Superhero: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

A superhero is a fictional hero, usually with abilities beyond those of normal human beings. They most often appear in comic books, but have also been featured in comic strips, radio series, TV series, movies, and other media. The abilities are usually superhuman (invulnerability, flight), but may be perfected versions of normal abilities (heightened reflexes or senses). Superheroes spend much of their time fighting supervillains, monsters and natural disasters. This kind of fiction is generally considered a subgenre of fantasy or science fiction, but its nature is such that it easily combines with numerous other genres' elements, including horror fiction, crime fiction and detective fiction. Marvel Comics Group and DC Comics, Inc. share ownership of the United States trademark #1179067 for the phrase "Super Heroes."

A dictionary definition of the superhero:

Superhero (soo'per hîr'o) n., pl. -roes. 1. A heroic character with a selfless, prosocial mission; who possesses superpowers, advanced technology, mystical abilities, or highly developed physical and/or mental skills; who has a superidentity and iconic costume, which typically express his biography or character, powers, and origin (transformation from ordinary person to superhero); and is generically distinct, i.e. can be distinguished from characters of related genres (fantasy, science fiction, detective, etc.) by a preponderance of generic conventions. Typically superheroes have dual identities, the ordinary one of which is kept secret. —superheroic, adj. Also super hero, super-hero (Trademark). (Definition from: Coogan, Peter. The Secret Origin of the Superhero: The Emergence of the Superhero Genre in America from Daniel Boone to Batman. Diss. Michigan State University, 2002: p. 358).

Many superheroes, e.g. Batman and the Green Hornet, are ordinary men possessing no super-powers. Their status as a superhero derives from an extraordinary willpower, intellect, physical perfection, exotic outfits and equipment, and a drive to fight for what is right--or, at least, what they consider right.

The word "superhero" owes its existence to the most famous superhero of all time: Superman, one of the most powerful superheroes, and the standard by which other superheroes are traditionally judged. However, many of these same traits were shared with protagonists of later Victorian literature, such as Arthur Conan Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, the pulp hero Doc Savage, and the dime novel stories of Buffalo Bill.

Common character elements

There are a wide range of attributes that are typically considered part of a superhero's make up, although they are by no means definitive. Typically, the classic superhero has a few of the following features:

• A secret identity.
• Superhuman powers and abilities, mastery of relevant skills, or advanced equipment.
• A typically flamboyant, distinctive costume (usually to hide the alter ego). It often has bright colours and a symbol (like a stylized letter or visual icon) on the chest.
• A willingness to risk life and limb in the service of good without expectation of reward.
• A special motivation, such as revenge, a sense of responsibility, or a formal calling.
• An above-average moral code, often including an unwillingness to kill.
• An arch enemy and/or a collection of regular enemies that s/he would fight repeatedly.
• An unusual weakness that limits the character or puts him in extreme peril when his/her enemies attempt to exploit it.
• Is either independently wealthy or has an occupation that allows for minimal supervision, so their whereabouts do not have to be strictly accounted for (e.g. Clark Kent's job as a reporter).
• An elaborate backstory called an "origin story" in which the circumstances of the character acquiring his/her abilities is explained, as well as their motivation for using it for fighting evil.

Character subtypes

In superhero roleplaying games (particularly Champions), superheroes are informally organized into a variety of categories based on how their skills and abilities are oriented:

• "Brick": A character with a superhuman degree of strength and endurance, e.g. The Incredible Hulk and the Thing.
• "Energy Blaster": A hero whose main power is a distance attack, e.g. Cyclops Starfire.
  • "Archer": A subvariant of this type where the hero uses missile weapons that typically have a variety of specialized functions like explosives, glue, nets, rotary drill, etc., e.g. Green Arrow, Hawkeye.
  • "Mage": A subvarient of this type where a character is trained in the use of magic which partially involves ranged attacks., e.g. Doctor Strange, Dr. Fate
• "Martial Artist": A hero whose physical abilities are mostly human rather than superhuman, but whose combat skills are phenomenal, e.g. Batman, Daredevil, Captain America, Robin.
• "Gadgeteer": A hero whose main asset is access to useful equipment that often imitates superpowers and usually has the relevant technical skills to maintain the equipment and use it to the character's best advantage, e.g. Forge.
  • "Armored Hero": A gadgeteer whose powers are derived from a suit of powered armor, e.g. Iron Man, Steel.
• "Speedster": A hero possessing superhuman speed and reflexes, e.g. The Flash, Quicksilver.
• "Mentalist": A hero whose main abilities are psionic in nature such as psychokinesis, telepathy and extra-sensory perception, e.g. Professor X and Jean Grey of the X-Men.
• "Shapechanger": A hero who can manipulate his/her own body to suit his/her needs as disguise or stretching, e.g. Mister Fantastic, Plastic Man, Changeling.
  • "Substance oriented Bodychanger - A shapechanger who can change his/her body into the equivalent of a mass of a substance that can have variable density such as sand or water. e.g. Sand.
  • "Sizechanger": A shapechanger whose powers involve altering their size to their advantage, e.g. The Atom (shrinking only), Colossal Boy (growth only), Hank Pym (both).

