Superhero fiction
Superhero fiction | |
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Stylistic origins | Early 20th century, United States, Japan |
Cultural origins | Golden Age of Comic Books (America) Kamishibai (Japan) |
Features | Focus on adventures of heroic figures usually possessing superhuman powers and/or other abilities |
Speculative fiction |
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Portal |
Superhero fiction is a subgenre of
Common plot elements
This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2023) |
Superheroes
A
By most definitions, characters do not strictly require actual superhuman powers to be deemed superheroes, although terms such as costumed crime fighters or masked vigilantes are sometimes used to refer to those such as Batman and Green Arrow without such powers who share other common superhero traits. Such characters were generally referred to as "mystery men" in the so-called Golden Age of Comic Books to distinguish them from characters with super-powers. Normally, superheroes use their powers to counter day-to-day crime while also combating threats against humanity by their criminal counterparts, supervillains.
Long-running superheroes such as
Supervillains
A supervillain or supervillainess is a variant of the villain character type, commonly found in comic books, action movies, and science fiction in various media. They are sometimes used as foils to superheroes and other heroes. Whereas superheroes often wield fantastic powers, the supervillain possesses commensurate powers and abilities so that he can present a daunting challenge to the hero. Even without actual physical, mystical, superhuman or superalien powers, the supervillain often possesses a genius intellect that allows him to draft complex schemes or create fantastic devices.
Another common trait is possession of considerable resources to help further his aims. Many supervillains share some typical characteristics of real-world dictators, mobsters, and terrorists and often have aspirations of world domination or universal leadership. Superheroes and supervillains often mirror each other in their powers, abilities, or origins. In some cases, the only difference between the two is that the hero uses his extraordinary powers to help others, while the villain uses his powers for selfish, destructive or ruthless purposes.
Secret identities
Both superheroes and supervillains often use
With superheroes, the duality of their identities is kept a secret and closely guarded to protect those close to them from being harmed and to prevent them from being called upon constantly, even for problems not serious enough to require their attention. This can be a source of drama with the superhero being forced to devise means of getting out of sight to change without revealing their identity, or bearing the price of keeping such a secret. In addition, this narrative trope can allow fantasy characters to be in occasional realistic stories without the fantasy element of the sub-genre appearing.
With supervillains, by contrast, the duality of their identities is kept a secret and closely guarded to conceal their crimes from the general public, so that they may inflict greater harm on the general public, and to enable them to act freely, and hence illegally, without risk of arrest by law-enforcement authorities.
Death
Death in superhero fiction is rarely permanent, as characters who die are often brought back to life through supernatural means or via
Another common trait of superhero fiction is the killing off of a superhero's significant other by a supervillain to advance the plot. Comic book writer
Continuity
Many works of superhero fiction occur in a shared fictional universe, sometimes (as in the cases of the DC and Marvel Universes) establishing a fictional continuity of thousands of works spread over many decades.
Changes to continuity are also common, ranging from small changes to established continuity, commonly called retcons, to full reboots, erasing all previous continuity.
It is also common for works of superhero fiction to contain established characters and setting while occurring outside of the main canon for those characters.
Crossovers
Genre flexibility
Over the history of the comic book genre, writers for major characters' series were required to produce material to strict regular publishing schedules that often ran for years. As such to fulfill this strenuous creative requirement, superhero stories have used a wide variety of story genres such as Fantasy, Science fiction, Mystery, Horror, Crime fiction etc. that put superhero characters in a vast variety and combinations of story settings and fiction tropes with their presence the major common element. As such, it has become an expected element to superhero fiction for the heroic characters to be placed in nearly any story situation, including relatively down-to-Earth drama with their personal lives out of costume.[3]
For instance,
History
Prototypes
The
The
The most direct antecedents are
Outside the American comics industry, superpowered, costumed superheroes, such as
Golden Age
In 1938, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, who had previously worked in pulp science fiction magazines, introduced Superman. (Siegel, as the writer, actually created the central and supporting characters; Shuster, as the artist, designed these characters, and gave Superman the first version of his now-iconic uniform.) The character possessed many of the traits that have come to define the superhero: a secret identity, superhuman powers and a colorful costume including a symbol and cape. His name is also the source of the term "superhero", although early comic book heroes were sometimes also called mystery men or masked heroes.
During
Like other pop-culture figures of the time, Superheroes were used to promote domestic propaganda during wartime, ranging from the purchasing of
Following superheroes's popularity during this time, those characters' appeal began to dwindle in the post-war era.[24] Comic-book publishers, casting about for new subjects and genres, found success in, particularly, crime fiction, the most prominent comic of which was Lev Gleason Publications's Crime Does Not Pay,[25] and horror.[citation needed] The lurid nature of these genres sparked a moral crusade in which comics were blamed for juvenile delinquency and the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency began. The movement was spearheaded by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who argued in Seduction of the Innocent, that "deviant" sexual undertones ran rampant in superhero comics.[26] In 2012, his methodology was reviewed and his results were found to be misleading if not falsified.[27][28]
In response, the comic book industry adopted the stringent
Silver Age
In the 1950s,
Empowered by the return of the superhero at DC,
In non-comics media
Film
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2021) |
Superhero films began as Saturday
Hit films such as 1998's
Live-action television series
Several live-action superhero programs aired from the early 1950s until the late 1970s. These included
Animation
In the 1940s,
In the 1980s, the
Comics' superhero mythos itself received a nostalgic treatment in the 2004 Disney/Pixar release The Incredibles, which utilized computer animation. Original superheroes with basis in older trends have also been made for television, such as Disney's Gargoyles by Greg Weisman and Cartoon Network's Ben 10 franchise and Nickelodeon's Danny Phantom.
