10 Worst Superhero Movie Posters

Posters are an artform unto themselves.

The old saying may be to not judge a book by its cover, but everyone still does. And that is precisely what a poster is; a cover for the film. It is the first impression a film makes on a viewer, which puts an inordinate amount of pressure on any poster. But when it comes to comic book movies, often projects that cost well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the pressure is even greater.

A great poster will get more viewers interested in the film its advertising, but a bad poster will drive viewers away just as quickly. And it is far easier to make a bad poster than a good one.

Recently, DC released the poster for their upcoming Aquaman film and it was roundly trounced by fans online. It definitely did not go over as well as DC and WB higher-ups were hoping it would, leading into the film's trailer release this week at Comic-Con.

But how bad is Aquaman's poster, really? How does it stack up among the worst of the worst? These are the worst comic book movie posters ever made and some of them are so bad, it's hard to believe they were ever even released.

Ever since the first Iron Man film was released, Marvel Studios has had an infatuation with making their posters resemble the classic Star Wars aesthetic. In other words, like the classic posters for Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, Marvel likes to structure its posters with several characters overlapping one another to create a tapestry out of their ensemble cast.

As time has gone on, Marvel has gotten better at this. Recent examples, such as the posters for Black Panther or Infinity War are genuinely excellent pieces. But when looking back at the early stages of the MCU, some of the posters can be flat-out painful to look at. And chief among them is the poster for Iron Man 2.

Attempting to go for the Star Wars-look, it fails in almost every regard. First off, the editing and photoshop is exceedingly rough around the edges, with the characters all bleeding into each other in very awkward ways that do nothing to compliment their individual lighting or the poster's overall appearance. Then there's the screensaver backdrop of the generic cloudy sky that looks like something pulled from an online generator.

Plus, this entire approach just doesn't suit Iron Man 2 very well. It isn't an ensemble film, if anything, it narrows its view and tends to focus solely on Tony alone for huge stretches of the runtime. From planning to execution, everything about this poster is a misguided mess. Much like Iron Man 2 itself.