Trying to list all of the World War Two Era super-heroes has susprised me, There were dozens of characters that I'd never heard of before we started looking for them.
It got me to wondering: If you really got down i nto the weeds and looked, how many super-heroes do you think there have been in total over the years? Not just in comics, but in books, movies, TV shows, computer games, etc.
Coming up with one thousand was relatively easy. I figure you could get up to fifteen hundred just by adding in all the various Ultramen, Kamen Riders and Super-Sentai characters just by themselves. Two thousnd would also be relatively easy, but I wonder what the maximum would bee if you really wnet searching? (And no, I'm not doing that!) Would five thousand b too many, do you think? a
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Do magicians count? I happen to be reading the chapter of The Comic-Book Book which deals with magicians right now, and they list 30, between 1939-1973, many of which I've never heard of, that they just don't have time to deal with (that's in addition to the ones they do devote at least a paragraph each to).
I would count them.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Okay, since I brought it up, below is a list of magician characters mentioned in The Comic-Book Book. I haven't cross-referenced these with your other list(s), so there may be some duplication; feel free to use or ignore as you see fit. They are presented in "Character - Title (Publisher)" order.
Balbo the Boy Magician - Master, America's Greatest (Fawcett)
Blackstone (at least four different series published by Vital, Marvel, EC and Street & Smith)
Hale - Dynamic, Punch (Harry "A" Chesler)
Houdini - The Great Houdini
Ibis the Invincible - Whiz, Ibis (Fawcett)
Jupiter, Master Magician - Prize Comics (Prize)
Kardak, the Mystic Magician - Top Notch (MLJ)
Magar the Mystic - Red Raven (Timely)
Mantor the Magician - Human Torch (Timely)
Marvo the Magician - Lightning (Ace)
Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians - Big Shot (Columbia)
The Master Mystic - Green Giant (Pelican Publications)
Monako, Prince of Magic - Daring Mystery (Timely)
Merlin - National Comics (Quality)
Merzak the Mystic - Mystic Comics (Timely)
Dr. Mystic, the Occult Doctor - The Comics (Dell)
Mystic Moot and his Magic Snoot - Ibis (Fawcett)
Mysterio, the Wonder Man - Startling (Better Publications)
Nadir, Master of Magic - Adventure (DC)
Norgil the Magician - The Shadow, Doc Savage (Street & Smith)
Dr. Occult - New Fun (DC)
Colonel Porterhouse - Whiz (Fawcett)
Red Reeves, Boy Magician - Silver Streak (Comic House)
Sargon the Sorcerer - All-American, Comic Cavalcade, Green Lantern, Sensation (DC)
Solar, Master of Magic - Captain Aero (Holyoke)
Stardust the Super Wizard - Fantastic (Fox)
Tao-Anwar, Boy Magician - Super-Magician Comics (Street & Smith)
The Wizard with Roy the Super Boy - Shield-Wizard, Pep (MLJ)
Yarko the Great Master Magician - Blue Beetle, Wonder World (Fox)
The Great Zarro - Great Comics (Great Publications)
Za-Za the Mystic - Za-Za (Charlton)
Zambini the Miracle Man - Zip (MLJ)
Zoro the Mystery Man - Slam-Bang (Fawcett)
This list does not include better-known magical characters such as Zatara (or Zatanna), Dr. Fate, Dr. Strange, the Spectre, Magicman, etc.
Wow, that's a lot.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
In your current list of Golden Age characters, I've done comprehensive looks at Fawcett, Centaur, Nedor/Pines/Standard and Quality. But that leaves a lot of publishers I haven't scoured yet, like Timely*, DC*, Fox, Ace, MLJ, Avon and more. I think you could get to 2,000 with the Golden Age alone.
* Yes, you've got a lot of them already, but there's always a few more under the seat cushions in all those anthologies.
And I'm not sure if I've included magicians in the lists I've already submitted in a comprehensive manner. That is to say, if I found one who had super-powers but no costume, or had a costume but no super-powers, or had a costume and super-powers but who fought only supernatural things and not criminals, I would have left him off. I'm pretty sure that happened a couple of times.
And if you included aviators, who generally wore costumes and often fought crime (as well as the Nazis), you'd get a few hundred more. And the numbers would explode if you included jungle characters, kid gangs, detectives, crime-fighting reporters and/or globetrotting adventurers! As Wertham would say, it's all crime comics and even the non-costumed characters wore the same outfit every issue for reader identification. IOW, a costume.
And that's just the Golden Age. There has been a profusion of characters since Barry Allen made superheroes cool again*. Late 1950s superheroes that weren't at Marvel and DC often get ignored, like The Jaguar, The Fly, Herbie the Flying Fury, Magicman, Nemesis, Captain Atom and the rest of the off-brand breed. Some of them kept inventing superheroes into the '60s, like Nukla, Son of Vulcan, Nightshade, Peacemaker and more.
* And that's not counting the mid-1950s heroes like Marvel Boy, Martian Manhunter, Captain Comet, Stuntman, M.F. Enterprises' Captain Marvel, replacement Captain Americas, etc., which are either Golden Age or No Age.
Added the Following:
Jeff of Earth-J said:
I was thinking purely in terms of "super-heroes" (although ecah of us seems to have their own definition of what a "super-hero" is, and I'll admit that I maybe haven't been perfectly consistent on that), but I figured that you might possibly get as high as five thousand.
If you threw in super-villains as well, you might come close to ten thousand.
Captain Comics said:
Concentrating just on the Silver Age, there were less publishers than in the Golden Age. After DC and Marvel, there was ACG, Tower, Archie, Gold Key, Dell, Charlton, Lightning and Warren.
But if we are talking about all super-heroes, then we must involve the other genres as well as location and time period.
There was a weird discrepancy in the fundamental works of Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Super-Heroes and Encyclopedia of Super-Villains in that, for example, Dick Tracy, James Bond and Captain Kirk are not listed in the former while Flattop, Ernst Blofeld and Khan Noonien Singh are included in the latter.
To be fair (and I find Rovin's various Encyclopedias flawed), many of Dick Tracy & James Bond's foes are closer to "traditional" super-villains like Lex Luthor, Dr. Doom or Two-Face, than those heroes are to "traditional" super-heroes. For instance, the Phantom of the Opera ticks most of the boxes to count as a super-villain, but there's no one in his story, certainly not Raoul, who could be considered a super-hero under the most generous definition.
Philip Portelli said:
With the indie boom of the 80s and 90s, I'm sure you could add many more.iefeld alone probably created 100.
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