Which comic book characters have now become household names?

[dupersuper]

Never in a million years are any of them "household names"

Storm, Cyclops, JJ and Venom might be because the movies were so huge, Commisioner Gordon might be, the name Plastic Man might be though I doubt most would know the character it reers to, Bizarro is close after showing up in 2 shows, the cartoons and Seinfeld, Pepper got a boost from the movie as well, though I wouldn't say household name..the rest no way.

[foxley]

Aquaman may be approaching household name status, but mainly as a 'superheroes are lame' punchline.

[Lord Bravery]

I'd say Blade is a house hold name. Maybe not as an actual comic book character, but people would probably recognize the name and say something like "The Wesley Snipes vampire guy?"

[Wadeithan]

In my experience, the list is way shorter than some of the ones posted here. I mean, Plastic Man? Seriously? I have friends who love comics who don't know Plastic Man. When it comes down to it, I think Superman/Clark Kent, Lois Lane, (probably) Jimmy Olsen, Batman/Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Spider-man (it seems like a lot of people know SM but not even Peter Parker), and Captain America (again, but not Steve Rogers) are probably about it as far as most people who aren't comic fans already would know (at least for superhero characters). I know that Blade had three movies, but it seems like a lot of people have already forgotten about them unless you specifically bring them up. The same is true of the Punisher movies, it seems. I'm sure people could say "the X-men" but probably couldn't name any specific ones. Now, for people who are even marginal comic fans, the list would be a lot longer, but household name implies that it's a common, understood-by-everyone name. Then, of course, there are the comic strip characters that others have already named, which would add quite a few names to the list. Like I said, in my experience, it's an EXTREMELY short list if you're talking to people who don't (or haven't) really read comics. I may have missed a couple, but I feel like a lot of people are greatly over-reaching with their lists.

[n8twing]

Don't forget:

Wolverine
Green Goblin
Robin The Boy Wonder
Batgirl
Archie Andrews
Betty & Veronica

[MNM]

Storm, Cyclops, JJ and Venom might be because the movies were so huge,

I'd be shocked if anyone who wasnt already a comics fan could name anyone other than Spider-Man, Wolverine, Magneto or Prof X if you asked them for characters from those movies.

And even if a few could name Storm or Cyclops, they are not household names, and certainly the majority on that list I quoted, Swamp thing, Spawn, Bizarro for example, are not household names. To think they are would be an action in delusion.

I'd say Blade is a house hold name. Maybe not as an actual comic book character, but people would probably recognize the name and say something like "The Wesley Snipes vampire guy?"

Is some people having a vague recollection that a certain actor played a particular type of character in a movie once enough to make that character a "house hold name"? It's like the Storm example above, some people might say "oh yeah, Halle Berry played some mutant". Doesnt make Storm a household name any more than it makes Blade one.

[foxley]

My own list would be much shorter:

Superman
Batman (and Robin)
Wonder Woman
Spider-Man
Captain America
Hulk (maybe)
Uncle Scrooge

If you count comic strips, then add:

Dick Tracy
Charlie Brown (and Snoopy)
Flash Gordon

[Enda8011]

-- Maybe because of Gomer Pyle, people seem to know vaguely of the Shazam! hero Captain Marvel. Of course, thanbks to tradmark issues with Marvel Comics, most non-comics readers think the Big Red Cheese is the one named Shazam.

-- Little Lulu, Richie Rich, and Casper the Friendly Ghost are still quite widely known, usually by people who've never read any of their comics or seen their horrible movies in the latter two cases.

-- Newspaper strip characters in the U.S. should also include Dick Tracy, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, and Buck Rogers, all of whom seem to be remembered to a disproportionate degree despite the waning of their presence in the newspapers themselves. With Tracy and Annie you have movie presence. (Annie not only has the terrible musical of that name, but also her radio show's prominent role in the plot of A Christmas Story.) Alley Oop survives because of a popular 1960s single about him long after his newspaper strip had largely faded from popular consciousness. And Buck Rogers is simply an archetypal science fiction character, at least in the U.S. Not too many years back, I'd have said everyone would recognize L'il Abner and Pogo, too, but their fame seems to have vanished in the last decade or so with the passing of the last generation that would have known them from the Sunday papers.

-- Kinda surprised none of the Viz characters are UK household names, though I guess that magazine's fortunes have declined somewhat from its peak some years back.

Buck Rogers started in prose, not comic strips, oddly enough.

[Enda8011]

This thread reminds me of a paradox. In the 1970s and 1980's, you found people such as Frank Miller attempting to infuse elements of the hard-boiled detective genre into Daredevil and so forth.

However, none of the private eye film series attempts in the last forty years have done well other than Shaft.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/...ice17_ST_N.htm

http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum....-reboot?page=2

"Bill Warren stated that he wished they would spend this much budget (as went into the [last two] FF films) on something that comes "in a hardcover". I pointed out that attempts to produce franchises based on adult prose literary have usually not produced many sequels".

"Authors of adult literary series had suprisingly little to no success in having prolific film franchises based on their novels and works. One shot adaptations of singletons do not disprove that point".

"I wanted to extrapolate that perhaps the reason that they do not put the sort of budget that the 2005 and 2007 FF films received into an adaptation of something that "comes in hardcover" has to do with, as I have shown, the trend in the last forty years that attempts to turn adult literary series into film series/franchises will not succeed. So, the studios do not put the budgets that the 2005 and 2007 FF films received into them, so instead we have medium budget adaptations of novels, often adaptations of singleton novels". [Tom Clancy has not had a film version of one of his books in theaters in the last nine years.]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...lbornFranchise

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...treamObscurity

Ancillary merchandise actually helps in this matter greatly, keeping these properties that rarely make the best-seller lists of books in the public eye. Go into a discount store, Wal-Mart, etc. and look for the tie-in items such as coloring books, plastic cups, ice cream, etc. In the case of Superman and perhaps Dick Tracy and a few others, cut rate DVD copies of public domain films and shorts from the 1930's and 1940's also help.

[Julian Fine]

Sadie Hawkins

[dancj]

Sadie Hawkins

Who?

(not being snarky - I genuinely have no idea)

[Julian Fine]

She's from Lil' Abner and is the origin of Sadie Hawkins Dances. Almost nobody knows who the character is anymore but she's probably has some of the most household name recogniton because of that tradition.

[dancj]

I've not heard of the dances either. Maybe it's an American thing.

[CaseyJonesCaseyJones]

The prominent popularity of certain superheroes is precisely why I included references to several in my comic, All Fall Down.

There's a list of the references to some of them here: http://www.caseyjonescaseyjones.com/?p=309

-C. Jones