Spoilers, spoilers, spooooiiilers!!! Everything’s comic books, all of the time! And as always I’m here to tell you what’s hot and what’s not.
This was a very important year for the superhero genre. It’s a turning point. If this year didn’t work, the longevity of the genre would truly be in peril. And that matters, to me. But also fatigue for the genre started to genuinely hit me a bit. I didn’t watch Gen V Season Two despite enjoying Season One, and I refuse to watch The Sandman Season Two for reasons I don’t feel I need to explain. Look it up if you must. So let’s get into it, guys!

Super-Ranking the Comic Book Movies and TV shows of 2021
Super-Ranking the Comic Book Movies and TV Shows of 2022
Super-Ranking the Comic Book Movies and TV Shows of 2023
Super-Ranking the Comic Book Movies and TV Shows of 2024

10. Captain America: Brave New World
In a different year this poor guy would have some kind of cushion. But unfortunately for Anthony Mackie and the makers of this movie, there were no poorly made DC movies or Sony Spider-Man spin-offs this year. So this Captain America film sinks straight to the bottom of the pack. I said everything in the review, it’s clear I’m not a fan of this messy blender of ideas. Also I continually forgot this existed many times this year. It’s forgettable as shit.
Even the best comic book movies and shows this year were saved from cluttered storytelling and some iffy dialogue by excellent casting. This did not have that benefit because it’s all so muddled that there’s nowhere for the cast to shine. And this is very much Secret Invasion syndrome again. The makers of this film had Anthony Mackie, Carl Lumbly, Harrison Ford, Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Blake Nelson, and Liv Tyler and consistently wasted all of them. And new Falcon is so damn annoying. Ugh.

9. Marvel Zombies (Hopefully Only Season One)
I could not care about this show, and if Paul Rudd wasn’t in it I wouldn’t have watched. And he’s BARELY in it. I had this on in the background while I was at work. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts I had throughout:
– This is boring but still better than Cap 4 because it’s easier to ignore that this exists.
– There are some interesting concepts that use the universe to its advantage, like the Pym particles being unleashed on San Francisco, the plot of Shang-Chi being condensed to two minutes, Rachel Weisz controlling zombies like she controlled pigs, Zemo turning the Raft into a safe haven from the zombies, and Alexei getting to fight Captain America and only winning by accident even though zombie Cap has no legs.
– I don’t like that Storm is just randomly here. They did this in What If…? and it’s a weird choice and just reminds people of everything they still haven’t done. Same with the Blade/Moon Knight hybrid. Very annoying.
– I think this and What If…? while having bright spots have only exemplified the issues with Marvel as a whole and made the last couple of years worse for them in the process, because there are no stakes and the animation and voice acting are bland and effortless in a bad way.
– I’m just remembering that Blade still hasn’t gotten made and Shang-Chi hasn’t had another movie and all the possibilities have been squandered because they made too much shit and didn’t make follow ups to any of it really and it’s all gonna come to a reboot of some kind and get a makeover and I’m just bummed and don’t care as much about this universe anymore.
– There’s two noble sacrifices per episode.
– The use of T’Challa, having him sacrifice himself while Peter says “I heard him say ‘Wakanda forever’ one more time” feels tacky and ghoulish.
– And it really does become a game of “How many characters and concepts can we introduce and use from the last couple of phases” which is why we suddenly get the Kamar Taj characters from Doctor Strange 2.
– I love Iman Vellani as Kamala but she’s not given good stuff to work with.
– If I ever hear somebody say “On your left” in a Marvel movie again I’m going to walk into an ocean.
– If Ant-Man weren’t in the original episode he wouldn’t be here, he’s got nothing to do. There are zombie versions of Hope Hank and Janet and Scott has no reaction whatsoever because clearly Paul recorded his lines first and then they decided to do that. Okay he finally noticed but he just said “Oh Hope”. Still lame.
– Oh I get it now, this TV show was written by Zeb Wells, which is why it’s not very good and the ending is boring and nonsensical. Good job, guys.

