Copyright Screen Rant
From Watchmen to Smallville to Batman: The Animated Series, the best TV shows based on DC Comics are even better than the movie adaptations. DC’s film output has been very hit-and-miss over the years; it’s given us masterpieces like The Dark Knight, but it’s also given us some of the worst comic book movies ever made, like Catwoman and Green Lantern. With James Gunn at the helm, DC’s future on the big screen actually looks promising for the first time in years. But through thick and thin, through Suicide Squad and Batman & Robin, DC’s TV shows have always been great — from old-school classics like Adam West’s Batman and Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman to newer gems like The Penguin and Doom Patrol. Harley Quinn The character of Harley Quinn and the medium of adult animation made for a perfect marriage. Harley Quinn basically takes the crude cartoon humor of South Park and Family Guy and imbues it into the DC Comics universe. This story of Harley going on wild adventures with Poison Ivy after breaking up with the Joker is a ton of violent fun, but it’s also surprisingly moving. Smallville Smallville ingeniously reimagined Superman’s origin story as a coming-of-age drama. We follow Clark Kent as a teenager growing up in his hometown, and see how he came to the decision to don a cape and fight crime. Smallville filters all of Superman’s iconic supporting characters through the lens of this teen drama, which makes all these familiar storylines feel fresh. Batman Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, and Matt Reeves have popularized a dark, gritty, grounded vision of Batman. But as great as some of their movies are, the more realistic you make Batman, the more it highlights the absurdity of a billionaire dressing up as a bat to fight crime. More than half a century ago, Adam West’s Batman series leaned into that absurdity. The 1960s Batman show almost played like a live-action cartoon, dialing up the comic-booky eccentricity of Batman, Robin, and their rogues’ gallery. With its vibrant colors, on-screen sound effects, and lighthearted humor, Batman didn’t take its title character seriously at all — and, in doing so, made him a mainstream icon. Doom Patrol Doom Patrol was hobbled by the streaming wars. It was initially developed for an exclusive DC Universe streaming service before being moved over to HBO Max. If it’d had a more stable streaming home, it probably would’ve become the hit it deserved to be. Doom Patrol is thrilling superhero entertainment, but it’s also a touching story about this band of misfits coming together. Batman Beyond The story of Terry McGinnis puts a totally fresh spin on the Batman mythos. Batman Beyond whisks us away to a cyberpunk tech-noir vision of Gotham City in the near future, where an aging Bruce Wayne takes a young ward under his wing and trains him to take on the Dark Knight mantle. Batman Beyond is one of the darkest superhero shows ever made. It pushes Gotham even further into a horrifying dystopia, it explores Terry’s grief over the loss of his father (the trauma that connects him to Bruce in the first place), and it sees a teenager becoming the new Caped Crusader in this crime-ridden hellhole. Wonder Woman Long before Gal Gadot played Diana Prince on the big screen, the actor most associated with the role of Wonder Woman was the great Lynda Carter. Carter’s portrayal of Wonder Woman in the classic ‘70s TV series was so iconic that it actually reversed the adaptational process and influenced the way the character was portrayed in the comics. The most notable influence that the comics took from the TV show was Carter’s spinning ballerina-style transformation from Diana into Wonder Woman. The series perfectly captured Wonder Woman’s inspirational ideals, and nailed her complicated relationship with Steve Trevor, played here by Lyle Waggoner. The Penguin Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb made a memorable debut as a secondary villain in The Batman, but he evolved into one of the most well-rounded adaptations of a comic book character in his own series. The Penguin would be a must-see gangster drama even if it didn’t take place in the DC universe. Lauren LeFranc simply told a gripping antihero story in the vein of The Sopranos or King of New York; it just happens to be set in Gotham City. The Penguin makes masterful use of backstory to turn its morally gray characters into complex, three-dimensional, tragic figures. Preacher Garth Ennis’ curious blend of Southern Gothic neo-western, religious satire, twisted fantasy drama, and pitch-black comedy can’t have been easy to adapt for television. But Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Sam Catlin made it look easy with the near-flawless four-season run of Preacher. The show didn’t tone down the visual flair or shock value or spiritual profundity of the comics — it leaned into all that stuff. Batman: The Animated Series Batman: The Animated Series is the perfect on-screen portrait of the Caped Crusader. The gorgeous animation brought the shadowy streets of Gotham to life with even more expressionistic vigor than Tim Burton’s live-action films, and Kevin Conroy’s voice performance captures the pain and sorrow that Bruce Wayne is tortured by. As a whole, Batman: The Animated Series is a probing character study of the titular superhero, capturing his grief and loneliness and deep-seated rage, but it also has some standalone episodes that could be considered masterpieces on their own. The vintage color palette evokes 1940s Superman cartoons and classic film noirs. Superhero shows don’t get much better than this. Watchmen Adapting Watchmen for the screen was daunting enough, but Damon Lindelof went a step further and set out to create a sequel to Alan Moore’s seminal comic book. Against all odds, this series ended up being a worthy successor to the graphic novel. It’s just as visually stunning, just as thematically rich, and just as subversively genre-bending.