These categories often overlap with various characters. For instance, Superman is extremely strong and damage resistant like a brick. However, he also has ranged attacks (heat vision, superbreath) like an energy blaster and can move quickly like a speedster.

This kind of fantasy is considered largely an American creation. However, there have been successful superhero characters in other countries which share many of the conventions of the American model. The most notable examples include Cybersix for Argentina, Marvelman from the United Kingdom, and most notably Japanese anime and manga series like Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and Sailor Moon.

While these are the traits of the classic superhero, many break the mold. For example:

• Marvel Comics' Wolverine has shown a willingness to kill and behave anti-socially. Indeed, Marvel Comics' superheroes could be seen as a reaction to DC Comic's super-virtuous heroes of the 1950s and 1960s. (See also anti-hero.)

• DC Comics' Batman has no powers, acts out of a desire for vengence, and is troubled within. However, Batman has trained extensively as a detective, is physically fit, and has at one time or another developed a number of specialty devices.

• Marvel Comics' Spider-Man makes mistakes on a regular basis and cracks jokes while fighting villains. He also has made a living taking and selling pictures of himself in action to The Daily Bugle and is willing to accept paid work on the occasional adventure as long as he is paid in cash.

• The Incredible Hulk of Marvel Comics is usually defined as a superhero, but his actions have often either inadvertently or deliberately menaced the population. As a result, he has been hunted by the military and by other superheroes.

• Luke Cage (AKA Power Man) and his partner, Iron Fist, operated a business called Heroes for Hire which charged a fee for their services although it was negotiable in certain circumstances.

• The Punisher of Marvel Comics is a vigilante who is often grouped with other superheroes. However, his response to opposing evil is hunting out and killing as many criminals as he can. This makes him the target of the police and other superheroes who are opposed to his extreme methods.

• There are superheroes such as The Demon from DC Comics and Ghost Rider from Marvel who are actual demons from Hell who find themselves manipulated by circumstance to be allies for the forces of good. Hellboy, on the other hand, is a demon who was raised from infancy after being rescued from the Nazis in World War II and is loyal to the forces of good on his own accord.

• Some superheroes have been created and employed by national governments to serve their interests and defend the nation. The most obvious examples are Captain America worked directy for the United States government during World War II and Alpha Flight, a superhero team who was created and is usually run by the Canadian federal government.

Most recently introduced superheroes have never had a secret identity. Some superheros that once had a secret identity, like Steel/John Henry Irons (DC Comics) have later made their true identity public. Other superheroes like the Fantastic Four and Wonder Woman (in her current version) have never had a secret identity to begin with.

Through the history of comic books, this kind of character usually conformed to the basic social assumptions and stereotypes in popular fiction during the first half of the 20th century. Hence, the typical superhero character at that time was a white, middle to upper class, heterosexual male professional. Typically, the character was often either independently wealthy like Batman or had a job that allows for a minimum of supervision so his whereabouts did not have to be precisely accounted for such as Superman's civilian job as a reporter. The typical female superhero was seen as a exception like Wonder Woman or docile and obedient helpmeets like Susan Richards AKA the Invisible Girl.

In the 1960s, the various Marvel Comics characters began to loosen the demographic type to allow for different images such as Spider-Man making a marginal living as a freelance photographer. Furthermore, the company created superhero characters of other racial groups as such as the Black Panther, Luke Cage and . The early examples of these characters often played to specific stereotypes; for example, Asians were often masters of martial arts. The rise of modern feminism also encouraged more active and independent female characters though some seemed to exist to be preachy radical feminist stereotypes like Marvel's Ms. Marvel. Eventually, more sophisticated characters were later developed to display a more honest sense of diversity such as Marvel Comics' Storm of the X-Men and DC Comics' Cyborg of the Teen Titans. Marvel comics has also introduced the first openly gay superhero, Northstar, but that is a character element that is still treated with some trepidation in mainstream stories.

Although Marvel Comics pioneered the idea of superheroes having character flaws, in the 1980s the concept was taken much further into deconstruction of the character form. It began in the acclaimed Daredevil stories by Frank Miller where the title character struggled with inner demons that seem to take him to the brink of madness, while in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Batman was recast as a obsessive and brutal vigilante who enjoys causing genuine terror in his criminal enemies. Alan Moore made a similar contribution in Watchmen with his characters who were people who were profoundly human in nature and tried to do the right thing in their point of view, such as Rorschach, a murderously brutal and insane vigilante who battled evil as he perceived it through his hateful paranoid schizophrenia. The success of these stories led to numerous imitations by other talents, but critics complained they missed the essential artistic elements of redemption and tragedy in the original stories. Without those elements, the imitations often came off as unlikable psychotics with little redeeming value.

