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Curated playlist

Golden Age superheroes

  • BatmanIn September 2024, Batman became the first fictional superhero to receive a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
  • SupermanThe first Superman was a homeless man tricked into taking a drug. Jerry Siegel wrote him as a villain in 1933.
  • Wonder WomanWonder Woman's creator invented a device crucial to the lie detector.
  • Captain AmericaCaptain America Comics #1 reached newsstands on the 20th of December 1940, carrying a cover date of March 1941. Its cover showed the hero punching Adolf Hitler. That hero, Captain America, was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Timely…
  • Spectre (DC Comics character)The Spectre first appeared in More Fun Comics #52, dated February 1940, and his debut opens with a murder. A New York detective named Jim Corrigan is on his way to his own engagement party when thugs stuff him into a barrel, fill it with…
  • Shazam (DC Comics)Shazam, the comic book hero also called Captain Marvel, headlined an issue, Whiz Comics #2, that sold over 500,000 copies. The hero at its center is a boy who becomes a towering adult by speaking a single word. Yet this same character…
  • Green ArrowGreen Arrow first stepped onto a comic book page in More Fun Comics No. 73, which was released on the 19th of September 1941 and carried a cover date of November 1941. Another hero debuted in the very same issue: Aquaman. By day, the…
  • Bucky BarnesBucky Barnes is a Marvel Comics hero whose fans once turned his death into a rule of the genre. The saying went that in comics, "No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben." For many years, Bucky was the first name on that…
  • Doctor FateDoctor Fate, the helmeted sorcerer of DC Comics, was nearly called Doctor Droon. Writer Gardner Fox came up with that name, and an editor changed it before the character reached print. Fox remembered the episode in a 1987 interview, and he…
  • NamorNamor, also known as the Sub-Mariner, made his debut in a comic that almost nobody ever saw. It was called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, a planned giveaway meant for theater owners. Only eight known copies survive from the batch made to…

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