Notes on public‐domain characters

Notes on public domain super‐heroes and super‐villains, adventure heroes and villains, folk heroes and villains, fantastic characters etc.

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Personifications of classical elements (air, earth, fire, water) and time (spring, summer, autumn, winter).

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• Prehistoric myth and folklore, and extremely broad categories

Traditional African religion; Australian Aboriginal mythology; prehistoric religion; list of Asian mythologies; proto–Indo‐European religion; Old (pre–Indo‐European) European mythology; mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

• Ancient myth, folklore, literature etc.

Near Eastern

— Egyptian (Geb, Ammit, Serket, Hathor, Apis, Atum, Iah, Set, Babi, Shezmu)

— Anatolian/Cypriot: Hurrian (Hannahannah, Teshub); Hittite mythology (Illuyanka, Kamrusepa)

— Ancient Mesopotamian religion: Sumerian (Kur, Enlil, Nintinugga); Assyrian/Babylonian (Marduk, Dagon, Nabu)

— Levantine: Canaanite/Phœnician (Moloch, Yam, Attar); Hebrew/Israelite (Eve, Seth, Lilith); Syrian (Satrapes, Semiramis)

— Religion in pre‐Islamic Arabia: Hejaz/Najd (Al‐Lāt, Hubal); Eastern Arabia/Bahrain; South Arabian (Basamum)

— Elamite

— Caucasian: Vainakh mythology

North African; Horn (Biher)

Indo‐Iranian: Iranian (Zoroastrian, Yazdan)

— Zoroastrian (Hvare‐khshaeta, Jamshid, Rashnu, Angra Mainyu)

— Vedic/Hindu (Yama)

European: Tyrrhenian/pre‐Greek …

— Balkan: Ancient Greek religion, Greek mythology (Hera, Demeter, Hestia, Persephone, Asclepius, Eros, Hebe, Pan, Narcissus, Ganymede, Achilles, Rhodopis, Pandora, Hecate, Hermaphroditus, Perseus, Helios, Typhon, Taras, Selene, Themis, Endymion, Cycnus, Talos, Metis); Paleo‐Balkan mythology

— Balto‐Slavic: Slavic mythology

— Celtic mythology: Continental (Taranis, Cernunnos); Welsh mythology (Culhwch)

— Germanic paganism (Brynhildr, Freyja, Freyr, Gullinbursti)

— Mythology of Italy: Roman mythology (Cupid); Etruscan (Tuchulcha)

— Uralic: Hungarian mythology; Finnish paganism, Finnish mythology (Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen, Ukko, Äkräs); Estonian mythology; Sami shamanism

Asian: Turkic and Mongol (Tulpar, Şüräle, Otukan, Zilant); Dravidian; Chinese; Japanese (Amaterasu, Raijin); Korean; Indonesian; Philippine; shamanism in Siberia.

Mythology of Oceania.

North American

— Anishinaabe traditional beliefs (Nanabozho, Mudjekeewis)

— Uto‐Aztecan + Zuni: Hopi mythology, Zuni mythology (Kokopelli); Aztec mythology

— Maya mythology (Chaac)

• Medieval folklore, literature etc.

History of fantasy: chivalric romance, including cycles thereof. Breton lais.

Matter of Rome: Sir Orfeo.

Matter of Britain: Arthurian legend; Gawain.

Matter of France: Huon of Bordeaux.

Nibelungenlied.

English folklore

Puck/Robin Goodfellow

Wild man, Valentine and Orson

Christian saints.

Jewish folklore

History of science fiction.

• Renaissance (14th to 17th centuries)

Thomas the Rhymer; Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499); The Maid’s Metamorphosis (1600); Hesperides (1648).

Modern literature etc.

• Fiction genres: Horror fiction, detective fiction, spy fiction, young‐adult fiction.

— Fantasy: Kalevala (1835)

— Western and frontier fiction: The Song of Hiawatha (1855) (Hiawatha, Minnehaha); The Virginian (1902) (Virginian, Trampas)

— Adventure fiction: “Examples of that period [mid‐Nineteenth Century] include Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, père, Jules Verne, Brontë Sisters, H. Rider Haggard, Victor Hugo, Emilio Salgari, Louis Henri Boussenard, Thomas Mayne Reid, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace, and Robert Louis Stevenson.”

— Gothic fiction: Jane Eyre (I, II, III)

— Robinsonade: The Swiss Family Robinson (1812)

• Religious allegory, like The Pilgrim’s Progress, often include demons and other fantastic characters.

• Story papers (1770s), penny dreadfuls (1830s), dime novels (1860s), pulp magazines (1890s).

• Fiction, often serials, in magazines (Collier’s etc.), including children’s magazines like St. Nicholas.

• List of science fiction films before 1920; List of adventure films of the 1920s; List of fantasy films before 1930.

• Comic strips and comic books.

• Real‐life persons: