10 Seriously F***ed Up Comic Book Moments We're Never Going To See On The Big Screen
We've seen lots of great comic book moments brought to the big and small screen over the years, but these? They're way too twisted, perverted, and downright sick to ever make it into a live-action adaptation.
Comic books often go to some really weird places, and while the success of adaptations both in theaters and on television has opened the door to studios becoming more willing to stick to the source material, there are some things they simply can't touch. There are a lot of different reasons for that, but what you'll find here is a breakdown of moments we consider to be easily the most f***ed up.
Whether they're too violent, sexually inappropriate, or just really twisted, none of these stand a chance of ever being adapted to live-action. Should they be though? Well, no, not unless the superhero movie genre is going to suddenly take aim not at R-Ratings, but at NC-17s! Some you may be familiar with, but many of these will shock you as you'll never believe just how nuts your favourite comics can get...
10. Green Lantern's 13 Year Old Girlfriend
2011's Green Lantern movie proved that bringing Hal Jordan to the big screen is no easy feat, and while there's a lot of great material featuring the character which could and should be pulled from the comic books, his relationship with a 13 year old member of the Green Lantern Corps definitely isn't one of them. While Arisia started off as a sidekick of sorts to Hal, it quickly became apparent that she had a major crush on him, and that ultimately led to the hero making it clear that he wasn't interested and that she should go after boys her own age.
So far, so good. However, when a heartbroken Arisia used her Green Lantern Corps ring to transform her body into that of a grown woman, Hal's attitude quickly changed. Over the course of just a few pages, he went from rejecting her advances to happily hooking up with Arisia, and he even ended up embarking on a relationship with her (despite the protestations of their fellow Corps members). Bear in mind that Arisia still had the mind of her 13 year old self; it was only her body which looked different now. All in all, this is one seriously screwed up relationship which will never grace the big screen!
9. The Joker Removes A Man's Skin
The Clown Prince of Crime has never treated his henchmen particularly well, but when Lee Bermejo decided to further explore the character's fractured psyche in a limited series which put the spotlight on what the villain gets up to when he's not battling Batman, things got all sorts of f***ed up. Take Monty for example. After letting The Joker down on three separate occasions, an example needed to be made, and that consisted of him having his skin removed from everywhere but his head, hands, and feet. Poor old Monty was then trotted out on stage for everyone to see, before understandably collapsing from his wounds and quickly dying.
What did he do that was so bad? Referring to Killer Croc as an animal, recoiling when The Joker kissed him, and letting his eyes linger for a little too long on Harley Quinn's, ahem, assets! Now, doing anything to annoy The Joker is pretty daft, but did any of that warrant being skinned alive? Whatever the answer to that may be, unless Ben Affleck's Batman movie is going the way of Deadpool by taking aim at an R-Rating, don't expect to see this play out there or in Suicide Squad later this year.
8. Twincest
As twisted as having twins Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch entangled in a romantic relationship may be, Mark Millar deserves credit for only ever really hinting at what they were getting up to behind closed doors during his run on The Ultimates. That makes this no less gross of course, but it's not like we were ever forced to endure scenes of the two fan-favourite heroes making out! Instead, readers were instead left to figure out for themselves just how seriously f***ed up being Magneto's children would make you.
It's a shame then that when the heavy handed Jeph Loeb took over writing duties, he didn't hold back in addressing the fact that these two were hooking up on a regular basis, making sure no one could ever mistake the fact that they didn't just love each other, but were very much IN love too. He then proceeded to have Scarlet Witch killed off and turned Quicksilver into a murderous psychopath, and the whole storyline was a mess. These two have never been more than brother and sister in the regular Marvel Universe and were clearly no more than that in Avengers: Age of Ultron last year too. So, unless Bryan Singer has some really weird plans for the X-Men franchise, expect it to remain that way!
7. Batman Bangs Black Canary After Burning Burglars
Frank Miller's Batman is a pretty messed up dude. Bear in mind this is the Bruce Wayne here who called Robin a retard and made him live in the Batcave eating rats to survive, but this alternate reality version of the Caped Crusader also didn't hesitate to murder the criminals he squared off with (a major departure from the classic Batman fans know and love). When he came across some crooks stealing bleach of all things, Batman ended up pouring it all over them and setting them alight. That alone is pretty bad, but what followed was even more cringeworthy.
After being confronted by Black Canary, the two heroes end up having sex on the rooftop - as said criminals burn in the background - and it's heavily implied that the Dark Knight's endurance in this respect doesn't go beyond more than a few seconds as the Canary goes from being all over Batman to looking at him with disappointment and disgust only seconds later. So, yeah, Miller's Batman basically suits up to overcompensate for being a terrible lover, and none of these plot elements should ever make it into a movie featuring the character!
6. The Invisible Man Gets Raped...To Death
Rumour has it that Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman is being rebooted for the small screen, and while this scene understandably failed to make it into the terrible movie starring Sean Connery, it's a safe bet to say that it will also be left out of the TV show (especially as it's likely going to air on a regular network, and not cable). When it was revealed that The Invisible Man had betrayed the team - something Hyde knew because he was the only on who could actually see their so-called ally thanks to his thermal vision - the character decided to take it upon himself to rape him. To death.
No, you didn't misread that; Hyde actually raped The Invisible Man to DEATH. When he died from his wounds, The Invisible Man's blood started appearing all over Hyde, showing just brutal and vicious an attack it had been. While things thankfully didn't get too graphic, the implied violence is worse in some ways, and this stands out as one of the most brutal and disgusting comic book moments ever. It would take a lot of guts for anyone to adapt this particular moment, that's for sure.
