Tonight is the season finale of The Penguin, the improbably excellent spin-off series of The Batman, elevating DC content to a new high even ahead of James Gunn’s DCU debut. There is some debate about whether it could get a season 2 after all, despite being a miniseries, and also which character might get another spin-off next.
I thought it might be interesting to see how The Penguin stacks up against essentially every other comic book/superhero show in the modern era (the last decade or so), in terms of how it’s scored. And we can see whether we agree with this list or not:
- X-Men ’97 – 99% critic score, 94% audience score
- Invincible – 99% critic score, 88% audience score
- Doom Patrol – 98% critic score, 77% audience score
- Ms. Marvel – 98% critic score, 80% audience score
- My Adventures with Superman – 98% critic score, 81% audience score
- Harley Quinn – 97% critic score, 86% audience score
- Watchmen – 96% critic score, 57% audience score
- The Penguin – 95% critic score, 91% audience score
- Agents of SHIELD – 95% critic score, 91% audience score
- Batman: Caped Crusader – 94% critic score, 56% audience score
Wow this list is…a lot to process, and personally, I think a lot of it is wrong. I would probably rate The Penguin at #2 ahead of everything else besides X-Men ’97 and guess what? That’s actually what audience scores would say too, as it would be tied at #2 with Agents of SHIELD in terms of audience score. I think fans got this one right.
Invincible is good, season 2 brought it down from being extremely good, however. Doom Patrol is solid but overrated. Ms. Marvel may have one of the best-cast heroes in the MCU with Iman Velani, but the show itself is just okay. Four of the ten here are animated series, which is fine, given the quality of those shows. I’m not quite sure why fans hated Caped Crusader and Watchmen so much, I’m guessing there were some past controversies I’ve forgotten about at this point.
It’s an interesting breakdown, 4/10 animated, only 1 MCU show (WandaVision, Loki, Hawkeye, Daredevil are all low 90s, but didn’t make the cut). The only non-animated DC series besides Penguin is Doom Patrol. The Boys at 93% is barely outside the top 10.
So yes, it’s technically #8 on this list with critics by a few percentage points, but it’s #2 in my heart, and certainly #1 for live action. Do you agree with that, or would you rank them differently?
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
