Super, Hero

What makes a hero into a superhero?

Okay, so there are basically four takes on this, with a fair bit of nuance in between:

1. A superhero has definitively superhuman traits, resulting from mutation, technological intervention, non-human origin or magic. There is a certain amount of debate as to how intrinsic the changes caused by a technological intervention have to be for the character to count as a super hero rather than a regular hero using tech.
2. A superhero is someone who wears a costume to fight evil/crime, usually including - if not exclusively - costumed supervillains.
3. A hero whose heroics are themselves 'super'; larger than life.
4. A comic book character published by DC or Marvel, the co-owners of the trademark 'Super Hero'.

The last is the easiest to deal with, because it's beautifully definite. A Super Hero is whatever DC and Marvel decide it is. Yay!

Logo for the 'super hero' trademark defence legal team.

What about the rest of us? For my money (and this really is just for my money), the thing to do is not to try to establish terms from the ground up, but to look at those who are clearly superheroes and see what they have in common. Perhaps we should start with the big three(s). DC and Marvel each have their heavy hitters, the 'big three' who stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of image and exposure. Who exactly Marvel's big three are is open to question, however. 

As part of the drive towards inclusion, Thor will be replaced
by a female character, and Iron Man by Usain Bolt.

The canonical big three seem to be the core Avengers: Iron Man, Captain America and Thor (hence the bigness of the news that one of the big three, Thor, will be replaced by a new, female incarnation). On the other hand, fan opinion is that the big three are more accurately the characters with the longest record of exceptional popularity: Hulk, Spider-Man and the soon-to-be late Wolverine, who significantly outsell any of the formal three's solo titles, thanks in large part to highly-successful adaptations. Of course, the MCU has seen a significant resurgence for Iron Man, Cap and Thor in the larger world; after all, Hulk didn't get another solo film and the non-canon Spider-Man and X-Men titles are struggling, but in comic terms, the balance is unchanged.

Hulk, Spider-Man and Wolverine are of course the easier three to categorise, as all three are superheroes by every definition. They each have superhuman traits which have become completely intrinsic to their beings, and fight evil in a larger than life fashion. The one stumbler is Hulk, who doesn't have a uniform, but 2012's The Avengers clearly established that the Hulk form is Bruce Banner's 'suit', and that works for me.

"First to punch the cameraman is in the 'big
three'!"

The other big three are more troublesome. Thor fits pretty much the whole package. Even on Asgard his power is exceptional, and on Earth clearly superhuman. He has an iconic costume and weapon, battles evil (his power is actually dependent on his virtue) and if a character who speaks in quasi-Shakespearean declamations isn't larger-than-life, I don't know who is. Captain America also has few questions; boosted beyond human limits by the supersoldier serum, he dresses in a flag and fights for right.

It's Iron Man who slows things down. His 'powers' are technical brilliance (prodigal and prodigious, but not beyond human levels) and a suit of armour. He has no intrinsic power that goes beyond human ability, although he does have an iconic uniform and battles villains in a super fashion. It could be said, however, that Iron Man is not a superhero.

The DC Big Three: If we go by powers,
that gives us Superman, Wonder
Woman, and Ambush Bug.

And yet, people speak of 'the big three' not because of Marvel, but because of DC, whose big three are pretty much beyond question: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. They are all costumed, all iconic and larger-than-life, all dedicated to the fight against crime and evil, but the odd man out is Batman. In Batman: the Brave and the Bold, Captain Atom describes Batman as a c-lister, pointing out that he has no powers at all, and yet Captain Atom doesn't come close to making the big three. 

Batman is the poster child for the 'super-normal', the characters whose superpower is that they are ludicrously good at a wide range of perfectly mundane things. Batman is a master martial artist, Olympic-level athlete, scientific and technical genius (even when he has help creating his gadgets, he is usually shown to possess excellent analytical and mechanical chops), and of course, the world's greatest detective. There is no one trait that is beyond human potential (although in practice he is usually shown to possess physical abilities on a par with more overtly powered characters), but the sheer range of his excellence could be characterised as superhuman.

It's depressing how hard it is to get a pic of these three in
which Wonder Woman isn't pushing her chest out.

More to the point, a definition of superhero that doesn't include Batman is almost intrinsically flawed. Batman is a critical part of the DC big three, and of the Justice League, one of the top-flight superhero teams. To say that Batman isn't a superhero borders on the disingenuous. If you ask the man or woman in the street to name five superheroes... well, they'd probably look at you funny, but if they gave you five names then they'd either name the Avengers (and include Iron Man, Black Widow and maybe even Hawkeye), or one of them would be Batman.

What does the man on the street know? Well, with a title like 'super hero', popular perception is important. Batman is a superhero, not because of any intrinsic ability, but simply because that is what the world calls him, and in a fictional character, that's really what counts.

This rules out actual super powers as a defining trait of the superhero, and leaves us with a combination of 2 and 3: A superhero wears a costume and fights evil/crime in a larger than life fashion.

The term I've been using for that fashion, iconic, is not mere happenstance. DC characters in particular are self-consciously iconic, and none more so than the trinity. Batman is vengeance and the night; iconically, he stands for 'justice', and the fact that in his world justice must be served by someone outside of a corrupt authority (see Watchmen for a hell of a lot of commentary on this). Wonder Woman is the Spirit of Truth, standing both for truth and for compassion. Superman is the big, blue boy scout; he stands above all else for an enduring hope in a better world.

He's a man with serious mental health issues who found the
last item of clothing from a doomed planet and gained the
power to teleport and recognise his own fictional nature.

Marvel is a lot less straightforward. To quote Alan Moore: "Stan Lee had this huge break through of two-dimensional characters."

Still and all, you can sum up most Marvel superheroes pretty quickly, and that's important. 

A superhero can be a complicated character, but never complex. Any apparent superhero who takes more than a paragraph to explain in their basic essence is probably a deconstruction.