But more direct ancestors to the superhero myth would be the legends of Robin Hood. Possibly based on a historical person but more likely a combination of exploits of many different outlaws ( Robyn Hude seems to have been a 12th century pseudonym given to criminals who's identities were unknown, similar to today's 'John Doe' ) the Robin Hood tales told of the leader of a bandit gang who robbed from the rich and greedy and distributed the stolen property among the poor. Justification of his crime spree was the apparently unjust laws against the peasant class. Tales of other outlaws similar to Robin Hood would be told over the years, some fictional characters and some based on men who actually lived. It was not uncommon for criminals to wear masks to conceal their identity and make it impossible for witnesses to identify them in court, although literary outlaws usually wore no masks. Quite often literary outlaws were portrayed as romantic; very popular with the ladies. A play based on this bandit tradition called "The Scarlet Pimpernel" was written by the Baroness Emuska Orczy in 1905 which told the story of a mysterious masked man during the French revolution who rescued aristocrats unfairly sentenced to the guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel could be considered the first masked hero who was was not a bandit as his actions were only to rescue people.
The next step towards the superhero came in 1915 with Russel Thorndike's "Dr Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh". Based on stories of smuggler gangs who operated in England's Romney Marsh in the 1700's who often fought skirmishes with British troops, Thorndike's novel told the story of a fierce leader of a smuggling gang known only as The Scarecrow. A former pirate named Captain Clegg, he would later give up his life of piracy to become the Vicar Dr. Syn of the town of Romney Marsh. When members of his church were arrested for smuggling and sentenced to be hanged Syn decided to rescue them, taking the clothing off of a scarecrow as a disguise. He inevitably became the leader of all the local smugglers known only as the Scarecrow wearing an elaborate scarecrow costume with luminous paint. In 1919 Johnston McCulley advanced the outlaw myth with his novel "The Curse of the Capistrano". Taking place in old California when it was still part of Mexico, it introduced the nobleman Don Diego who had a secret identity of the outlaw Zorro. Borrowing elements from both The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Scarecrow stories Zorro would fight against tyrannical and corrupt officials. After reading the short story Douglas Fairbanks decided it would make a great movie, 1922's "The Mark of Zorro". In his film Zoro wore an entire black outfit and black mask, leaving behind his trademark 'Z' sliced into walls or the skin of those he dueled with. Many of the artists and writers who worked on the first comic books were young boys in 1922 and would be inspired by this movie. Fairbanks would also make a movie based on Robin Hood.
In 1932 radio station owner George W Trendle wanted to create a weekly radio show that had the appeal of both Zorro and Robin Hood. The character he would eventually create was "The Lone Ranger". The Ranger was a mysterious masked man who along with his native American sidekick Tonto delivered justice in the old West. The origin of the ranger told years later revealed that he was the last surviving member of the Texas Rangers who had been lead into an ambush and gunned down by the outlaw Butch Cavendish and his gang. Left for dead he was discovered by Tonto who nursed him back to health, and after deciding to let the world believe that he had been killed along with the rest of the rangers donned the mask to hide his identity while he sought out members of the Cavendish gang as well as Butch himself. The Success of The Lone Ranger lead to Trendle creating another masked avenger show in 1936 called "The Green Hornet". Taking place in modern times the Hornet was newspaper owner Britt Reid who fought crime as a masked man along with his masked sidekick Kato. That same year Cartoonist Lee Falk introduced a newspaper comic strip called The Phantom, a crime fighter who wore a purple costume that concealed his face. The Phantom had no powers, unlike Falk's other creation Mandrake the Magician who first appeared in newspapers two years earlier. While Mandrake had the power of hypnosis which he used to fight crime, he had no secret identity and when not fighting criminals was on stage performing.
The arrival of the comic book saw the creation of Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for National Comics. What made Superman different from heroes of the past was the science fiction element of giving him super strength. Finally the concept of Heracles was combined with that of the masked hero. Although Superman wore no mask, even though he did have a secret identity as a mild mannered reporter. Long before the existence of television cameras the idea was that Superman would not stick around long enough for people to take his picture. The colorful costume and cape was taken from circus performers who wore the same style of costume at the time. National Comics followed Superman with Bob Kane's Batman, a hero with no powers. What Batman did get from Superman was the idea of the costume with a cape. Once again Batman had a secret identity, this time with good reason. Batman was seen as a vigilante who punished criminals outside of the law and was originally wanted by the police. With the success of Superman other comic book publishers began creating their own heroes. The majority had powers and all insisted on secret identities whether they were wanted by authorities or not. Superman's initial powers was super strength and speed thanks to his powerful legs that also gave him the ability to leap high in the sky. Gradually National Comics ( later known ass DC Comics ) began giving Superman more powers as he began competing against sales with other superhero titles. Super hearing, super breath, X-ray vision, skin of steel and so forth. Inevitably superman became so powerful that there was no longer any suspense in his stories. Therefore he was given a weakness, Kryptonite, the only element that could bring Superman to his knees. The success of superhero comics was short lived. The novelty of their powers quickly ran out and readers grew bored. Even Superman began to lose readers. One exception was Bob Kane's "Batman" which continued to attract readers. Batman's secret was that much of his comic was devoted to detective work. Another advantage was costumed villains who gave Batman a challenge. The comic books that survived did so by adapting Batman's style of storytelling.