8. Invincible (Season Three)
Now I’m cheating a bit here, because this is better than most of the following things on this list. It’s a good season and a good update of a well-written superhero story. This particular season covered two beloved stories from Invincible and improved upon one I didn’t really care about. It was a great time. But, and this is important, I don’t really care. I forgot it came out until I went to make the list. You can’t really win with me it seems. I say I want animated superhero TV shows and comic-accurate storytelling and then I get a direct adaptation, and… I did enjoy it, to be clear. I just have a short attention span and I like newer things. Sorry, Sandra Oh and Walton Goggins and the great cast and creators of this show.

7. Ironheart
This was a great time, and the overall quality of the TV show and the quality of the performances made me overlook my qualms. I don’t care about Riri Williams in the comics, she was created by a man who writes very generic characters that others later improve. This show took concepts I don’t care about and did something interesting with them. The performances from Riri and her best friend are great, as are most of the performances in the show. The return of Jim Rash was good to see. I think Anthony Ramos was somewhat screwed by writers and directors that made him too subdued, at the wrong times, so instead of menacing and enigmatic he often comes off as bored and whiny. Sacha Baron Cohen was excellent. I would really like to see a season two of this but I know it’s not coming. Marvel buried the shit out of this and it was trashed by the worst people on the internet, despite being really fun.

6. Daredevil: Born Again
This is a difficult one to place. On the one hand, it’s not that great and suffers from being cobbled together between a previous bad iteration and a newer, slightly better version. On the second hand, as long as Daredevil is back I don’t much care. This show does kind of coast on the quality of Charlie Cox’s performance as this character while simultaneously making him seem like a worse actor, because the resolution of certain plot threads was rather poor. The murder of White Tiger in particular, which was oddly revealed to have been carried out by Cole North, a good and complex character from the comics that has now been unnecessarily handed a villain role. But retrospectively and not in a genuinely interesting way.
Heather Graham was underbaked and frustrating, much like Michael Gandolfini’s character, who I found thoroughly annoying. Overall I understood what they were going for with both of them, but still. And the worrying thing is that the new showrunners made the front two and back two episodes, which are visually interesting, yet take a very surface level approach to themes that they got credit just for including. It’s all well and good to tackle the real life implications of police officers co-opting the Punisher’s symbol and using it for nefarious means. But the payoff in the series amounted to a bunch of cops fanboying at Jon Bernthal only for him to yell that that’s not what he’s about. That is not interesting. He doesn’t owe them any in-depth conversation about the thematics of why he does what he does.
So I’m cautiously optimistic going into Season Two. Like most of modern Marvel my enjoyment of the series is hampered by behind the scenes fuckery and Kevin Feige’s assurance that this show will remain separate from the larger MCU. Yuck. I’d be fine with that being the case again I suppose, but the show needs to be of the same quality as the old series for that to work. Also I can tell Matt’s not gonna be lawyering much for a bit. And I’m not on board with the action of this series being obscured by CGI fog like in episode one and nine. This show can be better than it is. Regardless, as I’ve said before, I like that they aren’t afraid to lean into Matt not always being a great or nice guy. I am of the opinion that his inability to confront his self-hatred and denial is largely what got Hector killed. And D’Onofrio killed it throughout this season. But yeah. There’s good and bad.

5. Doctor Who (Season Two or Fifteen or Forty-One depending who you ask)
Sigh. SIIIIGH. I was all for defending the crap out of this show last year. And on balance I still am, this season was fairly solid. Until the end, which made me question entirely whether I’m even a fan of this show anymore. I couldn’t even enjoy the final episode because I peeked at the ending. They claim to have a plan for the future, even though they clearly don’t and everyone and their mother knows the season two finale was cobbled together last last last minute. Regardless of this. The preceding seven episodes ranged from good enough to quite fun and overall this season was stronger than the one before it. I enjoyed the Doctor/Companion dynamic more. But they screwed it up royally in the end. And this is my ranking. And I’m a spiteful little bitch.
Shoutout to Alan Cumming’s performance as Mr. Ring-A-Ding and that episode in general, although I somewhat resent reviewers for making it sound like that episode was way more than it was, only to see the Doctor and Belinda talk to annoying fans of the show. Which I guess is fine, but not that interesting.
I just don’t have any faith or confidence in what comes next with this series.

