Each day in June you'll get an entry showing you the first appearance of seemingly minor characters, phrases, objects or events that later became notable parts of comic book lore. Not major stuff like "the first appearance of Superman," but rather, "the first time someone said, 'Avengers Assemble!'" or "the first appearance of Batman's giant penny" or "the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth" or "the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter." Stuff like that. Here is an archive of what I've featured so far.

Enjoy!

First appearance of the Batmobile

The Batmobile first showed up in 1941's Detective Comics #48...

However, it was soon after in 1941 that Batman #5 saw the first appearance of what we would really call the first Batmobile...

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First appearance of Thing's Aunt Petunia

In 1964's Fantastic Four #26, we get our first mention of Thing's Aunt Petunia...

Over the next eighteen years, Thing would often cite Aunt Petunia, but it was not clear if he wasn't just being colorful.

In any event, in 1982's Fantastic Four #238, John Byrne introduced a woman...

and in the next issue, we learn that SHE is, in fact, the Aunt Petunia of lore...

Pretty clever of Byrne messing with readers' expectations of what Aunt Petunia would look like.

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First mention of Superman as the "Man of Steel"

The term first showed up in newspaper headlines in 1938's Action Comics #6...

And by 1939's Action Comics #11, the term was being used by DC itself to promote Superman....

(It appeared in captions in the stories right afterwards)

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Feel free to send in ideas for future debuts I should feature here to bcronin@comicbookresources.com!