Non Indicative Name / Comic Books

---

• On a meta level, this often applies to comic titles themselves. In the 20th century, publishers frequently had good reasons to maintain the continuity of a particular title even as its contents changed. This happened a lot at DC in the Golden Age; Superman appeared in Action Comics; Batman started in Detective Comics. Marvel took its turn in the Silver Age, debuting a lot of classic heroes under non-indicative names: Tales to Astonish = Ant-Man, Tales of Suspense = Iron Man, etc. While Marvel has mostly discontinued these misleadingly-named series, they've been known to occasionally revive them for old time's sake, like when they brought back Journey into Mystery (the fantasy/sci-fi anthology where Thor originally made his debut) as a Loki series.
• The members of the No Names gang in 20 Fists do in fact have names. And their gang does.
• While Atomic Robo is heavily invested in Robo himself, the spinoff Real Science Adventures is generally not about real adventures or even real science, instead being mostly about the same sort of parallel-history superscience-fuelled pulp action as the main Robo comic.
• Agents of Atlas: There is a human robot who, to all appearances, is merely a robot and in no way human. In his revived version this is because the scientist who built him transferred his own life force into it. So the name is in fact accurate, but its meaning is not apparent to an outsider.
• In Amazing Age, the villain Mangle and hero Wrest are both psychics, but you probably wouldn't know that just from their codenames. Similarly, Black Knight has a costume that resembles a suit of armor, but he's actually an Electric Black Guy.
• Maybe one day we'll find out what The Avengers are supposed to be avenging. In-universe, the name was picked pretty much entirely for Rule of Cool.
  • Lampshaded in the movie, where as Agent Coulson lies dying he says that he's okay with it, as the team would never work without something to... well, he ends there, but "avenge" is implied. Later on, Iron Man states that if they can't save the world, they will avenge it. Prior to that, the Avengers Initiative was just SHIELD's codename for the program.
    • We find out in Captain Marvel that the name was inspired by Carol Danvers' USAF call sign.
  • The animated series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has Iron Man talk about "avenging the wrongs caused by all these villains".
• While Batman enemy Black Mask did originally wear what his codename suggests, a black mask, the charred Skull for a Head look he's sported since Batman: No Man's Land is his actual face, disfigured as a result of a fire that happened during one of his first fights with the Dark Knight.
• The Birds of Prey are simply a collection of female superheroes. 'Bird' being British slang for 'woman' lampshaded:
  Jaime: So they're like super-powered birds?
  Oracle: No!
  Jaime: They have bird-powers?
  Oracle: No.
  Jaime: Do they at least have bird code names?
  Oracle: ...One does.
• Black Canary dresses (partly) in black, but she doesn't exactly sing like a canary so much as screech like a banshee. And the original Black Canary didn't even have that power.
• Black Orchid's costume is neither black nor resembles an orchid tree at all. Her costume is depicted as various shades of purple and earlier versions look more like a moth or butterfly than a tree.
• The title group of The Boys includes a woman, who is downright called "The Female" due to No Name Given.
• Cyclops (usually) has two eyes; he just wears a visor that has one lens.
• In Marvel Comics, you'd think with a name like Typhoid Mary, this occasional Daredevil villain would have some kind of 'walking plague' power set. But that's far from the case, she's actually a mentally ill telepath with telekinesis and pyrokinesis. She just wanted a tough sounding name to declare that no man is ever going to abuse her again.
  • Ironically, the Elektra movie changed Typhoid Mary's powers to poisonous touch and breath, which made more sense for her name.
• Despite DC standing for Detective Comics, most of DC's comics are about superheroes, not detectives.
• Doctor Doom is not actually a doctor, but Fan Wank says he might have given himself an honorary one as ruler of Latveria. It should be noted that Doom himself almost never calls himself "Doctor" Doom, but simply "Doom" (ALLCAPS optional).
  • But does he have a PhD in doominess?
  • Of course, his archenemy, Mr. Fantastic, has several doctorates. He's generally addressed as "Dr. Richards".
  • Ben Grimm's personality is anything but grim. (These days. It fit much better in the early years when he was offer depressed about becoming a walking pile of rocks.)
• Firestorm's powers and origin have nothing to do with fire, weather, or firestorms, unless you count nuclear "fire". His main ability is molecular-level Transmutation.
• One Flash story arc is called "The Dastardly Death of the Rogues". There's only one death, and it's not a Rogue.
