Choosing a good superhero name can be a challenge. For every great name such as Black Widow, Captain America, Superman and his relatively simple superhero persona.
Superman is one of the oldest superheroes in existence, as he first debuted in the pages of Action Comics #1 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Back in the late 1930s, Superman popularized the genre is without question the most influential superhero of all time. He's starred in comics, newspaper strips, television shows, movies, video games - you name it and Superman's been a part of it. Clark Kent's superhero name is simple and effective - but Marvel couldn't help themselves when throwing a little shade at the straightforward code name.
In Marvel's 2006 crossover book Marvel Team-Up #14, Spider-Man partnered up with the Image Comics hero Invincible, in a story by the series creators Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker. The issue opens with Spidey duking it out with Doctor Octopus. Doc Ock gets the upper-hand on an uber-quippy Peter Parker and just as he's about to take down Spider-Man for good, Invincible appears from a portal and takes the villain out. Spider-Man is immediately confused as he wonders if it was Thor, Nova, or Sentry who saved him. When he gets a chance to talk to Invincible, he asks if Nova changed his costume again. After Dock Ock attacks again and police later surround the heroes, the pair hide atop a rooftop. Invincible explains he was thrown through a dimension by a bad guy, explains his tragic backstory, and says he needs to get back. That's when the discussion turns to superhero names.
'"Spider-Man?" isn't that a little lame?' Invincible asks. When Spider-Man finds out his name he tells him "I don't think you have a leg to stand on now." That's when Invincible goes on about how Spider-Man is a "kind of lazy name," and that it's like if someone had superpowers and said "I'll be Super-Man. It's not very creative." Shots fired. To be fair to Invincible, Superman isn't the most creative name in retrospect, but it fits the character perfectly and has become iconic over time. On the surface, it's a tad silly, as Invincible suggests, and the shade that it's lazy might be true in a more modern context, but there's no doubt Superman is an absolute classic name.
