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Tag: Hellboy

  • Best Superhero Movies on Netflix (January 2026)

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    There was a time when most blockbuster movies and popular television series found their way onto Netflix. Yet as the market for streaming grew, the amount of superhero movies on the service decreased. However, Netflix still hosts some of the best superhero movies ever made.

    What are the best Superhero movies on Netflix as of January 2026?

    Today, Netflix is more frequently associated with superhero streaming series than movies. They produced a number of mature series based on the world of Marvel Comics, like Daredevil. They also stream most of the Arrowverse shows based on DC Comics, thanks to a long-running licensing deal with The CW. Despite that, and most of these properties slowly making their way to Disney+ and HBO Max, there are still some fine superhero movies to be found on Netflix.

    Hellboy (2004)

    In 1944, a group of Nazi sorcerers led by the infamous Rasputin tried to summon several demons into their service. Thanks to the efforts of an Allied strike force and scholar Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm, they failed. However, an infant demon was discovered in the aftermath. Broom adopted this Hellboy as his own son, and trained him to become a force for good.

    Six decades later, Broom and Hellboy are employed by the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. With their aid, the BPRD have become humanity’s first line of defense against various monsters and magicians. Unfortunately, Rasputin’s allies have resurrected him, and they are determined to finish what they have started.

    There have been four films to date based upon Dark Horse Comics‘ superhero Hellboy and two cinematic reboots. Despite this, many feel that the first effort remains the best. This is largely due to the efforts of Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who scripted and directed the film. It is also thanks to Ron Perlman‘s masterful performance as the noble demon. It is also notable as the only Hellboy film adaptation to date to merit a sequel.

    The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

    Peter Parker is a brilliant but socially awkward teenager with dreams of becoming a scientist. This leads him to seek out a former colleague of his father, Dr. Curt Connors, who is studying cross-species genetics. A lab accident leads to Peter being bitten by a genetically-altered spider and becoming something new… The Amazing Spider-Man.

    When Connors is similarly transformed into a monstrous lizard man, Spider-Man must step up to save the city. This is made more difficult thanks to the efforts of NYPD Captain George Stacy, who thinks Spider-Man is more menace than superhero. This, in turn, endangers Peter’s romance with classmate Gwen Stacy, who just happens to be Captain Stacy’s daughter.

    Marc Webb faced a serious challenge following after Sam Raimi in developing a new Spider-Man film franchise. It is debatable how well he succeeded. However, The Amazing Spider-Man does have a devout fandom for several reasons.

    Many fans prefer Andrew Garfield‘s more wise-cracking take on Peter Parker than the more brooding variant played by Tobey Maguire. Another selling point for the movie is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and her chemistry with Andrew Garfield. Such is her popularity that many hope she may still find her way into the MCU as Spider-Gwen.

    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

    Miles Morales was a smart student, struggling to fit in and live up to the standards of his NYPD officer father. Chance leads to his being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining powers similar to those of the city’s greatest hero, Spider-Man. It also leads to Miles being entrusted with the only way to stop New York’s worst crime-boss from traveling between dimensions and wrecking reality after Spider-Man dies.

    In over his head and untrained in his new powers, Miles doesn’t think it is in him to be a hero. Fate intervenes again, giving him an unlikely teacher in the form of another Peter Parker from another world. Unfortunately, this Spider-Man is not the superhero he once was. However, with more and more Spiders showing up, Peter will have to remember what comes with great power. And Miles will learn that anyone can wear the mask.

    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a revelation upon its release. Beyond being a blockbuster success, it was a critical smash. Even those critics who normally turn up their noses at superhero movies praised the film for its innovative concept and revolutionary animation. It ultimately earned 52 industry awards, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for Best Animated Feature Film.

