(CNN) -- Mr. Ravenblade, Mr. Xtreme, Dark Guardian and hundreds of others. Some with elaborate costumes, others with haphazardly stitched outfits, they are appearing on city streets worldwide watching over the populace like Superman watched over Metropolis and Batman over Gotham City.



Geist patrols the Rochester, Minnesota, area, with a group of like-minded and similarly dressed colleagues.



As people become disillusioned from financial woes and a downtrodden economy and look to put new purpose in their lives, everyday folks are taking on new personas to perform community service, help the homeless and even fight crime.



"The movement is growing," said Ben Goldman, a real-life superhero historian. Goldman, along with Chaim "Life" Lazaros and David "Civitron" Civitarese, runs the New York-based Web site Superheroes Anonymous as part of an initiative dedicated to organizing and making alliances with superhero groups.



According to Goldman, who goes by the moniker Cameraman because of his prowess in documenting the movement, economic troubles are spawning real life superheroes.



"A lot of them have gone through a sort of existential crisis and have had to discover who they are," Goldman said. People are starting to put value in what they can do rather than what they have, he said. "They realize that money is fleeting, it's in fact imaginary."



Estimates from the few groups that keep tabs put the worldwide total of real-life superheroes between 250 and 300. Goldman said the numbers were around 200 just last summer.



Mr. Ravenblade, laid off after a stint with a huge computer technology corporation, found inspiration for his new avocation a few years ago from an early morning incident in Walla Walla, Washington.



"I literally stepped into a woman's attempted rape/mugging," Mr. Ravenblade said. While details were lost in the fog of the fight, he remembers this much: "I did what I could," he said, adding that he stopped the crime and broke no laws. "And I realized after doing what I did, that people don't really look after people."



Public response to real-life superheroes has been mixed, according to Mr. Xtreme, who founded the Xtreme Justice League in San Diego, California.



"Sometimes it's been really positive with people saying, 'Woohoo, the superheroes are here,' and then the usual barrage, saying 'Oh, these guys are losers.' Other times people will look kind of freaked out, and then sometimes people just don't know what to think about us."



Like Peter Parker kept his Spider-Man identity from his editor boss, Mr. Extreme and Mr. Ravenblade have asked CNN editors to keep their identities secret.



The current superhero movement started a few years ago on MySpace, as people interested in comics and cool caped crusaders joined forces, Goldman said. It goes beyond the Guardian Angel citizen patrols of the early 1980s, as the real-life superheroes of today apply themselves to a broadly defined ethos of simply doing good works.  Watch Crimson Fist help the homeless in Atlanta »



Chris Pollak, 24, of Brooklyn, New York, can attest to the appeal. "A lot more people are either following it or wanting to go out and do it," Pollack, who goes by the name Dark Guardian, said. By "do it," he means patrol the harrowing streets late at night.



"A lot of kids say they're real-life superheroes [on MySpace]," Mr. Ravenblade said. "But what are you doing? Being in front of a computer is not helping anybody."



Comic book legend Stan Lee, the brain behind heroes such as Spider-Man and the X-Men, said in his comic books doing good -- and availing one's self -- was indeed the calling card for superheroes.



"If somebody is committing a crime, if somebody is hurting some innocent person, that's when the superhero has to take over."  See a photo gallery of some real-life superheroes »



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