Guess the superhero by emoji

Batman — Bob Kane got sole credit for decades, but it was his co-writer Bill Finger who actually built the character now on screen — the cowl, the cape, the name Bruce Wayne, even the grim origin story. DC didn't add Finger's name to the credits until 2015, decades after he died broke and largely unrecognized.

Spider-Man — Marvel's own publisher reportedly told Stan Lee nobody would buy a comic about a hero with the powers of something people are scared of. It ran anyway, tucked into the final issue of a canceled anthology title, and turned into one of the best-selling comics Marvel had put out in years.

Superman — Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold every right to Superman to their publisher for $130 in 1938. It took until the 1970s — after decades that included one of them working as a mail clerk — for DC to publicly credit them and put both men on a modest pension.

Wonder Woman — Creator William Moulton Marston helped develop the systolic blood-pressure test, a piece of the machinery that fed directly into the modern polygraph. He folded that fixation on detectable truth straight into the character's signature weapon, the Lasso.

Iron Man — Stan Lee has said he built Tony Stark on a dare to himself — take the one kind of person 1960s readers were primed to hate, a rich weapons manufacturer profiting off the Cold War, and make them root for him anyway. It worked well enough that the dare barely reads as one today.

Hulk — The Hulk was supposed to be gray. The printers of the era couldn't hold the shade consistent panel to panel, so partway through the first issue's run Stan Lee just let the color drift to green and kept it that way for good.

Captain America — Joe Simon and Jack Kirby put him on the cover of his own first issue punching Hitler in the jaw — a full year before the US entered World War II. The comic sold roughly a million copies and reportedly brought in enough hate mail and threats that Marvel's offices needed police attention for a stretch.

Thor — Marvel's version borrowed the god wholesale from Norse mythology, then bolted on a secret identity as a disabled human doctor named Donald Blake — a device the comics quietly dropped decades later once it read less like a clever twist and more like a relic of the era it was written in.

The Joker — Everyone involved told a different version of who actually thought him up — Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson each claimed credit at various points. The one detail nobody disputes is the face: it's lifted straight from Conrad Veidt's permanent, disfigured grin in the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs.

Wolverine — He was built almost by committee — writer Roy Thomas had the idea for a short, feral Canadian hero, and Len Wein and John Romita Sr. filled in the rest — which is part of why nobody has ever fully agreed on who deserves the most credit.

Catwoman — She debuted in the very first issue of Batman, back when she wasn't even called Catwoman — just 'The Cat,' a jewel thief with no powers and, notably, no real interest in picking a side.

The Flash — Barry Allen's 1956 debut in a tryout title called Showcase is the single issue comic historians point to as the start of the Silver Age — DC had no idea it would land and mostly just needed something to fill an unsold slot.

Black Panther — T'Challa beat the real-world Black Panther Party to the name by about three and a half months — the character debuted in Fantastic Four in July 1966, the political organization formed that October — a coincidence close enough in timing that people still assume it went the other way.

Deadpool — Rob Liefeld has said flat out that he sketched Deadpool's silhouette off Deathstroke, DC's own mercenary antihero — and writer Fabian Nicieza leaned into it by naming him Wade Wilson, a direct rhyme on Deathstroke's real name, Slade Wilson.

Harley Quinn — She's the rare Batman character who started on screen, not on paper. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm invented her for a single episode of Batman: The Animated Series in 1992 as a one-off henchwoman, and the response was strong enough that DC folded her into the actual comics years later.

Venom — The black costume showed up months before its own origin story — Amazing Spider-Man #252 put Spider-Man in the suit with barely an explanation, because the comic that was actually supposed to reveal where it came from, Secret Wars #8, hadn't been published yet.

Aquaman — He debuted the same year as Wonder Woman, in 1941, and then spent a good chunk of comics history as the character people joked could only talk to fish — a punchline the writers didn't seriously start undoing until decades later.

Captain Marvel — Carol Danvers started out as a supporting Air Force officer back in 1968, got her own book as Ms. Marvel in 1977, and didn't take the name Captain Marvel until 2012 — well after the male Kree hero who'd originally held the title was already dead in the comics.

Green Lantern — The ring, not the man, is the actual constant — several different people have carried the Green Lantern name and power over the decades, going back to a 1940s version whose ring ran on magic, not the alien tech that powers the more familiar Hal Jordan.

