Comic book writers are obsessed with color. Ever notice that how often color is incorporated into a hero or villain's name? Don't believe me? Look at this:
Blue Beetle
Red Tornado
The Red Skull
Green Lantern
Gold Face
The Purple Man
Green Arrow
The Crimson Avenger
Look at that, 8 legimate heroes and villains, off the top of my head in just over 10 seconds!
Nobody I know is named "Red Mike" or "The Silver Joel". So why this plethora of colorful names?
Let's think about this. Without the colorful part of their names, do we still have legitimate names? Well, sans color, our group from above becomes:
Beetle
Tornado
the Skull
Lantern
Face
the Man
Arrow
the Avenger.
Most of these are perfectly decent names (in comic book terms), so why add the color?
Well, comics are still sometimes referred to as the four color medium - i.e. red, blue, green, and yellow. Note the colorful names mentioned above - blue, red, red, green, gold (yellow), purple (?), green and crimson (red).
Let's take a closer look here. The Crimson Avenger first appeared in 1938, Blue Beetle in 1939, Green Lantern in 1940, the Red Skull and Green Arrow in 1941, Red Tornado in 1961, and Goldface and the Purple Man in 1964. Obviously, the heyday of the colorful names was back during the Golden and Silver Ages of comic books. ( Golden and Silver Ages? Again with the colors! )
One color not mentioned, but also very popular in the 1940's was Black. However, in the late 60's and 70's as other colorful names were tapering off, black made a resurgence.
Many of the new "Black" heroes and villains were so named due to the socio-political significance that color took on in those decades. Thus emerged: the Black Panther(2) (1966), Black Manta (1967), and Black Lightning (1977).
