98 Fun Facts About Comic Books

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman first appeared in which comic, cover-dated June 1938?

Action Comics #1 cost ten cents; a copy sold for $6 million in 2024, and its June 1938 cover date is the usual starting point of the Golden Age of comics.

Which artist, alongside writer Stan Lee, co-created Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15?

Steve Ditko defined the look and co-plotted the early stories, then quit Marvel in 1966 and stayed famously reclusive for the rest of his life.

Which anthology comic introduced Wonder Woman in October 1941?

All Star Comics #8 introduced her as a backup feature; she headlined Sensation Comics #1 three months later and got her own title in 1942.

Which Marvel Comics title introduced Iron Man, cover-dated March 1963?

Tales of Suspense #39 gave him his origin in a cave; his own title, The Invincible Iron Man, only arrived in 1968. Journey into Mystery #83 introduced Thor.

In which issue did the Justice League of America first assemble?

The Brave and the Bold #28 was a tryout that brought the superhero team back for the Silver Age; the League only got its own title after it sold.

Wolverine's very first appearance was a one-panel teaser at the end of which 1974 Marvel issue?

The Incredible Hulk #180 hid him in its final panel; he fought the Hulk properly in #181 and only joined the X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1 the next year.

Which writer and artist introduced Deadpool as a villain in The New Mutants #98 in 1990?

Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld's Merc with a Mouth was so close to DC's Deathstroke, Slade Wilson, that Nicieza named him Wade Wilson as a wink.

Which independent comic book publisher releases the critically acclaimed series 'Saga'?

Image Comics lets creators keep their properties, so Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples own Saga outright. Image was founded in 1992 by artists who walked out of Marvel.

Which writer created the Vertigo series Preacher with artist Steve Dillon?

Garth Ennis wrote all 66 issues of Preacher for DC's Vertigo imprint from 1995 to 2000, with Steve Dillon on art; AMC adapted it for television in 2016.

Lois Lane and Clark Kent report for which newspaper in Superman comics?

The Daily Planet is the Metropolis newspaper where Clark Kent and Lois Lane work as reporters; Superman's earliest 1938 stories called it the Daily Star before the Planet name settled in 1940.

The Silver Age of Comics is generally said to start with the 1956 revival of which hero in Showcase #4?

The Flash's 1956 revival in Showcase #4 introduced Barry Allen in place of Golden Age speedster Jay Garrick; DC soon revived Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman the same way.

Why are 'comic books' called comic books even when they are not funny?

Famous Funnies, the first true newsstand comic, was a collection of strips.

Which 1890s New York cartoon character, a bald boy in a nightshirt, gave sensationalist journalism its name?

Pulitzer's World and Hearst's Journal both ran him, and became the 'yellow kid papers'.

How much were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster paid for the first Superman story in 1938?

$130 was $10 a page for the 13-page story, and the cheque signed away all rights to Superman, a character that became a billion-dollar property.

Siegel and Shuster met at Glenville High School in which city?

Cleveland's Glenville High School is where the two met as teenagers in the early 1930s; they bonded over pulp fiction and spent years trying to sell Superman before DC bought it.

In the 1992 comic Superman #75, which villain beats Superman to death?

Doomsday and Superman beat each other to death in Superman #75, released in November 1992 in a polybagged black edition that sold millions of copies; Superman was back within a year.

Which cartoonist created the self-published fantasy series Bone, launched in 1991?

Jeff Smith self-published Bone through his own Cartoon Books from 1991 to 2004, 55 issues in all; Scholastic's colour reprints later made it a children's bestseller.

Nine months before the US entered World War II, Captain America Comics #1 showed the hero doing what on its cover?

Punching Hitler on a March 1941 cover was a provocation: the US was still neutral, and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's patriotic hero predated Pearl Harbor by nine months.

Captain America was revived from decades frozen in ice in which 1964 comic?

The Avengers #4 (March 1964) had the team find Captain America frozen in a block of ice; in the retconned origin he had fallen into icy Atlantic waters in the last days of World War II.

Which 1954 body banned the words 'horror' and 'terror' from US comic-book titles?

The Comics Code Authority, set up by publishers in 1954 after Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency, barred 'horror' and 'terror' from titles, and its seal governed newsstand comics for decades.

Which Belgian cartoonist created the Smurfs in 1958?

