Too Silly for Comic Book Movies

Some characters and concepts are simply too silly to portray with comic book accuracy on a theater screen during a blockbuster movie. Honorary mention will be given (frequently in the case of DC) for silly characters and concepts that made it into television or streaming broadcast; but those characters and concepts remain too silly for the movies, according to the rules of this list.

Various entries below are marked by their status as of the last update to this list. The humor in this list was originally supposed to be - here's the 7 silly things they didn't include for every one they did. It has evolved over time into 'Wow. They did all that at the movies. Okay. Wow.'

• ✓ Oh my goodness, they actually did this - on the big screen, in theaters!
• → Partial credit for a live action television or streaming appearance.
• ⮎ Partial credit for a cameo or brief reference on the big screen.
• x Confirmed as too silly. Not only have they not done this yet, but the expected moment for this has passed by.
• x✓ Persistently silly. The expected moment passed, but they found a way to include this silliness later anyway.

Marvel kicked this whole game of too-silly-for-the-silver screen by doing a fantastic job portraying Iron Man, one of their founding Avengers, on the silver screen, in a near-perfect rendition.

Iron Man (2008) should not have worked, because Iron Man is an incredibly fun character, but kind of a lousy person. There's no comic book Iron Man story I am aware of that doesn't somehow rely on his pretty significant character flaws. But Iron Man is not too silly for the movies, his friends are.

They did excellent movies for The Hulk and Captain America around the same time. Die-hard comic fans became aware in around 2009, that now the key members of the comic book 'The Avengers' now had dedicated movies.

Captain America gets the first checkmark on this list. His silly bit is so silly, they saved it for an after-credits scene:

• ✓ Captain Ameria was frozen for decades to allow him to have an origin in the 1940s but be an Avenger today. But he's fine. It was just cold.

With Captain America, Hulk and Iron Man at the movies, two founding Avengers characters were now begging to get feature films: Thor and Namor.

And this is the heart of the problem - and the need for this list.

Thor and Namor are too silly for the big screen.

The silliness around Thor and Namor canoot be hidden after the end credits.

• ✓ Thor is a viking from space who swings his hammer so fast that it picks up frost giants with the wind force.
• ✓ Namor is an Atlantean who always wears a speedo, is almost always angry, and flies through the sky on tiny wings attached to his ankles.

Besides their core premise, these core Avengers have silly friends and silly aspects that help define them:

• ✓ Thor flies by throwing his hammer and not letting go.
• ✓ Namor flies by flapping tiny wings on his ankles.
• ✓ If Thor lets go of his magic hammer for too long, he loses his fantastic powers.
• ✓ Thor is a founding member of the Avengers.
• x Namor is a founding member of the Avengers.

It's not just Thor who is too silly for the big screen. So is about half of everyone he routinely interacts with.

• ✓ Thor's father, Odin, routinely falls into 'The Odinsleep' at convenient times to drive stories.
• ✓ Despite 'The Odinsleep' happening often enough to have a name, everyone treats it like Odin is probably going to die this time. He does not.
• ✓ Only those worthy of the power of Thor can lift Thor's hammer. Because magic.
• ✓ Unworthiness somtimes prevents Thor from lifting Thor's hammer.
• x Thor's friend Volstagg will only ally himself with those who prove themselves worthy - by picking up Volstagg.
• ✓ Ability to lift Thor's hammer creates an alliance at a critical moment, despite Odin not being a character refernce most people would blindly accept.
• x Ability to lift Volstagg creates an alliance at a critial moment.
• ✓ Allies worthy of Thor's power occassionally take over for Thor, simply by lifting his hammer.
• ⮎ Thor, a space viking with a great deal of cultural confusion about Earth customs, maintains a secret identity as a human surgeon name Dr. Donald Blake. This works fine because magic.
• x Thor and Dr. Donald Blake are different people, magically sharing a body, and basically doing 'The Odd Couple' to eventually forge a friendship despite their cultural differences.
• ⮎ Thor's friend Beta Ray Bill is a valiant alien warrior with the head of a horse. People are polite enough not to mention his horse head.
• Thor's friend Hercules is just the original Hercules of myth. Unlike Thor, Hercules is not a space viking he's just that same guy from legend arrived in the present day via a bit of time-travel. The origin of Hercules powers is, as far as anyone knows, exactly that from mythology.

