User:One-Man Army Corps/Superhero fiction

Superhero fiction is a literary genre, originating in and most common to American comic books, though the genre has expanded into other media through adaptations and original works.

The genre deals with adventures of costumed crime fighters known as superheroes, who often possess superhuman powers and battle similarly powered criminals known as supervillains.

Superheroes
A superhero is most often the protagonist of superhero fiction, although some titles, such as ''Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, use superheroes as secondary characters.

Secret identities
Both superheroes and supervillains often use alter egos while in action. While sometimes the character's true name is known, alter egos are most often used to hide the character's secret identity from their enemies and the public.

Death
Death in superhero fiction is rarely permanent, as characters who die are often brought back to life through supernatural means, retcons or other reasons. Fans have termed the practice of bringing back dead characters "comic book death."

Another common trait of superhero fiction is the killing off of a superhero's significant other by a supervillain to advance the plot. Comic book writer Gail Simone has coined the term "Women in Refrigerators" (named after an incident in Green Lantern #54 where Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex DeWitt is murdered by the supervillain Major Force and stuffed into Rayner's refrigerator) to refer to this practice.

Continuity
Often times, many works superhero fiction occur in the a shared fictional universe, sometimes (as in the cases of the DC and Marvel Universes) establishing a fictional continuity of thousands of works spread over many decades.

Changes to continuity are also common, ranging from small changes to established continuity, commonly called retcons, to full reboots, erasing all previous continuity.

It is also common for stories works of superhero fiction to contain established characters and setting while occurring outside of the main canon for those characters.

Crossovers
Crossovers often occur between characters of different works of superhero fiction. In comic books, highly publicized "events" are published featuring crossovers between many characters.

Intercompany crossovers, between characters of different continuity, are also common.