Storm — Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum introduced her in 1975 as one of the first major Black female superheroes in mainstream comics, and her original backstory has her tribe in Africa literally worshipping her as a weather goddess before Professor X ever recruits her.

Daredevil — Matt Murdock loses his sight as a kid saving a stranger from an oncoming truck, and the same chemical spill that blinds him sharpens his other senses to a superhuman level — a trade the comics have never let him fully make peace with.

Doctor Strange — He starts the story as an arrogant, successful surgeon, until a car crash wrecks his hands badly enough to end his career. The search for a cure is what actually drags him into sorcery in the first place, not any interest in magic for its own sake.

Magneto — Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced him in 1963 as a fairly straightforward villain with no real backstory. It was years later, under writer Chris Claremont, that Magneto got recast as a Holocaust survivor, which reframed his whole war with humanity as something closer to tragedy than mustache-twirling.

Professor X — He founded the X-Men, in the original 1963 telling, largely so mutants could prove to a frightened public that they weren't monsters — a pacifist strategy his oldest friend, Magneto, has spent six decades of comics loudly disagreeing with.

Cyclops — Scott Summers can't actually switch his optic blasts off — the visor and glasses aren't a costume choice, they're the only thing standing between him and blasting a hole through whatever he happens to be looking at.

Jean Grey — She started out simply as Marvel Girl, one of the five founding X-Men in 1963. It took over a decade, and writer Chris Claremont's Dark Phoenix storyline, to turn her into one of the most powerful — and most frequently killed off and resurrected — characters in the entire Marvel line.

Rogue — She debuted as a villain, not a hero — a new recruit to Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in 1981, introduced by permanently absorbing another superhero's powers and memories with a single touch. The X-Men only took her in later, gloves and all.

Green Arrow — His own creators admitted he started life as a fairly direct knockoff — a rich playboy who trains abroad, then comes home to fight crime with a signature gadget, a sidekick, an Arrow-Cave, and even his own clownish arch-nemesis. Swap the bow for a cape and it's just Batman's blueprint.

Hawkeye — Before he was an Avenger, Clint Barton was a circus performer, and before he was a hero at all, he debuted as a small-time Iron Man villain in 1964 — the archer's turn toward the good guys came only after the story was already running.

Black Widow — Natasha Romanova's 1964 debut has her sent by name to assassinate Tony Stark on orders from Nikita Khrushchev — she was written as a Soviet spy and Iron Man villain first, and only defected to the American side, and eventually the Avengers, later on.

Nightwing — When Dick Grayson finally outgrew being Robin in 1984, the new name he picked wasn't invented for the occasion — it's a Kryptonian identity, Nightwing, that Superman himself had told him about years earlier in an old story about a hero and heroine from Krypton's past.

The Punisher — Frank Castle debuted in 1974 as a one-off Spider-Man villain hired to hunt him down, built on a grim premise for the era: a Vietnam veteran whose family gets murdered and who decides the justice system moves too slowly to matter.

Ghost Rider — Johnny Blaze makes a deal with a demon to save his adoptive father from cancer, and the demon's idea of payment is turning him into its host — a flaming, chain-wielding motorcycle stunt rider bound by contract, not by choice.

Silver Surfer — Jack Kirby added him to the Galactus story without warning anyone — Stan Lee had plotted the arc with no herald in it at all, and was reportedly startled to see a silver surfing man show up in Kirby's finished pages.

Doctor Doom — Victor von Doom isn't hiding out anywhere — he's the actual, internationally recognized head of state of Latveria, which means a good chunk of his supervillain scheming technically doubles as foreign policy.

Loki — Marvel's version is lifted almost wholesale from Norse mythology's trickster god, right down to being a Frost Giant raised as an Asgardian and never quite told the truth about it — the resentment that origin creates has been doing narrative work for the character for over sixty years.

Vision — The villain Ultron built him, using the salvaged body of the original 1940s android Human Torch and copying the recorded brain patterns of a dead Avenger, Wonder Man, into it. Ultron's actual goal was to erase any leftover memories still stuck in the body, not to create a hero.

Scarlet Witch — Wanda Maximoff and her twin brother Quicksilver debuted together in 1964 as members of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, not the Avengers — the family tree connecting her to Magneto has been rewritten by Marvel's editors more than once since.

Nick Fury — He started out fighting Nazis in a World War II unit book in 1963, years before Marvel spun him off into Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. — the eyepatch predates the spy-agency version entirely.

