10 Best Comic Books That DON'T Have Superheroes

You might think it's all Marvel and DC, but sometimes the best comics don't have masks or spandex.

by Ewan Paterson
Parker The Man With A Getaway Face Darwyn Cooke
IDW/Drawyn Cooke

Superheroes are synonymous with comic books - there's just no escaping it. Through over 80 years of published material from Marvel, DC and their competitors both past and present, America's star-spangled do-gooders have made the medium their own. And with film, TV and gaming only expanding their influence even further, the impression of the medium as one synonymous with costume-clad characters isn't going to go away anytime soon.

But that doesn't that's all the industry has to offer. As many longtime readers are no doubt aware, the comics medium is home to a wide variety of genres and publishers. In fact, for a time, horror and western books actually outpaced superhero books in terms of sales and popularity, only being stymied when the Comics Code Authority introduced draconian rules on censorship in the 1950s. Even romance comics were massively popular for a long while.

Today, the reign of the superheroes is well and truly in effect, but their dominance doesn't mean that other genres aren't alive and well. Horror, sci-fi, true-crime, fantasy, noir and more all have a home in the medium, and at publishers who've largely departed the superhero spotlight.

Readers can read whatever they like (I'm certainly not here to police that), but once you broaden your horizons and start dabbling in bits and bobs from different kinds of storytellers, you'll find the comics medium is so much more interesting. The following stories - from outside the Big Two's sphere of control - are all a testament to that.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.