Voucherboy the Superhero Money Saver
Image via Wikipedia
What is a Superhero really all about? For me the definition has always been that a Superhero is someone who helps others.
A superhero (sometimes rendered super-hero or super hero) is a type of stock character possessing “extraordinary or superhuman powers” and dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes—ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas—have dominated American comic books and crossed over into other media. The word itself dates to at least 1917. A female superhero is sometimes called a superheroine (also rendered super-heroine or super heroine). “Super-heroes” is a trademark co-owned by DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Superheroes are authentically American, spawning from The Great Depression era.
By most definitions, characters do not strictly require actual superhuman powers to be deemed superheroes, although terms such as costumed crime fighters 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 police day-to-day crime while also combating threats against humanity by supervillains, who as their name implies are criminals of “unprecedented powers” in the same way that superheroes are crime fighters with “unprecedented powers,” though just as with superheroes they do not necessarily need genuine superpowers.
The Golden Age of Comic Books was a period in the history of American comic books, generally thought of as lasting from the late 1930s until the late 1940s or early 1950s. During this time, modern comic books were first published and enjoyed a surge of popularity; the archetype of the superhero was created and defined; and many of the most famous superheroes debuted, among them Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman.
The period saw the arrival of the comic book as a mainstream art form, and the defining of the medium’s artistic vocabulary and creative conventions by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors.
Generally, at least one of these supervillains will be the superhero’s archenemy, though several popular and long-running series, such as Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man, each have a rogues gallery of archenemies. Superheroes sometimes will combat irregular threats that also match their powers, such as aliens, magical entities, godlike or demonlike creatures, and so forth.