5. Fridged
The death of any superhero's loved one is almost always a significant moment for the character, but that wasn't really the case when Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex DeWitt was murdered. The whole thing was simply used as a plot device to further his story, and the fact that she was stuffed into a refrigerator after her death was too much for a large portion of the fanbase. Frustrated with the indignity of the character's death (did I mention that she had been chopped up before being put in there?) and the way women were constantly used in this way, future Batgirl writer Gail Simone set up a website which created major waves in the comic book industry and coined the term “women in refrigerators” to reference moments like this.
She was able to come up with a list of more than 90 female character who had suffered similarly violent deaths to further a male character's story arc (in Green Lantern's case, it was that one of his villains - Major Force - had discovered his secret identity), and the term "fridged" is still frequently used today. Needless to say, there's no way Warner Bros. will want to stir up a similar amount of controversy, especially when comic book fans are making it clear that they desperately want to see female led superhero movies and more strong women in these adaptations in general.
4. Crossed Does Some Seriously F***ed Up Sh*t
If you're familiar with Garth Ennis' work, you'll no doubt be well aware that he has pushed the boundaries in comics like Preacher and The Punisher on many occasions, but one of the most twisted moments to ever come from the talented scribe was in Crossed. When a virus spreads across the world, the infected - who are left with a burned flesh on their faces in the shape of a cross, hence the title - lose all inhibitions and have no other desires than to perform as many sick, twisted, and evil acts as possible.
One poor schmuck in this series figured that salt could hold off the infected (sort of like how it's sometimes used in ghost movies to ward off spirits), and with the infected closing in, he pours a circle of it around himself, his wife, and their daughter. Unfortunately for them, it most definitely doesn't work, and the next two pages are not easy to sit though. The splash page shows both the husband and wife being raped and gutted, while their child is held in the air and hacked to pieces. Meanwhile, the rest of their attackers stand watching laughing hysterically and pleasuring themselves. As f*cked up moments in comics go, this might just be the most traumatising ever. If by some slim chances Crossed were to be adapted for the big screen, there's no way it would escape the dreaded NC-17 rating with a scene like this included, while TV and cable networks would also never go near it.
3. Superman And Supergirl Sitting In A Tree
If you're at all familiar with the early days of DC Comics, you'll no doubt be well aware that they told some really weird stories back in the 1930s and 40s. Whether it's Bruce Wayne sharing a bed with Dick Grayson or Lois Lane and Lana Lang brainwashing a child Superman into falling in love and marrying them both, their books from that era are packed full of what is now some seriously inappropriate material. However, if you're after an example which will really make you cringe, look no further than the time the Man of Steel admitted that he wanted to marry his 16 year old cousin, Supergirl (he and Green Lantern really need to see the same therapist, huh?).
Superman makes it clear that if it wasn't for the fact it was illegal on Krypton, he'd marry his cousin in a heartbeat and happily start making slow and weird children with her. Despite being rejected by her cousin, Supergirl tracks down an older version of herself in a different reality and Superman is soon hooking up with her because the whole no cousins rule doesn't apply on that Earth apparently. Thankfully, that version of Supergirl couldn't survive on Earth-1, so the "hero" was forced to give up his incest fantasies and go back to pursuing Lois Lane. This really isn't going into Man of Steel 2.
2. The Blob Chows Down On The Wasp
Ultimatum was a comic book event packed full of gross WTF moments. For some reason, Marvel at the time decided to use a catastrophic event to hit the refresh button on the Ultimate Universe, killing off countless characters (Wolverine had his skeleton blown to bits by Magneto, while Quicksilver shot Cyclops in the head) in a bid to shake things up. However, the backlash to the story essentially just helped to bring on the demise of this once very popular alternate reality line, and the death which stands out as being the worst is no doubt what happened to The Wasp.
Mark Miller had brought some much needed diversity to The Avengers by making Wasp of Asian descent during his run on The Ultimates, but Loeb didn't hesitate to kill her off, and did so in the most messed up way he could clearly think of. After drowning off panel when a tsunami hit New York City, it was revealed that The Blob had decided to eat what was left of her. Why exactly he decided to eat the corpse of a person is hard to say, but this was a moment thrown in for the shock factor alone. As Marvel Studios make an effort to bring more diversity to their movies, just don't go into Ant-Man and The Wasp expecting a Blob proxy to subject Evangeline Lilly's Hope Van Dyne to the same fate, because this is a scene best forgotten.
1. Norman Osborn Seduces Barely Legal Teen
The rivalry between Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Norman Osborn/Green Goblin is one of the greatest in comic book history, but J. Michael Straczynski's "Sins Past" jumped the shark in a major way and made things between them way, way too personal. You see, it turns out that when Gwen Stacy went to Paris for a year, it was because she was secretly pregnant with the villain's children after he had seduced her. While she would have been the legal age of consent at the time, this was still wrong in so many ways, especially as it led to Peter admitting that he and Gwen had never had sex and that the Green Goblin likely killed her to cover up the fact she had his children.
Them being twins who grew to adulthood in just a few years because of the Goblin serum within them in one of the most moronic and laziest reveals in recent memory, and this whole story soured Gwen's legacy as Spider-Man's first true love and the sight of her and Normal in the throes of passion is one which the majority of comic book fans would most definitely love to forget. Seeing as "Sins Past" has become one of the most hated stories in the character's history, the chances of Marvel Studios tackling this in their upcoming reboot of the franchise have to be somewhere between slim and none.