By sheer coincidence, the French writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier created a superhero i with the same name as the Marvel Comics one familiar to us today, only Mercier did it in 1786. Black Coat Press has just published it (see sample chapter attached) as part of a translation of his sundry dream fantasies, which are rather obscure today even in France. Mercier (1740-1814) is best known for inventing the futuristic utopia in 1770 with L'An 2440, which inspired dozens of imitations over several decades; Edward Bellamy reinvented it here in 1888 with Looking Backward, which was even more influential.
--Brantley
