Curated playlist

Vigilante characters in comics

BatmanIn September 2024, Batman became the first fictional superhero to receive a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
Dick GraysonDick Grayson, the DC Comics hero who first appeared in Detective Comics #38 in April 1940, has changed more often than almost any character in superhero comics. He began as a child performer in a circus family. Since then he has carried at…
Wolverine (character)Wolverine, the Marvel Comics superhero, shares his everyday name with a mountain. Writer Chris Claremont took the name Logan from Canada's Mount Logan for an issue of X-Men in 1977. He liked the idea of the tallest mountain naming the…
Spider-ManMarvel's publisher told Stan Lee that Spider-Man would never work. The comic was being canceled anyway.
Ben ReillyBen Reilly first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #149, published in October 1975, and he was seemingly killed in that very same issue. He had no name yet. He was a nameless clone of Peter Parker, the man behind Spider-Man, grown by a…
Jason ToddJason Todd, the second Robin in DC Comics, had his life or death decided by a telephone poll in 1988. Readers of the Batman comics were handed two 1-900 numbers. One meant the boy would live. The other meant he would die. They had only a…
Robin (character)Robin, the young partner of Batman in DC Comics, once had his fate decided by a telephone poll. In 1988, DC invited readers to call a 1-900 number and choose whether the second Robin, Jason Todd, should die. The count came in at 5,343…
CatwomanCatwoman first appeared in Batman #1, published in the spring of 1940, and in that issue she did not wear a costume at all. She was called only "the Cat," a mysterious burglar and jewel thief. For most of the story she was disguised as an…
Two-FaceTwo-Face, the coin-tossing enemy of Batman, makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #66, published in August 1942. Late in that issue, Batman chases him down and corners him. The hero offers a simple deal: give up and start over.…
Billy ButcherBilly Butcher hunts gods, and he does it with no superpowers of his own. He is a fictional character, one of the two main protagonists of the comic series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. He leads a group of…
Rorschach (character)Rorschach, whose real name is Walter Joseph Kovacs, is the masked vigilante at the center of Watchmen, the graphic novel series DC Comics published in 1986. The very first character to appear in that series is a red-haired man carrying a…
Harley QuinnHarley Quinn, the DC Comics character, first appeared on screen on the 11th of September 1992, in the 22nd episode of Batman: The Animated Series. The episode was called Joker's Favor, and she was supposed to appear in it once and never…
Daredevil (Marvel Comics character)Daredevil is a Marvel Comics hero who first appeared in an issue with an April 1964 cover date. He is a blind lawyer by day and a costumed fighter by night, dressed in a devil-like outfit. His series sold modestly for years, and it came…
HellboyHellboy, the comic book hero created by Mike Mignola, arrived on Earth inside a fireball on the 23rd of December 1944. He dropped into the ruins of a church in Bromwich, England, where Allied soldiers were encamped. Only moments earlier,…
Flash GordonGeorge Lucas made Star Wars after he could not get film rights to Flash Gordon. Producer Dino De Laurentiis refused.
PunisherIn 2011, an editor at Marvel Comics revealed that the Punisher had killed 48,502 people on the page since the mid-1970s. That body count belongs to a character whom writer Gerry Conway meant as a second-tier figure. Conway has said the…
Miles MoralesMiles Morales makes his first public appearance as Spider-Man by stopping an assault by a villain called Kangaroo. The bystanders are not impressed. They tell him his Spider-Man costume is in bad taste, and he considers changing it. That…
Spawn (character)Spawn, the antihero of Image Comics, debuted in Spawn #1 in May 1992, and that first issue sold 1.7 million copies. The hero is Albert Francis Simmons, called Al, who is better known simply as Spawn. Todd McFarlane created him. Simmons…
ClayfaceDetective Comics #40, cover-dated June 1940, introduced a murderer called Clayface, and the man under the costume was a B-list actor named Basil Karlo. Nobody could have guessed what the name would grow into. Over the following decades it…
Blade (character)Blade, the vampire hunter of Marvel Comics, made his debut in The Tomb of Dracula #10, with a cover date of July 1973. He was only a supporting character there, created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan. Shortly afterward he…
April O'NeilApril O'Neil first appeared in 1984 as a computer programmer on the run. She fled robots she had helped program.
Silk (character)Silk, the Marvel Comics superhero whose civilian name is Cindy Moon, first appeared in April 2014 without a face. She showed up as a faceless cameo in The Amazing Spider-Man #1, created by writer Dan Slott and artist Humberto Ramos.…
Nico RobinNico Robin, a fictional character in the One Piece franchise created by Eiichiro Oda, is known to the world's authorities as the "Devil Child". The name sounds like a warning about a monster. The woman behind it is an archaeologist and…
DeadpoolDeadpool, the masked mercenary of Marvel Comics, once ended a storyline by breaking out of his own book and into the real world. There he confronted the writers and artists who were making the comic, and he turned to the reader with a…
Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesIn November 1983, in Dover, New Hampshire, the artist Kevin Eastman drew a masked turtle standing on its hind legs and gripping nunchucks. He drew it to make his fellow artist Peter Laird laugh. Laird answered by adding two words above it:…
Monkey D. LuffyMonkey D. Luffy is the rubber-bodied hero of the manga One Piece, created by Eiichiro Oda, and his story starts with a promise made by a small boy. In Windmill Village, in the Goa kingdom, young Luffy befriends a pirate called Red-Haired…
Peacemaker (character)Peacemaker is a comic book antihero whose name promises the opposite of what he delivers. When Christopher Smith debuted in Fightin' 5 #40 in November 1966, he was a pacifist willing to do anything to bring peace to the world. Writer Joe…
Spider-Man NoirSpider-Man Noir is a version of Peter Parker who has never seen a color. In the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, his home universe is entirely black and white, so ordinary hues leave him baffled when he travels elsewhere. That…
Black Cat (Marvel Comics)Black Cat, the thief whose real name is Felicia Hardy, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #194 in July 1979, yet she was never meant for that comic. Her creators had a different hero's book in mind when they dreamed her up. She…
Moon KnightMoon Knight is a Marvel Comics superhero who has died and come back more than once. His own stories have argued for decades about whether the god who revived him is real. He debuted in Werewolf by Night #32, published in August 1975. Since…