Superheroes what would you like to see?

More every day superheroism through superhero genre type fiction.

1. My superhero is my old godmother. She is way over 80 and has seen everything that is hard in the life. And she is like sunshine. And brave. And...

2. One of my very, very distant relatives is a bit like superhero to many peoples. (I was a bit afraid of his jaw and face when he visited my home when I was very young, under school age).



(Click subtitle button if you want to have english sub titles.)

3. Riku Mattila and Stephen Hawking are real superheros.

4. Many single mothers are real superheros.

Bravery is not lack of fear but action despite fear, winning fear.

Capability is not being outside reality but confronting reality when needed.

 

This is very reminiscent of a hero in the Ex-Heroes novel series called Regenerator. He had the power to heal anything, at a slight price to his health, but then he was bitten by a zombie. He didn't turn, but all of his power is now focused on stopping the spread of the disease in his body, so he can't heal people anymore.

ETA: That series also has one of my favorite superheroes of all time, Zzzap. Normally, he's wheelchair bound, but he can turn into a being of pure energy (very similar to lightning, hence the name) and can even fly. He's their civilization's battery, charging their generators, but staying in that form burns a tremendous amount of calories, something that's in very short supply during the apocalypse. It's an interesting dynamic.

 

Pretty much everything about superheroes has been well mined at this point (if you don't believe me, look to top cow and image. Marvel and DC don't have the monopoly on storytelling). I'd like to see people of color more. Maybe an actual Native American without stereotype powers (We don't all have to turn into wolves or eagles, guys, and anyone who did would be killed by their family for being a damn skinwalker). That would be a nice change of pace. There was already a stellar Rez comic (Scalped) but that was a solid crime story.

 

I'd like to see a story where one of the henchmen of the villain is the main hero. They realize, after a very dangerous plan is set in motion, that they did something really bad and will try to right their wrongs by defeating the villain from the inside. Maybe they sneak off to work with the superhero or plan a rebellion with the other henchmen.

 

Maybe some, like, real changes in the universe? In lots of superhero stuff, they capture a villain, he's captured, sent to jail, escapes in like a week, repeat. Also stuff like all the public and private property superheroes are always destroying, maybe some consequences like that.
Get rid of villains, and sometimes heroes, and just keep them gone. Its occasionally valid to bring someone back, but usually its just that no one wants to have to work in new characters.
The whole reason that Gotham needs Batman is that it's suppose to be the most crime ridden city on Earth, but if Batman is helping at all, why is it still the most crime ridden city on Earth?

 

I think part of the attachment to the status quo is tied to the business dynamics of the comic book industry. Things staying roughly the same makes it easier for new and returning readers to pick up a book without having to buy fifty back issues to understand what's going on. And the serial, unending nature of American comic books means it's easier to reuse fan favorite villains rather than brainstorm new ones from scratch on a tight deadline. This was especially true back when the Comics Code was in full effect and the villain had to be brought to justice by the end of the issue.

It's interesting to note that this sort of thing doesn't usually happen in adaptations. Villains are killed off or permanently incarcerated. Heroes die or retire. The settings are noticeably changed. Probably because movies and games and TV shows don't have to worry about constantly putting out content.

Agreed with everything in the middle. Complaints about nothing really changing are the biggest criticism I see of superheroes.

Funny thing with Batman is that the threats he set out to fight are pretty much gone by the present. Traditional organized crime in Gotham basically died out in his second or third year. The GCPD and city government are significantly less corrupt than when he started. Problem is all the costumed, mostly mentally ill supervillains came out of the woodwork and filled in the vacuum left by the mob's collapse. Against that lot, that anyone's still alive in Gotham is a testament to the fact Batman is helping.

The point about adaptations becomes relevant again here. Compare Batman Begins to The Dark Knight Rises, and you see Gotham go from a corrupt, rotting urban hellscape to a sleek, clean modern metropolis thanks to the nudge Batman provided.

 

Once I thought it would be fun to read some story about SuperHeroes which powers evolve as they use it. Of course, my first thought was totally a mess. I'm not very good at writing sci-fi, leave alone SuperHeroes genre, but I want to share my absurds ideas in case anyone is capable of dig something out of it.

