Superheroes

Superheroes as a storytelling device have always frustrated me. There's so much in the mechanics of how they work and the relation between the heroes and other characters that could be used to convey so much, even if often it doesn't. To be fair, I probably couldn't do any better, and probably haven't given what's on this page. Still, I wanted to explore some of these thoughts and see if I couldn't expand them out into concepts for characters and stories.

OUTSIDE VIEW

One of the most interesting mechanics of superhero stories is the secret identity. It's an incredibly efficient source of tension and serves to ground fantastical stories in the world of regular people, at least usually. Sometimes the civilian identity can be just as fantastical as the hero, but it still allows for some context to how fantastical conflicts are affecting the world. Usually the reader is aware of the dual identity, given that the story is from the perspective of the reader, and the tension comes in how it affects the hero's life and the possibility of other characters in the story finding out. What I'm interested in is if you could flip that so the story is from the perspective of a civilian who sees both identities of the hero and has to work to figure it out over the course of the story. In my short research I haven't really seen much where the hero is really a mystery, but I assume someone's thought of this before.

The concept here is that the love interest, who is the point of view character, comes to a new town and settles in to work or go to college, or both. It would probably make sense for them to be running from or leaving something behind, perhaps a bad family life or boyfriend, to have something that could catch up with them later in the story. In this new town, she makes friends, especially with three young men who go to college with her. Through some slip up or coincidence, she comes to believe that one of them is the local hero that fights crime in the town. From then on, she sets out to figure out which of them it is, presumably getting mixed up in whatever trouble the hero is in in the process. The result is a sort of team edward and team jacob scenario, with each of the different men having a distinct personality and motivation that would lead people to want it to be a specific one. And of course, the love interest and the hero have to fall in love. As an additional wrinkle, one of the guys would end up being the big bad at the end too.

A college town setting would be perfect for this, I think. Somewhere that gives the characters reason to be around each other all the time while also allowing them to be fairly independent individuals. I realized that my imagined setting was basically identical to Ivy Town from DC's The Atom comics, a sort of new england old town, though maybe a little less populated. Giving each of the potential heroes a different field of study would be an easy way to differentiate them as well. I figured one could be studying engineering (giving them the means to develop superhero technology) one could be studying criminal psychology or law (giving them a motive to want to deal justice) and one could be a business major from a wealthy family (giving them the funding to undergo this). They could also all be on a sports team together, which would give them a reason to know each other and be in shape.

This leads into one of the things which I'm fuzziest about that desperately needs to be worked out, which is the design and abilities of the hero. My first thought is someone who uses technology to fight crime a la batman, given that special abilities might be too easy a giveaway for this kind of mystery. That's not even getting into my thoughts on how often superheroes don't work for their powers. I figure this hero should be sort of amateurish and just starting out, so most of my design ideas have been intentionally makeshift. My first concept had them wearing a bandana, safety googles and a large hood/cape, though I'm not sold on this. I've also played around with them getting around on rooftops and powerlines, and perhaps using electricity off the lines as a boost, given that these sorts of towns aren't urban enough for much grappling or swinging, and getting around on foot or by car seems silly. Maybe a motorcycle, though. None of this I'm particularly settled on.

I've thrown a couple of things around for the heroine. Alongside being in school, she should be working at a restaurant or cafe. Somewhere the characters can spend downtime, and she can think about what's going on. It might also work with her trying to identify the hero. A scenario I'm imagining is where the three guys come in and order something peculiar they enjoy, and on the way home from work the heroine winds up getting mugged or something, and when the superhero saves her he accidentally lets something slip about the order. I've also played around with the love interest being hispanic, and finding out that there is not good mexican food available in the town and working at the one mexican restaurant to try and make it better. This could also serve as a potential relationship for the heroine with the restaurant owner, an old person that could help give them some context. They also definitely need a female friend from school, or else this story ends up a bit of a sausage fest.

As a story, this would have to start with the heroine coming to this town and getting settled in, meeting everyone, and possibly getting saved by the hero or getting invested in them some way or another. The story from there could fall into a pattern of her going from place to place and also investigating the hero in her spare time, getting involved in and helping stop villains and crime, while also getting closer to the three guys. This low level crime would turn out to be building up to or a distraction from some greater threat, at which point it would be revealed who the hero is, as well as who the villain is. Given her relationship to both, the heroine could help out in some way. If the villain were the business student, this greater threat could be that they were sending out villains in order to put competitors out of business or get cheap land, for instance. The hero has to have a bit of naive strangeness that would lead them to becoming a hero in the first place, and would have to over the course of the story figure out how to put that to good use. Of course, at the end the hero and the girl get together.

SPECTER

This one's a little siller, though possibly more spooky as well. This was an attempt to take the not very heroic superpower of seeing ghosts and trying to make it fit. I could imagine it would result in some metaphysical problems if you tried to square it with other heroes, but whatever. The idea here is a loserly teenager named Kate Clay is chosen by a talking axe/ancient spirit to guard the barrier between life and death after a century of it being left unguarded. This involves helping lost souls figure out what's keeping them tethered to earth, defeating evil spirits in combat, and slowly unraveling the mystery of what destroyed the last bearer of the axe a hundred years ago. I drew up a very rough mspaint pilot of this story which you can read here if you're interested.

