After ‘Spider-Man,’ 10 Comic Characters Who Deserve a Great Video Game

With Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 topping sales charts and getting critics thinking about their year-end Best-Of lists, it seems likely that eyes will shift toward the Marvel and DC Universes for any other potential chart-topping ideas.

Of course, Spider-Man is a special circumstance, given that Sony owns the film rights and has an animated movie coming out, so there are a lot of people with a lot of reason to make the game a big hit. Still, superhero movies are everywhere, and if there’s a dollar to be made, you can be sure that the gaming industry is giving a hard look at what could be the next cross-medium hit.

We’ve put together a list of comics that seem tailor-made for a video game as faithful, smart, and well-made as Spider-Man.

Let us know if we missed one of your favorites, or what you would add to the list, in the comments below.

Doctor Strange

The cool visuals and big ideas that Scott Derrickson managed to get across in the Doctor Strange movie could be amped up by a factor of ten if the Sorcerer Supreme were to be doing them as a game instead of a live-action movie.

There are, as basically everyone has pointed out at one time or another, a lot of things that look fine in comics but will not work without serious modifications in live-action. The nature of computer graphics in games is that you can straddle that line, making absurd comic book ideas (like, say, superheroes in tights) work just fine for mainstream audiences.

Pair that notion with the larger-than-life visuals that co-creator Steve Ditko brought to the early Doctor Strange comics and you have huge potential at the outset.

Green Lantern

After the Green Lantern movie came out, there was an attempt to cash in on the newfound name recognition of the property with a video game…which wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great, either. 

A fundamental problem of Green Lantern is that the options for what the character can do, and so what the user will want to do, with the ring is nearly limitless. Trying to work that into something that makes sense in gameplay could be a tricky thing, but with a massive, cosmic canvas and dozens of cool and unique-looking characters in the Corps (not to mention one of the most visually-interesting rogues galleries in comics), it seems like it would be at least worth the effort to try.

Savage Dragon

Erik Larsen’s long-running, creator-owned comic is one of the original Image Comics titles and one of only two (along with Spawn) that has been in continuous publication since the company was founded.

That gives you a lot of story, a lot of characters and scenarios, and a lot of cool villains to work with.

The fact that the title took place for most of its run in Chicago means that one could fairly easily build a pretty convincing cityscape to give a grounded sense of place to an open-world experience. And all the cool and crazy villains and allies that feature prominently in the book could make for some pretty cool elements, as well.

Who doesn’t want to fight a giant dude with a rooster head?!

The Fantastic Four

Marvel’s First Family is more than just the foundation on which the Marvel Universe was built: it’s a team of adventurer/scientists who take their lives into their hands and go to hidden realms…even before they get powers.

Once they become celebrity superheroes, it’s just double the fun.

So…yeah. This one just begs for a game. You could have a little bit of everything if you were so inclined, from Tomb Raider-style puzzle exploration to outer space adventures to quests in places like the Negative Zone and battles against foes like Annihilus and Galactus.

Aquaman

Another character who had a game — although everyone seems to generally agree it was pretty dreadful — back in the ’90s.

Aquaman as a video game should have everything baked into it to be great. He has cool powers that are pretty easy to visualize onscreen, he’s got a visually distinctive and dynamic world in which to ply his superheroic craft, and he’s got the ability to lead armies of Atlanteans or sea life against foes who can do the same.

With the James Wan film seemingly bringing the world of Atlantis to life in live action better than most people had imagined, it seems like an Aquaman game to give fans a first-person opportunity to explore that world is a no-brainer.

The Age of Apocalypse

Okay, so this is not technically a character, per se, but you can’t honestly tell us that an open-world game taking place within the Age of Apocalypse version of the Marvel Universe would not be incredibly fun to dig into.

The ’90s story, which is set in a world where Legion killed Charles Xavier before he was able to found the X-Men, saw Apocalypse rise to power as a result. He was challenged only by a team of X-Men led by Magneto, and counted among his soldiers the Summers Brothers.

It was a strange, cool, and incredibly stylized vision of the X-Men that, because there were so many X-titles in print at the time, was featured in dozens of comics despite its relatively short length. The breadth and depth of the world could be something to really explore and have fun with in both missions and background details.

Spawn

The variety of styles that Spawn has dabbled in over the years, coupled with an upcoming feature film, seems to make him an ideal candidate for this kind of thing. 

After all, who wouldn’t want a game that can shift seamlessly between Hell, the dark ages, and Manhattan’s grimiest corners?

Spawn has inspired a few games and, like Spider-Man, some of them were even pretty fun. But as with his movie, the fun is pretty forgettable and dated. There hasn’t really been a big breakthrough game for Spawn the way Image had with The Darkness years ago.

Booster Gold

How could you not want to experience the DC Universe through the lens of a time-traveling B-lister?

The nice thing about a character like Booster Gold is that he could exist outside of a single setting, allowing for any number of guest stars, cool scenarios, and locales to play a role in his game.

Meanwhile, the high concept — “time is broken” — means you could give him almost any villain, any challenge, any situation and make it as cool and epic and crazy as the designers of the game wanted…because once he figures out the puzzle and fixes the anomaly (or whatever), it would go back to normal and let the DC Universe be right again.

Silver Surfer

Going back to the likes of Green Lantern and The Fantastic Four, the visual dimensions of a Silver Surfer game are pretty obvious. A cool-looking character who spends most of his time in a stylized Marvel Comics version of deep space, meeting and saving and fighting a cadre of bizarre alien races, is nothing but good news.

While the NES version of the Silver Surfer game left a lot of people cold, it had the right idea, by shifting action from world to world and fighting a wide variety of villains with cool powers. That could all be done much better in today’s gaming environment, so Surfer could be a dark horse candidate for the easiest translation on this list.

Superman

This one kind of goes without saying.

Superman is the first and arguably the greatest superhero, who has a distinctive and cool home city, a great supporting cast, a handful of the best villains in comics…

…and no really great video game.

With so many great Batman games out there, DC fans have long wondered when the company was going to get around to giving the Man of Steel his due, but his numerous and sometimes complex powers provide some of the same experiential problems that Spider-Man’s can.

Spider-Man, though, has always been one step ahead of Supes as far as video games go. Now that he’s got a top-tier title, let’s make that one step a little smaller…!