Two-Face — Harvey Dent was originally spelled 'Harvey Kent' in his very first 1942 appearance, until editors caught how easily readers would confuse him with Clark Kent and quietly fixed the surname.

Hellboy — Mike Mignola drew him as a literal demon summoned by Nazi occultists near the end of World War II, then adopted and raised by an American paranormal researcher who never once treats the horns or the giant stone hand as a reason to distrust him.

Spawn — Todd McFarlane and six other Marvel artists walked out of the company in 1992 over creator rights and started Image Comics so they could actually own what they made. Spawn was the first thing McFarlane published there, and it sold around 1.7 million copies — still one of the biggest independent comic launches ever.

Invincible — Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker built the setup to look like a straightforward legacy story — teenager inherits superpowers from his famous hero father — then spent the first arc quietly revealing that dear old dad is actually an alien conqueror scouting Earth for takeover.

The Tick — Ben Edlund invented him at eighteen as a mascot for a Massachusetts comic shop's customer newsletter, not as a character meant to carry his own book. The shop ended up financing a full comic anyway once fans kept asking for more.

Kick-Ass — Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. built the whole premise around one blunt idea: an ordinary teenager decides to become a costumed vigilante with no powers, no training, and no real plan for what actual violence does to a person.

Judge Dredd — John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra built him as judge, jury and executioner rolled into one cop, patrolling a satirical mega-city so violent that the character reads less like an aspirational hero and more like a warning.

Astro Boy — Osamu Tezuka's manga began serializing in 1952, and the 1963 TV adaptation is generally credited as the show that established the visual style — big eyes, expressive faces, limited animation stretched by strong storytelling — that the rest of anime built on.

Saitama — Creator ONE originally posted the whole One-Punch Man story for free as a self-published webcomic in 2009, with rougher art than the polished version most fans know today — it built a following of millions online before any publisher got involved.

All Might — Kohei Horikoshi has said flat out that he built All Might as a direct callback to Golden Age Superman — 'the ultimate existence,' in his own words — right down to giving his special moves names lifted from American states and cities.

Sailor Moon — Naoko Takeuchi's editor is the one who suggested putting her space-heroine concept into an ordinary Japanese schoolgirl's sailor uniform — the mix of magical-girl fantasy and everyday high school life is what made the whole thing click.

Power Rangers — The show is a genuine hybrid: American actors and new footage spliced together with action sequences physically lifted from an existing Japanese series, Super Sentai, which had already been running for over a decade before Saban brought the format to the US.

Moon Knight — Marc Spector didn't debut as a hero at all — he showed up in 1975 as a mercenary hired to hunt down Werewolf by Night, and only switched sides partway through that same two-part story.

Swamp Thing — Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson's original version was a scientist named Alex Olsen, killed in a swamp explosion and transformed into the muck monster wearing what's left of his own memories — a short story so well received it turned into an ongoing series almost immediately.

Martian Manhunter — J'onn J'onzz gets accidentally teleported to Earth by a scientist's experiment in 1955 and just gets stuck there — his defining weakness, fire, arrived on the page six years after Superman's kryptonite, and reads like a deliberate echo of it.

Booster Gold — Dan Jurgens introduced him in 1986 as something rare for the genre: a hero who's open about wanting fame and money as much as he wants to do good, using stolen future tech and foreknowledge of history to stage heroics for the cameras.

Squirrel Girl — In her very first appearance in 1991, teamed up with Iron Man, she beats Doctor Doom — not with any elaborate power, just by commanding a small army of actual squirrels who chew his cloak to shreds until he retreats.

Plastic Man — Jack Cole's original 1941 version, Eel O'Brian, was a career criminal shot and left for dead during a robbery, then doused in acid that grants him his stretching powers. He wakes up nursed back to health by a monk and decides, more or less on the spot, to go straight.

Elektra — Frank Miller wrote her in 1981 as what he expected to be a one-off character in a filler Daredevil issue meant to buy him time as the new writer. He got attached enough to keep her around, then killed her off in the same run only a handful of issues later.

Blade — Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan introduced him in 1973 as a supporting character who was simply immune to vampire bites, not born half-vampire — the dhampir backstory people know from the movies was added to the comics only afterward, retroactively.

Constantine — Alan Moore asked his artists what they'd most want to draw, and both said someone who looked like Sting — so Moore built John Constantine's entire look, trench coat included, around the musician, who later said in an interview that he was flattered by it.