• The Fox Hunt has the villain who refers to himself as "Brontosaurus", despite being a tall, orange, humanoid person/thing that possessed a bank robber to lay low and has nothing to do with dinosaurs whatsoever. A couple of the characters calls him out on this.
• In the Great Ten, well... Immortal Man in Darkness couldn't be a less accurate name if it tried because the technology of the plane he flies drains his life as he pilots it; there have been about seven Immortal Men in Darkness since the team was founded. The name is a publicity thing. Similarly, the Seven Deadly Brothers. "I am seven. I am deadly. But I am a brother to no one." This is because the Seven Deadly Brothers are actually one man, an only child at that, who splits into seven people with different personalities due to a curse.
• Hellboy isn't exactly a boy these days, either.
  • Word of God is "You can't call him 'Hellman'. It's a mayonnaise."
• Marvel Comics' Hulkling has nothing to do with the Hulk, except that his combat form is also big and green. He's actually half-Kree and half-Skrull — in fact, his father was the original Captain Marvel.
• The original Human Torch from The Invaders was neither a human nor a torch but an android that burned on contact with air. The reason for his odd name is that at the time, "human torches" (performers who lit themselves on fire) were a well-known circus act. Since they're rarely seen today, modern readers parse the words separately and get confused.
  • In Universe-X there were Human Torches. They were torches but they weren't human.
• In Immortal Iron Fist, Fat Cobra's totem animal is actually the turtle.
• Invincible is vincible. Even moreso now that exposure to the Scourge has deprived him of his Nigh-Invulnerability, at least for the time being.
• The Invisible Hood started out with a hood, but without invisibility. A monologue at the beginning of his second story attempted to justify the name by stating that it referred to his Secret Identity. Nevertheless, by the end of that story, he had gained an actual Invisibility Cloak.
• While Iron Man's prototype suit was originally iron, the material of other versions has varied depending on continuity. In most of the comics, the suits have had iron in some form in the outer shell, usually enhanced in some way with forcefields. In some continuities, it's explained that Tony was inspired by the Black Sabbath song, though ironically the lyrics describe a Fallen Hero (and the comics hero himself predated the song by seven years).
  • In the movies, this is lampshaded (the explanation is used in the novelization, and carried over to the movies proper with a nod in the Avengers movie, where Tony wears a Black Sabbath shirt).
  Stark: "Iron Man". That's kind of catchy. It's got a nice ring to it. I mean it's not technically accurate. The suit's a gold titanium alloy, but it's kind of provocative, the imagery anyway.
  • In the Dutch translation, he is known as "Steelman". His suit probably isn't steel either, though.
• Another Justice Leaguer from the "International" era, the Crimson Fox, wore a costume consisting of brown and black shades, and no crimson whatsoever. She was originally going to be called the Red Fox (which is more fitting since her suit does look sorta red Depending on the Artist), but the possibility of legal action from the creators of an indie comic called Redfox necessitated a name change on DC's part.
• In the 2020 Metal Men series, Will Magnus builds replacements for the Metal Men (yes, again) called the Metal Mammals, who are non-indicative on several levels. Obviously, robots can't be mammals because they're robots. They're named after gases, not metals (although they are made of metal — which is also odd because Magnus's creations are traditionally named after the element they're made of, and previous continuities had a Gas Gang based on that principle). And finally, Florine is a cobra and Helium is a hawk, so they're not even modeled on mammals.
• Crops up a couple of times in The Multiversity in regards to certain Earth-8 residents and their Earth-7 counterparts.
  • Wandajin is the name for a group or cloud and rain spirits from Aboriginal Mythology, yet the superhero from Earth-8 with that name is white, whilst his counterpart on Earth-7 who is aboriginal is given the more generic moniker: Thunderer. The idea is more or less that the Earth-8 version is the "original" version from an earlier time when it'd be seen as reasonable for a character based on an Aboriginal myth to be lily-white, and the Earth-7 version is a later reboot from an Ultimate Universe where he's been given a Race Lift to better reflect his concept and abilities.
  • Another superhero is named American Crusader and whilst he does have elements resembling a Holy Crusader, he doesn’t have any design elements that say America. Contrast this with his Earth-7 counterpart Crusader, who lacks the American part of the former's name, but is near-identical to Ultimate Captain America with the Wearing a Flag on Your Head slightly toned down.
