March is Irish heritage month, and we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.  Today’s blog entry is about superheroes from Ireland. Both Marvel and DC have Irish heroes. Not many of them are as mainstream or as popular as most other heroes. If I were to talk about about all of the Irish superheroes, which according to the DC and Marvel Wikis is over 150, this blog would go on for a little too long. Instead, here are a couple of heroes from both Marvel and DC that have Irish roots.

There are a few notable Irish superheroes within the Marvel Universe. One Irish superhero that might surprise you is Captain America (Steve Rogers). Steve Rogers was born in Ireland. Steve is Irish-American, and it could seem like a cheat, but it counts. As an infant, he and his parents immigrated to Brooklyn, New York in the 1930’s. The powers of Captain America consist of superhuman strength, endurance, agility, speed, reflexes, durability, and healing. Essentially, he’s been transformed into the peek of human performance.

The X-Men, as we all know, are a mutant group fighting for good in the Marvel Universe. One not so popular X-Man is Banshee. Banshee, also known as Sean Cassidy, was born born in Ireland. He’s also the heir of a small fortune and a castle in Cassidy Keep, Ireland.

As an adult, Sean gets married. He also takes a job with Interpol. When he’s away on a mission in America, his wife gives pregnant with their child, Theresa. But before Sean returns home, his wife dies leaving Sean’s brother, Tom, to take care of Theresa for Sean. When Sean discovers that his wife has died, he lashes out using his sonic powers on Tom before he can tell him about his daughter. This attack causes Tom to fall into chasm, breaking his leg. Banshee later joins the X-Men when he runs off to America in anger. Banshee’s powers consist of sonic scream, sonar, sonis shield, vocal disorientation, vocal unconsciousness, and sound immunity. This combination of powers makes Banshee a mega-level mutant. For those who don’t know, a mega-mutant is on the scale of how powerful a mutant can be.

Lets not forget about DC. Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) is also a half-Irish superhero. Rayner was born to a Latin-American father and an Irish mother. At a young age, Rayner’s mother taught him Gaelic so he could be more in touch with his Irish heritage. Kyle became the sole Green Lantern when Hal Jordan, the most popular GL (short for Green Lantern), went mad with grief. And if you didn’t know, Hal Jordan went into a grief driven madness and destroyed all of the Green Lantern Corps because his home city, Coast City, was destroyed by Mongul. As a GL, Rayner is capable of creating hard light constructs, flight, protective barrier, and space travel.

Some other heroes with Irish heritage are DareDevil, Ant-Man (Eric O’Grady), and The Shamrock.  Regardless of however many Irish Heroes either DC or Marvel have, I think it’s cool that there are heroes with heritage from all over the world. Having heroes from around the world can inspire people from those countries to strive to do great things. As I said in the very first Justice League of America blog, I think that diversity is important.