Brazilian superheroes: from Capitão 7 to Radius
From a TV Record hero in the 1950s to a vigilante of Marília in 3121: a look at the history of superheroes created in Brazil.
Say "superhero" and most people picture New York or Gotham. But Brazil has been creating its own for more than seventy years, some of them before the country even had a strong comics industry.
Capitão 7, the hero born on television
The first big name didn't come from a comic book. Capitão 7 (Captain 7) premiered on TV Record on September 24, 1954, in a series created by Rubem Biáfora, with actor Ayres Campos in the lead. It stayed on the air until 1966.
Success on screen took the character to paper: from 1959 on, Capitão 7 had his own comic. It's the opposite of what we see today, when heroes usually go from the page to the screen.
The 1960s and Raio Negro
In the following decade, Gedeone Malagola created his best-known character, Raio Negro (Black Ray), at the publisher GEP (Gráfica Editora Penteado). Malagola also signed other heroes there, such as Hydroman and Homem Lua (Moon Man).
O Judoka and EBAL
Between 1969 and 1973, EBAL (Editora Brasil-América) published O Judoka. Its origin is curious: EBAL was publishing an American judo hero, and when that series was cancelled in the US, the answer was a Brazilian version. Pedro Anísio and Eduardo Baron took on the job. In the story, a student named Carlos saves judo master Minamoto from being run over and learns judo from him in return.
What these heroes have in common
Looking at this timeline, a pattern shows up: the Brazilian superhero is almost always created by someone who read a lot of foreign comics and wanted something that looked like home. Researcher Roberto Guedes gathered much of this history in the book A Saga dos Super-Heróis Brasileiros.
Another thing they share is how hard it was to last. Many of these characters had only a few issues and disappeared for lack of structure, distribution or money.
Where Radius fits in
Radius knows that struggle well. The character was drawn in 1996, on a school desk in Marília, by a 16-year-old Tiago de Moraes das Chagas. The first adventures were made by hand with his friend Rafael Mantovani Ribeiro and ended up in a drawer for the same reason as so many heroes before him. The full story is in From a 1996 drawing to a 2022 comic.
When Radius came back in 2022, things had changed. Independent creators can now publish, sell print and digital editions and reach readers abroad without a big publisher. The story is set in Marília Metropolitana in the year 3121 and mixes science fiction with Brazilian culture, from capoeira to Macunaíma. The where to start guide explains the universe in a few minutes.
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