I know that Superman is usually considered the first because he has actual superpowers...

...but if Batman is considered a superhero, shouldn't the Phantom also be considered a superhero?

No?

Superman was not the first superhero. For one thing, the Phantom was before him.

Superman was just a major new break from the past -- Siegel and Schuster kind of said "People, stop fiddling around. Here's a guy throwing a car." It was a quantum leap ahead, marking a new erea.

Also, Sherlock Holmes, thanks.

Samson.

You're welcome.

Nimrod. You're welcome.

Nimrod was probably Black Adam.

Hercules says hey.

Not nearly as old as even Samson, much less Nimrod.

Beowulf.
Thanks.

Zorro - 1919.

Not a bad serious guess, for sure.

The Scarlet Pimpernel - 1903.

We're talking costumed hero tho, right? So that would be the Phantom, yes?

Date: Unknown, sometime between the 8th and 11th century

So visually it takes more than a mask in your assessment?

I think if you require costume, and comic strip format, it's Phantom (to my knowledge). If you allow pulps and prose into it, it does creeping back to variations like Zorro, like Captain Pumpernickel, and so on.

I genuinely think the Three Muskateers is part of the same vein. And I wasn't really joking about Sherlock Holmes, either.

And on of the reasons that Don Quixote is my favorite novel is that he was a total fanboy -- he obsessed with the details of the chivalric romances he read. He had a huge collection of them in his house, and when he dressed up, he was dressing in his concept of a chivalric hero. He even endlessly quotes "rules" about their encounters, and gets frustrated when people don't seem to go along with the conventions.

So, Don Quixote is really John Byrne?

For me, it's someone who puts on a mask and fights crime. That would be the Scarlet Pimpernel, unless political crimes don't count, in which case Zorro wins.

Holmes is just an excellent detective. There have been a lot of those, but they are not superheroes.

Very much like him. Though Byrne is less lovable.

No doubt.

Well, not to debate it, but we were going for "first" not "what have there not been a lot of?" But because Holmes predates both the superhero tradition and the detective tradition, and he's in the bloodline of both.

He's almost superhuman in his powers of observation -- Watson is constantly amazed at his abilities. For the Victorian era, he's a reflection of where they thought the highest aspiration of heroic human endeavor was.

The notion of him as a superhero was one I cribbed from Michael Chabon. He thinks one of the reasons Holmes was the most popular fictional character in the world, with everyone awaiting the next installment, is that people were craving adventure stores that centered upon a fascinating hero with seemingly abnormal ability to overcome bad guys.

In hindsight, whether it's the Phantom, or the Shadow, or Doc Savage one is thinking about -- we sit here and think "Yeah, but why didn't any of them throw a car?" Superman seems so inevitable to us now. But Seigel and Schuster couldn't get any love at first. I guess the collective consciousness wasn't really ready.

I think Superman is truly the first superhero, in the fullest, no exception sense of the word.

Poe's C. Auguste Dupin (1841) predates Sherlock Holmes (1881).

Not to debate it. Not a bad serious guess on your part though.

I'm aware. He used the concept of "rationation" because the word "detective" hadn't been coined yet. "Detective" was coined by Wilkie Collins in The Moonstone (1868). Charles Dickins, best friend of Collins, was working on his first "detective" story (Edwin Drood) when he died in 1870. The first Holmes story was 1887. All of these things, in my mind, are part of the Victorian era fascination with heroes who use their minds, moreso than brawn (Age of Enlightment, Industrial Revolution, all that), but they seemed to have a fascination with mysticism and ghosts as well. I think these things kept on swirling and combining into fiction that was obsessed with gifted heroes.

I understand Holmes is not a superhero in the fullest sense. But there's only so much discussion we can do about the Phantom and masks worn by Zorro and Pimplehead.