I started chronollogicaly. Some people get this powers somehow. The thing is that this powers seems to be useless by the genre standards: like pissing (sorry) perfume, getting lost indoors and some other stupidities I came up with.
At this point, the Superheroes didn't even know what they are. They live their lifes and use (or hide) their powers with their friends just to kid around. Some of them try desperately to conceal theirs from family and friends.
Then, the change kicks in. Their powers are evolving into something that would be considered usefull by the genre standards in some weird triggering situations. The superheroe that can piss perfume realizes that can piss other things. Like oil, or drugs, or anything he/she can methabolize out of some common raw inorganical diet. He She becomes some kind of Mr/Miss Fussion Pharm Filter. That means that the power can evolve. Is not just pissing perfume anymore, he/she can eat inorganic food.
Anyway, I don't want to flood the thread: The same happens to the other superheroes.
The point of the story is showing how this power evolution happens and its effects on the characters and environment. Just ending the story with a full set of powerful Superheroes ready to beat the crime or change the world, maybe.
That one I'd liked to read. Don't know if I'll ever have time to write it.

 

Informed familial knowledge. I understand keeping your identity secret from the general public and I understand doing everything in your power to keep your identity secret from the people you fight but for the love of all things, tell your mom/dad/legal guardian/siblings/significant others/super-close best friends. And if you don't feel you can safely tell them, train yourself not to put their individual safety above the safety of others. It always annoys me when a hero's family member or friend or SO ends up in a situation they may not have if they had been informed about the hero being the hero; or the hero ending up in a situation they may not have been in if they had just talked to their family member with working knowledge of the thing! Like look, I'm LGBT, I'm still in the closet to my family about parts of my identity, so I know it can be hard to come out as a hero, especially if your support system is already vocally against heroes, but bro, it'll be so much safer for them in the long run.

"Oh but their family knowing would take the fun out." Look, I read a Teen Wolf fan fiction where Stiles told his dad in season 1 and his dad ended up investigating a situation without back up because he thought a werewolf was involved and got seriously hurt. It lead to a second conversation in the vein of "yeah werewolves are real, but don't go without back up if you think werewolves are involved!!!" I also read an Emperor's Edge fan fiction where the main character get throw back into her 8 year old body and is like "cool, I can stop a lot of the problems from the first time around!" and then her dad catches her scheming and she has to spin a quick lie to get past "time travel" but then she's like "okay, here's my plan." and he's like "That's it? Nope, we're sitting down and making the best possible plan."

To me that's were the fun comes in. Make that "air tight" plan and then find every way it could go wrong and exploit the ever loving heck out of it.


Teen heroes oversight. This is, of course, presuming there are adult heroes around. But even as early as 15 I was very concerned about the fact that there were teenage heroes getting into situations that could kill them and not having their adult counterparts stepping in to help (Looking at you Teen Titans). Or not telling their parents about their superhero identities because they might lose their housing because their family vocally hates their hero identity (Static Shock). And again, if your argument is that it would take away the fun, may I direct your attention to Young Avengers: Children's Crusade? There is adult oversight and the adult oversight decides "hey, since you weren't consciously aware of using your powers in a way that killed or almost killed this group of villains, you're grounded." (Actually a few were arguing for straight up killing Wiccan but Cap was having none of that nonsense) and then Wiccan sneaks out of grounding (as teens are wont to do) and the whole adventure takes place. Heck, the whole first episode or so of Young Justice is "teens disobeying their parents". But at least having that safety net for when things go beyond what the heroes can handle might also foster better parent/child relationships IRL both because children seeing helpful adults and adults seeing children allowed age appropriate independence to stretch their abilities and find themselves while knowing they can and should step in when their child is struggling.*


*that part is especially important to me because the only parents I've really seen like this are either upper middle class/lower upper class OR had a child attempt suicide. There's ways to do it at each level of financial security.

 

I'd like to see superheroes that don't get into crime fighting. Just help people in general. A super genius who gets into medicine and helps end diseases/or figures out an alternative fuel source for vehicles, a superman like person who uses their abilities to work in the construction industry, a person with plant based abilities (can grow things from seeds really fast or something similar) could help end world hunger, etc. I'd just like to see a person who suddenly acquires some sort of super power and doesn't automatically decide they must fight crime, it's limiting what they could do to help people - but it's the vast majority of superhero stories.
Also, the whole secret identity and costume thing is overdone, how about no secret identity and no costume?

 

As an almost lifelong fan of superhero comics, I actually always had a kinda idea of something I'd love to see in comics, or superhero stories in general, which I could summarize in two concepts:

One is to ditch the costumes, and have the characters maybe wear non-standard clothes but less capes and tights and more practical at best or at least something I could imagine a human being wearing in public. I actually wrote some "Capepunk" superhero stories and one of the main characters, indeed THE main character who is kinda a Superman Archetype, mainly wears his normal clothes but when he's initially out as a hero he wears a grey hoodie with part of his face obscured to hide his identity and a baseball cap and that's about it. And he does so until he's outed as a hero. Which brings me to this next point.

