Superhero fiction
History
The most direct antecedents are pulp magazine crime fighters such as the masked and caped Zorro (introduced by Johnston M. McCulley in 1919 with The Curse of Capistrano) with his trademark "Z," the preternaturally mesmeric The Shadow (1930), the "peak human" Doc Savage (1933), and The Spider (1933), and comic strip characters such as Hugo Hercules, Popeye, and the Phantom.[citation needed] The first masked crime-fighter created for comic books was writer-artist George Brenner's non-superpowered detective the Clock, who debuted in Centaur Publications' Funny Pages #6 (Nov. 1936). Historians point to the first appearance of Superman, created by Jerome "Jerry" Siegel and designed by Joseph "Joe" Shuster, in Action Comics #1 (June 1938) as the debut of the comic-book archetype of the superhero.
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