20 Worst Comic-Book Movies Ever

1.GHOST RIDER (2007)
Sure, it was better than Wicker Man, but this Nicolas Cage-headlined flick — starring Marvel's motorcycle-riding, flame-topped superhero Johnny Blaze, who sold his soul to save his father — was one hot mess, no pun intended. —Kate Ward
2.THE SHADOW (1994)
There once was a time when Alec Baldwin was going to be Hollywood's next great leading man, Penelope Ann Miller was going to be Hollywood's next great leading lady, and Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) was going to be Hollywood's next great action director. Then came The Shadow, an ambitious new take on the old pulp hero that flopped with audiences and critics and effectively dented the movie careers of its headlining talent. It's a shame: the movie is messy with cool retro style and rich ideas — none more so than its darker-than-the-Dark Knight vigilante, a gun-blazing psycho with mystically derived psychic powers — but they fail to gel into a comprehensive (or comprehensible) whole. And the Asian characters, like John Lone's villainous Shiwan Khan, toe the line of racist stereotypes. But its bigger sin is being a shoulda-been, coulda-been missed opportunity for all involved. —Jeff Jensen
3.BARB WIRE (1996)
If you look closely, you'll see that this Pamela Anderson Lee (yes, this was during ''The T-Bone Years'') disaster has pretty much the same plot as Casablanca: She runs a nightclub in 21st-century totalitarian America, and her old flame needs transport papers (here, fancy new eyeballs to pass retinal scans) to get himself and his new honey out of town. Of course, the plot is, ahem, enhanced to take full advantage of the star's particular, ahem, talents. Which consist of wearing clothes that barely keep those talents in check. —Marc Bernardin
4.CATWOMAN (2004)
Halle Berry followed up her historic Oscar-winning turn in Monster's Ball with a Razzie-winning role as the agile, pleather-clad heroine in this abomination of a film. Major props to Berry, though, for actually showing up at the Razzies ceremony to accept her award and deliver a rousing speech that included the brutally honest line: ''I want to thank Warner Bros. for casting me in this piece-of-s--t, god-awful movie.'' We agree. —Kate Ward
5.BRENDA STARR (1992)
The dated comic you always skipped over in the Sunday funnies in favor of Blondie came to life in this 1992 film that follows the ace reporter (Brooke Shields) into the South American jungle, where she scoops a story about a mad scientist trying to bring destruction to the world. And yes, the film really is as bad as it sounds. —Kate Ward
6.THE PHANTOM (1996)
Much like The Shadow before it, The Phantom was an attempt to give new life to an old pulp action hero. Of course, when you cast the impenetrable Billy Zane as ''the Ghost Who Walks'' — the latest in a long line of white African folk heroes who guard against, er, pirates — put him in a ridiculous skintight uni-hero-tard, and ask him to look tough, bad things will happen. Treat Williams looks like he's in a totally different movie, as a power-mad American rich guy. Oh, and this is the movie Catherine Zeta-Jones wishes was not on her résumé. —Marc Bernardin
7.DAREDEVIL (2003)/ELEKTRA (2005)
Daredevil's concept, borrowed from the Marvel comic, was cool — a blind superhero (Ben Affleck) fights crime using his other heightened senses — but the execution brought the film one Gigli away from disaster (see: that bizarre, ill-advised park fight scene). We're still not entirely sure how it spawned the just-as-bad spin-off/sequel, Elektra, whose sole accomplishment was tailoring a super-hot superhero costume for Jennifer Garner. —Kate Ward
8.TANK GIRL (1995)
If ever a comic-book movie should've been a cartoon, this is it. Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's British comic — about a pint-size hellion who liked blowing stuff up, hanging out with mutant kangaroos, and blowing more stuff up — was full of mad, impossible-to-translate energy. And Lori Petty just wasn't cut out for carrying a movie all by herself. Notable only for the casting of Ice-T as one of the aforementioned mutant kangaroos and Naomi Watts as Tank Girl's gal pal, Jet Girl. —Marc Bernardin
9.FANTASTIC FOUR (2005)
Take one beloved comic series, add four bland, overrated actors, and what do you get? A horrible, tedious movie that somehow managed to make a buck — $330 million worldwide, to be exact — and generate one unfortunate franchise. Too bad the script wasn't money — the film's character development was so diluted, it was difficult to determine which of the four was the invisible one. —Kate Ward
10.SHEENA (1984)
My fondness for this movie is directly related to the fact that it's rated PG. See, when I was a downy soft 14-year-old, this movie hit HBO. And HBO back then didn't have too much of a back catalog, so this movie would pop up all the time. Especially when I was home sick from school. Did I mention that Tanya Roberts has a topless bathing scene? (This was back when you could get away with that in a PG movie...thanks for nothing, Steven Spielberg!) And, since PG movies could air during the day, you had a pretty decent shot of being able to flip channels between Transformers and boobs. The rest of the film is mindless pap about Roberts' animal-talking jungle girl saving the wild from crazed mercenaries. But, still... —Marc Bernardin
