The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the contemporary blockbuster ecosystem so thoroughly and for so long now, to the point where it's getting ridiculous, that it may sometimes be easy to forget that there's a whole section of the Hollywood Venn diagram that excludes it while still including Marvel. Although there have been a whopping 34 MCU films (so far), there have also been 39 non-mcu films throughout history based on Marvel Comics publications -- and that's not even counting the ones adapted from comics published by Marvel offshoots, such as "Kick-Ass" and the "Kingsman" and "Men in Black" franchises.

Not for nothing, a lot of those non-mcu films have been pretty darn amazing. There's an argument to be made that, between the "X-Men" and "Spider-Man" series in the 2000s, Marvel movies were shaping and defining superhero cinema as we know it long before the MCU. Even the most critically renowned Marvel movie ever is not,...