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

    There have been many incarnations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Despite this, their story did not differ much from film to film, or cartoon to cartoon. That changed with the 2023 animated superhero movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

    The film opens with the standard origin of four baby turtles and a rat being mutated into humanoid creatures by mutagenic ooze. However, this group of turtle boys hide themselves from the world because of their foster father Splinter’s fear of humanity. Not because of some need to maintain a superhero secret identity. Despite this, his sons long to be a part of the world above their home in the sewer.

    The existence of the Ninja Turtles is uncovered by aspiring teen journalist April O’Neil, after they recover her stolen moped. This leads to a partnership, as the TMNT help April investigate a series of crimes tied to the sinister TCRI. It also leads to the discovery of another found family of mutants, pressured into a life of crime by their charismatic leader, Superfly.

    Mutant Mayhem was notable for being one of the few times the Ninja Turtles actually seemed to act like real teenagers. It was also marked by a unique visual aesthetic, and for how well it merged ideas taken from a wide scope of earlier adaptations. The end result was a reboot that won over a new generation of fans while satisfying the old guard.

    KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

    Long ago, demons preyed on humanity. Hither came three young women, warrior poets who mixed song and sorcery to fight the demons. They created the Honmoon; a mystic barrier that limited the power of demons on Earth. Through the centuries that followed, three women in a generation would be chosen as the new guardians of the Honmoon. Today, those guardians are Huntrix – a K-pop idol group consisting of rebellious Mira, innocent Zoey, and confident Rumi.

    Huntrix are challenged in popularity by a demon-backed idol group called the Saja Boys. This leads to a battle of the bands for the souls of the world. However, Rumi has a secret; a half-demon heritage that threatens to break up the band and her friendships with Zoey and Mira.

    Some may question the inclusion of KPop Demon Hunters on a list of superhero movies. Certainly it is more heavily influenced by Korean culture and mythology than traditional comic book heroics. Yet at its core, the movie is a magical girl story, with summoned weapons, colorful costumes, and secret identities. That makes it a superhero movie by most metrics, in terms of story if nothing else.

    How we picked the best Superhero Movies on Netflix in 2026

    As noted earlier, there is little in the way of superhero movies on Netflix in 2026. However, there were still enough titles to make narrowing the list down to a top-five difficult. To that end, these movies were assessed based upon their influence, awards won, and success in establishing an on-going franchise.

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    Matt Morrison

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  • 10 Creepy-Cool Items You Can Buy From Guillermo del Toro’s Collection

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    Guillermo del Toro isn’t just an Oscar-winning filmmaker—he’s a diehard fan of all things horror, especially monsters. He famously has an entire dwelling, dubbed Bleak House, to contain his wonderfully grim collection of art, artifacts, props, and other covetable items, but even someone with del Toro’s generous resources understands the importance of downsizing from time to time. An upcoming auction will serve to give some of his treasures new homes.

    In a Heritage Auctions press release (with an accompanying video interview), del Toro explained why he’s trimming a small corner of his Bleak House inventory. “I have collected for decades,” he said. “I believe that collecting is not owning. Collecting is protecting, a sacred duty, being a keeper of a flame, an acolyte.”

    But the recent Los Angeles wildfires made him expand his thinking on that front. “This predicament has made me aware of the impossible size of the collection and the responsibility to share this meticulously curated treasure trove with others who might accept the vow to save these pieces of culture and beauty for the generations that follow.”

    We’d love to “accept the vow,” but as you might expect from such a high-caliber horror nerd, the stuff’s not exactly budget-friendly. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t drool over pictures and imagine the possibilities.

    Here are 10 items from the del Toro auction that we’re gazing at with especially longing eyes; fans of the director and all things spooky should head to the Heritage Auctions site to learn more, including how to bid, and see the full inventory. The auction kicks off September 26.

    Here’s a description of each item:

    Top row:

    Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein Chapter 12 Published Illustration Plate Original Art from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Novel Adaptation (Marvel, 1977-1983); starting bid $200,000.

    Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal, 2008), Ron Perlman “Hellboy” Screen Used Hero “Big Baby” Shotgun with (6) Shells; starting bid $50,000.

    Pacific Rim (Warner Bros., 2013), Screen Used Hero Gipsy Danger Jaeger Escape Pod; starting bid $10,000.

    Second row:

    The Shape of Water (Fox Searchlight, 2017), Full-body Conceptual Clay Maquette for Amphibian Man; starting bid $3,000.

    Mike Mignola – Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #4 Splash Page 10 Original Art (Dark Horse, 1994); starting bid $26,000.

    Bernie Wrightson – Meat Loaf “Dead Ringer” Final Album Cover Painting Original Art (Epic, 1981); starting bid $80,000.

    Third row:

    Cronos (Grupo del Toro, 1992), Guillermo del Toro Original Early Concept Sketch of Vampire; starting bid $4,000.

    Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun (Katherine Tegen Books, 2019), Original Illustration Art by Allen Williams; starting bid $3,000.

    H.R. Giger – “The Tourist” Painting Original Art (ca. 1980); starting bid $150,000.

    Fourth row:

    Jean-Girard “Moebius” – The Incal #4 Story Page 9 Original Art (Humanoids, 1985); starting bid $30,000.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Cheryl Eddy

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  • Selma Blair Feels She “Never Really Hit My Stride With Acting” Since Getting “So Sick” After ‘Hellboy’

    Selma Blair Feels She “Never Really Hit My Stride With Acting” Since Getting “So Sick” After ‘Hellboy’

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    Selma Blair is reflecting on her acting career after she “stepped away” when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

    In a recent interview with Glamour for the magazine’s 2023 Women of the Year issue, the actress opened up about what she feels like she missed out on.

    “I still feel like I never really hit my stride with acting because after Hellboy I was so sick that I really stepped away,” Blair said. “And because I wasn’t a huge star, no one came looking.” The actress starred in the 2004 superhero movie as well as its sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, in 2008.

    It wasn’t until 2018 that the Cruel Intentions actress publicly revealed her MS diagnosis, and has been in remission since 2021. However, she previously shared that she went undiagnosed for 40 years.

    Since learning that she has the autoimmune disease, she has put her focus on other ambitions, including embracing disability activism as well as working with disability inclusion specialist Andraéa Lavant, who consults with brands and film sets. But Blair still ponders about her once-acting career and if it’s something she could ever get back to.

    “I had to realize I do love acting,” she said. “I really would love an amazing director to ever think there’s something for me.”

    Blair “do(es) wonder, practically” how she would go about taking on a role if presented with the opportunity. She explained to the outlet that she has less dysphonia when she already knows what she wants to say, so she believes that she can memorize lines.

    “I think that’s the key with everything,” she added. “Really get comfortable with yourself and it doesn’t matter if you falter, because you know where to pick yourself up again. .. I have such a fucking determination.”

    Earlier in the interview, Blair also recalled the “pure exhaustion” she felt following the birth of her now-12-year-old son, Arthur. Now, she knows it was MS flares that she was experiencing for years before her diagnosis.

    Prior to knowing what was causing her symptoms, she told the magazine that she remembered feeling “broken down.” She said, “I was totally out of the workforce, and I couldn’t earn money,” because experts had told her she needed to take it easy.

    She eventually told her manager that she needed to get a job, so she ended up taking on some sporadic work, including commercial projects as well as a role on Anger Management. But even her physical pain made those jobs difficult.

    “I was forcing myself on a plane, and I was getting vertigo. I would wake up, and I couldn’t move,” Blair said. “It was a very hard time in my life, but it was the catalyst to become who I am now.”

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  • Wait, Kurt Busiek & Mike Mignola Made A Final Fantasy Comic??!!

    Wait, Kurt Busiek & Mike Mignola Made A Final Fantasy Comic??!!

