Black Canary was never a sidekick - she shared a book with Johnny Thunder back in the old Flash Comics in the '40s, but she wasn't his sidekick. In fact, she was first introduced as a criminal that Johnny was infatuated with — then it was revealed that she was actually undercover. And then she became popular and basically took over the book from Johnny Thunder.
Wonder Girl was originally just a young version of Woman Wonder. Later retcons made that impossible, so Donna Troy was created and oh god, you don't want to get into that whole mess.
Beast Boy was a younger member of the original Doom Patrol.
Huntress was originally the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. She wasn't a sidekick, because Batman was retired by then. (It was Earth-2.)
Zatanna was never a sidekick - she was always her own mystic hero away from her father, Zatarra.
Knight? What Knight? The Shining Knight? Also not a sidekick.
Hawkman and Hawkgirl were partners, neither one was a sidekick.
Mary and Freddy Marvel...eh, you might say they were sidekicks, but they were a part of the "Marvel Family."
Isis was not a sidekick. She was actually a part of the Shazam/Isis Power Hour TV show - one half was about Captain Marvel and the other half was about Isis. She had her own adventures, though sometimes she teamed up with Captain Marvel.
Golden Age Hawkgirl was a sidekick, of the "usually competent but gets captured a lot" type. Silver Age Hawkgirl was an equal partner, at least on paper. (Crossovers and guest appearances tended to play her as a sidekick.)
Are we restricting this to DC? Because otherwise Bucky is a major absence in that list, although Marvel never was as big on sidekicks as DC (Marvel's young heroes used to be their own thing instead).
DC primarily. They seem to have more sidekicks.
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See, that's kind of what I thought. Hawkgirl's backstory's confusing too, there's the alien cop version, the Egyptian reincarnation, and a Hawkwoman in there somewhere.
What about Zachary Zatara, Zatanna's cousin or something? Did Zatanna ever have a sidekick?
Also, the Knight I meant was Cyril Sheldrake, did some reading on him, his father, Percy, was supposedly Shining Knight's sidekick, but the identity was later used by his son, Cyril, and Cyril took on a Squire as his own sidekick.
I'm really looking for more sidekicks here, or people that might count as them, any suggestions are helpful.
edited 15th Jun '15 8:44:09 AM by Soble
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Rick Jones has been a sidekick to half of Marvel's superheroes.
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Two-bit blockhead
Hawkman had Golden Eagle.
Phantom Stranger had "Cousin Oliver" temporarily, who could follow him anywhere he went.
Plastic Man had Woozy Winks.
Hour Man had the Minute Men, a legion of kid sidekicks.
Getting into the real obscure sidekicks now.
edited 18th Jun '15 5:20:09 AM by Soble
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Calendar enthusiast
It wasn't Lee, it was writers that came after him. Under Lee's run, Rick was a supporting character in The Incredible Hulk, and was as much a morality pet as a sidekick. Early Hulk really did need a friend character who wasn't, well, the Hulk.
edited 18th Jun '15 10:38:16 AM by VampireBuddha
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The Flash (Jay Garrick) had Winkie, Blinkie, and Noddy, though they weren't kids. Star Spangled Kid had an adult sidekick in Stripesy.
Initially, sidekicks were sales-boosters. Sales of Batman did indeed get a boost after the introduction of Robin (introduced essentially to give Batman someone to talk to; his name was almost "Tiger" and he almost lost his parents in a plane crash), as did pretty much any other comic that introduced a kid sidekick. This is even discussed in Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
For about five seconds they tried to set Rick up as the new Bucky but everyone realized it was creepy as hell and so they just introduced the Falcon instead.
Though in the modern continuity they did establish she was Robin as a child before she grew up and became Huntress after Batman died.