    
    Subverted in Mastermen #1 which shows an in-universe comic book depicting a Golden Age American Crusader with more American elements played up. This seems to imply that he dropped those aspects in the Modern Age but kept the name and that his Ultimate Universe counterpart is an In-Universe back to basics approach.
• Nightcrawler of the X-Men has nothing to do with worms. His body is covered in dark blue, nearly black fur, which is probably where the "night" part comes from. However, he's trained acrobat and does a lot of jumping around and not much crawling. He does crouch, however.
  • During his run with John Byrne on X-Men, Chris Claremont tried renaming Nightcrawler "Misfit", which is a little more accurate, although seeing as the X-Men are ALSO misfits...
• Marvel Comics' Night Nurse secretly treats wounded superheroes. As she reveals to us in Doctor Strange: The Oath, she's actually a doctor, but "Night General Practitioner" isn't as catchy. And as seen in her appearance in Marvel Divas, she isn't against attending at high noon, either.
• There is little obviously thunderbolt-like to the powers displayed by Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, who is an expert martial artist with some borderline-mystical abilities. Different versions of the character have “Thunderbolt” be a nickname attached to him by a news reporter because he’s just quick and impressive, or refer to the significance of the thunderbolt in Buddhist iconography.
• The original Seven Soldiers of Victory had eight members. Officially Wing didn't count because he was just the Crimson Avenger's sidekick... but Stripsey and Speedy did, even though they were sidekicks to Star-Spangled Kid and Green Arrow. The actual reason was, simply put, Wing was Asian: when DC revisited the team in later material, they were very frank that there was no good reason for him to not be a full member. The post-Crisis version replaced Green Arrow with Alias the Spider, who didn't have a sidekick... and added Vigilante's sidekick Stuff, the Chinatown Kid.
• The Silver Sorceress, a DC Comics character introduced in 1971 as a deliberate Captain Ersatz of Marvel's Scarlet Witch, wore a costume that of course... consisted entirely of gold, brown, and red shades. When she became part of the Justice League over a decade later, she did have silver hair at least, though it was completely covered by her elaborate headgear and a Retcon in any event — in her first appearance, she was depicted with brown hair.
  • Somewhat justified in-universe: in her last major appearance, before her Heroic Sacrifice, she admitted to being colorblind.
• Harmony Smurf from The Smurfs is a Dreadful Musician.
• Spawn: recurring cop character Twitch is a skilled marksman with nerves of steel and a steady hand. In one issue it's commented, "The reason they call him Twitch is because he doesn't."
• Spider-Man:
  • The Night Gwen Stacy Died doesn't take place at night.
  • Spidey fought a villain called "The Living Brain". It was a robotic computer.
  • The Sinister Six in The Superior Foes of Spider-Man suffers this, as there are five of them. Boomerang defends this to the other members by claiming that it will make people think there's a secret sixth member, who could be anyone. It could be Dormammu (A demon lord vastly more powerful than all of them combined)!
  • The title Superior Spider Man ultimately proved to be non-indicative. During the final arc, Octavius was forced to concede that he was, if anything, inferior to the true Spider-Man, Peter Parker.
  • Both Spider-Woman and Miles Morales have a power called "venom strike" or "venom blast", that's actually an electrical shock.
  • Kraven the Hunter is many thing — but cowardly isn't one of them.
• Superman:
  • Action Comics got its name because it was born as a magazine publishing multiple comic stories. Eventually it became a book featuring a single character, and often a single story (or a fraction of one).
  • The Infinite Monster of Supergirl storyline The Unknown Supergirl storyline is really big but not infinite.
  • The Leper from Krypton: Superman is infected with a pathogen called "Virus X"... which is not a virus at all, but a bacterial species. Superman explains "Virus X" is really a placeholder name.
• The Ten-Seconders: "Hero" is the leader of the Gods, but he's more of a supervillain than a superhero, being a tyrannical maniac who spearheaded the destruction of human civilization and keeps at least one of his fellow Gods in captivity.
• The UglyDolls comic "So, You Want to be A Ninja", has Ninja Batty Shogun training Wedgehead in the art of ninjitsu, part of which involves giving different and wildly incorrect names to things that already exist. Ninja Fries and Ninja Ketchup are actually onion rings and sweet chili sauce, while Ninja Tacos are microwave burritos. Do not question your sensei!