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    I’m not a full-time comics guy, but I certainly have my favourites. And Hellboy might be my most favourite of all, so to have gone decades without knowing that its creator Mike Mignola worked on a Final Fantasy comic has blown my weekend wide open.

    Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender

    Famed comics author Kurt Busiek, best known for his superhero work on stuff like Superman and The Avengers, told a story over the weekend on Twitter about a comic he and Mignola teamed up for in the early 90s. “Every time someone starts talking about the unreleased FINAL FANTASY comic I wrote years ago”, he says, “there’s a spate on online news articles and discussion, and they all seem to get the story wrong.”

    I somehow didn’t even know this was a story, so definitely enjoyed Busiek’s recounting of it, which for some will be a correction to older stories that got it “wrong”, but for me is one of the coolest “what if” tales in video game adaptation history.

    Busiek’s retelling was over a number of Tweets, so I’ve pasted the full text below (with a couple of capitalisation edits), but if you want to read them as the site intended you can start here:

    Mike Mignola did great-looking covers for it, but he didn’t draw the interiors. Dell Barras did, and he finished about an issue and a half before the plug was pulled. I think I got three (of four) issues written.

    It was not an adaptation of the game. The project started as an original adventure set in the world of FINAL FANTASY I, but after Disney Comics had approved my outline for it, Squaresoft decided they wanted to tie in to the forthcoming game, now known as FINAL FANTASY IV. I was kinda saddened by this, because…..I liked the story I’d come up with, and I liked that it was about low-level characters who were basically trying to survive, and the new game was about high-ranking people who were in charge of armies and countries and such, which was more confining, but so it goes.

    So they paid me a kill fee for my first outline, and I did a new outline that used the characters from the upcoming game but told a new story in that world, rather than adapting the game. They liked that fine.

    Some folks have said that clearly I hadn’t played FFIV or I wouldn’t have wanted to make changes they didn’t like. That’s true, but it’s because FFIV wasn’t done yet. This was before it had even been released in Japan. I worked off an overall bible and character design art.

    I’ve seen it reported that I’ve said it was a bad comic and that it’s good that it didn’t come out. I’m pretty sure that I said it wasn’t my best work (I had to put it in a hurry for reasons mentioned above) but it was a solid story. And I’ve said FINAL FANTASY fans would…..not like it if it was published today, because they’d bring all their knowledge of the FF lore that’s been built up over the past 30 years to it, and it wouldn’t match that; it’d seem like heresy. But I would have been fine with it coming out back then.

    I’ve seen people saying I wanted to change the character names, because I didn’t understand who they were. The stuff they say I didn’t understand wasn’t in the character descriptions I was given, and for all I know didn’t exist yet. Maybe yes, maybe no. But I asked…..SquareSoft about the names, and they encouraged me to change them, with an eye toward using the new names in the US release of the game. So you can be grateful the comic never happened, or Cid might have been called “Lord Blast” for the past 30+ years!

    SquareSoft started talking with me about hiring me to be their in-house “Americanizer,” because they liked the stuff I was doing. But I’d just moved to a new area, and the job would have meant moving to the Seattle suburbs, and I was ambivalent about that. They may have…..been, too, because for whatever reason, we didn’t talk about that job for very long.

    But if it had come up in 1991, it’d have been part of the whole thing; if it was finished today it’d be this weird out-of-continuity thing that got everything “wrong.”

    A console staple
    Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

    The idea these three guys (Barras is perhaps better known for his animation work, on everything from the original Transformers to Spider-Man) could have worked on a Final Fantasy comic, of all things, is interesting enough. The fact we could have had Busiek serve as some kind of Localisation Guy, naming and renaming characters, is even wilder. Lord Blast!

    If you want to see some of Mignola’s covers, issue #4 is here, while another shared by Busiek is below:

    Image for article titled Wait, Kurt Busiek & Mike Mignola Made A Final Fantasy Comic??!!

    Illustration: Mike Mignola

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    Luke Plunkett

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