Data story · Comic Heroes
The most popular comic book heroes, decade by decade.
Count the comics a character appears in each year and you get a picture of their career: when they arrived, when they were everywhere, and when they quietly went missing. Spider-Man led four decades out of seven, but the 1960s belonged to someone you might not guess.
Every strip on this page is a real Comic Heroes strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Comic Heroes.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one character. Each band is one year, from 1961 on the left to 2025 on the right, coloured by how many comics they appeared in that year. Near-black means not around, purple means a regular, about twenty issues a year, and bright gold means everywhere, a hundred or more. The scale is logarithmic, so the step from two issues to twenty looks as big as the step from twenty to a hundred.
The counts come from the Marvel Database fan wiki’s appearance lists, dated by each comic’s cover date, for fifty-three characters. Anything before 1961 is not drawn.
Who led each decade
By total appearances, Spider-Man led the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2010s and 2020 to 2025. Captain America edged the 1970s by two appearances, 348 to 346, and Wolverine took the 2000s. The 1960s went to Nick Fury, with 166 appearances against the Human Torch’s 162.
Fury led every single year from 1966 to 1969 and again from 1972 to 1975. He is also the clearest fade in the set: 41 appearances in all of 2020 to 2025, and none at all in 2024.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
Spider-Man’s six decades
Spider-Man has the most appearances of anyone here, 4,828, and his strip is the brightest from end to end. He had the most appearances of all fifty-three characters outright in 30 of the 65 years, and tied in two more. His busiest year was 2010, with 172.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
Wolverine’s peak, and his gap
No single year in the data beats Wolverine’s 2011: 206 appearances, more than three a week, and he passed 170 in every year from 2009 to 2013. Then the strip goes almost dark: 142 appearances in 2014, then 20, 11, 9 and 14 from 2015 to 2018. That matches his death in a 2014 storyline and his return in 2018; he was back to 75 appearances in 2019.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
Late bloomers and one-year wonders
Some strips are dark for most of their length, and where the colour starts is the whole puzzle. Ms. Marvel, the Kamala Khan version, has 52 empty years before her first appearance in 2013, then 73 in 2016 and 79 in 2017.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
Rocket Raccoon is the late bloomer who was already there. He first shows up in 1982 but has only 10 appearances in the 25 years before 2007. From 2014, the year of the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, he has 225 in four years.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
And some strips have one band far brighter than anything around it. Green Goblin, here Norman Osborn, appears in 178 comics in 2009, when the Dark Reign storyline put him in charge; no other year of his passes 79.
- Not around
- A regular
- Everywhere
Empty bands are not missing data. 718 of the 3,445 bands across all fifty-three strips are empty, about 21%, and most are the years before a character existed. That is why the dark stretch at the left of a strip is often the most useful thing on it.
The other forty-seven characters are puzzles in the Comic Heroes category. If you like reading careers as colour, how great directors’ careers rise and fall does the same for film-makers, and billionaire fortunes does it for money.
Huezle shows you one of these strips and four names. Try placing a character by where the colour starts.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
Which superhero has appeared in the most comics?
Of the fifty-three characters here, Spider-Man, with 4,828 appearances from 1961 to 2025.
Who was the most popular hero in the 1960s?
By appearances, Nick Fury, with 166 in the decade, just ahead of the Human Torch with 162. Fury led every year from 1966 to 1969.
Why does Wolverine disappear from comics around 2015?
His appearances drop from 142 in 2014 to between 9 and 20 a year from 2015 to 2018, which matches his death in a 2014 storyline. He returned in 2018 and was back to 75 appearances in 2019.
More guides
- How great directors’ careers rise and fall, film by film.Directors’ careers drawn one band per film, coloured by IMDb user rating: most peak early, a few peak late, and a handful never have a bad night.
- Billionaire fortunes that rose and fell, year by year.Forbes-list fortunes from 2001 to 2026 drawn as strips of colour: the fastest risers, the 2009 crash, and the people whose names left the list.
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
Now try naming one yourself.
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