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Newer Than They Think / Comic Books
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  • Though he's almost universally considered a "classic" Spider-Man villain, Venom didn't appear until 1988, when Spider-Man had already been running for over two-and-a-half decades. And contrary to what many fans believe, the Venom Symbiote was actually rather passive and non-aggressive when Spidey first donned it in Secret Wars (1984), and Peter only got rid of it once he realized it was a living organism that had a habit of taking his body crimefighting while he was asleep. It wasn't until the 1994 cartoon series that the Venom Symbiote gained the "slowly turn Peter into an aggressive asshole" status it's now famous for. This aspect of it became Ret-Canon, though, with a variety of in-universe explanations given for it — from its previous hosts having negatively affected it, to the symbiote having always been like that.
  • Harley Quinn wasn't officially introduced into The DCU until 1999, but she's such an indispensable part of the Batman mythos that it's now practically unthinkable to include The Joker without at least referencing her. She was originally created for Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, 52 years after the introduction of her Puddin'.
  • Daredevil:
    • A lot of Frank Miller's additions to the mythos fall under this. Some fans are surprised to learn a character as iconic as Elektra didn't appear until 168 issues into the series.
    • Bullseye didn't even appear until issue #131, much closer to the Frank Miller era than more "classic" era villains like the Owl.
  • Though it appeared in the old Adam West show and Batman Returns, Catwoman didn't start wearing a black catsuit in the comics until 2001. Her pre-Crisis version tended to wear dresses, or a leotard over tights, with a fondness for green or purple, and her post-Crisis version previously wore a purple catsuit.
  • Batman:
    • Batman's iconic Grappling-Hook Pistol originated in the first Tim Burton movie in 1989, before being brought over into the comics.
    • The iconic look of Gotham City (perpetually dark skies, gargoyles everywhere, crumbling infrastructure, old-school buildings, Bizarrchitecture in general) is similarly a creation of the film — specifically of production designer Anton Furst. The look was brought into the comics in a largely forgotten 1992 storyline involving an insane architect; prior to then, Gotham mostly looked like a normal city.
    • Nowadays seemingly everyone pictures Batman wearing black, but this wasn't always the case. While his cape and cowl were midnight blue as early as 1939, they lightened to powder blue in subsequent decades and remained that color even as the comic became Darker and Edgier between the 1970s and the '90s. Equally more striking is the prevalence of the light gray bodysuit, which was replaced on film by the all-black suit in 1989 but continued to appear in the comics until the mid-'90s — and even then, the suit was sometimes colored charcoal gray rather than black, and the cape and cowl could still appear with blue highlights.
    • The general depiction of Batman as a grim, violent character inspired by Gothic Horror and Film Noir is a pretty recent idea, and it never really took off in the comics until the 70s at the earliest. Even in the 1940s, when Batman made his debut in a feature in a noir/mystery anthology, his stories had plenty of campy and silly elements, which only got more pronounced in the Silver Age. Batman himself was not portrayed as particularly brooding (he was willing to kill, but that's about it), being more of a wisecracking adventurer who frequently smiled in fights. And even after stories like The Killing Joke helped popularize the more serious approach to the character, writers still regularly used camp for darkly humorous effect.
    • The idea that all of Batman's villains are varying degrees of insane is fairly young, as well. Arkham Asylum wasn't introduced until 1974 and wasn't consistently called that until 1979. It wasn't really associated with Batman's rogues then, either; most of them were either regular crimelords or traditional supervillains. As late as 1986's Who's Who, only a handful of villains were listed as Arkham residents (Joker, Two-Face, Mad Hatter, Maxie Zeus, and Floronic Man). The idea seems to have been codified by a mix of the Post-Crisis era giving writers carte blanche to redesign villains into more deranged figures, and the popularity of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.
      • For that matter, Arkham wasn't even confirmed to be in the neighborhood of Gotham City until about 1980. In its first appearance it's only stated to be in New England (although that raises a whole other can of worms...)
      • The Joker himself was not always portrayed as being insane. He was at one point or another interested in profit and was often arrested and put in jail. A 1950s comic story 'The Crazy Crime Clown' even had him feign insanity! It's been argued that the first time the Joker was truly written as insane was in the "Laughing Fish" story, where he was seemingly incapable of understanding that he couldn't copyright a mutated fish, which was published in 1978.
    • Everybody knows that Bruce Wayne is the head of Wayne Enterprises, right? Except Wayne Enterprises first appeared in 1979, after Batman had already been around for forty years. Prior to the company's introduction, Bruce presented himself more as an Idle Rich Upper-Class Twit than the reclusive but Honest Corporate Executive we're familiar with today (for that matter, Lucius Fox, who is almost essential nowadays, debuted in the same issue as the company).
