Comic Universes That Would Blow The MCU Away

The MCU has grown into such a huge blockbuster juggernaut that it can feel cumbersome for beginners—and even a little nonsensical at times for fans. Arguments can be made for (and against) adapting just about any successful comic under the sun into a series with an MCU-style interconnected universe, but obviously, not all of them are created equal. Here's our list of contenders for comics that, in the right creative hands and with enough funding, could form the basis for great cinematic universes—and maybe even dethrone the MCU.

Wildstorm could make cinematic magic out of Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's 12-issue, three-arc run on The Authority, the magnificent, satirical spinoff of Stormwatch. (The 2017 Ellis-scripted reboot isn't bad either, but nothing beats the 1999 original.) Artist Bryan Hitch experimented with the "widescreen" visual style of wanton destruction that he would later bring to Marvel's The Ultimates, the spiritual predecessor to the MCU's over-the-top style.

It's a rare superhero who speaks candidly about making personal sacrifices. "My whole life. I traded it for this one," says the Engineer. She's made sacrifices to "fight people." She misses "being in a lab, being a physicist, a technologist... I don't drink gin and bitter lemon until I fall over. I don't have sex with my ex-boyfriend every third Thursday [anymore]," she says with a bittersweet smirk. Asked why she does what she does, she gives an unpretentious answer. "Because someone needs to."

Before the real-world horrors of September 11, 2001 made narratives about superheroes versus terrorism a dime a dozen, The Authority asked tough questions about the superhero fantasy. At the end of the first story arc, as the victorious Authority members survey the damage, the Engineer all too nonchalantly brings up a question that the MCU rarely asks, Captain America: Civil War notwithstanding: "How many people do you think we killed?" If The Authority were to be adapted with that conversation intact, then MCU critic Mel Gibson couldn't call superhero movies "violence without conscience" anymore. He'd have to find a better excuse for passing on that Odin role.

In the beginning—1978, to be precise—Alejandro Jodorowsky collaborated with the great Jean "Moebius" Giraud on a short called "The Eyes of the Cat" for Metal Hurlant, French precursor to Heavy Metal. Minimalistic and creepy as all get out, it told of a large bird flying over an otherworldly landscape to fetch the titular eyes for a man in a high tower. The first masterpiece of the Jodoverse is The Incal (1981), again with art by Moebius. Later expansions of the Jodoverse include, but are not limited to, Before the Incal (1988) with art by Zoran Janjetov, Final Incal (2008) with art by Jose Ladrönn, and Incal spinoffs such as The Metabarons (1992-2003) with art by Juan Gimenez and The Technopriests (1998) with art by Zoran Janjetov and Fred Beltran.

The Jodoverse is Jodorowsky's vast science fiction universe populated by strange monsters, superpowered goddesslike beings, frightening alien fascists, trash-dwelling Garbage Eaters, creepy Technopriests, psychospiritual warriors, and the mystical crystals known as the Light Incal and the Black Incal, which function in the same god-making way as the Infinity Stones, bestowing godlike powers on their possessors.

The Jodoverse has more than enough compelling content to challenge the MCU; it's as full of reality-smashing power as Jim Starlin's Thanos Quest and The Infinity Gauntlet. And considering the many movies that have lifted content from Jodorowsky's ideas over the years, bringing his comics finally, officially to life would deliver a measure of overdue justice.

Illustrated by a variety of talented artists including Phil Jimenez, Jill Thompson, Chris Weston, Tommy Lee Edwards, John Ridgway, and Morrison's longtime collaborator Frank Quitely (New X-Men, Batman & Robin, All-Star Superman), Grant Morrison's The Invisibles is a fit of dizzying genius.

In 1994, five years before The Matrix, The Invisibles' King Mob and Lord Fanny did mind-expanding fisticuffs in leather and vinyl gear better than Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity ever would. As Morrison explained in 2009, "When The Matrix came out, it was covering a lot of similar areas. There were bald guys in fetish amounts doing kung-fu." If it's so similar to a movie everybody has already seen, why does the world need an Invisibles movie, let alone an interconnected cinematic universe?

Buzzing with allusions to the Tarot, shamanism, visionary trances, rock-n-roll, transcendental meditation, tantra, New Agey pseudo-philosophy, and reality-bending mind-fights, The Invisibles is more than just a wacky action series. Morrison's inspirations ranged from the traditional to the flat-out bonkers. Like Akira and other psychedelic sci-fi masterpieces, it owes an indirect artistic debt to Jodorowsky and Moebius, and has direct connections to everything from the poetry of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron to the Marquis de Sade and Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology. Morrison once suggested that if The Invisibles never made it onto the big screen, then perhaps we'd "see it as a video game." Why not both?

Featuring gritty characters like everyone's favorite stone-cold fascist Judge Dredd, professional Aeroball player-turned-murderous cyborg Artie Gruber, and lorry-driving vigilante Bill Savage, 2000 AD was, in the words of Garth Ennis, "the greatest comic ever... A glance at the roster of talent involved is enough to take the breath away." That's coming from the creator of Preacher and The Boys.

Tharg the Mighty, 2000 AD's fictional editor who happens to be a leather jacket-clad space alien, frames the anthologized stories in a science fiction meta-narrative. Imagine a movie that jumps in and out of the "real world," with Tharg sending 2000 AD comics to us "Earthlets" from his home planet of Quaxxon, and the awesome events happening in those comics.

Here's the pitch: NeverEnding Story meets Logan by way of Dredd. In the reality-shattering climax, Judge Dredd, Bill Savage, Johnny Alpha and Durham Red from Strontium Dog, Nikolai Dante, Zenith and many more cross into one universe and forming a superhero team, not unlike the Avengers or the Authority, to fight an unholy alliance between Judge Death and the Volgan Republic. Now that's how you rival the MCU.

Comics such as Neil Gaiman's Sandman (rumored to be "unfilmable"), Brian K. Vaughn's Y: The Last Man (slated for a TV adaptation but still no movie as of May 2017) and Saga with artist Fiona Staples (don't tell us it's "unfilmable," too), and so, so many others demand to be made into epic film franchises. On the manga front, mech warfare epics such as Robotech and Mazinger-Z (the latter of which is getting an adaptation, announced in January 2017), the pirate-treasure hunters show One Piece, and the supernatural period piece Hellsing all have the depth and wealth of content to challenge the MCU's supremacy—potentially. Clearly, comics are a richer medium than Hollywood understood for years. We're just getting started.