The Best Comic Book Directors and How they Rank

With the resurgence of the superhero genre and comic book adaptations in general in the late 1990’s, there has also been an emergence of directors who seem to be specialists in this genre of film. This is a list acknowledging these perhaps lesser known film makers and seeing to what degree they are specialists.

Bryan Singer

Bryan Singer had already established himself as a great director in general when he provided films such as The Usual Suspects in the mid 90’s, but since his directing of X-Men in 2000 his name has become synonymous with comic book films. X-Men and X2 both led the way he way for how future comic book adaptations should be approached. Superman Returns...not so much, but then he won us all back with arguably his best comic book adaptation yet X-Men: Days of Future Past

Overall Rating: 8/10

Joss Whedon

This man has never been a stranger to comic books as he has had a successful and critically acclaimed run as the Astonishing X-Men’s lead writer, while also successfully adaption his TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a long running comic series. Whedon’s really moved into the public eye which his 2012 release of The Avengers, the first cinematic venture into a film with a vast number of superheroes, and boy did he pull it off, as I’m sure he will do with Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi is something of a veteran of the modern superhero film, because as early as 1990 Raimi had created his own superhero in Darkman and made the sort of brooding, dark adaptations we are used to seeing more recently. He then went on to make two of the most quintessential comic book adaptations in the form of Spiderman 1 & 2. He also did Spiderman 3 though...he loses points for that one.

Overall Rating: 7/10

Christopher Nolan

There is no possible way i could claim Chris Nolan is a strictly ‘comic book’ director, rather, he is one on the finest directors of the past 20 years. However, his Dark Knight trilogy is an example of a experienced film maker, making comic book adaptations that will not be seen as great comic book films, but great films in general, and in an arguably snobbish film era we live in, that takes some doing

Overall Rating: 9/10

Matthew Vaughn

Matthew Vaughn is different from almost everyone else on this list in that he is not well known for directing traditional comic book adaptations (bar X-men: First Class, which was excellent), but rather for directing more obscure comic books in the form of Kingsman and Kick-Ass. The two aforementioned films really complimented the directing style that I feel Vaughn is most comfortable with, and bring out the best of Mark Millars comics.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Conor M.