Another thing is to ditch the secret identities. Like the characters still have what I would call "codenames" or "callsigns", as do many in the military like pilots for example, or even outside of the military. But they're more titles or something, outside of the initial stories, the main character, the Superman Archetype, stops hiding his identity and just comes out as a superhuman. In fact it's kind of a huge moment, literally called "The Moment", when he saves mankind from an insane cult's attempt at global genocide and nearly dies in the attempt and not only does he reveal his identity to the world but it causes many other people with powers around the world to do the same--effectively revealing a kind of previously unseen silent minority of people with superhuman powers (the subtle implication is that other folks in history who were said to have superhuman abilities like Hercules or even Jesus Christ were among this group, who also hid their true power for fear of "coming out" as it were). But the point is, ditch all the idiotic "Clark Kent" bullshit, pretending a pair of glasses can so alter your appearance that it makes the seven foot tall alien demigod appear as if he's some putz from Kansas. Just be yunno John Smith, aka "The Marvel", and let it be almost a title like prince or sir or whatever.

 

I'm totally on board with ditching costumes if they aren't some form of armor or intended in-universe to be eye-catching and carry symbolic weight. There's a reason many live action adaptations don't bother trying to be faithful to the comics on this front.

Ditching secret identities is a more mixed bag. It works for some heroes (few of Marvel's ever bother with them anymore), but not for others.

The street level vigilante types, for example. Much of what they do is technically illegal, so exposing their identities risks major legal trouble. It also paints a target on the back of everyone remotely connected to them, not to mention leaving them vulnerable to an attack at any time. Meanwhile, somebody like Wonder Woman doesn't need another identity unless a story involves undercover work or something.

 

@X Equestris
The thing about the "secret identities" angle I just never could grasp was the huge WHY that came up, like why would, say, Superman be afraid that someone related to him was in danger...who was insane enough to put a hit out on Papa Kent, considering that regardless of failing or succeeding they'd piss off an alien god-king who can crush suns in his bare hands and blow up a solar system if he sneezes too hard (and yes that's canon btw). So if anyone were insane enough to dare to even look angrily at the Kents, or Lana Lang or Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen or whatever, it would be their last act on Earth since the next thing they experienced before death would be hearing the words "Up, up and away!" before they get uppercutted through the space-time continuum (and yes it's canon that Superman can punch through time too) and thrown back to the beginning of time.

Also the whole "I'm a seven-foot tall godlike space monster who can shoot lasers from my eyes but if I wear glasses then suddenly I look like Pete Davidson and no one will be the wiser!" and how no one can easily see through this...disguise in an instant. Like I get Batman, Daredevil, Spider-Man, etc as they wear full masks which cover their faces and so no one would realistically suspect some flighty rich cuck like Bruce Wayne and his teenaged concubi--err I mean "young male assistant" Dick Grayson are actually Batman and Nightwing; or that some scrawny nerd like Peter Parker who can barely get out of bed without his elderly aunt/assisted care provider helping him is actually the superhuman vigilante Spider-Man...but when the "disguise" is a pair of glasses or not even that in Wonder Woman's case then I have to call bullshit.

I mean honestly, Wonder Woman posed as a human chick for decades, and no one noticed the fact that this six-foot tall amazon with a rack the size of a pair of soccer balls is actually the OTHER six-foot tall woman with a rack the size of a pair of soccer balls who looks EXACTLY LIKE HER but with her hair in a ponytail and (comparatively) more clothes on, and strangely never seems to be around whenever Wonder Woman shows up...how curious...

As for vigilantism...ehh, I guess. They kinda went into that in the CW Green Arrow show recently, with the whole anti-vigilante laws nonsense. I guess I never saw superheroism as "vigilantism". I hate to keep referencing stuff I wrote cause it comes off as a shameless pat on the back, but I also kinda adapted (read stole) an idea from the 90's Image Comics era of comic books like Youngblood or WildC.A.T.s was that superheroes aren't seen as "vigilantes" but basically kinda like celebrities. You can't realistically create laws to govern a being like Superman or even Spider-Man so even IF they were doing something "illegal" (because gutting Lex Luthor after he tries to blow up the moon with a kryptonite laser is TECHNICALLY vigilantism) then how would you even enforce it. I said this before but if The Flash or Thor or Superman really existed, there would be no real laws or anything governing them.