• The Ultimates: The Son of Satan, one of the Defenders, is not really the Son of Satan. As if he really had to clarify that... (the one in the original continuity is the son of a demon, though he might not be Satan himself — just about every demon in the Marvel Hell has claimed to be the Devil)
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool: When Gwenpool was introduced, Marvel fans were disappointed to find out that she wasn't Gwen Stacy as Deadpool (though that was the case in her first appearance◊) but rather a person named Gwen Poole.
• DC's Vigilante (Adrian Chase) occasionally fought a pair of assassins named Cannon (who wielded blades) and Saber (who used guns).
• Vixen's powers are themed around animals as a whole, not just foxes (female or otherwise)
• Warlock is not a male witch, he's a robot alien.
  • The word 'warlock' comes from the Old English 'waerloga', "oathbreaker", and originally referred to any practitioner of magic (who had thus broken faith with the church). Since Warlock defied his father and his home planet's traditions when joining the New Mutants, the moniker "oathbreaker" fits him rather nicely.
    • Warlock's father, the Magus, is (obviously) also a robot alien. Not an astrologist or magician.
  • The Marvel Comics character now known as Wiccan (who is one of Scarlet Witch's reincarnated twins) was presented with "Warlock" as a possible codename. He immediately rejoins with the "oathbreaker" argument, concluding with "it is not a nice word."
  • Adam Warlock is not a male witch either.
• In Watchmen, The Comedian, despite his name, never actually says or does anything funny. He understands what a joke society is, and becomes a parody of it. Could be justified, as "The Parodist" isn't nearly as good of a superhero name. Granted, he originally wore a jester costume and had a smiley, happy-go-lucky attitude, but whatever.
  • And, to quote Lester B. Bum, "There's these guys, called the Watchmen, but they're not called the Watchmen!"
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): The Magic Sphere is neither a sphere nor entirely magical, with a large array of mechanisms set behind the mirrored disk which are visible when Odin breaks it. At least two of the mechanical components are visible when it is intact, as a partially mercury filled glass tube and the turning frame are on the exterior of the wall right by the seeing disk.
  • The names of Atlantiades/Hermaphroditus make perfect sense in the original mythology where they're named after their paternal great-grandfather Atlas and both of their parents, Hermes (Herm) and Aphrodite (aphroditus). Their names make far less sense in Wonder Woman (Rebirth) where writer G. Willow Wilson chose to make Aphrodite their only parent while leaving them with the same set of names referencing their father Hermes even though Hermes is supposedly not their father in this continuity.
  • Nubia's weapon, the Staff of Understanding, is quite obviously a spear.
• The X-Men's resident card-obsessed Badass is named Gambit, even though "gambit" is commonly used as a chess term. However, "gambit" is conversationally used outside of chess contexts, e. g. in debating, to refer to a calculated maneuver in general. It is sometimes used in card games such as poker. When the priest Ruy López de Segura introduced the word into the language of chess in 1561, he used an already existing term from Italian, dare il gambetto. This came from the language of wrestling and meant "to use your leg to trip up your opponent".
• In Italian, the wolverine is called "ghiottone", which means Big Eater. The superhero Wolverine does not eat his opponents, nor does his superpower revolve around eating. Hence why the superhero's name is consistently kept in Gratuitous English in Italian translations of X-Men.
• The Transformers (IDW):
  • A noticeable chunk of The Transformers: Robots in Disguise is set on Cybertron, where the robots don't bother to disguise themselves.
  • The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers was not enough of a last stand to prevent two other Wreckers comics, although admittedly the list of surviving Wreckers does shorten each time. On the bright side, The Transformers: Sins of the Wreckers does indeed focus on the sins of the (remaining) Wreckers!
  • Most of the The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye successor Lost Light is not set on the starship Lost Light that served as the main hub of MTMTE, with the exceptions of "The Plotters' Club" and the final arc. It works symbolically, at least.
  • The Transformers - Megatron: Origins ended up here thanks to Retcons in subsequent comics. While originally intended as his Start of Darkness, later comics would establish so much about Megatron's life before the Croteus 12 mine closure and the experiences that would radicalise him that the events of Megatron: Origin do not cover most of Megatron's origin; far from being the From Nobody to Nightmare the comic originally portrayed Megatron as, the angry miner who throws a pickaxe and kills one of Senator Decimus's guards already has his own political movement and has survived two separate attempts by the corrupt government to neutralise him as a threat.

---