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in General Factchecking by Novice (580 points)

Spiderman is the most popular superhero. According to Zavvi, the web-slinger is the world’s most popular superhero "with more than 5 million average searches per month". In a CNN entertainment article, the author writes "Positive psychology theorizes that quality of life can be bettered by subjective experiences and traits, which is seen in how Spider-Man deals with whatever swings his way." The life of the character is so relatable and it's easy to see yourself in him as he navigates the same daily struggles that many of us face rather than being out of touch with most readers like Batman or Ironman.

by Newbie (360 points)
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Although Spiderman might be the first superhero that everyone should thing of and according to this article too he 'was' the most famous one. He might be now as well but as this article is from 2022 we can not tel for sure if he is still on the top as preferences might change as the years go.
by Newbie (390 points)
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I think I very strongly agree with this because since I was little spiderman has always been the top superhero for me and a lot of others I know. Although the data provided is about 2 years old and a spiderman movie came out at that time, spiderman has still stayed fairly consistent throughout history up until today. He is plastered everywhere and continuously talked about from generation to generation, my 7 year old brother included.

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by Apprentice (1.0k points)
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It appears as though this is mostly correct, although the sample from which the poll was taken will most certainly impact the overall answer. Game UK did an analysis on searches for superheroes to determine both the most popular cinematic universe and superhero. The results did indeed show Spiderman as the most searched for superhero, and a graph broke it down by country. The US favored spiderman which begs the question of of the sample of Zavvi primarily come from the US. Additionally, we have to consider things like relevance, as there have been many more movies, shows, and video games centering around Spiderman than other superheroes. Regardless, Spiderman does appear to be the most popular on the world stage, but one can't help but wonder if it's more because of circumstance than anything else.

The graph can be found at the link. I wasn't able to include it here as there were issues with the image rendering into the post.

https://www.game.co.uk/blog/marvel-vs-dc

Likely not misinformation
True
by (140 points)
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At first thought, Superman is the most popular super hero to me. However, through extensive research, a majority of my findings conclude the same as the claim above. That Spider-Man is the most popular super hero.
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by Apprentice (1.1k points)

There is some issues. First this CNN article is from two years old so the data is a little old. 2021 saw a huge increase of Spider-Man popularity due to the release of the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home in December of 2021. We indeed can see a rise of interest in Spider-Man going off of Google Trend searches. I am unable to find where the source that CNN used, Zavvi, got their information of "5,100,000 average monthly Google searches". However I did find an article from Bounding Into Comics from May 22 of 2024 that states Spider-Man is the most popular Superhero. This article says that a study found that 48.7% of people polled across the world (113 countries) said Spider-Man was their favourite. Unfortunately the hyperlink to the study they used doesn't work anymore. Fortunately I was able to find the correct hyperlink of the study data. I do believe that this is the original source and I found that it says Spider-Man is the number one superhero with 48.7% of people interview in 113 countries saying so.

www.imdb.com/title/tt10872600/

trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2021-04-01%202024-10-13&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F06ys2&hl=en-GB

boundingintocomics.com/comic-books/lists/who-is-the-most-popular-superhero/

www.game.co.uk/blog/marvel-vs-dc

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by Newbie (340 points)

Spiderman indeed is one of the most popular superheroes. I found this article (gamesradar.com) by George Marston claiming he has the best origin story. Spider-Man No Way Home is the highest grossing solo superhero film according to Box Office Mojo (boxofficemojo.com). The higher grossing films Avengers team up movies.

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by Newbie (460 points)
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Although Spiderman does have the best origin story according to the first link you provided, there is not much evidence about the people who voted as well as what type of survey/questionnaire this was. Also, the fact that this is an article from 2022 which may not reflect current favorite superhero choices.
by Novice (980 points)
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I wonder if using an article from gamesradar.com which appears to only consult one persons opinion's of superhero origin stories could be biased. If a different website had a similar article written by a different individual, who is to say they would both write that Spiderman's story is the best?

Taking account of factors like the likability of a superhero's origin story is another great way to examine the popularity overall, but seems a bit subjective. Numbers however, seem to be a way to look at this character objectively and obviously the last film that came out shows that Spiderman is the superhero people want to see.
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by Newbie (260 points)

The statement is misleading. The article that would make this statement true is outdated.( https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/entertainment/spider-man-national-superhero-day-marvel-comics-cec/index.html )The article was published in 2022, which doesn't quite make the statement true. In the article it says that "50 million searches of spider-man occurred" which made spider-man the most popular superhero. One of the biggest reason that 50 million searches occurred would be that the movie spider-man: No Way Home came out December 17, 2021. (https://www.marvel.com/movies/spider-man-no-way-home)  I didn't find any recent data proving that spider-man in 2024 was the most popular superhero. This can be bias cause not everyone who searches up sider-man likes the superhero. People could be searching movies up, how many Spider-Man’s have been made or actors who have played Spider-Man. That doesn’t mean he is the most popular superhero.

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