We weren't sure exactly what to expect from Ryan Reynolds's silly and violent Deadpool, but certainly no one anticipated it to be breaking box office records. Now that that success is in the bank, we know that an R-rated comic book movie really can make a killing.

Jessica Jones and the upcoming Preacher series are laying more groundwork for some decidedly adult comic adaptations in TV land, and here are 14 other titles that are ripe for the jump to the screen in Deadpool's wake:

1. Saga

Image Comics

As well as topping every annual best comics list since its launch in 2012, Fiona Staples and Brian K Vaughan's Saga has never been afraid to give controversy the middle finger - calmly confronting tedious complaints about the portrayal of breastfeeding on the comic's cover and then cheekily doubling down for the collected edition, for instance.

This series deserves a faithful adaptation with all the sex, drugs, strong language and genuine human (well, alien) emotion that made it so loved in the first place.

2. Midnighter

DC Comics

Meet your new favourite superhero, Midnighter - essentially a gay Batman with a healthy sense of irony. We're ready for our first queer on-screen hero, cruising on Grindr with one hand while punching his free fist through a bad guy's head.

Throw in Nightwing (the first Robin and most objectified male character in all of comics) for a cameo and they can continue to expand the DC movie universe while they're at it.

3. Hellblazer

DC Comics

OK, so they've twice tried to bring John Constantine (rhymes with 'wine') to the screen without much success. The big problem: they keep making him too nice.

Third time's the charm with Johnny boy. The right filmmaker needs to understand that he never does anything that isn't in his own interests, and damn the consequences to the people close to him. Mix in a generous dose of demons, booze, cigarettes, sex and bad language and you might have a movie worthy of Constantine. They could even make him bisexual, but we won't hold our breath...

4. The Boys

Dynamite

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson take the superhero genre to its savagely violent conclusion in The Boys, which proved just too much for DC Comics to handle and had to be picked up by another, more daring publisher, Dynamite Entertainment, instead.

The adventures of this group of CIA agents tasked with policing superheroes explores everything from the real collateral damage of superhuman fights in public places (it's not pretty) to the corrupting influence of absolute (super)power. It would make Captain America's tiff with Iron Man look embarrassingly tame by comparison.

5. Afterlife with Archie

Archie Comics

The world of Riverdale was always more of an all-American thing, but that changed in 2013 when the deliciously brutal zombie apocalypse comic Afterlife with Archie gave the whole world something to click with.

If the upcoming Riverdale TV show takes off, there's no good reason not to take all its loveable characters into this alternate world of black magic, fratricide and...er... incest before killing them off one-by-one for our amusement.

6. Sex Criminals

Image Comics

Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals has been a hit of mammoth proportions, and how's this for a premise: a young couple discover that they share the power to freeze time whenever they orgasm.

Throw in a bit of social activism and a group of 'sex police' and you're on the way to an indie comic book movie hit perfect for not watching with your parents.

7. Scalped

DC Comics

Jason Aaron is one of the undisputed kings of Marvel Comics these days, but his roots are in creator-owned titles like Scalped (drawn by RM Guéra), the tale of undercover dealings and crime on a Native American reservation.

A gritty neo-noir with a broad engaging cast, Scalped also wins bonus points for not being another story about a bunch of white guys - which makes it a rarity in comics and would be refreshing in films, too. A TV show was allegedly in the works, but like so many of these things seems to have quietly disappeared.

8. Nextwave

Marvel Comics

It's hard to believe that Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's silly and obscene series got past the gatekeepers of Marvel Comics, but it did and we couldn't be happier.

A group of B-list superheroes fighting broccoli men and angry dragons with no genitals, this is superheroics with the common sense removed and, to be honest, the natural successor to Tim Miller's Deadpool.

9. Black Hole

Charles Burns

A bizarre STI that randomly mutates its victims is tearing through the teenage population of an American suburb in the mid-'70s. The only solution? More sex! Chuck in a murder and lashings of angst and alienation, and you're really on to something.

Gone Girl's David Fincher has been attached to an adaptation of the Charles Burns classic on-and-off for the best part of a decade, and we really can't see why this hasn't happened yet.

10. Stray Bullets

David Lapham

David Lapham's self-published crime epic Stray Bullets follows the adventures of the young, troubled but undeniably hard-as-nails Virginia Applejack down through the years with a large (and frequently highly-disposable) cast.

The strength of the comic isn't so much its extreme violence - and boy does it get violent - but the humanity and complexity it invests in even its most irredeemable characters. Extra marks for the daring filmmaker who manages to incorporate Ginny's bonkers 'Amy Racecar' daydreams into the proceedings.

11. Y: The Last Man

DC Comics

More quality work from Saga's Brian K Vaughan, this time with the excellent Pia Guerra on art duties. Yorick Brown and his monkey Ampersand find themselves the only male survivors of a mysterious event that violently kills all mammals with a Y chromosome.

Exploring gender, science, romance and everything in between in the post-male world, with the help of secret agents and modern-day Amazons galore, it's no surprise that there have been loads of attempts to bring Yorick's emotional journey to the big and small screen, none of which have ever got off the ground.

12. Girls

Image Comics

Ostensibly a story about identical naked alien women that hatch out of eggs that live only to procreate and destroy, the Luna Brothers' series is really the tale a small community tearing itself apart without much help from the invaders from another world.

The profusion of sex and nudity, not to mention the scene where a man has his testicles cut off(!), suggest to us that this probably isn't for kids.

13. Wolverine

Marvel Comics

We know that the third Wolverine film might be looking at an R rating already, but you've got to ask whether musical theatre-loving happy chappy Hugh Jackman can ever bring the edge to Logan that he deserves.

When Jackman finally hangs up his claws, the time will be ripe to get Wolverine back to his berserker fury basics, chopping his way through armies of supervillains, terrorists and ninjas and healing from hideous wounds that might even make Deadpool blink. 'Enemy of the State' or 'Old Man Logan' would be good places to start looking for blood-stained inspiration.

14. Lost Girls

Alan Moore / Melinda Gebbie

Alan Moore really doesn't want anyone adapting his comics, but maybe he would make an exception to finally bring the Melinda Gebbie-illustrated erotic adventures of literary heroines Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling to the screen where they belong.

Oh, sorry - we weren't talking about XXX-rated comic book adaptations, were we? Consider your childhood safe. For now.

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