During the 50's superhero comics took a back seat to anthologies like E.C. Comics "Tales From the Crypt". During the 1940's D.C. had merged with All-American publications acquiring their line up of superheros which included Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and their Justice Society of America. By 1951 D.C. had cancelled all the All-American titles except for Wonder Woman. In 1956 D.C. decided to relaunch the All-American superheroes in what amounted to reboots of each series. Each hero was given new identities, new costumes and new origin stories. Even the Justice Society of America was revived as the Justice League of America, however while the former was basically a social club where superheroes gathered to discus their solo adventures, the later was a team where Heroes gathered together to fight common foes. The "Justice League of America" proved to be a breakout success for D.C., no surprise as fans of every individual title all also bought the JLA comics. D.C.'s competition began to notice this, and over at Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman decided they should have their own version of the JLA. During the 1940's Timely had published their own line of superheroes including Captain America, the Sub-Mariner and The Human Torch. Timely had not published any comics with these characters in nearly a decade and the initial idea was to bring them back as a team. Goodman asked Timely's editor in chief Stan Lee to develop the new superhero team. But Lee had ideas of his own. He had always wanted to reinvent the superhero genre by doing away with formula cliches he did not like, such as the secret identity. Lee had always thought that if he had super powers then he would tell the world rather than putting on a costume to disguise his identity. He also felt that superheroes should wear their own street clothes rather than silly costumes and would never want to hang around with annoying sidekicks. Since Timely would be reintroducing characters that had not existed in print for ten years Lee decided that they may as well introduce new characters rather than bring back the old ones who would now be in late forties. A story was written about a team of astronauts who's ship is bombarded by cosmic rays, giving each different powers. One tuned into a new version of The Human Torch, one into a version of Elastic Man called Mr Fantastic, one into Invisible Girl, and one into a large powerful monster like creature called The Thing. All four take a vow to use their powers for good and call themselves The Fantastic Four. This new line of superheroes comics would go under the MC banner for Marvel Comics, in tribute to Timely's original superhero title from the 1940's
The Fantastic Four was Stan Lee's great experiment at reinventing the superhero genre. It did not take long, three issues, for Lee to give the Fantastic Four costumes, and the rest of the superhero characters Lee created would all have secret identities. But he continued to innovate with each comic he wrote. The success of " The Fantastic Four" lead to "The Incredible Hulk", "Spider-Man", "Thor", "Dr. Strange", Marvel's second superhero team "The Uncanny X-Men", "Iron Man", and "Daredevil". Now with several superheroes created for the new Marvel Comics Lee was able to finally create Timely's version of JLA called "The Avengers" who's original lineup was Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Ant Man and Wasp. Later Captain America joined The Avengers, his long absence from the comic book scene explained with the revelation that at the end of WWII he had fallen out of an airplane in the arctic and had been flash frozen into a block of ice, only thawing out in the 1960's. The Sub-Mariner was also brought back in an issue of Fantastic Four, his long absence being explained as him getting amnesia after being caught in the blast zone of a nuclear bomb test.
While Marvel and D.C. would publish the majority of superhero titles during the 70's and 80's there was a few attempts at superhero titles through independent comic companies, many which were creator owned. The most notable was Dave Stevens "The Rocketeer" published by Pacific Comics, although some humor based superheros were also successful including Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby's "Destroyer Duck" for Eclipse Comics, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" for Mirage Studios, and Ben Edlund's "The Tick" for New England Comics. While the independent comic book companies that went up against Marvel and D.C. in the 80's were not very successful, the 90's was a different story. Suddenly there were comic book publishers who rivaled D.C. and Marvel both in sales and in popularity, once again many which produced creator owned comics. Image was the company which got the most attention with a lineup of superheroes that included "Spawn", "The Savage Dragon", "Youngblood", "Witchblade" and "The Maxx". Malibu Comics offered "Rune", "Hardcase", "Prime", "Mantra", "Ultraforce" and "The Night Man". Valiant had "Archer & Armstrong", "Shadowman", "X-O Manowar", "Timewalker", "Bloodshot" and "Harbinger". And Dark Horse which was mainly licensed characters from movies and television in the tradition of Gold Key also had success with "Hellboy", "The Moth", "Nexus", "X" and "The Mask".
This new age of creator owned comics not only gave comic book writers the freedom to experiment with their creations without having a publisher insist they stick close to the usual formulas, but drew the best talent away from the established comic book companies One of the overall themes is that of the antihero. The established publishers stayed away from antiheroes sticking to the formula of "Truth, Justice and the American Way" for their superheroes. In a way this has brought the superhero full circle. Heracles may have been heroic but basically looked out for himself. His famous "Twelve Labours" were given to him as punishment by King Eurystheus after Heracles killed his own children in a fit of rage. From Robin Hood to Dr Syn the folk hero was the outlaw, and these folk heroes would be the prototype of the superhero. Ironically the superhero genre evolved out of stories of criminals. Superman's origins go back to Robin Hood, a common thief who robbed from the rich. Lex Luthor's origins go back to the Sheriff of Nottingham. By the 20th century the role of folk hero and villain had reversed and now the superhero represented the law while the villain was the outlaw. Why the superhero must continue hide his identity behind a mask when most villains do not is a complete mystery.