    • Batman's old "disappear in the middle of a talk with Gordon while the latter's back is turned" trick has only been traced back to 1972, in Detective Comics #424.
    • Batman being a Nay-Theist or atheist hasn't always been a part of the character. As late as the mid-80s he made references to God. Plus there is him saying "God Almighty" in Batman: Under the Red Hood. That's 2010.
    • Catwoman has always had a flirtatious relationship with Batman since her 1940 introduction but—excepting a brief period in the late 1970s/early 1980s—they’ve only been an Official Couple in the main universe since the early 2000s. She actually disappeared from comics all together between 1954-1966 because the editors at DC thought she was too sexy to get past the comics code.
      • Although the original Huntress was introduced in the 1970s as the daughter of the Earth-2 Batman and Catwoman.
    • Today, it is virtually impossible to think of Alfred as being anything other than one of the most important characters in the Batman mythos - the man who raised Bruce Wayne after his parent's death, his surrogate father and his closest friend and confidant. It's unheard of for any serious Batman adaptation today to exclude Alfred, even if it excludes characters like the Joker and Robin. But the contemporary concept of Alfred having raised Bruce only originated in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, published in 1987 - nearly a half-century after Batman debuted! Alfred himself didn't make his debut in the comics until 1943 (five years after Batman's debut), in a story where he meets Bruce for the first time when he's an adult well into his career as Batman, with Robin already by his side. This remained his backstory for the next forty-plus years.
    • Most people are aware that Kate Kane, Bruce's cousin and the current Batwoman, wasn't created until 2006; What most people aren't aware of is that her relation to Bruce was one of the many retcons of the New 52 era.
    • While the Joker had been a prominent character from almost the very beginning, the Joker's status as Batman's Arch-Enemy is a recent concept in the franchise, as the idea was introduced in the '70s during The Bronze Age of Comic Books — three decades after his introduction — before it was later solidified into the mythos in the '80s thanks to stories such as The Killing Joke, A Death in the Family and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns delving further into his backstory and dynamic with Batman, while also establishing him as a greater and more personal threat to the Bat Family thanks to murdering Jason Todd and paralyzing Barbara Gordon.
  • Superman:
    • Smallville being Clark Kent's hometown is not itself an example of this trope having been established since 1949... but its location being in Kansas was only confirmed as canon in 1986. Previously the comics located it anywhere from the Midwest to the East Coast (several stories from the Silver Age have it as relatively near the ocean).
    • Although Supergirl is an iconic and inextricable part of the Superman mythos, the best-known and most enduring version of the character (Superman's cousin Kara Zor-El) didn't make her first appearance until "The Supergirl From Krypton (1959)", twenty-one years after the debut of Superman. In 1985, DC killed the character and attempted to replace her several times with little success, finally reintroducing a modern Kara Zor-El in "The Supergirl from Krypton (2004)".
    • Darkseid, upon his first appearance in 1970, was strictly a New Gods character, and generally kept his nose out of the core DCU. His power was ambiguous (though clearly vast), and he preferred Eye Beams to fisticuffs. The modern conception of him as the DCU's Big Bad and an enemy of Superman in particular didn't occur until 1982, when Legion of Super-Heroes used him as the main villain of The Great Darkness Saga, and 1996, when Superman: The Animated Series drew on the fact that Darkseid technically debuted in Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen to establish him as one of the few villains capable of matching Superman blow-for-blow.
    • Superman originally fought for "truth and justice" (as in the Superman Theatrical Cartoons), with "the American way" only added in 1951 for the TV series The Adventures of Superman.
    • Clark Kent and Lois Lane have only been married in the main universe since 1997, half a century after they were created. That said, plans for them to have a Relationship Upgrade go back to the 1940s.
  • Superman and Batman teamups are usually thought of as a very old thing, and they are. However, most fans tend to assume this started with World's Finest, which began publication in 1941, owing to the fact that the covers of the comic always showed Superman, Batman, and Robin teaming up or hanging out. This wasn't actually the case: the comic ran both Superman and Batman stories, but not stories featuring the two together. It wasn't until 1954 that the book featured its first actual teamup of the two, which was due to its pagecount being dropped to the point that the book couldn't include a story for both characters anymore and had to write one featuring both. The first actual teamup between the two happened in 1952, in Superman #74, not counting cameo appearances in Justice Society of America.