So...the Avengers formula calls, critically, for lots more characters that you also cannot do in the movies.

• ✓ The Ant Man
• ✓ The Falcon - whose intense military training allows him to - put on some wings and flap about to defeat bad guys.
• ✓ Quicksilver is a mutant with super speed powers so powerful that he typically handles half of the foes in every battle he participates in. Quicksilver doing half of all the heroics makes a great comic book cover, but is probably untouchable for the movies.
• ✓ Hawkeye has a bow and arrow, which he is quite skilled with. That's it. That's his whole deal.
• Sentinel is an iconic Superman like character whose only weakness is his muderous split persona that kills exactly as many people as he saves in his Sentinel persona.
• Wonder Man is bascially Johny Cage from Mortal Kombat but with vaguely defined super powers.

And these characters have their own silly aspects:

• ✓ After a significant delay, Ant Man notices that 'Giant Man' seems like a much better way to handle super hero fights.
• ✓ After realizing 'Giant Man' is the more practical approach to fighting crime, 'Ant Man' goes back to being 'Ant Man'.
• ✓ The Falcon - our flappy bird hero - is the one guy that Captain America looks up to. Joking aside, I cannot empahsize enough how foundational this relationship is to telling a good Captain America story. I cannot express how screwed Marvel is that they have to include flappy bird man in the movies if they want to strongly portray their most iconic character, Captian America. (Unbelievably, Anthony Mackie's portrayal is both perfect and somehow makes the wings cool. They were not this cool in the comic.)
• Hawkeye - the man whose powers are a bow and arrow - leads the Avengers on various occassions.
• x Hawkeye - the man whose powers are a bow and arrow - and Quicksilver - the man who is too powerful to make good movies about - sometimes argue about who should lead the Avengers.

• Fancy Dan who threatens Spider-Man with his sharp fashion sense and peak human dance moves.
• ✓ The Dread Dormamu - cosmic interdimensional villain with a face made of burning striped carpet
• Cat Thor - the star of Squirrell Girl's roommates fan fiction, and Loki's occassional alter-ego.
• Diamondback - She throws diamonds. The diamonds she throws, with her hands, can hurt Luke Cage.
• → The Porcupine - His powers are a suit covered in quills. He's scared to take it off. It's gross and sad.
• → The Swordsman - His powers are charm and a sword. He's a bad-guy, but he's not a bad guy.
• ✓ The Spot - with powers of poking holes in reality to punch Spider-Man through.
• The Wall - with powers of - bascially just being a brick wall.
• The Fixer - stereotype evil scients minion army producing side-kick.
• Hydra Bob - He joined Hydra for the dental plan, and stayed because the 'captured by heroes' insurance pays pretty good.
• Spider-Killer - a robot commissioned by news reporter J.Jonah Jameson to kill Spider-Man.
• Sin Eater - Villain with a magic shotgun shoots people - cleansing them of all their sins.
• ✓ Task Master - A cheesy villain in skull mask copies the worst Avenger's abilities - bow and arrow, shield throwing, kicking and punching. Beloved fan favorite, believe it or not.
• Stilt Man - who has (evil, I guess) robo-stilts.
• Mister X - shows up without a shirt and starts flawlessly defeating every hand-to-hand fighter in the world. Does so in cool 90s shades. Does not take any of the fights seriously.
• ✓ The Vulture - What if The Falcon were a bad guy. Wouldn't that be scary? - I maintain after the fact that this shouldn't work - even after it clearly did. Marvel cheated by casting Michael Keaton.)
• Mr. Myxlplyx
• → The Songmeister
• ⮎→ The Red Tornado is an android that spins it's body parts very fast to create whirlwinds. Double partial credit awarded here for a reference in the Black Adam movie, and a live action appearance in the Supergirl TV show.
• ⮎ Bat Mite
• ✓ M.O.D.O.K. Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing (Modofk?) - a giant head with timy arms and a jet engine for a butt.
• ⮎ Hydra Villain Dr. Zola - A teletubby like cyborg villain with a small camera for a head. Plenty of setup on Zola but he hasn't appeared with his teletubby body as of 2023. Partial credit for his future camera head appearing in one of his labs.
• The Beyonder
• ✓ Tazerface - The inclusion of Tazerface counts as a 'triple word score' for the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.
• ✓ The Klaw
• Hammer Head - A prohibition era mobster who puts his head down like a bull to charge at people and crush them with his incredibly flat, incredibly hard, incredibly square hair.
• Fing Fang Foom is a two story tall dragon who spends most of his time doing low-paid henchman work.