Peyo, born Pierre Culliford, introduced the Smurfs as side characters in his Johan and Peewit strip in the Belgian magazine Spirou in October 1958.

Which two publishers were the last to abandon the Comics Code, in January 2011?

DC and Archie dropped the Comics Code seal within a day of each other in January 2011; Marvel had walked away in 2001 after the Code rejected an issue of X-Force.

What was Stan Lee's birth name?

Stanley Martin Lieber, born in Manhattan in 1922, used 'Stan Lee' as a pen name to save his real name for serious novels, then adopted it legally.

With what one-word motto did Stan Lee sign off his columns and promotional copy?

Excelsior! is Latin for 'ever upward' and the motto of New York State; Lee closed his Stan's Soapbox columns with it for decades.

Jack Kirby, known as 'The King' of comics, was born under what name?

Jacob Kurtzberg, born on New York's Lower East Side in 1917, took the name Jack Kirby in the 1930s and co-created Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and Thor.

After leaving Marvel for DC in 1970, Jack Kirby created which multi-title saga?

The Fourth World spanned New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle and Jimmy Olsen from 1970 to 1973 and introduced Darkseid, who became a lasting DC mainstay.

Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider where?

A science exhibit on radioactivity is where the irradiated spider bit Peter Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962).

Which newspaper publisher spends his days slandering Spider-Man?

J. Jonah Jameson publishes the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker sells photos of himself; Jameson debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in 1963.

Which character took over as Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe after Peter Parker's apparent death?

Miles Morales debuted in Ultimate Fallout #4 in 2011, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, and later starred in the Oscar-winning Into the Spider-Verse.

Which 1980 X-Men storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ends with Jean Grey's death?

The Dark Phoenix Saga ran in X-Men #129-137 in 1980; editor Jim Shooter insisted Jean Grey answer for destroying an inhabited world, so Claremont and Byrne killed her on the Moon.

In Marvel Comics, mutants such as the X-Men are born with which genetic trait that gives them their powers?

The X-gene is why Charles Xavier runs a school for them; his old friend and foil Magneto thinks mutants should rule humans instead.

Which Archie Comics character is a teenage witch from the town of Greendale?

Sabrina Spellman first appeared in Archie's Madhouse in October 1962, created by George Gladir and Dan DeCarlo, decades before the 1996 sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

In Todd McFarlane's Spawn, which demon returns the dead soldier Al Simmons to Earth?

Malebolgia, ruler of the eighth circle of Hell in McFarlane's mythology, gave Al Simmons his powers and sent him back to Earth as Spawn; Spawn #1 appeared in May 1992.

Which graphic novel became the first to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1992?

Maus, Art Spiegelman's account of his father's Holocaust survival, drew Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs, and received a Pulitzer Special Award in 1992.

Who wrote 'Watchmen', the 1986-87 DC series drawn by Dave Gibbons?

Alan Moore's Watchmen is the only comic on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923; Moore has disowned every film made from his work.

'Watchmen' won which science-fiction prize in 1988, in a special 'Other Forms' category?

The Hugo Award's one-off 'Other Forms' category was created in 1988 and went to Watchmen, the only graphic novel honoured that way before a Best Graphic Story Hugo arrived in 2009.

Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir 'Persepolis' is set during the revolution in which country?

Iran's 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war frame Satrapi's Tehran childhood; the 2007 animated adaptation was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Robert Kirkman's 'The Walking Dead' comic ran for how many issues before ending abruptly in 2019?

193 issues: Kirkman ended The Walking Dead in July 2019 with no advance warning, explaining himself in the final issue's letters page; the solicited issues #194 and #195 were decoys.

The Image space-opera series 'Saga', drawn by Fiona Staples, is narrated by which character?

Hazel, the daughter of Alana and Marko, narrates Saga from an unseen adult future as the series follows her parents' flight from a galactic war.

Mike Mignola's Hellboy works for which agency?

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense; his stone Right Hand of Doom is the key to the apocalypse.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird named their four turtles after artists of which period?

The Italian Renaissance supplied Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo; Eastman and Laird picked the names from an art-history book when creating the turtles in 1984.

The red-headed teen who debuted with Betty and Jughead in 1941 first appeared in which comic?

Pep Comics #22, cover-dated December 1941, introduced Archie, Betty and Jughead in a six-page story drawn by Bob Montana; Veronica Lodge arrived the next year.

The hometown of Jughead, Betty and Veronica, which gave its name to a 2017 CW series, is called what?

