Public Domain Super Heroes



  is a collaborative website about comic book, film, literary, or pulp characters in the public domain that have appeared in comics or fit in a common comic book genre such as the masked vigilante, caped crusader, or jungle lord. The wiki format allows anyone to create or edit any article, so we can all work together to create the site. Check out the Help FAQ to help you get started! We now have articles. We want to reach over 1500 articles.

For info on what constitutes "public domain", check out the Public Domain FAQ.

After Action Comics #1 gave the world Superman in 1938, there was an explosion of costumed heroes in comics. New publishers and characters sprang up everywhere. After World War II, these type of characters fell out of favor with readers. This caused many publishers to go out of business and many characters were lost. Those comics and their stars have since fallen into the public domain. This enables anyone to use those characters and those classic stories any way they wish. Over the years many publishers have taken advantage of this, including AC Comics (FemForce, Men of Mystery), Malibu (The Protectors), America's Best (Terra Obscura), and - most recently - Dynamite (Project Superpowers), and Image Comics (Next Issue Project) among others.

This is intended to be an online encyclopedia of these characters, providing pertinent information to fans who want to learn about their history, as well as creators who may want to use them. Unless otherwise noted, all images and information are believed to be in the Public Domain. The information and images presented are intended to give a brief overview of the characters and provide a visual reference.

Enjoy.

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 * If you are adding to the Wiki, please try to keep the information restricted to what is Public Domain for now. That would be mainly Golden Age information. We might add things like The Protectors, Terra Obscura and Project Superpowers in the future, but for now we want to be primarily a Public Domain resource. Our intent is to provide information on public domain characters that creators could use in their works. For a list of disputed public domain characters see here.


 * Thank you to all of our research sources. Be sure to visit these sites in our Other Links/Research Sources links to them and thank those sites creators for their great work. If you add a page to the wiki please link your sources if you used any of these or other websites and thank them for any image contributions.





This Week in Public Domain Super Heroes
Tony Zalloco, who runs the Golden Age Heroes Blog, is publishing a reprint collection of several Golden Age public domain stories through his publishing imprint Terrific Comics. It's also got some nifty original art on the cover. More here

Featured article


Joe "Cowboy" King was an American World War II pilot who operated in and around India, who dressed and acted like a cowboy....

(See Cowboy Sahib)

