Some people get annoyed at Stan Lee's cameos in all the Marvel movies, but not me. Because I know that when Lee is filming those appearances, he's prevented from making the irrelevant, depressing, terrible, generic superhero-based projects with which he's filled the last 20 or so years of his life. Like his latest,…

Eat your heart out, Andrew Garfield.

With real-life superheroes turning up on the six o'clock news and providing fodder for prime-time procedural dramas, we've seen some of the most sensationalized aspects of the real-life superhero movement. This year, the long-running webcomic Something Positive has cast some of its characters as costumed community…

For all of their well-meaning pageantry, real-life superheroes are still simply civilians in costumes. As the arrest of firearm-wielding Michigan superhero Bee Sting demonstrated, amateur superheroics can attract the vigilante element.

We've seen people who dress up as costumed heroes do amazing things, like Lenny Robinson, the man who wears a Batman suit to hospitals to cheer up sick kids. And many of the so-called "real-life superheroes" are ordinary people who happen to do their (non-violent) community service in costume as a classic symbol of…

Remember André Luiz Pinheiro, the fellow who's dressing up as a police-commissioned Batman to provide inspiration to the children of crime-plagued Taubaté, Brazil? The BBC recently did a short feature on his outreach efforts. Wearing the cowl in broad daylight is definitely a throwback to the "Batman digs this day"…

Unbeknownst to DC Comics, a new sequel to The Dark Knight Returns is unfolding in the Brazilian city of Taubaté. Police have recruited 50-year-old military retiree and local Batman impersonator André Luiz Pinheiro to patrol crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Never mind real-life superheroes, 24-year-old DeWet Du Toit of George, South Africa wants to become the flesh-and-blood incarnation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Lord of the Jungle.

Out of all the real-life superheroes patrolling the globe, none have captured the populace's attention quite like Seattle's Phoenix Jones, a twentysomething crime-stopper who brazenly hangs out on drug pushers' turfs and defends the Emerald City's neighborhoods with a maniac optimism.

Well, I don't remember Alpha Flight ever going on this adventure. Three teenagers from Chilliwack, British Columbia recently decided it would be a ripping idea to lure would-be pedophiles to public places using fake internet profiles.