The streaming era has opened the door for a lot more shows to find a life for audiences at home, and this is true for comic book adaptations. While network television shows have to answer to sponsors and constantly watch ratings, streaming has more leniency to allow its shows to live on for longer periods, thanks to instant access even weeks or months after the show’s debut. Netflix has proven it will cancel a show if it doesn’t hit it big in its debut month, but at least the full season gets released, and it doesn’t end up canceled midway through. This has allowed some comic book shows that wouldn’t otherwise get made to find life on streaming.
Here is a look at seven of the best comic book shows of the streaming era, ranked. To keep the list varied, we only included one show each from the MCU and DCU.
7) Peacemaker
Image Courtesy of HBO Max
The DCU and the DCEU before it have released some excellent shows on streaming, including The Penguin, Creature Commandos, and Peacemaker. However, it was the latter of those shows that remains the best from the studio, and that is surprising from an obscure DC character. Much of the success of Peacemaker comes down to John Cena’s performance as the lead character.
Of course, Peacemaker first appeared in The Suicide Squad, where he was the team member who was in Amanda Waller’s pocket and betrayed his teammates. However, James Gunn really opened up Chris’s story in the HBO Max series and turned Peacemaker into one of the most complex comic book characters on streaming. With two seasons, both strikingly different, Peacemaker is proof that DC can thrive on the small screen, even as Gunn builds the big-screen world.
6) The Sandman
Image Courtesy of Netflix
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics remain among the best proof that comic books can be literature. It took decades for someone to adapt the stories to, and when it finally arrived, what resulted was brilliant fantasy television. With Allan Heinberg as the showrunner and Tom Sturridge perfectly stepping into Morpheus’s shoes, Sandman was a shocking and brilliant adaptation that gave the comic’s fans exactly what they wanted to see.
However, real-world issues caused the Netflix series to end with just two seasons. The good news is that the showrunner knew it was ending, and he could finish with “The Wake” storyline and offer a nice closure for this comic book show on streaming. This is something a lot of shows can’t do when a streamer decides not to continue producing the shows.
5) The Umbrella Academy
Image Courtesy of Netflix
My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way broke into comics with his series, The Umbrella Academy, with art by Gabriel Ba. While this was a Dark Horse Comics series, it ended up becoming a massive success, running for 21 issues, and even won an Eisner Award for Best Finite Series/Limited Series. In 2019, Netflix released the first season of the streaming series.
The storyline follows a team known as the Umbrella Academy, who became estranged after being raised as heroes since childhood. However, when their adoptive father ends up murdered, they realize they have to stop an apocalyptic event. The problem is that they can’t stop it. The first three seasons received positive reviews, while the fourth was still great, but not as many viewers liked how the story ended.
4) Locke & Key
Image Courtesy of Netflix
Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill, has proven to be a match for his dad and has not only written some of the best novels and short stories in the horror genre over the past decade, but also has some great adaptations of his work. On television, his comic book series with Gabriel Rodriguez ended up adapted for Netflix, and it was just as brilliant as the comic version.
Locke & Key follows the Locke family after their father’s murder when they move back into the ancestral Key House. Once there, the three kids find mysterious keys that open doors to great wonder, and sometimes, deadly horror. A demon also lives buried under the home and needs one of the three kids to release it. The series ran for three seasons, and it tells the complete story, allowing fans to watch the entire comic book story play out in its entirety.
3) WandaVision
Image Courtesy of Marvel
The MCU has released several comic book adaptations on Disney+, but the best of the best remains its first release, WandaVision. This story follows the events of Avengers: Endgame, where Wanda Maximoff has to deal with the death of her beloved Vision. The twist is that the series opens with Vision still alive and the two living a 1950s TV sitcom life in a town called Westview.
Each episode moves through the decades and takes on the form of a popular sitcom from that era, and soon, fans learn that Wanda created this entire world and is forcing all the townspeople to live it along with her, against their will. The series is a story exploring trauma and how it negatively affects a person’s well-being. Each episode was a treat for people with a love of sitcoms, and the storyline was strong enough to carry it through.
2) The Boys
Image Courtesy of Prime Video
The Boys proved that an adult-themed, R-rated streaming series could work on streaming. Based on the comic book series by Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan), the Prime Video streaming series follows a world where the superheroes known as The Six are mainly jerks, only out for their own fame while making a multinational corporation millions of dollars in licensing agreements. They are also more villain than hero.
The Boys themselves are a team initially government-created, who have since begun an independent mission to bring down The Six. Karl Urban is great as Billy Butcher, the man who wants to kill the world’s most powerful hero, Homelander, while Jack Quaid is the everyman that fans follow into the story. The Boys ends after five seasons, although it also spawned several spinoffs on streaming.
1) Invincible
Image Courtesy of Prime Video
Invincible followed up The Boys’ success and took adult, R-rated comic book entertainment into animation. The comic, created by Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), tells the story of a teenager named Mark Grayson who learns he has superpowers like his dad, and he sets out to protect Earth from supernatural threats. This becomes hard when his own father proves to be an alien sent to Earth years before to prepare it for his race to conquer it.
The series has three seasons, with a fourth coming in 2026 and a fifth already green-lit too. This is a unique comic book streaming series because it is an animated hit that is overly graphic and gory, but that seems to have made it even more popular with fans. This is easily the best animated streaming comic book show on television, without compare.
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