  • Some of the most famous Peanuts characters didn't appear until well after the strip's 1950 debut. Peppermint Patty first appeared in 1966, Woodstock in 1967, Franklin in 1968, and Marcie in 1971. None of them were in the two most famous Peanuts specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
  • Even though Black Panther debuted in the 1960s, many of the elements people associate with the character, such as the Dora Milaje, his arsenal of advanced Wakandan gadgetry, and his vibranium-laced costume, did not exist until Christopher Priest's iconic run during The '90s. His little sister Shuri also wouldn't be introduced until the 2005 run.
  • The idea of Captain America as the overall leader of the superhero community in the Marvel Universe is relatively recent, dating from the publication of Secret Wars (1984). Before that, Cap wasn't even a frequent leader of The Avengers themselves — the role more often went to Iron Man and Thor. The only exception being "Cap's Kooky Quartet", but even then, he only gets to lead a team of novice (at the time) Avengers.
  • Being a movie franchise based on a comics franchise dating back many decades, you'd be surprised that a lot of elements in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are relatively recent additions to the comics, usually going back to 2001 or so at the earliest.
  • Similarly, the New 52 has had a major impact on the DC Extended Universe and DC's various TV shows and video games:
  • Black Lightning (2018) heavily features the title character's daughters Anissa and Jennifer, who were created in 2003 and 1996, respectively.
  • The infamous "Captain America, I command you to— WANK!" panel is commonly assumed to be a victim of Have a Gay Old Time, much like the Joker's "boner" from the Silver Age. It actually comes from Captain America #366, published in 1990.
  • Susan Storm from Fantastic Four being called the Invisible Woman started in 1985, a full 24 years after her first appearance, whereas beforehand she was the Invisible Girl. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to imagine her codename as anything but that.
  • Atlantis is an iconic part of Aquaman's backstory, but originally, he wasn't from there. In his Golden Age appearances, Aquaman was merely the unnamed son of a human scientist who had experimented on him to allow him to survive underwater. Aquaman's ties to Atlantis, as well as his real name ("Arthur Curry") weren't established until a full 18 years later.
  • The idea that Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon are an Official Couple has become such a staple amongst comic fans that it can be surprising to learn that it wasn't a thing until the 1990s. Prior to that they were portrayed as much more platonic, and Barbara was several years older than Dick. Their romance started due to disputes on whether Nightwing was more of a Teen Titans or Batman character. This caused Nightwing to split up with Starfire and be put with Oracle. The love triangle started even later, when an issue retconned Dick into having cheated on Starfire during their engagement..
  • Black Canary did not always have her famous Canary Cry. In fact, the cry didn't start appearing until over 20 years after she first became a character. The "Canary" in her name has nothing to do with superpowers. The original Black Canary was a Badass Normal until 1969. It's the second Black Canary, her daughter, who has always had the cry.
  • Ask a non-comic book reader to name members of the Suicide Squad, and they'll likely name Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and... Harley Quinn? Actually, while the former two are regulars of the squad, Harley Quinn was never a member until the New 52 relaunch in 2011. Thanks to the 2016 movie, she's now quite possibly the most well-known member of the Squad, showing up in nearly every subsequent film (both live-action and animated), TV show and video game featuring the team. Prior to this, it was the far lesser-known character Nightshade who was arguably the team's most prominent female member (other than Amanda Waller, of course).
  • The notion of a comic strip creator typically being a Reclusive Artist really only began with Garry Trudeau, who shunned the limelight even as Doonesbury became a major phenomenon in The '70s. Before that, artists like Al Capp and Walt Kelly were very much public figures who eagerly courted media attention. Capp actually had a brief stint as a TV game show host in The '50s. Even the famously shy Charles Schulz gave numerous interviews and even made on-camera appearances in the various Peanuts anniversary TV specials.
  • Deadshot having a Morality Pet with his daughter Zoe is often thought of as one of his defining attributes. However, Zoe herself wasn't introduced until 2005, over fifty years after Deadshot was created (though he was barely used until Suicide Squad in 1987).
  • Green Arrow is Black Canary's main love interest. Despite this, they didn't become an item until the early 1970s. The original Black Canary's second and most important love interest was Larry Lance, who she married and who is the father of the second Black Canary. The Crisis reboot caused Composite Character elements between the original Black Canary and her Legacy Character daughter. This ended up with the original Black Canary staying with Larry while her daughter became Green Arrow's love interest.
  • Another Green Arrow example - the now iconic origin story of Oliver Queen being stranded on an island and developing archery skills in order to survive first appeared in 1959 - a full 18 years after the character's debut!
