Superheroes run the world, and I’m not just talking about titans like Marvel and DC. From The Umbrella Academy to Invincible and well beyond, here are 8 great superhero series to get into.
Superheroes run the world…or at least Hollywood. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is quite possibly the biggest things to happen to movies since their inception, with 23 films put out since 2008, lots more on the way, and mountains of money stored safely in the Marvel Studios vault. And that’s not to mention all the TV shows Marvel has coming to Disney+. Over at Warner Bros., DC Comics are doing pretty well themselves, with films like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Zack Snyder’s Justice League creating an increasingly solid front against the competition at Marvel.
And like Marvel, DC is going hard on TV. Soon enough we’ll have shows based on Green Lantern, Peacemaker and more, and that’s on top of already-running shows like Harley Quinn, Titans and Pennyworth. You see what I mean? Superheroes run the world.
And I haven’t even gotten into all the superhero shows that have nothing to do with Marvel or DC. Although these comics dynasties are usually the first thing people think of when they hear “comic book movie” or “superhero show,” there are lots of other contenders in the mix, and some of them give the old guard a run for their money. If you, like me, love superhero stuff but don’t want to just patronize Marvel and DC, here are some great options to explore, in no particular order:
The Umbrella Academy — Netflix
Let’s start with one that’s made quite a few waves in the last few years: The Umbrella Academy. This Netflix adaptation of the comic by Gerard Way (who also started the band My Chemical Romance, oddly enough) is sort of like a profane Fantastic Four. It’s about seven super-powered siblings who grew up under the dysfunctional gaze of their demanding adopted father Reginald Hargreeves, who trained them to be a superhero team. The main story picks up with the siblings as adults, all of them nursing childhood psychic wounds that never quite healed.
That makes the series sound dour, and there is a melancholic strain running through it, but mostly what you remember is how unabashedly wacky the whole thing is, full of talking butler monkeys, time-traveling assassins played by Mary J. Blige and a trip back in time to try and stop the Kennedy assassination. Breakout character Number 5 is a middle-aged man trapped in a tweenager’s body, so he’s got the grumpiest of the group despite looking the youngest. Klaus is a pansexual layabout constantly arguing with his dead brother Ben.
And it just goes on like that. The show is constantly throwing some new twist, new characters, new sights, new sounds at you. It’s funny, touching, action-packed and the second season is better than the first. Now bring on the third!
The Boys — Amazon Prime Video
In Marvel and DC stories, the superheroes usually beat the bad guys in the end. But if the superheroes are the bad guys? That’s the question posed by The Boys, which takes dead aim at the (mostly) wholesome superhero entertainments put out by the big two and fires. The superheroes on The Boys are monsters plain and simple, starting with Homelander, the show’s psychopathic version of Superman. Queen Maeve, its version of Wonder Woman, is far too jaded to care about the atrocities he commits. The Aquaman-like hero the Deep is a sexual harasser. These heroes are not here to save you.
Instead, our protagonists are the titular group of hero hunters dedicated to exposing the corporate backed super-beings for the dangerous frauds they are. It’s a fun inversion of the usual superhero formula, and the show has a blast satirizing everything from corrupt politicians to Scientology to big budget Avengers-style superhero movies.
The Boys show is funny, but it’s a bleaker, blacker kind of funny that what you’ll find in The Umbrella Academy. It’s action-packed, but it’s bloodier and more disturbing than anything from Marvel or DC. On The Boys, the people who have the most power aren’t to be trusted with it, and the only hope for humanity is to take them down.
Invincible — Amazon Prime Video
Amazon apparently wants to corner the market on subversive superhero shows. Invincible shares a few things in common with The Boys, namely a dangerous version of Superman who could kill everyone on the planet if he got in the mood. We learn pretty early on that the powerful Omni-Man is a lot less benevolent than he seems, and a lot of the show’s first season plays out like a mystery novel: we don’t need to know what horrible thing Omni-Man did, but rather why he did it. When the answer comes, it’s worth the wait.
So part of the show is a cynical deconstruction of the superhero myth, like The Boys. The other half is much more straightforward. Omni-Man’s son Mark is also a superhero, the titular Invincible. While his father has a grim, disturbing job to do, Mark is full of teenage optimism and excited to use his new powers to help save the world. Of course, he has a rude awakening when he finds out who his dad really is.
Although Mark and his family form the center of Invincible, the show has a healthy supporting cast of miscellaneous other superheroes and villains, each with their own personalities, agendas, and often impressive voice actors. Mark is voiced by Oscar nominee Steven Yuen, his mother Debbie by 12-time Emmy nominee Sandra Oh, and Omni-Man by Oscar winner J.K. Simmons.
Amazon has renewed Invincible for two more seasons. Robert Kirkman’s comic book of the same name provides a lot of source material, so now is a good time to get in on the ground floor.
The Old Guard — Netflix
Charlize Theron heads up this Netflix movie about a group of immortal warriors who have dedicated their eternal lives to helping people. Beyond their immortality, the members of the Old Guard don’t technically have any superpowers, but they’ve been doing what they’re doing for hundreds of years and gotten extremely good at it. The fight scenes here have a grit and immediacy that feels more brutal and personal than some of the other series on this list, and it ends up that long life can be used against those blessed with it in some horribly creative ways.