As the protagonist I envision Kate as a bit of a loser. I put her in high school mostly because I was interested in trying out characters of that age and the school setting. Conveniently for ghost whispering, Kate is the kind of kid who frequently cuts class and goes off campus to get food. At this point in her development, I began to worry she was getting too cool so I gave her a best friend who's part of the theater department and wears one of those russian fur hats all the time. Something I'm still on the fence about with her character is giving her a not great home life and reason to get out of the house at night a lot. Parents or lack of them is usually pretty important to teen heroes, and I'm not sure making them the equivalent of the peanuts adults work here.

The axe I've tentatively named Atoma, after atomism, though I think there could probably be a better name. Ifanyone knows any cool mythological axes or death-associated weaponry that would be much appreciated. This weapon is able to cut through ghosts and other spectral stuff (it could probably cut the soul out of a person's body), but more importantly can communicate its knowledge of the afterlife to Kate and also some abilities to her, like being able to see ghosts, obviously. For the sake of it being a superhero story I also made it give her a pseudo-spectral form, which grants her enhanced physical abilities and maybe some floaty or blending into shadows kind of stuff. Something that would make her seem somewhat unnatural. Atoma is also a character in her own right, essentially a mentor for Kate as she learns the ropes, and eventually a partner in ghostbusting.

The ghosts of this story are pretty normal. In the world, most people just pass over easily after death. There are some which stick around because of lingering attachments, or are being held for some reason. Souls that stick around too long become progressively more wraithlike, at which point they need to be defeated in order to pass on. This process varies from person to person, obviously.

I chose to set this story in Washington, though it doesn't really change that much about it. After listening to a fair bit of sloan, I've come to see that Canada might also be a good location for this, though I don't know much about living there. As with the previous story, I didn't want somewhere too urban. Just some lame city that's notable for like one thing. One small joke about the setting I have is that Kat's high school is named after William Howard Taft, because Taft was the previous bearer of the axe, and died in the town trying to stop some threat. This would imply that taft was secretly a badass, which I think is funny. Plus it would make for great flashbacks.

Some potential characters are Kate, the axe, and Eric (the previously mentioned theater friend). As a friend on the other side, I put in a character, Ophelia, who is a 1940s schoolgirl that won't pass on and haunts the school and Kate by extension. She could offer a bit of running commentary on ghostly affairs, and also help Kate figure out what ghosts are around. I've also played around with the idea of there being a werewolf girl either coming to town or school, but this may be too silly. Beyond vengeful spirits, some potential antagonists are a lich/necromancer, as well as a true crime podcaster who wants to figure out why so many cold cases are getting solved in this small town. That last one could lend itself to some funny situations I think.

I wrote up a rough pilot story for this, which is linked above, where Kate gets the axe after going on a night walk and tries to help a wayward ghost, only for it to turn out that it was actually a killer that had lost it's memories over time. Further stories could deal with Kate once established as a ghost whisperer trying to protect herself and identity from the increased attention, and eventually dealing with the broader threat that Atoma failed to defeat last time.

TEEN WIZARD

In a distant dimension of pure potential, a wisp of darkness floated around and pulled more darkness into itself until it congealed into… a teenager. After a long period of wandering, the teenager was found by a visiting wizard and brought back to earth to hone their magical abilities. They don't manage to control it very well.

Admittedly, this is a lot like Sabrina the teenage witch. Or maybe Klarion. It's like a lot of stories about young magicians, really. It honestly isn't even that superheroey, since it isn't really a good vs evil conflict story. One of the inspirations for this was watching totoro, and thinking about how that kind of story would work in a superhero type setting. Something magical is caused by either the teen or by something around them, it both symbolically and literally represents the issue at hand, and then it's resolved. Someone trying to get in control of magical powers could probably lend itself to that.

I'm not sure what this character would be called. My current designs has him as a semi emo teenager with a pointy hat, robe and jeans, but I made him look entirely human, which I'm not sure is the best fit for the character. On one hand I want him to fit in with regular teenagers, which he'll presumably hang out with in the story, but on the other hand it doesn't make him look magical at all. If I want that direction, I feel like it would end up looking like a black mage with bangs, which is no good. Their wizard mentor on the other hand, would be Wendingerus the Wizard of Williamsburg (or the West Village or whatever). The clearest image I have of this story is a big silly wizard tower sandwiched between regular buildings in new york. The contrast between the mundane life in the city and the eccentricity of the wizard life is one of the main focal points of this. To that end, this wizard is probably of the senile old man type more than the wise one.

MISCELLANEOUS

Any random character or setting idea will get put down here, just in case they develop into something else.

Color Knight: Shoots paint at people. Wears a brightly colored suit of armor. Acts like a super dorky chivalrous fellow (calls people milady). Every fight they're in ends up being a huge annoying mess. I just think this character would be fun to use as a joke teamup with a real superhero. I am concerned that the name sounds racist, though. Upon drawing this character, I've become undecided as to whether it would be funny if it was a guy or a girl under the mask.

Twotone Thief: One of my many attempts to make a ska themed character. This is a thief who's as hard to spot in bright light as in darkness, on account of a suit that changes from black to white. Can't think of anything to do with this, though.

Psychocandy, Pulse Demon, and Primal Scream: An experiment in basing characters off of various albums and bands. Psychocandy is a vaguely alive creature that can make everything fuzzy and slow in a radius around them. Pulse Demon is a demon that disrupts electronics/circuit breaks, and shimmers. Primal Scream is blinding, looks like a dark souls boss.