Who was also Ms. Marvel at one time, before the current Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. Yes, I just learned that from Google, but it further proves your point. Superhero titles are fluid and can (and have!) belong(ed!) to multiple heroes over the years. Complaints now about one iteration of Superman being a) not Clark Kent and b) not straight are, well, they can say more about the complainers.
When and who would be the considered first movie Superhero? Prior to movies popular hero’s appeared in “dime novels” like Old West lawmen and villains. Is this a good example:
I'd say the obvious one - Superman, once he was animated by the Fleischers. But there were precedents from pulp fiction and radio, like Doc Savage and The Shadow.
I think it wasn't until 1989 a black superheroine starred in her own comic... I would've been buying it but there was no #2 (although later another #1, and then zip), she got renamed Photon. I followed the female characters but they started killing them off or having something heavy happen to disable them, around half or more of them, which disabled the comic book from having many female readers I think! Phoenix (killed), Elektra (killed), Spider-Woman (original version, killed), Ms. Marvel (original, kidnapped and raped, eventually killed/merged with Rogue of the X-Men), Supergirl (killed), Batgirl (paraplegic in a wheelchair), The Wasp (victim of violent spousal abuse), Nova (second one from Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer, killed), Dream Girl (Legion of Super-Heroes, killed)... geez, it just gets depressing! I know they brought back some of them eventually, but I didn't know that at the time of reading, and who hangs around a dozen years to find out? Actually I did just see Phoenix/Jean Grey come back as I was on the way out the door, so that was cool. Spider-Woman and Supergirl both had their own comics which I'd bought, but it's kind of hard to show support when they've been killed and no longer appear anywhere. An old spiel I've put out there before... imagine if half the black superheroes were killed off or heavily damaged so they couldn't appear?
If you could consider Tarzan as super-powered (he communicated with animals) he was in the movies very early before sound played by Elmo Lincoln.
I just can I picture hieroglyphs of an ancient Superman: “Faster than a speeding chariot Able to leap tall pyramids in a single bound”
Yes, unfortunately, Marvel's talent wasn't always enlightened in the past when it came to female characters. There's a rumor that the Spider-Man comics didn't have any female villains for years because Stan Lee was opposed to it. Much, much later (after Lee was gone) Black Cat was introduced as a "frenemy" and there was a minor character, Titania, who had a morbid fear of Spider-Man, which was interesting. But, to this day, there really aren't many female villains in the Spider-Man books with Peter Parker (I'm not sure about the Miles Morales comics, but Into the Spider-Verse did have Olivia Octavius). Many of the stories you mentioned have since been ret-conned or conveniently forgotten, though. Even Barbara Gordon isn't in the wheelchair any longer, and there are multiple female Spider characters now, including the original Spider-Woman, who is back alive (and a great character). In defense of the Jean Grey story, which is terrific, killing her off was an editorial demand from Jim Shooter - Chris Claremont and John Byrne originally intended for Grey to just give up her power and go into self-exile. The behind-the-scenes story of Captain Marvel/Photon, Monica Rambeau, is pretty depressing. When Roger Stern was writing Avengers, he placed Rambeau as the new leader of the team, at a time when Captain America, Thor and Iron Man had all left the group. Once again, editors demanded that Cap be brought back to the Avengers, made the leader again, and that Rambeau be dropped from the team entirely. Stern was pissed, understandably, but had to oblige, as he didn't own the characters or the book.
Not knowing how rare it was I actually accepted the death of Phoenix very well at the time as a reader, thought it was pretty amazing stuff, plus I did know the old Phoenix rises from ashes tale in the back of my mind. She caused a planet and another space ship full of aliens to die so would agree with the she should pay sentiment. I knew less about the Elektra story but was reading Daredevil when she came in and then went down. No complaints until they added Supergirl and Spider-Woman to the dead lists. Since then I have found and enjoyed comics I missed, the future Spider-Girl comics probably most, but a Black Cat appearance is always enjoyed too.
Again, being an old-time comics fan, I can actually remember when death was a concern. It added to the comics universe when you actually thought someone would die, because they wouldn't come back! Nowadays, death don't mean a thing.
Then again, what was Marvel's first actual "major death"? Not a hero, but a blonde chick. Innocent civilian, no less.
Technically, Bucky's death happened before Gwen's, though (at the time) it wasn't depicted, just described retroactively. And he's back alive now. Betty Brant's brother (I think) was killed in an early issue of Amazing Spider-Man, though he was a very minor character.
Exactly. One didn't stay terminated, the other didn't matter. I was at a Chicago Comicon one year when Shooter was in charge ('82? '83?), and he was on a panel, talking about some unpopular decision he'd made, and lamented that, "They're probably gonna kill me for that..." To which I opened my big fat mouth and yelled out, "If they kill you, will you come back?" Brought the house down. Even got a smile from Jim.
Not being very well versed in this particular genre I’ll put it to the experts here: If you could design a Superhero today what attributes both positive and negative would enable the character to be rational enough to enable a following long into the future? What would enable the character to keep up with the times?
Muskman Skills: He's a genius like Reed Richard and his superpower is transforming matter into amazing things in the blink of an eye. His weakness: If he encounters Twitter, he turns into an idiot.
Yeah, but that wasn't so much a story, as it was an integral part of the origin of the hero. Baked-into the character development. He was as much his Jor-El as he was his Jonathan Kent: building blocks of his integrity.
If I knew that I guess I'd be contacting a Hollywood agent or sending in scripts someplace. I think a big part of it is it has to appeal to a kid or the kid in an adult.
When my son was about four or five and thinking of superheros, he said something like, "I'm going to invent a superhero-Mr. Unstoppable and he won't have any weakness." He thought for a minute and then said, "Wait, then the stories aren't very interesting then, are they?" I was stunned at his insight.
If we're talking death of an ongoing character (rather than a character who was revived and/or created specifically to be killed off) there were a few before her: Junior Juniper in Sgt. Fury (1963) Una in Captain Marvel (1968) Captain George Stacy in Spider-Man (1970) Lady Dorma in Sub-Mariner (1971)
Yeah, we can do this all day, but really, was there one as essential to the ongoing plot arcs at the time as Gwen, or as significant a loss in the eyes of the current Marvel readership? Spideer-man was the largest in circulation of those titles at the time, and in the years leading up to it. Of those five, it appears Dorma is the only constant presence in the life of the main character (who by all accounts, was almost a higher-profile for his involvement with Sue Richards in another, higher-circulation title - than in his own). I could be wrong, but that's the way it appears to me, having lived through those days as an active reader of the books. I don't even recall what sort of reverberation the loss of Capt. Stacy had in the life of Peter at that time...or, how important that was to a reader of the titles (was "Spectacular Spider-Man" even in print back then...?).
Capt. Stacy's death was a fairly shocking occurrence especially since he was one of Spidey's main supporters and was well on his way to putting the pieces together about Peter/Spiderman before being killed off. It also set up a roadblock for the Peter/Gwen romance since she now blamed Spidey for his death. It definitely threw his life into disarray for a year or two's worth of issues.
Silver Surfer is often paired against other cosmic characters who are even more powerful, like Galactus or Thanos. However, for me, Surfer is one of those characters who is more interesting when he makes guest appearances or as a supporting character. As is, many Surfer stories tend to have a philosophic, thoughtful theme, rather than the usual hero-vs-villain story. The recent Mike Allred series used that approach.
Don’t these characters ever grow old age wise. Nobody’s invincible if they age and die. If they didn’t eventually they’d be the only ones left on the planet. That would be some mess!