Afterwards there was a cultural shift of sorts where you started to see sidekicks gradually disappear. You still have a lot of Kid Hero characters but very few of them are sidekicks, even when they're patterned after adult heroes. Like Ms. Marvel and the Young Avengers, who are basically teen versions of famous Marvel heroes and yet have no real affiliation (save for Kate Bishop) as partners.
edited 18th Jun '15 5:58:31 PM by comicwriter
Spider-Man singlehandedly killed the kid sidekick. Why read about a preteen tagging along with an adult hero when you can have a teen hero instead?
Because after Spider Man and X-Men, there aren't any other notable teen heroes?
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The Teen Titans introduced afterward, the continuing expansion of the X-Men, Jaime Reyes, Ms. Marvel, the increased popularity of the Legion in the 70s and 80s, and the aging up of Billy Batson go against that statement. As well as the fact that sidekicks were very much a thing of the past after Spider-Man.
edited 19th Jun '15 6:36:21 AM by TheEvilDrBolty
I stand corrected.
But you're telling me Ms. Marvel was a teen hero. I don't believe you
◊.
Oh you meant this one
. I didn't know this one existed.
edited 19th Jun '15 6:43:36 AM by Soble
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Another part of it was that in general people in the 30's and 40's seemed much more comfortable with the idea of fictional adults exposing kids to outrageous violence. Cracked had a wonderful piece on just how flat-out INSANE pretty much everything aimed at kids were back then, from comics to TV to advertisements. Adults endangering the lives of Tag Along Kids was just a conceit of the pop culture of the era.
Now you've seen so much backlash against the idea of kid sidekicks that they had to retroactively age up Bucky in the comics and flat out make him an adult in the movies.
There's also the emergence of "teenagers" as a distinct demographic in popular culture in the 50's. The "teen as main character" was a narrative innovation that arose with the universalization of high school education. Spider-Man was very much riding that trend.
Sidekicks aren't solely teens though. Stripesy was Star-Spangled Kid's sidekick, and Pat Dugan is Stargirl's. There's adult-adult versions too, The Tick and Arthur, the latter a fully-grown man with an office job. Tiger and Bunny, with Tiger more-or-less being the sidekick, despite being a fully-grown man with a kid.
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There are exceptions but the vast majority of them are teenagers or young children, largely due to the wish-fulfillment aspect.
Even in the Stripes example you noted, the book got around that by making him the partner of a Kid Hero.
edited 19th Jun '15 1:04:43 PM by comicwriter
Actually, Stargirl was the teen hero and S.T.R.I.P.E.S. was her sidekick. (One of the few teen heroes with an adult sidekick.)
Poor Toro the Flaming Kid. It used to be said that the only person who stayed dead in Marvel was Bucky, but that ain't the case anymore. Now I'd say it's Toro (and perhaps Uncle Ben, but that is neither here nor there). I think the last time he was seen was in a fairly recent story where he and the other Young Allies were time displaced to the present.
There used to be a lot of "young boy legions," too. Group of kids who frequently worked with an adult hero or adult mentor. There was the Boy Commandos, The Newsboy Legion, The Little Wise Guys (their adventures, being from Lev Gleason, could get really dark), and others. I think Simon and Kirby are credited with that particular innovation. Interestingly, Terrible Turpin who was on Metropolis's Special Crimes unit (and was introduced as a Metropolis cop under Kirby's tenure on Jimmy Olsen) was supposed to be an adult Brooklyn from the Boy Commandos.
Nope, Toro is still alive. He recently appeared on All-New Invaders, where he was revealed to actually be an Inhuman after Infinity released Terrigen mists.
Rummaging through the DC Database, I wondered how many sidekicks there were, and who qualified. Obvious ones out of the way:
Then I got to some of the more dubious ones, characters who began as supporting, guest characters. Groups like Teen Titans and Young Justice whose shtick, I believed, was that they were all sidekicks at one point or another - yet they had their own series, or didn't have "mentors" so to speak. I also don't have the original books, so I can't gauge whether or not they were actively involved in their own careers, or if they tagged along with other heroes.
Long story short - how many other characters still have sidekicks, which characters might still count as sidekicks?
edited 14th Jun '15 5:55:50 PM by Soble
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