time. From campy to grimdark, from late nights in Gotham City to sunrises in Wakanda, these are the films that both define the genre and have helped turn the thrill of watching comic book characters leap across the screen into a multiplex lingua franca.
