12 Greatest Ever Comic Book Movie Anti-Heroes

11. Spawn

Another difficult sell, mostly because the film he appeared in continues to be wrongly criticised as among the worst in the genre, Spawn is the most unfairly hated comic book movie character of all time. And for once, his cult status is legitimately deserved with the usual caveat that he's "so bad he's good".

It may be an unpopular evaluation, but Spawn is better than the vastly more appreciated Darkman (and is also more enjoyable than The Crow, which takes itself WAY too seriously). It was the first R-Rated comic book movie (so maybe give it another chance after Deadpool slays everyone) that landed in entirely the wrong era, when Warner Bros' agenda was turning Batman into a cinematic toy advert.

And at its heart is a terrifying, tragic figure who makes The Punisher look like Mary Poppins. He's not pretty, his methods are uncompromising, and there's no laboured puberty jokes and none of the moral hand-wringing that has defined the MCU. Plus there's no limiting commitment to realism that has dropped the DCEU's grit of any actual darkness: make no mistake, Spawn is a bona-fide bad-ass.

Let's maybe work a little harder to get the sequel out of development hell, eh?