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Curated playlist

Comics adapted into television 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.
  • Wonder WomanWonder Woman's creator invented a device crucial to the lie detector.
  • Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
  • The Sandman (comic book)The Sandman, a dark fantasy comic book written by Neil Gaiman for DC Comics, began with a question about a catch. Gaiman remembered the day DC editor Karen Berger offered him a Sandman series. His own reply, as he told it, was: "Um... yes.…
  • Fantastic FourThe Fantastic Four heroes argued, held grudges and wore no masks. Marvel's 1961 team broke the polished hero mold.
  • 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…
  • HulkThe Hulk is a Marvel Comics superhero who lives as two people in one body, and the two typically resent each other. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created him, and he first appeared in the debut issue of The Incredible Hulk in May 1962. One half…
  • 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…
  • The Boys (comics)The Boys, an adult superhero comic co-created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, was cancelled on the 24th of January 2007. Only six issues had appeared. The decision was abrupt, and it also killed a planned collected…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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:…

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