Comicon’s Best Comic Book Films Of 2024

As an adjunct to our Best of the Year Awards, Comicon would like to also recognize the best (admittedly, a relative term this time) in films based on comic books in the past year. Of course, far fewer films were released in 2024 — and many of them don’t deserve recognition of any stripe — but maintaining the list reveals just how varied the genre, such as it is, continues to be in the wake of connected universes, DC Studios taking 2024 off to reboot again, and Sony finally learning the error of making Spider-Man movies without Spider-Man. But this year’s list also reveals just how perilous it can be to make a movie based on a comic book.

The following are Comicon’s Best Comic Book Films of 2024.

5. Madame Web, directed by S.J. Clarkson, screenplay by Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless and Claire Parker & S.J. Clarkson; story by Kerem Sanga and Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless; starring Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor and Tahar Rahim; released by Columbia Pictures

Make no mistake: Madame Web is a bad movie. But when compared to other comic book films released this year that did not make the cut — Kraven: The Hunter, The Crow (2024), and Joker: Folie à Deux amomg them — it turns out to be the most enjoyable of the lower tier lot. Just not for any of the reasons Columbia or parent company Sony would like. Madame Web is a collection of terrible choices. Johnson seems more suited to play the Jessica Drew featured in Secret Avengers. I’d even argue that’s who she really signed on to play as her Cassandra Webb performance feels like it is being delivered under duress. The other young actors, cast because their stars were rising at the time of production, also feel out of place as this is another film without Spider-Man. But they also have little to do as three young wards prove too much for the script. And then there’s Rahim’s evil spiderman, Ezekiel Sims. If you haven’t watched the movie but heard of the baffling dubbing quality of his lines, watch at least the first scene. Nothing can prepare for just how awful it looks and sounds. Unlike the other films mentioned above, though, Madame Web still manages to be entertaining in its wrongness. It’s a collection of decisions so poorly conceived that you would believe this was the filmmakers’ intent. To borrow from Mystery Science Theater 3000, it is the most “ambitiously bad” movie I’ve seen any major Hollywood studio release in quite some time. Where the others felt merely like contractual obligations to a slate of machined films cashing in on the Marvel Cinematic Universe gold rush, Madame Web rages against its own contracts. Well, when it isn’t half asleep.

4. Venom: The Last Dance, directed by Kelly Marcel, screenplay by Kelly Marcel; story by Kelly Marcel & Tom Hardy; starring Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy, and some other people; released by Sony Pictures

As I said in my review of the film, The Last Dance understands what its audience wants to see: Hardy delivering a two-hander performance by his lonesome. The scenes with Eddie (Hardy) and Venom (also Hardy) crackle with life and a reckless abandon for superhero convention. It even has the bandwidth to comment on its own tired formula as Eddie looks ready to collapse at any given moment. But where this sensation really shines is anytime the movie focuses on someone other than the venomous duo. Guest actor Juno Temple seems to know she’s in the perfunctory scenes and delivers an appropriately curious performance. Chiwetel Ejiofor, though, doesn’t know how to modulate his acting for a third-tier film, and so offers his military character far more character than the script could muster. While the film continues Sony’s overall trajectory for the Spider-Man Movies Without Spider-Man, Hardy still manages to infuse his corner of that reality with some fun — and his scenes are genuinely good. But other than a possible appearance in Avengers: Secret Wars, I think he’s earned a well-deserved rest.

3. Hellboy: The Crooked Man, directed by Brian Taylor, written by Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola and Brian Taylor; based on the story by Mike Mignola; starring Jack Kesy, Jefferson White, and Adeline Rudolph; released by Ketchup Entertainment

With all due respect to Guillermo del Toro, I have to say The Crooked Man is the most Hellboy movie ever made; a point our own Anton Kromoff made in his review of the film earlier this year. It turns out the secret is to start with a shorter, nearly one-off Hellboy story and get the people who actually write Hellboy to script the adaptation. From the title character’s quips, to the occasional title card, to Grammy Oakum’s (Suzanne Bertish) explanation of witchballs to the viewer, a concerted effort is made to maintain the vibe of the comic. Crank co-director Taylor, at the helm by himself here, also tries to convey Mignola’s curious ability to animate very still poses. Admittedly, that ambition leads to variable levels of success throughout the proceedings. Kesy, the third man to play Hellboy, does an admirable job maintaining the weariness of his predecessors, but does so through almost clinched teeth. That unease, though, serves the story as he is the first to sense the evil in the old coal mining town. Indeed, every performance serves the tone well as the writers and filmmakers also decided to make something more overtly horrific than the earlier films. While the results are sometimes hokey or cheap looking, it also serves the sensation of reading a scrappy, early Hellboy story. Hell, even that opening title card, with its Hammer Films inspired design and copyright notice, tells you what to expect and it all adds up to a smaller but overall well-made Hellboy movie. All it’s really missing is Hellboy falling from an impossible height while shouting “Aw, crap!” I’d be curious to see what the same team could do with Hellboy in Hell, but I’d rather they keep adapting these tales that only glance at the larger story. It seems the genuine way forward for Hellboy as a motion picture concern.

