The 10 Greatest COMIC-BOOK MOVIES that don't feature any superheroes

Not all comic-book movies wear capes. While spandex-clad heroes dominate the big screen, you don’t always need a shot of super-serum to make a great comics-inspired film. In fact, there are several classics that you might not even realise sprung from the panels on the page. Total Film celebrates a mix of eclectic favourites, from romantic dramas to coming-of-agers, arthouse thrillers and crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Who said comic books were for kids?

- JOEL HARLEY

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE 2005

Rhe comic Published in 1997, this graphic novel by John Wagner (co-creator of Judge Dredd) and Vince Locke follows small-town family man and business owner Tom McKenna as his shady past suddenly resurfaces, setting into motion a terrible chain of events.

The adaptation Director David Cronenberg’s first – and to date, only – comic-book adaptation kept the original’s broad outline and striking opening sequence but deviated from course at the arrival of sinister Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris). The all-new direction jettisoned a chainsaw fight, torture dungeon and the assisted suicide of old pal Richie (played in the adaptation by William Hurt). Rejecting the idea of ‘righteous’ violence as catharsis, Cronenberg favoured shorter, more thematically appropriate bursts of brutality. With Harrison Ford reportedly turning down the lead, star Viggo Mortensen only agreed to come on board after meeting Cronenberg (the pair would become frequent collaborators). According to Mortensen, Cronenberg reworked Josh Olson’s screenplay, which the LOTR actor had described as ‘120-odd pages of mayhem; just senseless, really’. Under the Canadian auteur, the film became a study of violence’s effect upon the human body and soul. As one might expect from the director of Crash, neither body nor soul copes particularly well with a piping-hot pot of coffee to the face. 

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