In the late 1990s, there was a reaction where notable talents like Kurt Busiek and Alan Moore who endeavoured to reconstruct the genre with successful titles like Astro City and Tom Strong that combined artistic sophistication and idealism into a superheroic version of retro-futurism.

In the early 2000s, a Christian superhero emerged, Bibleman and his enemy, El Furioso.

This genre has dominated comic books for the last few decades. One reason is the ability of the medium to visually depict the heroes' action-oriented adventures without expensive special effects budgets. So as fans of other genres were often drawn away to other more profitable media (which were equally suited to genres such as westerns, romance, or crime), fans of superheroes continued reading comics. (Animation - which shares many of comics' advantages in depicting the genre - remained another popular medium for superheroes, but also proved successful in keeping other genres of entertainment popular with children, for similar reasons.)

The genre has proven remarkably flexible in the kind of stories it can tell, since the fantastic nature of the superhero milieu allows almost anything to happen without it feeling unnatural. For example, in an early period of the 1980s series, The New Teen Titans, the team faced off against a supervillain who controlled a cult in one story, then went off to another galaxy to participate in a space war in the following story, then returned to Earth in the next story to become involved in a gritty urban crime drama involving young runaways. The content of these three stories is each quite different from one another, and yet the same principle characters are involved without any feeling that they clash with the subject matter. In a sense, superhero comics can be said to include hybrid genres that combine the superhero genre with horror, comedy, crime, science-fiction, fantasy, and other genres.

The superhero genre's treatment in media outside comics was generally limited in terms of the characters used and the popular attitude towards them. With a few exceptions, they were considered children's fare. Superman, for instance, had a lavish adaptation in animation with Fleischer Studios, but his first live-action adaptations were notoriously cheap film serials.

Most fans believe the problem was aggravated by the success of the live action Batman movie and TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward, which was staged as a campy spoof of comics and superheroes. The series stereotyped comic books and superheroes as laughable and stupid. That attitude would plague further adaptations of the genre like in the Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve. In that series, although there were some successful efforts to establish the dignity and grandeur of the character, it still relegated his archenemy, Lex Luthor to being a comic villain with broad comic sidekicks, and the series quickly degenerated into comedy and cliche.

In the 1980s, there were more successful efforts to establish more dramatic superheroic stories, such asRobocop directed by Paul Verhoeven, but the film Batman in 1989 directed by Tim Burton was the first modern attempt to emulate the dark mood of the Frank Miller comics. Although it launched some imitators, fans complained that the Batman series degenerated into the same stereotypical silliness of the 1960s TV series under Joel Schumacher. This trend culminated with the film Batman and Robin in 1997, which was a critical and commercial failure. Meanwhile, several attempts to adapt Marvel Comics' characters to cinema failed to even make it to theaters. Unsuccessful movies based on DC Comics' Steel, and Todd McFarlane's Spawn did little to help.

The genre's respect began to recover with the success of the film adaptation of Marvel Comics' character, Blade. The success of this obscure character gave other film producers the hope that other comic book superheroes could be successful if adapted with more respect for the genre. That hunch proved correct with the success of the film X-Men, and with Unbreakable, an original film that dealt with the genre conventions of superheroes in a dramatic, intelligent manner. The commercial potential of this respectful approach was further confirmed with the spectacular success of the film adaptation of Spider-Man. This blockbuster hit has led to further adaptations of superhero characters such as Daredevil, The Hulk, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hellboy, and a return to Batman. Although the box office results and critical reaction to these films has varied widely, there has been enough success to rejuvenate the genre's prospects in the movies.

Another notable treatment of the superhero theme in non-comics media is the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the protagonist is a dyed-in-the-wool idealist superhero (superpowers, a secret identity and supervillains come with the package) who exists in the horror genre. The series presents a believable superhero, while nevertheless poking gentle fun at the superhero genre (along with other genres). Smallville has proven very successful in reinterpretting the characters of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in their younger years, with a greater focus on their personalities, in a narrative format more familiar to the mainstream television audience. Other recent TV superhero series enjoying varying degrees of success include: Angel, Alias, Lois and Clark, Roswell, Timecop, Sheena, Dark Angel, and Mutant X.

While popular superheroes have also spawned successful - and sometimes unsuccessful - video game franchises, as of late two notable games have centered around original superhero characters. Freedom Force, released in 2002, parodied 1960's comic heroes while City of Heroes, released in 2004, is an MMORPG that allows players to create their own superhero characters and fight with and alongside other players.