2. Alien: Romulus, directed by Fede Alvarez, written by Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues; starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, and a ghost; released by 20th Century Studios

While it might seem like I’m bending the rules here as the movie is not based on a comic book, no other Alien film has ever captured the sensation of reading a 1990s Dark Horse Aliens comic like Romulus does. I suppose no other Alien film even knows about the Dark Horse comics of the ’80s and ’90s. But with Alvarez committing to an overarching survey of the Alien/Aliens property, it feels the filmmaker left nothing behind as he incorporated ideas from the previous films (even Prometheus), video games like Alien: Isolation, and the very vibe of those early tales published by Dark Horse. The Weyland-Yutani corporation looms large but is unseen — represented here by their logo and another Hyperdyne Systems model 120-A/2. While the digital necromancy involved in bringing Ian Holm back from the dead is unquestionably odious, it also seems to serve the point of both Romulus and those Aliens comics: the Company is not your friend. Then there are the characters, ground down by forces they cannot comprehend and mostly dispatched by the Company’s insatiable desire to exploit the Xenomorph. Spaeny and Jonsson make for a likable familial duo and I’m pleased to know I’ll see them again in a subsequent film. The others do their best as the dead meat, with Merced (making her second appearance on the list this year) doing an admirable job as both the film’s answer to Alien‘s Veronica Cartwright and Alvarez’s do-over of Prometheus‘s abortion scene and Alien: Resurrection‘s newborn birth. The only ill-considered callbacks are the use of Holm’s likeness and the dialogue quotes from other films. Otherwise, Romulus does a remarkable job in being a good Alien movie and, oddly enough, the best Dark Horse Aliens comics adaptation we could ever hope to get. Unless, y’know, the director decides to do an adaption of Aliens: Genocide at some point.

1. Deadpool & Wolverine, directed by Shawn Levy, written by Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells & Shawn Levy; starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, and Matthew Macfadyen; released by Walt Disney Studios

While 2024 was not the strongest year for comic book movies, Deadpool & Wolverine would still shine in year with, say, The Batman, X-Men: First Class, Superman (1978), and Spider-Man 2. Sure, it relies on a lot of modern connected universe tropes and their customary cameos, but when filtered through the Deadpool lens, those elements get a fresh coat of paint. One example: Elektra’s (Jennifer Garner) response when Deadpool (Reynolds) offers his condolences upon learning her Daredevil died. She shrugs and offers a weak “meh.” The joke leans into Garner’s personal life as much as it does the audience’s overall dislike for the Daredevil and Elektra movies. See also: the “only ever gonna be one Blade” line from Wesley Snipes and Wade’s look to the camera; an ambiguous acknowledgement of Marvel Studio’s plans at the time that only gets funnier as their Blade project slides closer and closer to cancellation. That irreverence for the more hallowed parts of the MCU method actually breathes new life into the whole enterprise and serves as a palette cleanser for Marvel’s upcoming spy-thrillers and, of course, its Multiversal crescendo in a few years. But that’s just the meta-narrative stuff that’s unavoidable with Deadpool. Anchoring it all is the incredible onscreen chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman. The pair are so likeable as ill-suited allies that I’d love to watch them in a remake of a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road to … movie or even another stab at Ishtar. They’re just that good as a comedy duo that the world deserves to see them together again as other characters. Meanwhile, there’s the unexpected pathos the army of scriptwriters offer to the characters, Corrin’s unexpectedly great take on Cassandra Nova (seriously, why wasn’t that character revealed as the true villain of the Multiverse Saga?), and — as I said in my original review — the way the film makes you wistfully nostalgic for the early 2000s Marvel movies: a collection of films I, personally, don’t particularly enjoy. All of that adds up to the best comic book movie of the year. But, dear Marvel Studios, don’t try this again. There’s only ever gonna be one Deadpool & Wolverine.