Comic book movies are all the rage these days. We have Marvel breaking box office records with Avengers: Endgame and DC making Oscars history with Joker landing 11 nominations. With Black Widow and Wonder Woman 1984 coming this summer, and Morbius and Eternals later in the year, it doesn't look like the trend will be ending any time soon.

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But not every comic book movie is so obvious about its four-color origins. Some of these movies barely mention that they're based on comics. Everyone knows that Spider-Man, Superman and the other spandex-wearing men and women of the superhero movies first showed up on newsstands, but there are plenty of movies you may not know are based on comics. Here are 10 of them.

10 Ghost World

 

 

Nine years before she made her Marvel debut as Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson gained critical acclaim for playing Rebecca in Ghost World. The movie, based on the Daniel Clowes comic, follows best friends and recent high school graduates, Enid and Rebecca, as they find their bond being tested over the summer. With a new job at a coffee shop, Rebecca finds herself more interested in clothes than hanging around, and Enid becomes obsessed with a lonely middleaged man named Seymour. Ghost World shot Scarlett Johansson to stardom, and the movie was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

9 Bulletproof Monk

Comic book movies were just starting to take off in 2003 with the X-Men 2, Hulk, and Daredevil hitting screens. American Splendor, based on the autobiographical comics of Harvey Pekar, was a critical hit that played up its connection to a comic. On the other end of the spectrum was Bulletproof Monk. Starring Chow Yun-fat, Seann William Scott, and Jaime King, Bulletproof Monk was based on the comic of the same name by Brett Lewis and Michael Avon Oeming. The marketing for the movie didn't mention its comics roots, and while that may not have helped the film's box office chances, it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

8 Atomic Blonde

Based on The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, Atomic Blonde pushed its connections to John Wick more than the comic it came from. The movie was directed by David Leitch, a stuntman turned director who helped make John Wick the franchise we all know and love today. Leitch co-directed the first John Wick before signing on to direct Deadpool 2.

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Before he made Deadpool 2, Leitch teamed up with Charlize Theron and James McAvoy to bring Atomic Blonde to the big screen. The movie was met with good reviews and proved to be a box office success, making $100 million off of a $30 million dollar budget.

7 Cowboys & Aliens

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg must have thought he was living in a dream. His comic, Cowboys & Aliens, was going to be made into a big-budget movie starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford with Jon Favreau directing. How could a movie by the guy who turned Iron Man into one of the biggest superheroes of all time that starred James Bond and Indiana Jones not be a smash success? Suddenly the comic he came up with (it was actually written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley with art by Dennis Calero and Luciano Lima) was sure to be a massive movie franchise.

Sadly for Rosenberg, the reviews were poor and the box office was worse. The movie, with a budget of $168 million made just $174 million worldwide. There would be no Cowboys & Aliens 2.

6 Men In Black

Men-in-Black

Lowell Cunningham was working as a factory security guard when he wrote The Men In Black for Aircel Comics. The series, which featured art by Sandy Carruthers, came out in 1990 and while it had its fans, it wasn't a huge hit. That all changed in 1997 when the comic was made into a movie starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

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Men In Black was a box office smash, spawning three sequels, an animated series, video games and even a ride at Universal Studios Florida. While Men In Black: International wasn't a hit at the box office, a franchise like this likely won't stay dormant for long.

5 The Diary Of A Teenage Girl

The story of a 15-year-old girl who dreams of being a cartoonist losing her virginity probably isn't the first thing that pops into your hear when you think "comic books," but that's what Phoebe Gloeckner's The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures is about. The graphic novel was turned into a critically acclaimed film by first time writer-director Marielle Heller. The Diary of a Teenage Girl also gets to brag about being Kristen Wiig's first comic book movie, beating Wonder Woman 1984 by five years.

4 Faust: Love of the Damned

Based on Tim Vigil and David Quinn's x-rated superhero horror comic, Faust: Love of the Damned tells the tale of John Jaspers, a heartbroken man who sells his soul to a man known only as M so he can get revenge on the mobster who killed his girlfriend. As you can imagine, selling your soul to random people never goes well, and John finds himself working as an assassin for the devil.

The movie, which is about as violent and sexual as the comic, received mixed reviews but has become something of a cult classic, even showing up on RedLetterMedia's Best of the Worst in 2018.

3 Hardware

Written and directed by Richard Stanley, 1990's Hardware was made for a paltry $1.5 million dollars and went on to become a cult classic. While the movie found the majority of its audience when it came to VHS, it became hard to find in the home video market and didn't come out on DVD until 2009. That was because the movie had plagiarised a short story from Judge Dredd Annual 1981. The comic story, titled "SHOK!" was created by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill, whose names were added to the credits for all future releases.

2 Red

Red movie adaptation

Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner probably didn't expect their three-issue Wildstorm series about a retired black-ops CIA agent to be turned into a movie. They certainly couldn't have expected the movie to star Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren. Most of all, there was no way the would have expected the movie to be a critical and financial success that would spawn a sequel. And most of the people who made Red into a box office hit probably still don't realize that it's based on a comic.

1 A History of Violence

A History of Violence Movie

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke, A History of Violence tells the story of Tom Stall, the owner of a small-town diner who becomes a celebrity after killing two would-be robbers. Having his face on the news is a real problem for Tom after a gangster from Philidelphia becomes convinced that Tom is actually Joey Cusack, a former member of the Irish Mob.

Directed by David Cronenberg, A History of Violence was nominated for two Academy Awards. Rumor has it that even Cronenberg didn't know the story was based on a graphic novel until after he agreed to make the movie. How's that for not telling people?

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