Superhero Colours: The Visual Guide

Given the sheer volume of superhero films being released by Hollywood in recent years, you can’t failed to have notice that heroes from both the Marvel and DC Universes share some common traits; most notably, their colour.

Superheroes are almost always dressed in blue, red and yellow (think Captain American, Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman, Wolverine, etc.) with anti-heroes often dressed in darker colours (Batman being the most obvious example). When it comes to villains, you’ll also notice a trend, with orange, purple, green and silver being the most common colours (think Magneto, The Joker, Dr Doom, Dr Octopus and Lex Luthor for good examples).

But why is this? Is there an obvious reason behind the choices for superheroes and villains? It turns out that there is actually quite a lot of theory behind how comic book characters are coloured, and both heroes and villains have common palettes that say quite a lot about who they are as a character. Luckily however, I don’t need to explain it all here, as the team over at Cartridge People have produced this handy visual guide to explain it: