I was reading one of the Godzilla titles just now and the fairies of Mothra are showing a human a diagram on a stone wall that classifies the monsters now attacking Earth and she points out that they missed Godzilla. I remembered the scene in the last Crisis book DC put out where Alex points out that while he'll never understand why everything in the DC multiverse starts with Superman. I realized that there is always a single character starting point for genre families like the monster movies and superhero comic books. The FF started marvel, without it there might not be anything else, Godzilla, Gamera started their own little monster universes and Superman started in many ways superhero comics. Sherlock wasn't the first detective, but he really did start the genre rolling as far as popularizing that type of character. It really does take just one to get it all going.
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To an extent a genre is the result of writers imitating other writers or building on their work (e.g. taking the same situation and then putting a twist on it), and readers looking for more stuff like such-and-such. My feeling on finishing a good book is often that I'd like to read another like it.
Not too long ago the Captain, commenting here on a Pirate Eye solicitation, raised the question of whether the pirate genre is too inherently limited. I think any genre comes across as dull if it's handled without imagination. Those creators who bring something extra to them show what might be done with them, and other creators steal their stuff or have their imaginations stimulated by them.
But in cases like a breakout star like Godzilla or Sherlock Holmes or Superman it's like everything comes together almost without anyone realizing or intending it too. Rarely can someone come up with a plan to do this sort of thing, it's almost always random.
I think things that succeed often do so by being good in very many ways. Also, the nuances in how things are handled make a difference. Mowgli appeared before Tarzan, and Tarzan has a lot in common with him, but he's not simply the same. He's more savage, the jungle of his stories is more savage, and he takes on and dominates its savage creatures. Likewise, Godzilla may have come across as more intelligent than the monster from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
Quality also matters. Many of Holmes's deductions seem ingenious but plausible, and Stan Lee's jokes in 60s Marvel comics were often genuinely funny.
Although the Holmes series gave detective fiction a great impetus, the genre already existed. Émile Gaboriau's novels had been translated into English and my recollection is Fergus Hume was partly imitating them when he wrote The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was published in 1841 and is recognized as the first true detective story.
His hero, C. Auguste Dupin, appeared in this and two other stories, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", in December 1842/January 1843 and "The Purloined Letter", in December, 1844. He, like Holmes, is a private citizen (with an assistant who narrates the stories) who offers his services to the police.
A few years ago I read a collection titled Early German Austrian Detective Fiction: An Anthology trans. and ed. by Mary W. Tannert and Henry Kratz. I have some notes on this as I posted on it on the Captain's old board. The first two items in the collection predate those tales of Poe's and are murder mysteries, but lack a detective figure who unravels the crime. (My recollection is the circumstances behinds the deaths are instead gradually brought to light by inquests and further information turning up.) This makes a difference, as part of the interest of many detective stories, including Poe's, is their depiction of the power of reason. On the other hand, this element isn't always present in post-Poe mystery fiction. The stories are The Caliber (1828) by Adoph Müllner and The Dead Man of St. Anne's Chapel (1839) by Otto Ludwig.
Superman opened the comic-book superhero floodgates, but the masked crimefighter type of superhero predates him (e.g. the Green Hornet, the Clock, the Phantom). However, Superman left a mark on many of those who came after him, so e.g. they commonly wore skin-tight, colourful costumes (which, of those mentioned, only the Phantom did) and capes (which the Shadow and the Spider did, but not those other three).
And then there is James Bond. Fictional spies and secret agents had been around for decades but it was the Fleming novels and more especially the films that brought the genre to the fore with numerous TV and movie series following in 007's wake. I have read a few pre-Bond spy novels, and though they are entertaining, the protagonists did not capture the imagination the way Bond did.