Deadpool & Wolverine Is the Best Comic Book Movie of the Year (Golden Issues 2024)

After the massive boom of comic book movies over the last 10-15 years, 2024 was a bit of an enigma for the genre. There were very few comic-inspired films to be released on the big screen over the course of the year, and many of them were met with poor responses and middling box office results. All that to say, there was one massive exception to this unusually down year for comic book movies, making this race quite possibly the biggest landslide across our 2024 Golden Issue Awards.

When the nominees were announced, the contest for Best Comic Book Movie probably could’ve been called right away. The nominees included Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (a 2023 holdover that was released too late for our awards last year), Madame Web, Venom: The Last Dance, and the animated Watchmen: Chapter One. Joining them, of course, was the biggest R-rated movie in box office history, Deadpool & Wolverine.

And the winner of the 2024 ComicBook.com Golden Issue for Best Comic Book Movie is…

Could it have gone any other way? Not that there isn’t love for those other nominees amongst the voters on our staff, but one of these things was not like the other. Deadpool & Wolverine was not only an enormous hit at the box office, but it was also a massive favorite amongst fans. The film introduced Deadpool to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, brought Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine out of retirement, and delivered some of the most memorable surprises in recent comic movie history.

If it were released any other year, Deadpool & Wolverine would still have a shot at contending for this award. In 2024, though, there was just no way it could lose. This was the only MCU movie released across the whole year, following several years of three to four MCU movies each. DC is undergoing a transformation under James Gunn and Peter Safran at the newly formed DC Studios, so 2024 is a gap year for that franchise. That left us with a new Deadpool and what appear to be the final three entries in Sony’s maligned Marvel universe.

Marvel Studios put all their eggs into the Deadpool & Wolverine basket this year, a move that paid dividends for the company. Shawn Levy’s Deadpool threequel made more than $1.3 billion at the global box office, which is good enough for the second highest grossing film of the entire year (trailing only Pixar’s Inside Out 2). The next biggest comic book movie this year, Venom: The Last Dance, barely made a third of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s total.

Deadpool & Wolverine was a dominant force in 2024, and one of the most popular Marvel movies in some time. Now it can add a Golden Issue to its long list of accolades.

The nominees for Best Comic Book Movie:

• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
• Deadpool & Wolverine – WINNER
• Madame Web
• Venom: The Last Dance
• Watchmen: Chapter One