11 Criminally Underrated Superheroes Hollywood Totally Ruined
8. Steel
Warner Bros.
When Superman temporarily kicked the bucket in 1993, John Henry Irons was by far the best candidate for his replacement.
A Man of Steel fan through and through, Irons was put on the path to superheroism by Superman's death. Adopting the famed 'S' and fashioning a suit of armour from his days in AmerTek, Irons enjoyed a long running series in the nineties, completing his comic book career with a short but fondly remembered stint on Grant Morrison's Justice League. Steel, featuring Shaquille O'Neal in the titular role was not, however, a highlight, and lays a pretty strong claim for the mantle of worst comic book film too.
What makes Steel so categorically terrible isn't just that it had Shaq in the main role, but that it also decided to completely ignore pretty much all of its source material. The film did its own thing, and subsequently wound up as both a critical and financial disaster, leaving the character to languish in live action limbo.
It's not all bad though, as the character received some relative attention in the DC Animated Universe. Perhaps a DCEU appearance is on the cards later down the line?
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.