  • While The Avengers themselves avert this as they've been around since 1963, the idea that they're the premier superhero team of the Marvel Universe and the answer to the Justice League is a relatively recent development. For much of its existence, the Avengers were not considered the big team of Marvel by either the writers or readers. In fact, they were seen as a dumping ground for characters that weren't popular enough to hold their own titles. Canonically, the greatest superhero team was the Fantastic Four, while the most popular team for much of the '80s and '90s were the X-Men. It wasn't until the '00s where the idea began to shift, as Marvel put an increasingly large amount of focus on them in the comics, and of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • When people think "Teen Titans" they think of the 1980s team. Teen Titans, however, began the 1960s. The classic team was Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy, and Wonder Girl (with Speedy and Wonder Girl not even being in original roster). Thanks to Adaptation Displacement, people most associate the Titans with Robin, Changeling/Beast Boy, Raven, Cyborg, and Starfire.
  • Wonder Woman's peaceful island home has been around since her very first issue, but it wasn't called "Themyscira" until 1987—over forty years after she debuted. Before that point, it was "Paradise Island". The name-change was one of many tweaks to the DC Universe brought about by Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986.
  • X-Men:
    • Though he's the one member of the X-Men that everyone knows, Wolverine didn't appear in the series until 1975, a little over a decade after it began. The same goes for several other iconic X-Men, like Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus, who joined the team in the same issue as Wolverine. Meanwhile, while many people know Gambit and Jubilee due to their prominent roles in the beloved 1992 TV show, both characters were relatively recent additions to the franchise at the time, having debuted in 1990 and 1989, respectively.
    • Magneto's tragic backstory as a Holocaust survivor is the character's defining aspect now, yet it was first established in 1981, eighteen years after he was introduced. In fact, the issue, "I, Magneto...." was a radical reinvention of the character, who had mostly been a one-note evil megalomaniac until that point. The new direction stuck so well that nearly every adaptation uses his revised backstory, and he's been portrayed as varying flavors of antihero since then.
      • In addition, the concept of his iconic helmet protecting his mind from telepathic attacks (and in particular from Xavier's powers) wasn't introduced until the film X-Men in 2000. Before then it was actually the other way around, as the helmet gave Magneto limited psychic abilities.
    • X-23 is very well-known as the Distaff Counterpart to Wolverine, but many would be surprised to learn that she debuted in the animated series X-Men: Evolution in 2003, and was quickly brought into the comics in 2004. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine the X-Men franchise without X-23, even though she was introduced 40 years after the franchise began.
    • Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch weren't revealed to be Magneto's children until 1987, over two decades after their first appearance. Before Chris Claremont's retcon, they were intended to be the children of the Whizzer and Miss America.
    • The idea of Mr. Sinister being a traitorous minion of Apocalypse. While it's a key part of their dynamic today, it wasn't established until 1996, a full 10 years after both characters were introduced. Before that point, there was never any indication that Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse were connected in any way—since they were created by two different writers, and debuted in two different series.note 
    • The island nation of Genosha wasn't introduced until 1988, but it's now such an iconic part of the X-Men mythos that it shows up in nearly every adaptation. Notably, it's probably the second (or maybe third) most famous fictional country in the Marvel Universe after Wakanda and Latveria—which have been around since 1966 and 1964, respectively.
    • Professor X telepathically or verbally summons the team with his famous Catchphrase "To me, my X-Men!" That's been around about as long as "Avengers, assemble!" right? Well, at the end of X-Men #1, he says "And now, return to me, my X-Men." But it was as late as 1996, beginning with the Onslaught crossover, that Xavier began using "Come to me, my X-Men!" reasonably regularly. And he only starts using the four-word version with New X-Men in 2001. (Technically, the first use of "To me, my X-Men!" actually takes place in Excalibur, also in 1996 ... only it's Pete Wisdom in a bald-cap taking the piss out of the sort of thing he thinks Xavier says.)
  • Rychlé šípy: Only as a matter of a couple years, but considering how firmly entrenched in Czech popular memory it is as an example of the ideals of the good old First Republic times, for anyone besides dedicated fans it may come as a surprise that in fact it only started being published in 1938, after the First Republic started falling apart, and that most of its first run was in fact published during the German occupation and WWII.
  • The very first shop dedicated to comic books in the United States was Gary Arlington's San Francisco Comic Book Company, which opened in April 1968. Comic shops did not become the dominant mode for selling comics in the US until the 1990s, before which they could be found at any newsstand, drug store, gas station, etc.