He attends Riverdale High with Jughead, Betty and Veronica.

The Eisner Awards, comics' equivalent of the Oscars, have been presented since 1991 at which event?

San Diego Comic-Con has hosted the Eisners since 1991; they are named for Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit, who attended the ceremony until his death in 2005.

San Diego Comic-Con's sold-out attendance through the 2010s was roughly how many people?

130,000 or so attendees filled the San Diego Convention Center each year through the 2010s; the event began in 1970 as a one-day 'minicon' of about 100 people.

Tintin first appeared in 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième, a youth supplement to a newspaper in which country?

Belgium: Le Petit Vingtième was the children's supplement of the Brussels Catholic daily Le Vingtième Siècle; Hergé's 24 albums have sold more than 200 million copies in over 70 languages.

Hergé's clean, flat drawing style, which shaped generations of European cartoonists, is called what?

Ligne claire means 'clear line': uniform ink lines, flat colour and no hatching, a style Hergé perfected on Tintin; Snowy the dog is Milou in the original French.

Why does Obelix have permanent superhuman strength without needing the druid's potion?

Obelix fell into the cauldron of magic potion as a baby, so its effect never wears off and Getafix refuses him more; Asterix first appeared in Pilote in 1959.

Asterix was written by René Goscinny and drawn by which artist, who continued alone after 1977?

Albert Uderzo drew every Asterix album from 1959 and wrote them too after Goscinny's death in November 1977, until handing the series to Ferri and Conrad in 2013.

Which manga holds the Guinness record for most copies published of a comic series by one author?

One Piece, Eiichiro Oda's pirate saga serialised in Weekly Shōnen Jump since 1997, took the Guinness title in 2015 with 320 million copies and was recertified in 2022 past 500 million.

Charles Schulz drew how many Peanuts strips over almost 50 years, all without assistants?

17,897 strips ran from October 2, 1950 to February 13, 2000; the final Sunday strip appeared the morning after Schulz died.

Before it was renamed Peanuts, Schulz's strip ran in the St. Paul Pioneer Press under what title?

Li'l Folks ran weekly in the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1947 to 1950; United Feature Syndicate renamed it Peanuts without asking Schulz, who disliked the name all his life.

Jim Davis named Garfield after whom?

James A. Garfield Davis shared a name with the president; the strip became the world's most widely syndicated.

How many newspapers ran the first Calvin and Hobbes strip on November 18, 1985?

35 newspapers carried the debut strip on November 18, 1985; by the time Watterson retired it on December 31, 1995 it ran in more than 2,400 papers.

Which single-panel comic by Gary Larson ran in newspapers from 1980 to 1995?

The Far Side ran from January 1, 1980 to January 1, 1995, with Gary Larson drawing about 4,000 panels of cows, scientists and cavemen before retiring it.

In Marvel's 1961 debut of the Fantastic Four, what bombarded the team's spacecraft and gave the four their powers?

Cosmic rays on a rushed, unshielded space flight gave the four their powers in Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961); Bruce Banner's gamma rays followed in The Incredible Hulk #1 in May 1962.

Which Marvel artist co-created Daredevil with Stan Lee in 1964?

Bill Everett drew Daredevil #1 (April 1964) with writer Stan Lee; Wally Wood redesigned the costume in red in issue #7 the following year, and Gene Colan became the long-running artist.

How many issues did Neil Gaiman's original 1989-1996 run of The Sandman span?

75 issues, over which Dream is revealed as one of seven Endless siblings: Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium and Destruction.

Wonder Woman's creator William Moulton Marston also devised an early version of what device?

His systolic blood-pressure test became one component of the modern polygraph; his wife Elizabeth suggested the link between emotion and blood pressure.

Black Panther's nation of Wakanda is sustained by deposits of which fictional metal?

Vibranium, the meteoric metal that absorbs vibration, made Wakanda rich and secretive; T'Challa debuted in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966, with Kirby's half-face cowl redrawn as a full mask.

What colour was the Hulk in his 1962 debut issue?

Gray was Lee's choice for Incredible Hulk #1, but the printer could not hold the shade consistently, so the Hulk turned green from issue #2; reprints were recoloured green for decades.

Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, was co-created in 1959 by which artist?

Gil Kane drew Hal Jordan's debut in Showcase #22 (October 1959) from a John Broome script; editor Julius Schwartz wanted a science-fiction Green Lantern, a clean break from the 1940s Alan Scott.

