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This comic trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and goes well beyond capes. It starts with the first appearances every fan should know (Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #27, Amazing Fantasy #15) and the creators behind them: Siegel and Shuster, Bill Finger, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko. Then it widens out to the history of the medium: the Yellow Kid and yellow journalism, the Golden and Silver Ages, the Comics Code Authority and Fredric Wertham's moral panic, the founding of Image Comics. There are rounds on graphic novels (Maus, Watchmen, Persepolis, Saga, The Walking Dead), on newspaper strips (Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes) and on comics from beyond the US: Tintin, Asterix and One Piece. Difficulty runs from easy openers to questions that will test a lifelong collector. Every answer has been verified against Wikipedia and shows its citation once you have answered.
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Q 01Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman first appeared in which comic, cover-dated June 1938?
Action Comics #1
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.
Q 02Which artist, alongside writer Stan Lee, co-created Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15?
Steve Ditko
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.
Q 03Which anthology comic introduced Wonder Woman in October 1941?
All Star Comics #8
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.
Q 04Which Marvel Comics title introduced Iron Man, cover-dated March 1963?
Tales of Suspense #39
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.
Q 05In which issue did the Justice League of America first assemble?
The Brave and the Bold #28
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.
Q 06Wolverine's very first appearance was a one-panel teaser at the end of which 1974 Marvel issue?
The Incredible Hulk #180
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.
Q 07Which writer and artist introduced Deadpool as a villain in The New Mutants #98 in 1990?
Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld
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.
Q 08Which independent comic book publisher releases the critically acclaimed series 'Saga'?
Image Comics
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.
Q 09Which writer created the Vertigo series Preacher with artist Steve Dillon?
Garth Ennis
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.
Q 10Lois Lane and Clark Kent report for which newspaper in Superman comics?
The Daily Planet
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.
Q 11The Silver Age of Comics is generally said to start with the 1956 revival of which hero in Showcase #4?
The Flash
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.
Q 12Why are 'comic books' called comic books even when they are not funny?
Early ones reprinted humorous newspaper strips
Famous Funnies, the first true newsstand comic, was a collection of strips.
Q 13Which 1890s New York cartoon character, a bald boy in a nightshirt, gave sensationalist journalism its name?
The Yellow Kid
Q 21Which Belgian cartoonist created the Smurfs in 1958?
Peyo
Peyo, born Pierre Culliford, introduced the Smurfs as side characters in his Johan and Peewit strip in the Belgian magazine Spirou in October 1958.
Q 22Which two publishers were the last to abandon the Comics Code, in January 2011?
DC and Archie
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.
Q 23What was Stan Lee's birth name?
Stanley Martin Lieber
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.
Pulitzer's World and Hearst's Journal both ran him, and became the 'yellow kid papers'.
Q 14How much were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster paid for the first Superman story in 1938?
$130
$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.
Q 15Siegel and Shuster met at Glenville High School in which city?
Cleveland
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.
Q 16In the 1992 comic Superman #75, which villain beats Superman to death?
Doomsday
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.
Q 17Which cartoonist created the self-published fantasy series Bone, launched in 1991?
Jeff Smith
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.
Q 18Nine months before the US entered World War II, Captain America Comics #1 showed the hero doing what on its cover?
Punching Hitler
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.
Q 19Captain America was revived from decades frozen in ice in which 1964 comic?
The Avengers #4
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.
Q 20Which 1954 body banned the words 'horror' and 'terror' from US comic-book titles?
The Comics Code Authority
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.
Q 24With what one-word motto did Stan Lee sign off his columns and promotional copy?
Excelsior!
Excelsior! is Latin for 'ever upward' and the motto of New York State; Lee closed his Stan's Soapbox columns with it for decades.
Q 25Jack Kirby, known as 'The King' of comics, was born under what name?
Jacob Kurtzberg
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.
Q 26After leaving Marvel for DC in 1970, Jack Kirby created which multi-title saga?
The Fourth World
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.
Q 27Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider where?
At a science exhibit
A science exhibit on radioactivity is where the irradiated spider bit Peter Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962).
Q 28Which newspaper publisher spends his days slandering Spider-Man?
J. Jonah Jameson
J. Jonah Jameson publishes the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker sells photos of himself; Jameson debuted in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in 1963.
Q 29Which character took over as Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe after Peter Parker's apparent death?
Miles Morales
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.
Q 30Which 1980 X-Men storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne ends with Jean Grey's death?
The Dark Phoenix Saga
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.