Superheroes on Screen - Retrospective 1994

The year when C-listers were king:

1994__________________

Somebody Stop Me! The Jim Carrey machine was going into full swing with this adaptation of the Dark Horse character who when donning Loki's mask could do pretty much anything. This light hearted action comedy was a pretty big success for a lesser know hero, banking over $100 million. The follow up, Son of the Mask, however, was an abomination.

This film may be best know for the tragic accident resulting in the death of the star Brandon Lee. It performed moderately well and spawned a couple of sequels.

A year earlier, The Meteor Man, a parody of Superman bombed, so obviously it was time for a parody of Batman. Thanks Damon for the memories.

Some accused The Shadow of copying the Burton Batman, but this is actually a worth while movie in the vein of the pulp heroes The Rocketeer and The Phantom.

A near miss. People who hate on the recent Fantastic Four films should be grateful that this one never got a real release. The Thing is dang ugly, and the others arent much better.

This DtV followed up Sam Raimi's (pre-Spidey) Darkman film.

In animation, this Spider-Man series was pretty notable in its epic season long stories with multiple guest heroes. Not as good as the Batman series of the same era, but still fun. The fact that Spider-Man was not allowed to punch becomes pretty distracting once you are aware of the limitation. Also, CG cityscapes looked atrocious, even back then. In the last episode, Spider-Man came to our universe and met Stan Lee.

Cancelled after two short seasons, this series boasted many guest appearances by Iron Man's Avenger buddies as they faced off against the Mandarin.

A pretty funny show that is kind of a parody, but kind straight at the same time, this blue guy got 3 seasons.

There you have it, a year we could probably have lived without, but a couple of note worthy products. This definitely wasn't yet the golden age of Superheroes on Screen.