Curated playlist
Comics adapted into animated series
- BatmanIn September 2024, Batman became the first fictional superhero to receive a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
- SupermanThe first Superman was a homeless man tricked into taking a drug. Jerry Siegel wrote him as a villain in 1933.
- Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
- The Addams FamilyThe Addams Family appears in a Christmas cartoon from 1946 in which the household greets a group of carolers by pouring boiling oil on them. Charles Addams drew the scene, and readers liked it enough that it was later sold on Christmas…
- PopeyePopeye the Sailor Man began as a hired hand who was supposed to leave the story. In 1938, the newspaper strip that carried him ran in 500 newspapers. Over 600 licensed Popeye products were on sale, and his creator, Elzie Crisler Segar, was…
- GarfieldAs of 2013, the comic strip Garfield ran in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals. That reach earned it a Guinness World Record as the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. American cartoonist Jim Davis created it, and it grew into a…
- Hägar the HorribleThe Viking in Hägar the Horrible pillages Paris, then can't make his stolen palace plumbing work at home.
- The Adventures of TintinThe Adventures of Tintin first reached readers on the 10th of January 1929, in the youth supplement of a Belgian newspaper. Its creator was the cartoonist Hergé, a pen name for Georges Remi. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth, the…
- Flash GordonGeorge Lucas made Star Wars after he could not get film rights to Flash Gordon. Producer Dino De Laurentiis refused.
- PeanutsPeanuts, the comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, filled 17,897 installments before it ended. One description called that run "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being." The strip began in 1950, and its stars were small…
- X-MenThe X-Men comic was cancelled in 1970 after seven years of weak sales. A new team in 1975 turned it into a hit.
- Spawn (character)Spawn, the antihero of Image Comics, debuted in Spawn #1 in May 1992, and that first issue sold 1.7 million copies. The hero is Albert Francis Simmons, called Al, who is better known simply as Spawn. Todd McFarlane created him. Simmons…
- Invincible (comics)Invincible is an American comic book series published by Image Comics, and its first issue went on sale on the 22nd of January 2003. Writer Robert Kirkman created it with artist Cory Walker. The story follows a teenager named Mark Grayson,…
- DilbertDilbert first appeared in newspapers on the 16th of April 1989, written and drawn by Scott Adams. By 2013 the strip ran daily in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and 25 languages. It follows an engineer who works in a micromanaged…
- Archie ComicsArchie Comics began with a patriotic superhero, the Shield, on its cover.
- AsterixAsterix, the French comic album series, usually opens with a small joke at Rome's expense. The standard introduction reads: "The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely..." That hesitating last line has…
- Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesIn November 1983, in Dover, New Hampshire, the artist Kevin Eastman drew a masked turtle standing on its hind legs and gripping nunchucks. He drew it to make his fellow artist Peter Laird laugh. Laird answered by adding two words above it:…