• ✓ Spider-Ham - a normal spider was bit by a radioactive pig.
• ✓ Rocket Racoon
• ✓ Howard the Duck (how is he the first Marvel movie?!)
• ✓ Cosmo, the space dog. He and Rocket don't get along.
• ✓ Daredevil - a blind lawyer who swings around the city at night fighting crime.
• Squirrell Girl - her powers are roughly those of a Squirrell.
• Beta Ray Bill - Thor, but with a horse's head. (His face made a cameo, but I'm not checking this off until we see him lift the hammer and prove he is worthy.)
• ✓ Doctor Strange - egotistical surgeon turned wizard
• ✓ Frog Thor
• → Luke Cage is the Power Man. His powers are stregth and nearly total invincibility. His weaknesses are everyone around him. His story is fantatsic, but his powers and costume are dumb.
• ✓ Paper Bag Man - because Spider-Man doesn't bring his costume grocery shopping and crime never rests.
• Agent Venom: Space Cop
• Citizen V
• Mach V - successor to Mach IV - successor to Mach III - successor to Mach II - successor to Mach I.
• ✓ Deadpool is brain-damaged and his brain-damage expresses itself by making him aware (through the 4th wall) that he is a character in media. While he is aware that this is an aspect of his brain damage and tries to ignore it, he is also always correct about the media format.
• Jeffrey the Land Shark
• ✓ Spider Man 2099 is the most 90s thing to happen in the 1990s, but is from 2099.
• ✓ Shang Chi - whose powers are being great at Kung Fu.
• ✓ Iron First - Like Shang Chi, but only uses one limb to attack.
• Ambush Bug (DC)
• Scott Free the Miracle Man (DC) - whose super powers are mainly escape artistry.
• Impulse (DC) was raised at super speed in vitrual reality and must adapt to not being online 24/7.
• Sasquatch
• Puck
• Multiple Man
• Beak
• Doyle Dormamu - Illegitimate son of Dread Dormamu
• Koi Boy
• Chipmunk Hunk
• Gorilla Man
• → Blackbolt
• → Medusa
• Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
• ⮎ StarHawk / Aleta (name changed but costume and connection to Charlie 27, Nikki and Martinex)
• ⮎ Charlie 27 is a giant soldier who grew up on Jupiter.
• ⮎ Martinex is a living computer with heat and cold powers because he was built with a killer gaming PC cooling system.
• Sting Ray - Would it be cool if someone with access to Tony Stark's Iron Man suit blueprints built his own inferior suit that only works well underwater?
• H.E.R.B.I.E. is a long-suffering robot maid built by Reed Richards to help him avoid parenting Franklin Richards - whose mutant powers occassionally change the nature of reality.
• → Old Lace is a velociraptor left as a gift to a young girl from her paranoid and over-protective parents.
• → Hour Man stands out from other heroes because he only has his mediocre powers for an hour at a time.

These characters come with their own silly moments.

