Fresh off of the Avengers proving that you can make a successful movie with half a dozen recognizable actors and established franchises ? who knew?! ? you have to expect there are calls going back and forth about how to rip off its success and make some quick cash.

Obviously, a reboot of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four can’t be that far away, and DC is confident they can make a Justice League movie with a new Batman and not piss people off too bad, but what is left for the greedy, industry ruining producers that don’t have their greasy hands all over the rights to a major property?

Thankfully, plenty. There are more stables of super powered cast offs than there are failed Fox mid-season sitcoms. While walking down the landscape of comic book heroes, you couldn’t throw a strange glowing rock without hitting a desecrated corpses of various slapped together groupings that couldn’t carry their own monthly.

Nobody should ever think the Darkstars, the Champions, or that time Aquaman decided to start a new Justice League in Detroit would actually make a dime, but the sheer volume of crap that comic book creators have thrown at their walls to see what stuck has given rise to a healthy number of lower profile superhero teams that could make somebody some money on the big screen.

As long as you don’t let Brett Ratner direct it, of course.

Civic Minded Five



While the Civic Minded Five are entirely terrible at fighting crime, which is surprising considering they include such luminaries as Mr. Envelope and Captain Mucilage, I fully back them getting a movie. Mostly because it would mean we get a chance to see Patrick Warburton as the Tick again. Seriously Fox, we could make a superhero movie about the idiot executive that keeps canceling all your good shows so they can greenlight stuff like Life on a Stick.

Legion of Super-Pets

Look, I’m not going to pretend the Legion of Super Pets wasn’t a truly awful idea. Comet the Super-Horse, Beppo the Super-Monkey, Streaky the Supercat, and Badgie the Super-Honey-Badger weren’t exactly going to make DC a million dollars in comic form, but if a director can’t figure out how to make some serious cash from a movie about super powered animals they probably shouldn’t be employed. Also I might have made up the Super-Honey-Badger thing, so feel free to steal that one.

Runaways



Runaways are a group of heroes who have, as their name suggests, ran away from their super villain parents. What? No, not the Joan Jet group. They don’t have any super powers as far as I know, except maybe if we count Kristen Stewart’s thousand yard stare and emotionless acting skills as a superpower.

The Exiles



Comic books really love having multiple realities. More characters die from their monthlies going out of print or direct shots from the retcon laser than all the Apocalypses combined. When entire planets, universes, and realities get blinked out of existence, sometimes the super powered cats (in the beatnik sense and not the animal sense, we already covered the Super-Pets) who inhabit them get to exist outside of time and space to iron out the creases in other realities. Sort of like Quantum Leap but way more spandex. And death. What more do you need for box office success?

The Deviants



In the 90s, comic book companies stumbled over each other in order to see who could be the darkest and edgiest of all of them. Wildstorm did a particularly good job of this, especially with the series DV8. The Deviants were darker than a David Lynch film, edgier than a coke razor, and none of them were very concerned with being superheroes when there was just so much sex and murder to be had.

The Authority



So the comic book dorks reading this list, or who have read other stuff I’ve written here about comics, have to have seen this choice coming. I let my hard-on for the late great Wildstorm and their comics be known quite often. When DC shuttered them for good, I went broke buying forties to pour out on my front porch. So it is no surprise that I think The Authority needs themselves a few big budget movies.

The series got a little hit or miss after Mark Millar’s run ended, but before that this is a series begging for a movie. How nobody in DC’s movie department has figured out that a group of hyperseuxal occasionally ultra violent heroes attempting to eliminate corruption and maybe overthrow the American government in the process would make a few bags of money, I don’t know.

Great Lakes Avengers

I’m going to be honest with you here, if you don’t want to see Squirrel Girl ? the single most powerful superhero in the Marvel Universe ? on the big screen, you have less taste than a glass of water.