‘Spider-Noir’ Is Almost Here — Here Are the Dark Superhero Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Series (or After You’ve Finished It)

Nicolas Cage is back in the trench coat, and the internet cannot stop talking about it. ‘Spider-Noir‘ arrives on Prime Video with eight episodes of Depression-era crime, shadow-soaked streets, and a retired masked vigilante who cannot quite stay retired, and it is already shaping up to be one of the most distinctive comic book shows in years.

Shot in both black-and-white and color, the series strips the superhero genre down to its bones and dresses it in a trench coat, delivering Marvel through the lens of Raymond Chandler. For viewers who are now hungry for more of that moody, morally complicated tone, the good news is that there is a whole ecosystem of dark superhero shows worth diving into.

What Makes ‘Spider-Noir’ Stand Apart from Every Other Dark Superhero Show

Cage plays an aging, down-on-his-luck private investigator in 1930s New York who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero. That setup alone separates ‘Spider-Noir’ from pretty much every other entry in the genre. There are no world-ending stakes, no alien invasions, just a broken man and a city full of rot.

The showrunners on ‘Spider-Noir’ are Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot, with Lightfoot being the creator behind one of the best of Netflix’s Marvel slate, ‘The Punisher’. That pedigree matters enormously, because Lightfoot understands how to build character-driven tension within a superhero framework rather than around it.

The story centers on a gangland boss named Silvermane, played by Brendan Gleeson, who has been the subject of repeated assassination attempts, while Ben Reilly begins to believe something is amiss when a suspected arsonist reveals he can spark fire from his hands. It is pulpy, paranoid, and deeply entertaining.

Li Jun Li plays Cat Hardy, a reimagined version of the classic Black Cat who is a nightclub singer with a secret, fresh off the success of Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’, while Lamorne Morris stars as Robbie Robertson, a dedicated journalist trying to make it in 1930s New York with the odds stacked against him.

The Gritty Comic Book TV Shows That Built This Kind of Storytelling

If ‘Spider-Noir’ is your entry point into darker superhero television, then ‘Jessica Jones’ is the next essential stop. The series features extensive film noir styling, a de-emphasizing of superhero tropes, and a thematic bleakness that feels appropriately self-contained. Like Ben Reilly, Jessica is a private investigator whose powers are almost beside the point compared to the psychological weight she carries.

‘Jessica Jones’ is a character-driven neo-noir series that delves into complex themes such as trauma, abuse, and redemption through the lens of its titular private investigator turned reluctant superhero, with a grounded approach to storytelling that makes it a standout entry in the Marvel television landscape. That grounded approach is precisely the DNA that ‘Spider-Noir’ inherits and pushes even further back in time.

Krysten Ritter starred as Jessica Jones during a three-season run on Netflix, which ran from 2015 to 2019, and the show moved to Disney Plus in 2022 along with ‘Daredevil’, ‘Luke Cage’, ‘Iron Fist’, ‘The Punisher’, and ‘The Defenders’. The whole interconnected street-level universe is now accessible in one place, making it easier than ever to binge the shows that first proved superhero television could be genuinely dark.

Why ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Is the Closest Thing to ‘Spider-Noir’ on Streaming Right Now

For viewers who want their gritty superhero fix set in a modern city rather than the 1930s, ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ is the clear recommendation. CNET’s head of streaming coverage described it as retaining the same bite, viciousness, and brilliance of the original, earning every bit of its TV-MA rating, packing in shocks, drama, graphic brutality, and doses of introspection.

‘Daredevil: Born Again’ continues the gritty storytelling of its Netflix predecessor while exploring Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s future in the MCU, with Charlie Cox returning to a conflicted, emotionally layered version of the character. The show shares with ‘Spider-Noir’ a preoccupation with how heroism survives in a city that actively punishes it.

During Disney’s upfront presentation, Krysten Ritter took the stage to announce she is joining the cast of ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Season 2, reprising her role as Jessica Jones, the beloved superhero and private investigator. The reunion of these Netflix-era street-level heroes feels like a deliberate acknowledgment of just how powerful that darker corner of the Marvel universe has always been.

The DC Side of the Noir Superhero Series Conversation

‘Spider-Noir’ does not exist in a vacuum, and DC’s own corner of gritty crime television deserves a place in this conversation. ‘The Penguin’ gave audiences the gritty, noir-tinged gangster epic they did not know they needed, landing closer to ‘The Sopranos’ than any campy superhero show, with nearly every superhero element of the DC universe stripped away in favor of a slow-burning, neo-noir character study brimming with tension and moral decay, scoring a near-perfect 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobblepot is depicted as a ruthless, calculated player in Gotham’s criminal hierarchy, making him both terrifying and strangely sympathetic, with Farrell bringing layers that move the character far beyond a stereotypical villain portrayal. The show is proof that comic book IP can serve as a canvas for prestige crime drama without sacrificing either.

The Fox series ‘Gotham’ made a similar argument years earlier, with one critic noting that it is not a superhero dressed up in street clothes but rather a gritty noir dressed up like a superhero.

‘Gotham’ ran for five seasons and followed Jim Gordon and his partner Detective Bullock as they navigated rampant crime in a city on the edge, chronicling Gordon’s rise from detective to commissioner alongside the origins of some of DC’s most notorious villains. Between these two corners of the comic book world, there has never been a better time to be a fan of the darker, stranger edges of the genre, and if Ben Reilly’s world has you converted, which of these shows are you planning to queue up next?