Theron holds the movie together with her performance as Andromache of Scythia, Andy for short. Once again we’ve got an Academy Award winner in a lead role, which tells you how far superhero movies have come since the days when Adam West was bam-smack-pow-ing baddies across the small screen as Batman. You can count on pretty much all of these series to deliver when it comes to production value.
The Old Guard isn’t interested in subverting the typical superhero story; it just provides a new spin on it. This next show, on the other hand…
One-Punch Man — Adult Swim, available on Hulu
And we’re back to superhero satire. This anime series takes place in a world where superheroes and villains are carefully cataloged and categorized by a complicated bureaucracy, headed up by a council of heroes with their own agendas. Powerful forces threaten the planet Earth, coming from as far away as distant space and as close as our own oceans. Schemes are hatched and empires toppled…but it doesn’t matter because lead character Saitama blasts through any and all combatants with a single punch, no matter strong they are or how carefully they lay their plans.
A lot of the fun of One-Punch Man comes from that anti-climax: a threat is built up over the course of an episode, it seems that nothing can stop certain disaster, and then…Saitama downs it with one punch. It’s surprising how this doesn’t get old. Saitama wants a challenge. He wants to test his mettle against an opponent truly worthy of him, but he can’t. He’s not just too strong; he’s way, way too strong, which leads him straight through the thrill of victory and out the other side to melancholy. When nothing presents any challenge to you, limitless power becomes…boring. Saitama has more trouble with an ordinary run to the grocery store than he does with the supervillain of the week, or even the season.
So far, the show has been able to wring a lot of heart and humor out of this premise, although it must be said that the first season is better than the second. Still, One-Punch Man is well worth checking out.
The Nevers — HBO
HBO’s new superhero drama doesn’t bill itself as a superhero drama…but it is one. The Nevers is about a group of unrelated people — mostly women — living in Victorian London who wake up one day to find that they possess extraordinary powers. Lead character Amalia True gets flashes of the future. Her best friend Penance Adair can make extraordinary electrical inventions. One woman can turn things to ice, another can shatter surfaces with a touch, one guy can possess birds. And the lot of them are persecuted by a bigoted British establishment who sees them as a threat to the stability of the empire.
So we’ve got a group of ordinary people with mismatched powers feared and ostracized by polite society. Ladies and gentlemen, we are officially looking at a riff on the X-Men. Yes, it’s a period piece, and yes, the characters are mostly women, and yes, the milieu is pretty different…but this is a riff on the X-Men, and that’s not a bad thing. The X-Men franchise has endured for a reason, and The Nevers has a lot of what made it fun, plus a healthy dollop of Victorian gothic drama, an ongoing mystery, charmingly off-kilter dialog, and committed performances from a large cast of eager-to-please actors.
The first season of The Nevers is rolling on as we speak. I honestly don’t know where it’ll end up, but I’m on board for the ride.
The Venture Bros. — Adult Swim, available on Hulu
The Venture Bros. has been through a lot of phases in its long life. It started waaaaaaaay back in 2004 as a riff on old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Jonny Quest, and along the way turned into something very different. Nominally, the lead characters are pill-popping super-scientist Rusty Venture, his hulking bodyguard Brock, and his over-enthusiastic teenage sons Hank and Dean. But the show could not stop adding new characters and wrinkles to its universe, from the necromancer Dr. Orpheus to the butterfly-obsessed supervillain the Monarch to the crime-fighting Office of Secret Intelligence and on and on until, seven seasons and 14 years later, it had built a mythology as dense as anything from Marvel and DC, all of it simmering in a sauce that’s one part earnest coming of age drama, one part caustic comedy, and several parts obscure pop culture celebration.
I’ll put it this way: at one point Doctor Venture is hunted by a group of supervillains modeled after both the Injustice Society, from DC Comics; and members of Andy Warhol’s Factory, from the New York City art scene of the 1970s. If that sounds like the kind of thing that appeals to you, The Venture Bros. is worth checking out. If you don’t know what to think of it, it’s still worth checking out.
There’s nothing quite like The Venture Bros. on TV, which was why I was so upset when it was cancelled after its seventh season, despite that season ending on a cliffhanger. It’s not like the show hasn’t had a long life, but I wasn’t ready for it to end, so maybe if enough people pick it up HBO Max or someone else will be persuaded to revive it.
Jupiter’s Legacy — Netflix
Netflix just dropped eight episodes of Jupter’s Legacy, an adaptation of Mark Millar’s 2013 comic book of the same name. This show tells the story of a group of people who were gifted with superpowers in the 1920s. They spent near a century fighting crime, and are now ready to pass the baton on to their superpowered kids.
Only the kids have different ideas. Having been famous and superpowered their entire lives, they’re spoiled, and have some very different points of view on their parents’ code of ethics, particularly as regards whether it’s okay for superheroes to kill people in the name of justice. That’s a strict no-no for the parents. For the kids, not so much.
Critics are pretty split on this one, with plenty admiring its ambition and gravity but wishing it would pick up the pace. Others concede that it does some things well but not as well as the legions of other superhero shows on the market. That said, it’s more of a hit with audiences than critics. If it looks interesting to you, dive in!
And there are other series we haven’t talked about. Even outside of Marvel and DC, there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to superhero content to know and love. And if you put Marvel and DC back into the equation, you could probably watch nothing but superhero series and be satisfied for a long time.
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