The Most Popular Superheroes Across The Globe Might Surprise You

Long gone are the days when superheroes were something only for ultra-nerds and children to geek out over. Now, thanks in large part to movie blockbusters from Marvel and DC skyrocketing the popularity of these characters to non-comic book readers as well, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't at least seen one film featuring Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman, or their associated friends and foes.

In order to find out exactly how popular each superhero currently is, U.K. retail video game company Game did a study on the popularity of Marvel vs. DC across the world, while also testing out which individual superheroes and supervillains are the most popular in each country. The company's methodology included looking through Google Analytics to see which country searched for each brand and respective super-powered individual the most. Fans may find some of the results to be especially surprising; here's a look at what the study found.

The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done wonders for Marvel's overall popularity, although the popularity of some characters was already established prior, thanks to the original Spider-Man movie trilogy predating the MCU. According to Game, Marvel is more popular than DC in 85% of the selected countries, with some big exceptions including Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea. 

The company also tested to see which superhero is most popular across the world and your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man takes the cake with 48.7% of countries declaring him as the favorite through their search boxes, including the United States and much of Africa and Europe. No other hero comes close, with the next-most-popular superhero being Wonder Woman, with just 12.8% of countries, including Russia, Japan, and the U.K. Captain America can't even win his own country in popularity, only coming out on top in Canada, Australia, Germany, and Ireland. One would think Batman and Iron Man would be more popular, thanks to their incredibly well-performing films, but they each only take around 9% respectively, while Superman garners just over 5%. Aquaman, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, and Groot round out the list with four, three, two, and one country favoring each, respectively.

Finally, the retailer tested out the popularity of both properties' villains, with the universe-halving Thanos capturing more than half of countries with 56.4%, then the Joker with 17.9%, Venom with 13.6%, Emplate with 9.6%, and Ultron, Catwoman, and Daken rounding out the list with about 1% each.