• x Iron Man's various magnet-centric super powers.
• x Iron Man's skate shoes
• Thor telling Cat Thor - "I see that your head is slowly growing every moment."
• Cat Thor is one of Loki's personal self-images in his own pysche.
• Luke Cage has to fight a guy for the right to call himself "Power Man".
• → Luke Cage's very 1970s "Power Man" costume.
• Task Master truly understands their place in the pantheon of comic villainy - and does the job, gets paid, and moves on before the heroes mop up.
• ✓ Captain Marvel cannot say his own name for unmentioned copyright reasons. (DC)
• x Squirrell Girl and Iron Man are social media pen-pals.
• x Squirrell Girl occassionally 'borrows' Iron Man's armor, in spite of his many security upgrades meant to prevent her specifically from breaking in.
• → The area on the Moon that has breathable air.
• StarHawk is 'The One Who Knows'. It is unclear if his inability to use his time bending future sight for real good is due to some critical future moment in time, or, more probabily, his astonishing social awkwardness.
• ⮎x In the comics, Tazerface does - indeed - shoot tazers from his face. Partial credit for Rocket clarifying whether this was the case in the movie.
• x Tony Stark gets in a fight with Sting Ray over Sting Ray's (inferior) use of Stark Tech in his (vastly inferior) super suit.
• The Vision builds an almost emotionless android family for himself to help him connect with his own missing emotions.
• The Vision builds a green android dog for his family to help them blend into their neighborhood.
• Deadpool reminds us that Nick Fury's super-power is having super-spy depth perception with only one working eye.
• Doctor Octopus dates Peter Parker's Aunt May for awhile.
• ✓ In some universes, Nick Fury - the greatest spy to ever live - increases his bad-assness by looking like Samuel Jackson. It's worth noting that comic-book Nick Fury was borrowing Samuel Jackson's likeness many years before the movie version did.
• Hour Man travels through time on his old time sailing ship.
• Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe
• Squirrell Girl beats up the Marvel Universe
• Both Doctor Hank McCoy and Doctor "Bones" McCoy both answer to Captain Kirk's call for assistance when the X-Men visit the Enterprise

• Task Master - the poster child for lazy one-note supervillainy, is a pretty good professional mentor.
• After Ragnarok, all police officers are Thor.

Superman gets his own section. He has had some fantasticly silly moments on the big screen, but if all of his 'too silly' exploits were listed here, Superman's list of silliness would dwarf all other characters combined.

Okay, maybe I'll just include a few favorites here:

• Superman's best friend, Jimmy Olsen, is turtle boy. He's three stories tall, and looks a bit green and scaly, like a turtle.
• Superman is rescued by the Newsboy Legion in their Wondrous Whiz Wagon several separate times.
• To clarfiy that this was no fluke, the new Superboy is rescued by the Newsboy Legion in his first appearance.
• Superman gets turned into two separate color-coded copies of himself made up of lightning.
• Superman dies, and is replaced by his spritiual successor, a clone, a Kryptonian war machine, and a reanimation of his dead body. This could honestly make a fantastic movie - but it also meets the 'Thor' levels of wackiness this list was founded on.

Deadpool is going to need his own section. Deadpool, thanks to his brain damage, is an unreliable narrator. That means he can say things that the editors won't allow any trusted source of information to say.

For example, Deadpool can repeatedly point out that Squirrell Girl is, by any reasonable assessment of her win/loss record, the most fearsome character in the Marvel comics universe.

• ✓ The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division
• Bad guy finds out that a non-agent S.H.I.E.L.D. accountant does not make a good hostage.
• ✓ Bad guy finds out that non-agent S.H.I.E.L.D. staff still take S.H.I.E.L.D. field training. (Maria Hill vs Loki, Phil Coulson, in general.)
• ✓ Sentient Worlds Observation and Response Department
• Advanced Idea Mechanics (Hinted at in WestView but unconfirmed.)
• The Council of Reeds
• The West Coast Avengers
• The Great Lakes Avengers
• Alpha Flight - The Canadian Avengers
• The Metal Men - Alloy themed shapeshifting metal androids who just want to be a real boy (like Pinnochio). Some of them are very soft metals making them bad at super-hero stuff.

• ✓ The Thanos Copter. It's a 1970s earth helicopter painted with bright yellow paint. It has the word 'Thanos' written on the side in purple letters.
• Thanos rides in the 'Thanos Copter' during his battle with Squirrell Girl
• The Comics Stone
• The Ego Stone
• Citizen V's flying V Wing

Here be spoilers for the comics - and maybe for the movies.

• The Porcupine saves Captain America's life and becomes an Avenger.

• Peter Parker's friend Ned becomes the Hobgoblin - a villain who glides around on a surpluss Green Goblin glider and uses magic and pumpkin bombs to terrorize New York.

• The Spot succumbs to his one weakness - getting punched back, through those same holes in reality.

• Various villains break good by getting shot by sin eater.