Radio
Beginning 1940s, the
Literature
Adaptations
Superheroes occasionally have been adapted into
Also during the 1970s,
In the 1990s and 2000s, Marvel and DC released novels adapting such story arcs as "
Original
Original superhero or superhuman fiction has appeared in both novel and short story print forms unrelated to adaptations from the major comic-book companies. It has also appeared in poetry.
Print magazines devoted to such stories include A Thousand Faces: A Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction, published since 2007 in print and electronic form, and online only as of 2011[49] and This Mutant Life: Superhero Fiction, a bimonthly print publication from Australia, published since 2010.[50] The latter magazine was one of the few to also publish superhero poetry, ceasing to do so as of 2011. Superhero poems there included Philip L. Tite's "Brittle Lives", Mark Floyd's "Nemeses", and Jay Macleod's "All Our Children".
Novels with original superhuman stories include Robert Mayer's
Video games
While many popular superheroes have been featured in licensed video games, up until recently there have been few that have revolved around heroes created specifically for the game. This has changed due to popular franchises: The
Internet
In the 1980s and 1990s, the
Magazine-style websites that publish superhero fiction include Metahuman Press, active since 2005,[51] and Freedom Fiction Journal.[52] Superhuman fiction has also appeared in general science fiction/speculative fiction web publications, such as the weekly Strange Horizons, a publication that pays its contributors.[53] Two examples there are Paul Melko's "Doctor Mighty and the Case of Ennui" and Saladin Ahmed's "Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions".
The
Outside the United States
There have been successful superhero works in other countries most of whom share the conventions of the American model. Examples include Cybersix from Argentina, Captain Canuck from Canada, and the heroes of AK Comics from Egypt. Japan is the only country that nears the United States in output of superheroes.[citation needed] The earlier of these wore scarves either in addition to or as a substitute for capes and many wear helmets instead of masks.
Japan
Japanese superheroes date back to the 1930s, when some of the earliest superpowered costumed heroes appeared in Japan's
The iconic manga series Astro Boy (1952–1968) by Osamu Tezuka is considered to be the first[54] superhero[55] of Japanese manga and anime, and considered to be one of the most influential works in the medium to date.[56] The character of Astro Boy (Atom) himself is sometimes considered the manga equivalent to Superman,[57] due to the influence and popularity[58] of the character and the series.
Additionally,
Other countries
In 1947, Filipino writer/cartoonist Mars Ravelo introduced the Asian superheroine Darna, a young Filipina country girl who found a mystic talisman-pebble from another planet that allows her to transform into an adult warrior-woman. She appeared in her own feature-length motion picture in 1951 and has become a cultural institution in the Philippines.
British superheroes began appearing in the
In France, where comics are known as
In the late 1980s,
In 1954, Brazilian filmmaker Rubem Biáfora introduced Capitão 7 (Captain 7), the first Brazilian superhero (described as a mix of
On Middle East Kuwait-based company Teshkeel Comics after translating American comics also published an original superhero comic book series, The 99. The 99 debuted in May 2006, and continued to be published until September 2013. Teshkeel published The 99 in English, Arabic, and Indonesian, among other languages.[63] The 99 was distributed in North America via Diamond Comic Distributors.[64]
Cat Claw is a superheroine co-created by a pair of Serbian comic artists and writers.
Biały Orzeł (White Eagle) is a Polish mainstream superhero created by brothers Adam and Maciej Kmiołek (and
Malaysia also created a few notable superheroes, such as
In Australia, the print magazine This Mutant Life: Superhero Fiction was launched by editor Ben Langdon as a bi-monthly to publish prose and some poetry (it discontinued accepting poetry in 2011) of original superhuman fiction.
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Sarutobi Sasuke precipitated a "ninja boom" among the young throughout the country. Sarutobi is an adolescent superhero who, in addition to his ability to chant incantations, appear and disappear at will, and leap to the top of the highest tree, can hear whispered conversations hundreds of yards away, is superhumanly strong, can ride on clouds, is able to conjure water, fire and wind as well as transform himself into other people and animals.
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Still, Hajdu is right to point out that Wertham's ideas of proof were extremely primitive, more forensic than scientific. (Wertham had often testified in court cases, which skewed his sense of evidence.) Wertham thought he could prove his point by stringing together many anecdotes collected from his clinical research, making his claims virtually unverifiable.
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The pastoral bliss enjoyed on earth by alien superhero Goku, his wife Chi-Chi, and son Gohan, is interrupted by the emergence of a band of aliens, led by Garlic Jr.
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External links
- Media related to Superhero fiction at Wikimedia Commons