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Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

US television program

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ2916274 ↗
Source-derived summary

Who Wants to Be a Superhero? is a superhero genre reality TV series that was broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) produced by Nash Entertainment and POW! Entertainment. The show was created by Stan Lee and Nash Entertainment. A junior version of the show was broadcast on BBC Two/CBBC in the UK.

Premise

Potential contestants auditioned as their super hero selves. The final 10 selected were then placed in common quarters. The contestants were then tested for superhero traits. Lee was the only judge and would instruct the eliminated contestant: “Turn in your costume”. He also mentored the contestants and made appearances, primarily on TV screens, on a giant plasma at the top of a tower block, a monitor resting in the middle of a pile of trash, or on individually issued "communicators". The winner's character concept would be the star of a Stan Lee scripted Dark Horse comic book and a TV movie for the Sci-Fi Channel.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” as uS television program. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wants, Superhero and television.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current 159-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Wants, Superhero and television providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”, the useful work is to connect “uS television program” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2916274. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Who Wants to Be a Superhero? primary sources, Who Wants to Be a Superhero? archive and Wants research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.