4. Peacemaker (Season Two)
So… I don’t know what to do with this, really. I think largely it was a good season but there were some glaring issues that made more sense when James Gunn said he wrote this at the end of back to back writing Creature Commandos and Superman. There are too many episodes where not much happens, meaning not enough time is spent exploring the implications of Nazi world. There could have been a lot more done there.
The eventual coming together of Harcourt and Peacemaker read weird to me because she spent so long telling him she wasn’t interested and I wasn’t ever really on board with the idea that she secretly was. Gunn kept saying their love story was at the center of the season but I didn’t think it really needed to be?
He gets crap for doing the same things in his writing, and I usually defend him because his found families of dysfunctional misfits usually work for me and feel distinct enough from each other. But he does tend to return too often to the relationship between a serious woman and a man-child who’s more interested in the relationship than she is. It worked mostly with Star-Lord and Gamora because their actual romance was mainly in Infinity War and fairly inconsequential and easy to ignore. The best part of Guardians 3 is that they just go their separate ways. I think the best version of that dynamic was in Superman, though I don’t think Lois got enough time with Clark for me to buy her saying “I love you back”, I think she’ll get there but maybe not yet. And the line reading of Clark yelling “super shit” is still my least favorite part of that movie.
But back to Peacemaker. The final episode where other dimensions were played for dark laughter and there was an overly smiley montage of founding Checkmate, I just didn’t really care that much. I do like Checkmate as a comics concept, but I don’t see how this will evolve into that version. Otherwise the season was mostly solid. I like John Cena. I wish he had more time in the costume. The scenes with the two Vigilantes were good. The episodes set entirely in Nazi world were good. I like how this show handles trauma. And Tim Meadows is a comedy God. Largely I think this season’s best quality was making me realize in retrospect that season one was quite fun and overall stronger.

3. Thunderbolts*: *Actually It’s The New Avengers But Is It Really? Lol Jokes, We Here At Disney Love To Laugh
Yeeeeeeeah. I gotta rewatch this again. Maybe I’ll go do that now. Okay, I did. Actually I didn’t. I just refused to go back and edit this bit I wrote months ago. It’s a pretty good movie. I don’t want to beat a dead horse because the review is out there, but I don’t really have any confidence we’ll see this team again after Doomsday so I don’t like that so much of this feels stitched together and you can feel the missing pieces. Which we’ll have to talk about again soon enough. But there is some great stuff in this and it’s nice to watch these actors mess around and be stupid.
There’s not much more to it. I will say, whoever’s responsible for Wendell Pierce having a larger role in this than Superman made a huge mistake and needs to be fired, even if it’s James Gunn. The person who keeps making Sebastian Stan have long hair in these movies should also be fired.

2. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
FUN! RETROFUTURISM! YAY! I also need to rewatch this one. Again, I feel this review will be weighed down by my frustration for this universe and my inherent worry that they will ruin the things I like somehow. This world is so fun. I don’t want them to get folded into the grim gross regular MCU. By the way, quality doesn’t matter, if the John Malkovich scenes hadn’t been cut out of this movie this would be at number one. That’s how easy it is, Marvel. Be smart.

1. Superman
Are you at all surprised by this? I’ve watched this seven times now. I’ve watched behind the scenes stuff. I liked this film a lot. It isn’t perfect. I think there could still be a better Superman movie. But it is easily the best Superman movie there’s ever been, by a country mile. And at the end of the day, I just appreciate this movie because it was so fun and positive and weird and people who didn’t like Superman and thought he was boring loved this movie a whole lot. That makes me really happy. This character represents so much to our society, to pop culture as a whole, and I just wanted a good Superman movie. And we got that.

Next time on ToomanyservingsofJohn… A very bored snake kills cinema and a year is further explored!