Which artist drew the 1988 one-shot 'Batman: The Killing Joke'?

Bolland later recoloured the whole book himself for the 2008 Deluxe Edition, replacing John Higgins's original palette.

How old is Bruce Wayne when he comes out of retirement in 'The Dark Knight Returns'?

55-year-old Bruce Wayne, ten years retired, returns in Frank Miller's 1986 four-issue miniseries, inked by Klaus Janson and coloured by Lynn Varley, which set the template for the grim Batman of later decades.

Harley Quinn was created not for comics but for which 1992 cartoon?

Batman: The Animated Series introduced her in the 1992 episode 'Joker's Favor'; Paul Dini and Bruce Timm meant her as a one-episode henchwoman, and she did not enter main comics continuity until 1999.

Hank Pym, the future Ant-Man, first appeared in which 1962 Marvel anthology?

Tales to Astonish #27 (January 1962) cast Hank Pym in a one-off shrinking story, 'The Man in the Ant Hill'; he returned as the costumed Ant-Man in issue #35 that September.

Before it became Marvel, Martin Goodman's publishing company was first known as what?

Timely Comics was Goodman's name for the line from 1939; its Marvel Comics #1 introduced the Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner, and with its second printing sold nearly 900,000 copies.

Batman's Boy Wonder sidekick took his name and medieval-look costume from which legendary figure?

Robin Hood, as illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, gave Dick Grayson his name and tunic; he debuted in April 1940 and reportedly doubled sales of the Batman titles.

Jim Starlin named the Mad Titan Thanos after a concept from which thinker?

Sigmund Freud's Thanatos, the death drive, gave Starlin the name during college psychology classes; Thanos first appeared in The Invincible Iron Man #55 in 1973.

Which journalist became Venom's first host when the alien symbiote bonded with him in 1988?

Eddie Brock, a disgraced Daily Globe reporter, bonded with the symbiote in The Amazing Spider-Man #300 (May 1988); the alien had debuted as Spider-Man's black costume in issue #252 in 1984.

How many issues did DC's 1985–86 crossover 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' run?

12 monthly issues from April 1985 to March 1986: Marv Wolfman and George Pérez killed off the original Supergirl and Barry Allen among hundreds of characters and rebooted the entire DC timeline.

Which creator of Astro Boy is known in Japan as 'the god of manga'?

Tezuka, who also created Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack, is often called the Japanese Walt Disney, a major inspiration in his youth.

Katsuhiro Otomo's 'Akira' was serialised from 1982 in which Kodansha seinen title?

Young Magazine, Kodansha's seinen weekly, ran Akira from December 1982 to 1990; its 120 chapters fill six volumes, and Marvel's Epic imprint first brought it to the United States.

Akira Toriyama's 'Dragon Ball' was inspired by which classic Chinese novel?

Journey to the West supplied Son Goku, named for the Monkey King Sun Wukong; Dragon Ball's 519 chapters helped push Weekly Shōnen Jump to its 1995 peak of 6.53 million copies a week.

Quino's six-year-old comic-strip heroine Mafalda comes from which country?

Argentina's Quino (Joaquín Salvador Lavado) drew Mafalda in Buenos Aires from 1964 to 1973, and the strip has been translated into more than 25 languages.

Judge Dredd is judge, jury and executioner in which dystopian future metropolis?

Mega-City One sprawls over the eastern United States; Dredd debuted in the second issue of 2000 AD in 1977, created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra.

Dennis the Menace and Gnasher are the mascots of which long-running British comic?

The Beano has appeared weekly since July 1938, the world's longest-running weekly comic; Dennis the Menace joined in 1951 and his dog Gnasher in 1968.

'V for Vendetta' was first serialised in black and white in which British anthology?

Warrior, Dez Skinn's anthology, ran V for Vendetta in black and white from 1982 until it folded in 1985; DC finished the story in colour as a ten-issue series in 1988-89.

To date Ramona Flowers, Scott Pilgrim must defeat how many of her evil exes?

Seven evil exes form the league Scott must beat across Bryan Lee O'Malley's six black-and-white digests, set in Toronto and published by Oni Press between 2004 and 2010.

Which 2006 graphic memoir became a Broadway show that won the 2015 Tony for Best Musical?

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel's memoir of her closeted father, took seven years to draw, with Bechdel photographing herself in the pose of every human figure; the musical opened on Broadway in 2015.

