[Librarian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sevenlima

What if had a third major comic book company founded the begin of 1930's ?

There were quite a few back then. It's more a question of who lasted into the present day. Marvel and DC didn't start out as Marvel and DC.
In many cases, they also absorbed several of the others. That's how they evolved into the companies we know now.

There have been other pushes to bring some older ones back over the years too. Like how Awesome Comics got "Fighting American" before they essentially became half owned by DC, and how other characters had attempted resurgences in the 70s and 80s. How Dynamite has Green Hornet and Kato now. Many of the properties survived into the modern day scattered to new companies from where they started.


This might help you better if you want research on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superhero_debuts

And then you may want to look up the history of Marvel and DC. How they absorbed different heroes and different labels.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Switchblade

Superman codified and popularized most of the major superhero tropes, but elements of it could be found in a lot of other stories.

That's debatable. Popularized maybe because of how well he grew into Serialized media and more, but codified is questionable. Much of the tropes he used predate him in other stories to even "Formula of the time" levels. The beacon of hope elements he represents were a Zorro thing before him. Much of his other elements were already in "The Desert Rose". And other elements of his abilities were already scattered to others. If anything, the lawsuits to any company that tried to "copy" him were characters that were lost to time now, like the original "Wonderman". Capes and secret identities, love interests, etc were all things before him. Which by today's standards would be a laughable lawsuit, but it did kill a character from existing back then.

Superman is more a combination of those capes and tights tropes, basic hero formulas and then Hugo Hercules, with a slight "Moses" style backstory of someone with great power/potential sent away from their home as a baby.

As the story goes, superman was almost a villain instead, as his "over powered" nature made him a character publishers initially thought would make a better contrast for a hero to overcome.

Much of what was superman is predated by Ogon Bat/The Golden Bat over in Japan. Which is considered one of the earliest if not the first "Comic book Superhero". As most before it were musicals, stage plays, radio plays, books, or news paper comic strips.