Was a big fan of Alpha Flight precisely at that period, and I absolutely dont remember JP Beaubier (note how the “gay” token is a French speaker) having AIDS. At the time he was not specifically revealed as being gay, and certainly not as having AIDS. If I remember right Bill Mantlo was writing the series at the time, and Northstar was sick either because of his loss of connection with his sister or contamination by Pestilence (a lot of things in Mantlo’s run were extremely confusing).
Puck was later retconned by Mantlo as being an adventurer from the thirties that got reduced in height for trapping a Persian sorcerer inside of him, at the price of great pains but also with the reward of considerably slowing his aging. Originally, it is clear Byrne just intended Puck to be a very agile dwarf (probably due to mutant genes) with a genetic recurring pain (apparently something some dwarfs experience in real life). Mantlo didnt get the biological explanation and went for a mystical one. Too bad, Byrne’s Puck was quite original. Still, Puck got rid of his curse, and as an aging adventurer was a great character too.
Total thread hijack.
Asterix is short, and not just in comparison to Obelix.
Buffy’s pretty short. IMDB says SMG is 5’4".
So’s Spike.
Deal with it, fangirls.
Inch High, Private Eye was not very tall. He used this to his advantage.
ETA: Ninja’ed by HeadNinja!!!
Durkon Thundershield
Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII and later a movie actor, was probably the closest thing to a real-life action hero there’s ever been. He was tiny - five foot five.
Professor Challenger from Conan Doyle’s *The Lost World *and other works
However, the best short hero is Doc Savage’s sidekick Lt. Col. Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair
Napoleon Bonaparte?
Anyone played by Alan Ladd when not standing on a box.
Oh yeah, Wolverine’s pretty short, too. When he’s not being played by Jackman.
Reepicheep is about the size of a housecat. He’s unusually tall for a mouse (though not for for a Talking Mouse of Narnia).
And of course I am interested in human characters anyway.
I’m not going to use Billy. He does almost all his hero stuff as Captain Marvel (who of course is not Shazam, and who’s also probably around 6’2" or 6’3"). And he’s not done growing (in his own mind, I mean; of course he’ll probably never grow up in continuity).
<draws self up to full height> 5’5" is not tiny.
Are cartoons allowed? Atom Ant may be the smallest superhero.
I shan’t object if y’all want to talk about shrinkers and, but for my purposes, only humans who without magical size-changing powers count.
Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass.
Oh, I forgot. Another Doc Savage aide, Major Thomas “Long Tom” Roberts, is usually described as a runt.
I was going to mention him, but when I went to get a link to put in the post, I noticed his height was listed as ‘3’6" formerly 6’6"’. Read the bio…yep, sure enough, [del]someone left him in the drier too long[/del]the demon shrunk him.
Terry Pratchett’s work features a number of short people in action roles, but most are non-human (e.g. dwarves, gnomes, the Nac Mac Feegle). The only unusually short human character I can think of at the moment is Nobby Nobbs* of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, but I don’t know that you’d call him a hero. I mean, he’s generally one of the good guys and has definitely seen action, but since he’s usually robbing corpses afterward then “hero” is maybe not the best description.
*His exact species has been questioned, but he does have a certificate from the Patrician stating that he is in all probability a human.