Whose everyday life in Ohio was the subject of the autobiographical comic 'American Splendor'?

Robert Crumb, who had moved in around the corner, drew some of the earliest stories after seeing Pekar's ideas in 1972.

John Constantine's look was modelled on which musician?

Sting was the model: artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben, fans of The Police, wanted to draw the singer, and Alan Moore obliged; Constantine debuted in Swamp Thing #37 in 1985.

Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme debuted in issue #110 of which anthology in 1963?

Strange Tales #110 (July 1963) introduced Doctor Strange as a five-page backup to the Human Torch feature; the split book later paired him with Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel in 1953 after DC sued, alleging he copied which hero?

Superman was the hero DC said Fawcett had copied, and after a decade of litigation Fawcett settled in 1953. Billy Batson's hero debuted in Whiz Comics #2 in 1940 and starred in a 1941 Republic serial.

Which editor founded Mad in 1952 together with publisher William Gaines?

Harvey Kurtzman edited Mad from its first issue in October 1952 until 1956, when Al Feldstein took over; mascot Alfred E. Neuman first reached the cover in issue 21 in 1955, inside a fake mail-order advertisement.

Will Eisner popularised the term 'graphic novel' with which 1978 book?

A Contract with God, four linked stories set in a Bronx tenement, carried the 'graphic novel' label on its 1978 cover; the industry's Eisner Awards are named for him.

Batman #1, published in April 1940, introduced which two enduring villains?

The Joker and Catwoman, the latter billed simply as 'the Cat', both debuted in Batman #1; Alfred the butler did not arrive until issue #16 in 1943.

In 'Krazy Kat', what does Ignatz the mouse repeatedly hurl at Krazy's head?

A brick, which Krazy takes as a love token, flies from Ignatz in nearly every strip; George Herriman set it in a dreamlike Coconino County, Arizona, and Hearst's papers ran it from 1913 to 1944.

Which 1936 newspaper hero was the first to wear the skintight costume now standard for superheroes?

The Phantom, Lee Falk's 'Ghost Who Walks', began as a daily strip on February 17, 1936, wearing a purple body-stocking and domino mask, and is based in the fictional African jungle of Bangalla.

Which strip became the first daily comic to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1975?

Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau won the 1975 Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning, which so irked editorial cartoonists that their society passed a resolution condemning the Pulitzer committee.

Which Italian creator introduced the enigmatic sailor Corto Maltese in 1967?

Hugo Pratt introduced Corto in 'A Ballad of the Salt Sea' in 1967; born in Valletta in 1887 to a Cornish sailor and a mother from Seville, the sailor roams the first decades of the 20th century.

French artist Jean Giraud drew his surreal science-fiction comics under which pen name?

As Gir he drew the western Blueberry; as Moebius he contributed designs to Alien, Tron and The Fifth Element.

Free Comic Book Day, launched in 2002, falls on the first Saturday of which month?

May's first Saturday was chosen by retailer Joe Field, whose idea launched on May 4, 2002, the day after the first Spider-Man film opened; participating shops give away millions of comics.

Kamala Khan, who took up the Ms. Marvel name in 2014, is a teenager from where?

Jersey City, across the Hudson from Manhattan, is Kamala's home; she was Marvel's first Muslim character to headline her own comic, and inherited the name from her idol Carol Danvers.

Kryptonite was introduced in 1943 not in the comics but in which medium?

Radio's The Adventures of Superman introduced kryptonite in a June 1943 storyline; it did not reach the comics until Superman #61 in 1949, though Siegel had drafted an unpublished 'K-Metal' story in 1940.

Which Bill Willingham Vertigo series exiled Snow White and other fairy-tale characters to Manhattan?

Fables ran 150 issues at Vertigo from 2002 to 2015, with Snow White, Bigby Wolf and other storybook exiles living in hidden Fabletown in Manhattan.

Which E.C. Segar comic strip introduced Popeye in 1929?

Thimble Theatre had run since 1919 when Popeye walked on in January 1929 as a one-off sailor hired for a voyage; he took over the strip, which later carried his name.

In the Franco-Belgian western comic Lucky Luke, what is the name of his horse, billed as the smartest in the world?

Jolly Jumper carries the man who shoots faster than his shadow; Luke's other companion, Rin Tin Can, is billed as the stupidest dog in the universe.