10 Little Known Superheroes That Would Make DC Millions On Film

8. Deadman

Deadman DC Comics
DC Comics

Another well-known face among DC's supernatural faithful, Boston Brand - the Deadman - has to be one of the most likeable characters in the medium.

A trapeze artist murdered during one of your average everyday death-defying stunts, Brand was given the power of astral projection by Rama Kushna, a deity that he believes is actually the omniscient force responsible for all creation. Tasked with avenging his own death, and with watching over the mystical city of Nanda Parbat, Brand regularly possesses other people in order to solve mysteries and warn others of impending threats - a premise that, in the book, leads to both comedic and dramatic shifts in tone.

Much like the aforementioned Etrigan, the character features heavily in DC's self-described 'Dark Universe', which again, lends him well to the R-rated resurgence currently makings its way across the comic book genre.

What makes Boston Brand so compelling, however, is that the surreal nature of his situation is off-set entirely by just how down-to-earth the character actually is. A lot of Hellboy's charm can be owed to that same sort of self-awareness, and, considering just how successful those films were, it's not hard to imagine a Deadman feature resonating in quite the same way.

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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.