2023 was a strange year for a million reasons, but especially in the realm of comic book adaptations. This is the year that will officially end the DC cinematic universe as we know it with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in just a few days, and featured the latest batch of “is the MCU dead?” chatter when The Marvels didn’t do gangbusters numbers at the box office. But beyond that, it was a year that featured some high profile adaptations (like David Fincher’s The Killer), a lot of fun animation (like the second Spider-Verse movie), and your requisite streaming/direct to home video releases (like the recently released Merry Little Batman).
So, we want to know what your favorite comic book film of the year was, even though, yes, we know that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom isn’t out yet, and that might hypothetically top your list. Maybe we’ll do a special Reader Poll of whatever wins this one versus that film in January.
We also want to acknowledge the internal debate that we’ve been having in our Slack about the inclusion of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in this conversation. It has been rightly pointed out that it is essentially a toy film and that, if we are including toy films that have seen comics about their toys, then maybe we should’ve included Barbie in this list. And while yes, there are Barbie comics, Barbie hasn’t been a consistent presence in the longboxes of comics fans for 30+ years now. At times, there were more frequent Transformers comics than there were new lines of toys; that’s never been the case for Barbie.
So, vote in our Reader Poll, and check back on Monday for the results.
