The original backyard museum. In 2019 the collection moved into a building twice this size.

Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum

Elkhart, Indiana

"This is the largest superhero memorabilia collection in the world," said Allen Stewart, founder of the Hall of Heroes. He should know. Most of the collection -- over 10,000 superhero artifacts and 65,000 superhero comic books -- is his.

Allen's Hall of Heroes -- the original home of the museum -- still stands in his back yard, built in 2006 as a replica of the Hall of Justice from the Super Friends Saturday morning TV series. "Super Friends was my favorite cartoon of all time," said Allen. "The 1978 season, when they had Super Friends vs. The Legion of Doom."

Allen Stewart wields Thor's Hammer.

Tributes in the museum are everywhere: to Plastic Man, the Teen Titans, the Hulk, the Herculoids. There are superhero Slurpee cups from the 1970s, action figures in massed hordes, a Green Goblin pumpkin bomb, a Superman hairbrush. Allen owns an Adam West Batman suit and the red outfit worn by William Katt in the short-lived TV series The Greatest American Hero. "We're the same size," said Allen of Katt. "I put the costume on, once, and did a somersault from a trampoline over a bonfire. My wife was ready to shoot me."

Showing off his collection's best features comes easy to Allen -- he's a real estate agent by day (we tried to corner him on a price for his Hall, and he put on his best realtor smile as we babbled about the deal-killing effect of basement kryptonite gas). But each week, when no one is watching, our hero sheds the disguise and whisks off to a local comic book shop to buy 40 just released superhero comics. He reads every one, then adds them to the museum's archive (Its goal is to preserve a copy of every superhero comic ever made).

Costume from "The Greatest American Hero" TV series.

The Hall of Heroes collection currently extends back to the early 1940s, "the drool stuff," said Allen. He showed us comics with covers of Uncle Sam battling Nazis at Pearl Harbor, Superman snapping photos of an atom bomb blast, and Captain America punching der Fuehrer in the face.

Reading over 65,000 comics has made Allen one of the world's foremost superhero historians. We asked if he knew when Triplicate Girl (of The Legion of Super-Heroes) became Duo Damsel. He did. "That was 1967," he said. "One of her was killed by Computo the Conqueror, a great big giant computer. Adventure Comics, right around issue #340." Allen said he couldn't remember the last time he got a question wrong.

Wonder Woman display, including her invisible jet.

Allen's dedication to superheroes extends far beyond passive collecting. He told us he was greenlighted as a contestant for the show Who Wants to be a Superhero?, but then the series got canceled. Earlier, he was edged out by Chris O'Donnell for the role of Robin in the film Batman Forever. "I think I could have done a better job," Allen said, "because I would have brought more passion to the character."

While Allen posed for a photo wielding the Hammer of Thor, we asked if his completist approach made the Hall of Heroes a kind of superhero seed bank or survival ark. "An ark! Exactly! That's what it is!" said Allen, pleased with the analogy. If global warming drowns all coastal libraries and museums, the Hall of Heroes Museum could be the lone surviving record of human existence. At least no one would wonder why the planet was destroyed. There were so many titanic battles, so many supervillains!