10 Best Movies Based On Dark Horse Comics

Superman III, Catwoman, Green Lantern…. you can see why Stan Lee jokingly referred to DC comics as “Brand Ecch.” Then again, movies like Elektra, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Spider-Man 3 didn’t exactly give him anything to brag about.

Far more diverse than either is Dark Horse Comics, which over the years has been behind the kind of offbeat projects that would give its competitors cold feet.

Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, Dark Horse has published everything from Manga (Lone Wolf And Cub, Blade Of The Immortal) to adaptations of The Thing and RoboCop, and the films based on their original titles vary from the outrageous to the sublime.

There are no conventional 60s style superheroes in the Dark Horse canon, though you’ll find plenty of undead cops, well-meaning demons and time-travelling detectives. For anyone tiring of the current trend for white American men saving the world from special effects, the following films should be a breath of fresh air.

Released after Batman & Robin torpedoed superhero movies but before X-Men revived the genre, Mystery Men remains (along with Super and The Incredibles) one of the most entertaining blends of homage and send up, but what makes it absolutely unmissable is a cameo from Michael Bay.

Cast because of his friendship with director Kinka Usher, the filmmaker fleetingly appears as a henchman hired by Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) to destroy Champion City after its resident superhero, the corporate-sponsored Captain Amazing, is inadvertently killed by the eponymous heroes. Far from being super, the group’s spurious powers include throwing spoons, turning invisible when nobody’s looking and the ability to look badass while wielding a shovel.

A box office flop, Mystery Men’s indifferent reception was due more to poor timing than anything else. It sounds hard to believe now, but in 1999 it was the only comic book movie that played in multiplexes.