11.THE PUNISHER (2004)
Who knew the title for this Thomas Jane-John Travolta film would be so fitting? There's likely no better punishment than sitting through this uninspired, mind-numbing revenge thriller. —Kate Ward
12.SUPERGIRL (1984)
This Superman spin-off, starring Helen Slater as the female cousin to the blue-spandexed hero, worked like Hilary Swank in The Next Karate Kid: It didn't. Kara-El, niece of Jor-El, blasts to Earth on a mission to find a power-generating orb — Omegahedron — that had spiraled away from her home city on Krypton. Needless to say, things go haywire when Faye Dunaway gets her hands on the precious rock and wants to rule the world with it. —Youyoung Lee
13.BARBARELLA (1968)
One look at the opening credits to this erotic sci-fi cult favorite — in which Jane Fonda strips in zero gravity — and you'll know exactly what you're getting into. Director Roger Vadim (a.k.a., Fonda's then husband) may have enjoyed the tease, but we just couldn't stop laughing. It's nowhere near a good movie, but, honestly, it doesn't really matter. —Kate Ward
14.HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)
The late Steve Gerber's Marvel Comic of the same name was a trippy countercultural landmark of the '70s. The movie is one of the worst — of any kind — to come along since Plan 9 From Outer Space. We're not gonna tell you anything about what happens in the movie, other than to say that Howard comes to Earth from Duckworld and he knows ''Quack Fu.'' One more thing to blame executive producer George Lucas for. —Marc Bernardin
15.STEEL (1997)
Let's pretend we were in the room for the conversation between Shaquille O'Neal's agent and the folks at Warner Bros. that led to this disaster, rivaled only by Kazaam. AGENT: ''Shaq really likes comic books...he's even got that Superman ''S'' tattooed, somewhere. Do you have a comic movie he could star in?'' WARNER: ''Well, it just so happens that DC killed Superman, and replaced him with a bunch of lame-ass poseurs. And one of them is a giant black dude who carries a big hammer and welds himself a suit of armor.'' AGENT: ''Sounds horrible. Where do we sign?'' —Marc Bernardin
16.SWAMP THING (1982)
In the comics, Swamp Thing — a sentient mass of heroic moss and muck who protects the planet from environmental and supernatural threats — is synonymous with sophisticated storytelling. But in the movies, Swamp Thing is synonymous with cheese, one that took a surprisingly cool character and made him as silly as he/it appeared to be. Wes Craven's low-fi 1982 flick was actually once warmly regarded by many fanboys not yet spoiled by the looming future of super-serious, super-produced superhero movies. It has its charms: the moment where Swamp Thing (Dick Durock, uncomfortably trapped inside a green rubber suit one step more advanced than Sigmund and the Sea Monster) regenerated a limb was kinda cool. Still, the movie's most memorable special effect was Adrienne Barbeau's jiggle. If all we did was entice you to Google for her deleted nude scene, may the good Lord forgive us. And because we usually don't get to drop these, we'd like to say, one more time: Dick Durock. Somewhere, some schlubby porn actor is banging his head against the wall (so to speak) and cursing his lack of imagination. —Jeff Jensen
17.BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)
There are nipples on the Batsuit. Nipples. On. The. Bat. Suit. —Marc Bernardin
18.THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)
It's certainly an extraordinary premise: taking the entire body of Victorian-era sci-fi and fantasy and crafting an elaborate, continuous mythology. In the comics, created by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, the League was a band of monstrous and morally ambiguous adventurers and misfits — the Invisible Man; Captain Nemo; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Allan Quartermain; and Mina Murray, a.k.a., the lady Dracula bit in Bram Stoker's book — that secretly served the British crown and battled the likes of Professor Moriarty and the Martians from War of the Worlds. But the 2003 film version, starring a cranky Sean Connery, is an underfed, overblown fiasco devoid of the geek joy and inspired imagination of the comics. Bad choices and butchery abound, from faithlessness in the adaptation (like adding Tom Sawyer to the British line-up of heroes as a sop to American audiences or giving Murray vampiric superpowers) to a blink-and-it's-over running time. Then again, maybe that's a blessing. —Jeff Jensen
19.SUPERMAN IV: QUEST FOR PEACE (1987)
Did you even know that a fourth installment of the Superman franchise was made? Yeah, thought so. Even a muscled Christopher Reeve and sinister Gene Hackman couldn't save this meteor from hitting, which has the flying crusader impossibly saving seemingly all the landmarks across the globe, like the Statue of Liberty, Mount Etna, and the Great Wall of China. Sadly, he didn't get around to saving his dignity. —Youyoung Lee
20.JUDGE DREDD (1995)
Just the name alone is enough to inspire dread in us. Sylvester Stallone plays an indefatigable cop prowling the ''Cursed Earth,'' where cities are violent and crime is out of control. Unfortunately, he's framed, and sets out a mission to clear his name, with Rob Schneider at his side. Let me say that again, for the cheap seats: WITH ROB SCHNEIDER AT HIS SIDE. —Youyoung Lee