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Faith Mitchell
Professor Lewis
English 115
22 October 2014
What Makes a Hero?
The definition of a hero can be defined in all sorts of ways. Many people have different
ideas of which characteristics make up a hero. I was assigned to do an ethnography about any
type of heroes in any setting. For my Ethnography I chose to observed a comic store in order to
figure out what people into comics believe makes a hero. I first observed a comic book store.
The store was a small comic book store located off a main street in Northridge called Earth 2.
Proceeding my observation, I asked a few simple questions about action heroes. I did not
influence any of the people I observed or questioned.
As soon as I walked into to the comic book store I immediately noticed it was very
crowded. There was a wide age range of about 16-45, although the majority of the people were
in the 18-20 range. I also noticed there were far more males than females. This was very
interesting to me because it somewhat proved the stereotype that mostly younger aged men are
interested in comics. As I was observing I noticed that the people in the store easily could strike
up a conversation with each other. Complete strangers acted as if they knew each other very
well. This is most likely due to the fact that they have the love for comics in common, but I
typically do not see people conversing so easily in any other store setting. This could mean that
comic lovers are more open to conversing and hearing others opinions on the topic. There are
many controversial arguments in comic books which create many discussions, and could be why
many of them were conversing with each other. Most of the people inside the comic store were

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very passionate about the comics. They were having in depth conversations about the action
heroes and their comics. I could tell that they really enjoyed discussing comics and had a lot of
knowledge on this topic.
As I was observing I picked up on a conversation about Marvel and DC. Marvel and DC
are two major comic lines that are very popular in the comic book world. Both of the people
engaged in the conversation were in agreement that DC is better because of the fact that they are
better known. The DC heroes include Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, which are the
main super heroes that people are most familiar with. One of them also said that there are far
more DC heroes than Marvel heroes, and DC heroes are more powerful and defined as
characters. They also said more people look up to the DC heroes because they are what
automatically comes to their mind when they think of a hero.
After observing the store for an hour, I asked a few people some simple question about
action heroes. The first question I asked was What makes a Hero? I asked more men than
women, due to the fact that there were more men in the comic store, ages 18-20. From the
answers I received, it was shown that the women focused on the emotional side of the heroes.
Their answers included: loving, selfless, courageous, and loyal. Men tended to answer with more
terms about the physical side of the hero. Their answers included strong, knows how to fight,
and brave. Possibly the woman can more easily connect to the emotional side of a hero whereas
men can connect to the physical side. It could also be because woman look up to heroes as
emotional figures of how they should be emotionally while men look up to them as how men
should be physically.
Many people answered with phrases like abnormally willing to sacrifice themselves.
and going beyond normal human capabilities. This showed me that besides superheroes

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abnormal strength and super power, people believe that heroes all together go beyond the normal
human, and that puts them in a category of superhero. The people inside the comic store look
up to these figures in the comic book as their heroes, rather than everyday heroes like police,
firemen, military, etc. All the comic book heroes have abnormal characteristics that put them in a
different category than humans which ties together why they would be describing heroes to have
abnormal traits that go beyond normal humans.
The next question I asked was Do heroes need to have emotions to be considered a
hero?. The answered varied, some explained that heroes are more admirable if they have no
emotion at all. They believe that by having no emotion, they can focus on their job as a hero and
not let emotions get in the way. Other said that having emotions is a huge part in being a hero.
They commented that the emotional side of the story is a big part in the comic books and makes
the heroes seem more relatable. With the answers having such a wide range, it is clear that they
can be considered heroes with or without emotions.
From the information I gathered on the comic store, I concluded that many of the
stereotypes about comic readers are true. The comic store was filled with mostly 18-20 year old
males which is what a typical comic store is known to have. I also found that women care more
about the emotional side of heroes while men cared more about the physical side. Some people
believe it is necessary for heroes to have emotions while others believe it is not. DC is better
known, and most believe the DC heroes are better and more defines as characters. It was very
interesting to observe a setting I am not familiar with and be able to pick up so much information
and discover what people believe a hero really is.