  • Nowadays, it's become a trend for people to call the Marvel Universe the Lighter and Softer option for superheroes and The DCU the Darker and Edgier option. However, it was originally the other way around.
    • DC originated the superhero archetype in the 1930s, and many of their stories were optimistic and idealistic, with their heroes having broad motivations like "truth and justice" and fairly one-note characterizations. When Marvel pivoted from horror comics back to superheroes in the 1960s, Stan Lee pioneered the psychological side of superheroes, with Fantastic Four bickering among themselves like a family and Spider-Man having to grapple with the pressures of juggling his two lives while acting like a normal (if brainy) teenager. Many stories of the era were quite dark and deconstructive of what DC was doing, focusing on character drama and personal anguish over gimmicky Silver Age nonsense.note 
    • During the 1970s and 1980s, perception of DC changed as they moved towards their reinvention as "the edgy one" with gritty proto-graphic novel series like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. At the same time, Marvel was putting out similar dark, edgy material like Frank Miller's Daredevil run and the failed New Universe, but as they got to the 1990s and the Rob Liefeld era, their comics started to become absurd, gimmicky, and puerile, and they oversaturated the market so bad it completely collapsed.
    • After a series of buyouts, Marvel Comics ended up in the hands of Disney right as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which consolidated the best of Marvel's back catalogue while ignoring the worst) exploded in popularity; as the MCU maintains a very distinct personality across the movies, generally aiming for an Action Comedy tone, it created a larger impression on audiences that Marvel were a 'fun' family brand, especially as their darker elements have been watered down in adaptation. And, though Disney impose very little influence over the comics (which really continue to be tonally about the same as always) they did push the brand to prioritise the characters they owned the film license for (IE, the Avengers) at the expense of those they didn't (IE, the X-Men), which resulted in the latter decreasing in presence (X-Men as a brand are a much darker entity than Avengers typically is, owing to the political themes of the team and the presence of Wolverine, and sub-teams like X-Force).
    • By contrast, DC had The New 52 Continuity Reboot in 2011, right before they launched the DC Extended Universe; these movies took primary inspiration from the New 52, and aimed to be Darker and Edgier options to the successful (and, as aforementioned, lighter in tone) MCU. The New 52, meanwhile, was a reboot that aimed to be a Darker and Edgier take on the DCU, (controversially) reinventing most of their characters and lore into darker, grittier circumstances, as well as outright erasing some of their lighter characters. The result was a two-pronged reinvention of both companies on both their film and comic fronts (and subsequently influenced their following avenues into other media), with the previously cynical and jaded Marvel Universe looking like a fun, comedic setting while the idealistic and hopeful DCU became a grim, gritty one. Marvel have seen a lot of success as a result of this, while DC, not so much.
  • Black Adam is an interesting case. As a character, he is rather old, debuting in late 1945, however, he was merely a one-off villain. It wasn't until the DC revival of the Marvel Family in the 1970s where Black Adam became a recurring enemy, though as that happened so late in DC's run of the character, Adam didn't get a chance to really shine until the 90s Power of Shazam! series where he was truly upgraded to the position of Captain Marvel's nemesis. Many aspects of his backstory and personality, such as his association with Kahndaq and his Unscrupulous Hero tendencies, were laid down by Geoff Johns in the 2000s. Likewise, while Black Adam is nowadays pretty heavily associated with Superman, the two rarely interacted until the mid 2000s.
  • Martian Manhunter is seen as a core part of the Justice League, with his removal from the group in the New 52 era being disdained in part for this. However, though J'onn was there from the team's first appearance, he went Out of Focus as its membership grew, only appearing intermittently, and, as the least popular of the original gang, he was ultimately Put on a Bus in 1969. For much of the "Satellite Era" and the Bronze Age in general, the era called back to most frequently as "classic Justice League", he was more or less completely absent. He only returned to the group full-time in the "Justice League Detroit" era in 1984, at a point when the team was mostly new characters and C-List Fodder. However, the Detroit era kicked off a rather long tenure for J'onn, as he stuck around for Justice League International, maintained a presence in the book throughout its various spinoffs, and then became a core part of the late-90s JLA relaunch. At that point, he had been basically codified as a character who could work as a member of either of the two main forms of Justice League stories: old enough and strong enough to not feel out of place when a writer wanted the gravitas of a roster of all A-listers, but relatively less popular and therefore under fewer obligations, giving a writer the freedom that comes with more obscure heroes. After that point, he was basically omnipresent, and it became easy to view his history as a straight line of continual importance, making the decision to boot him out of the League a real shock.

Alternative Title(s): Comics

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