As far as Daredevil goes, it's a good name and the trademark wasn't being protected, so why not use it? A little while after that, Myron Fass figured the same thing and started publishing stories of Iron Jaw, Plastic Man, and.... Captain Marvel, which lit a fire under Marvel to make sure they owned that name (I don't recall the exact story how that happened, but it ended up, as we know, that that Marvel got the name and DC got the character.)

The [Something] Man construct is a no brainer; it signals a superhero character and usually makes the theme evident.

But really, no character stands or falls on just the name--it's what you do with it.

I think the selected names served the purpose--a definitive purpose of the characters they represented. For example, "Spider-Man" gets to the point; he's a mix or balance of his distinctive sides, which is better than say, a character called "The Arachnid," which carries with it a ton of negative, itchy, disgusting connotations.

The other names ending in "-Man," well, that's comic book creators going with something that was hammered into pop-cultural acceptance with the success of Superman, so Iron / Wonder / Radioactive / Molten / U- / Ice / -Thing / Titanium and the rest of that army of "-Man" men were going to get that treatment. The all-too popular default naming convention.

"The Avengers" always seemed to be a choice (among many) to create a team name that sounded more aggressive than the "Justice League of America," which--in all honesty--read like a Masonic Lodge group or union club name.

"The X-Men" had mid-century sci-fi novel & movie influences all over it (as the letter "X" was often used to imply danger, secrecy or being the "other"), but I do think such a "threatening" name was also an attempt to take yet another piece of the aura from the even more threatening-sounding Doom Patrol.

Spider-Man turns out to be a pretty good nam.

Iron-Man was already a term used of strong men, so it has resonance.

Ant-Man is a perfect name considering the origins of the character.

The Thing is perfect, and reflects how the character sees himself. And 'The Ever-loving blue eyed Thing' is genius.

Considering he was in Strange Tales, yes. But it also fits perfectly.

SHIELD and Avengers, they were in the business of selling books, so latching onto pop culture makes sense. They were not out to make ground breaking original art, they wanted to sell books to kids and teenagers. That they did make original art is something we can be thankful for.

The Myron Fass thing; he also presented a Dr Doom and at least one other villain, with a Marvel name and Marvel came knocking. They settled by him selling them his trademark for Captain Marvel. Fawcett licensed their Captain Marvel directly to DC; but, since Marvel now had a trademark on the name Captain Marvel, for use in a title, DC had to title their book Shazam; but, nothing prevented them from still calling the character Captain Marvel.

Roy Thomas added homages to the Fawcett character, during his run, like Dr Savana, the switching with Rick Jones and a couple of other things.

The Thing was recycled, I believe, from an Atlas monster story, aside from the classic film. Invisible Girl was derivative of both HG Wells and the newspaper strip The Invisible Scarlet O'Neil.

The Mandarin was another Fu Manchu rip-off (just as the Yellow Claw, though YC was a direct swipe, rather than a character type).

SHIELD was a specific swipe of Man From UNCLE. The tv series was hot and Stan admitted to the swipe, in Son of Origins. In the second or third issue, they introduced the New York HQ of the agency, which was entered via a barber shop, where the chair dropped through the floor, on hydraulics, to the hidden complex below. In the tv series, the UNCLE agents entered the UNCLE HQ via Del Floria's Tailor Shop, when the sentry activated a hidden door, via a steam press. the early issues also feature all of the SHIELD agents in suits, like UNCLE. Kirby then adds combat gear, when SHIELD gets into a shooting battle, with HYDRA and Steranko followed that with making the combat uniforms the permanent agency uniforms. He even had sentries in orange "dress uniforms."

They recycled several Atlas monster/story names, in the early Marvel days. Also some of the western character names. Ghost Rider was originally a Magazine Enterprises western hero, drawn by Dick Ayers. Marvel picked up the trademark on the character and produced their own Ghost Rider western comics. Then, they introduced the Johnny Blaze version and rechristened the western hero Night Rider, with reprints of the previous stories.

The name of the Scarlet Witch might have been partially inspired by a Centaur comics villain, The Witch. Quicksilver's name was derived from the Quality Comics character, which Mark Waid eventually revived (since DC owned it), as Max Mercury.

Shanna the She-Devil is likely derived from Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

The Nedor/Better/Standard character was called Doc Strange, invoking Doc Savage, rather than Dr Strange, like the Ditko character, though they might have used either title with him (I've only seen bits and pieces, but recently downloaded the issues of Thrilling Comics).

Roy Thomas homaged the Quality Comics characters, who comprised the Freedom Fighters, at DC, as the Crusaders. However, he also homaged the Nedor Fighting Yank, with The Spirit of '76 and the name Captain Wings was the title of a feature in Wings Comics, from Fiction House (which was a knock-off of Captain Midnight). Dyna-Mite referenced Dan the Dyna-Mite, the sidekick of the DC hero TNT.

Sgt Fury recycled a ton of things, from DC's Sgt Rock, the Atlas Combat Kelly, John Wayne's Sgt Stryker (Sands of Iwo Jima) and dozens of other sergeants in movies and war comics. Dino Manelli was an homage to Dean martin, while Izzy Cohen was visually based on Charles Bronson.

Some of the concepts in Spider-Man were borrowed from Simon & Kirby's The Fly. Kirby's early ideas were directly from The Fly, plus a sketch he had done for a character to be called The Spider or The Silver Spider, who was more or less the same character as The Night Fighter, which was advertised in Mainline Comics, but never debuted (I think, might have been a Harvey comic, while they were there). Ditko reworked it into what we know, which is part of why Kirby later claimed creation of it.

You can also point a finger at the Challengers of the Unknown, especially their origin, for the basic concept, minus super powers, of the Fantastic Four. Both have a group of people survive a crash and then decide to stay together for further adventures, usually involving monsters and other scientific mysteries. The FF diverts from that once they bring Dr Doom into it (you could also argue the Sub-Mariner, though that first story still has a lot of monster elements).

Pinky I've heard Niven, I think and, possibly, Peter Lawford (though Niven would seem to be more in Lee & Kirby's wheelhouse).

I've never heard of an inspiration for Keonig.  He was a Lee & Dick Ayers character and always seemed kind of generic; but, they wanted a German who turns against the Nazis. Visually, the only name that really comes to my mind is Christopher Plummer, in The Sound of Music....


 

When did Charles Bronson start wearing a moustache? Or I suppose the question should be, when did become part of his trademark look? I ask because I thought that happened a bit later than some of these comics meant to be based on him.