• ✓ A younger more innocent Loki hops around the time trying to prevent his own future evil.

• ✓✓ Wilson Fisk - whose powers are wealth, evil, careful planning, minions, and being a pretty big guy - fights hand-to-hand when all else fails - and wins every one-on-one fight he ever particpates in, with rare exceptions.

• Norman Osborne - recovering goblin mask wearing psychopath - is the real hero at the end of the Secret Invasion.

• Iron Man breaks bad and has to get in a knock-down drag-out fight with a younger more altrustic version of himself. The younger version wins and vows not to break bad later.

• Later, Iron Man breaks bad and has to get in a knock-down drag-out fight with an AI backup of his younger more altrusistic self. The AI backup is the hero of the story. The ending of the battle is cut short by the literal end of the world, which neither Iron Man does anything to prevent.

• Iron Man's AI backup finds a young girl who built her own iron suit, and declares itself her mentor. She is not enthused, and the AI is arguably not very helpful.

• Spider Man 2099's best friend is basically a slinky.

• Spider Man 2099 has all the powers of a spider, including a venomous bite.

• Doom 2099 turns out to be a decent guy just trying to get by in 2099, because Doom (or a clone of Doom) without the resources to threaten the planet is a pretty solid friend, employer and occassional hero.

• Dr. Doom, when he lacks the resources the threaten the planet is a pretty solid friend, employer and occassional hero.

• Dr. Doom is a good uncle who only wants the best for his niece.

• Dr. Doom's niece is almost certainly the most important person in any and all timelines, and occassionally relies on her despotic dictator uncle for sound life advice.

• Reed Richards has trouble balancing his cross multiverse collaboration with his other selves with raising a family.

• Most versions of Reed Richards have collected the infinnity stones and are using them to terraform their reality for the betterment of all sentients.

• Our version of Reed Richards never got around to collecting the infinity stones because he has a family.

• Our version of Reed Richards has to deal with Namor (flappy wing feet) constantly trying to woo his wife away from their family.

• Our version of Reed Richard's homeschool with a some mole people, an evil super scientist's clone and a robot dragon.

• Our version of Reed Richards has to fight for custody in court over the evil super scientists clone.

• Our version of Reed Richards - the one who cannot even gather the infinity stones - was doing the important work all along raising his family, because his kids are way more powerful and critical to the timeline than the (infinity stone gathering)k Council of Reeds ever was.

• Top tier assassins for hire, and Deadpool, get into a prolonged murderous contest so that one of them can blackmail the other into fixing a hobo's brain damage.

• A dead villain's henchman with a healing factor wants to be the very best, like no one ever was.

• Task Master's secret handler is his forgotten wife and a current S.H.E.I.L.D. agent.

• The Punisher becomes the Ghost Rider

• The Punisher Ghost Rider becomes a herald of Galactus

• The Punisher Ghost Rider Herald of Galactus time travels back in time to kidnap Thanos and raise him better.

• The Punisher Ghost Rider Herald of Galactus time travels back in time to kidnap Thanos and raise him better results in the exact Thanos we already had - what a shock.

• Doctor Octopus does a Freaky Friday with Peter Parker, becoming "The Superior Spider Man". He's much better at being Spider-Man than Peter was.

• Spider-Man's clone who wants Peter's life back

• Spider-Man's other clone who is really depressed

• Spider-Man's other other clone who isn't taking being a clone seriously.

• Spider-Man (Miles Morales) three clones.

• ✓ Nick Fury leads a secret spy agency from a flying aircraft carrier. I still cannot believe they included this.

• ⮎ Nick Fury has a flying car.

• Nick Fury leads an army of spies and secret agents in flying cars in an all-out sky-filling attack on an equally secret bad guy base.

• The Klaw convinces The Beyonder that Captain America is an invincible boogey-man.

• Squirrell Girl defeats Doctor Doom in her first appearance.

• Squirrell Girl defeats Thanos single-handedly.

• Thanos' defeat at the hands of Squirrell Girl is unsurprisingly not prevented by his use of his 'Thanos Copter'.

• Squirrell Girl saves earth from Galactus, but not single-handedly. She has substantial help from her sidekick Tippy-Toe - a small squirrell who wears a pretty bow.