Like assume that Thor did kill say Loki in a battle over the Cosmic Cube, executing him without due process...and? We charge him with what? Saving the Earth too hard? And in what court? What kind of a judge or jury or police force is going to argue with the alien storm god? How would you even punish him? Imprisonment? Even if you gave him a 10,000 year sentence and he lowered himself to agreeing to being "imprisoned" somewhere for that time (and by lowers himself I mean "decides not to just teleport back to Asgard at will") it wouldn't matter as he's basically immortal. He can just take a nap for 10,000 years and sleep it off like a hangover...meanwhile the public is ENRAGED because you just screwed over the guy who saved mankind from Loki so you'd look like an asshole and he'd look like Jesus carrying a cross made of Uru.

At best, the government would look idiotic for even stepping into such a conflict, persecuting people who are actively using their powers to help others for no personal gratification other than to do the right thing. And at worst the public would view the government as helping Lex Luthor or Loki or whatever, and with good reason since it seems oddly suspicious that LexCorp is allowed to remain in business after their founder tried to blow up North America twice in the last month. So the best bet, in my opinion, would be the governments of the world just step back and let the grown ups handle things instead of trying to "regulate" superhumans.

 

Which kinda is something else that I would love to see: stop it with this "never harm a soul" hero archetype like Batman or Superman, who refuse to kill anyone. Like why? Why not immediately kill a super villain the moment you get a chance, or just kill a bank robber. If someone breaks into a bank, shoots eight people and tries to run away with the cash, and gets cornered by the cops and gets shot in the head...the cops may be "questioned" but everyone isn't going to be falling to their knees, overwhelmed with sorrow they killed the vicious sociopath OH THE HUMANITY!!!

So why is like Lex Luthor or the Penguin or Joker still alive? Snap their neck, say it was self-defense, and if anyone asks if that's true or not point to the mile-deep pile of corpses they left behind and retort "What would YOU have done, sunshine!?"

No one is going to be beside themselves, tossing and turning in bed at night and unable to grasp the severity of the death of Oswald Cobblepot, the psychopathic lifelong terrorist who wanted to murder every first born son in Gotham because he was butthurt his parents abandoned him (guess psychopathy runs in the family).

No one wants to admit the REAL reason is because if you killed off the villains, the story would end, so instead of coming up with a logical answer (and granted I can't either) they instead pivot to "Batman would never kill anyone! Even the insane serial murder who dresses like a clown and crippled Commissioner Gordon's daughter!"

 

I don't mind hard no kill codes as long as there's a good personal reason for the hero to hold on to them. I don't agree with them, but I don't mind.

Batman's is bound up in his strong aversion to death and deep psychological need for a stark dividing line between himself and his enemies. Daredevil fears killing as a vigilante would be a mortal sin. Superman can easily dispatch most earthly threats without lethal force thanks to his powers, while using them to kill would risk widening the gulf between himself and the humanity he desperately wants to be part of. Wonder Woman's was rooted in pacifism, though since the 90s she's become the most willing to kill of DC's big names.

Where I have a problem is when those reasons are portrayed as undeniably correct outside the character's head.

Personally I find stuff like Batwoman's "will kill when there's no other option" much more reasonable. That's where I've gone with my own work in the genre.

 

@X Equestris
Agree, and honestly Batwoman's argument/reasoning makes the most sense. Like, I can grasp the idea of "I don't want to kill you but fuck you, drop the nuclear launch button Luthor, or this next round goes in your skull" more than say Superman or Batman who just seem to think it's fingerquotes wrong fingerquotes with no actual logic beyond that.

But then again my two favorite heroes are Hulk and Punisher, who routinely kill bad guys and teabag them then take a selfie over their corpse, so my view of vigilantism is a bit skewed.

 

Hi,

I'm absolutely with Laughing Rabbit. This whole idea that - wow I've just discovered a superpower now I'm going out to fight crime - is lame. Why can't you have more superheroes who don't want to do the whole hero thing? More like - yes if I pass a burning building I might pull out the people etc, but I'm not going to go out of my way to save the world, and getting involved in feuds with other superfreaks is just plain stupid - type people. I'd rather have them living their lives, being happy, and then occasionally being drawn into whatever conflict by events even though they don't want it.

Also more truly weird powers.

Cheers, Greg.

 

I would like to see superhero comics scale back and focus on smaller stories for one character/group of characters as opposed to a giant multi-title crossover that we seem to be getting more and more frequently. Big crossover events were fun and interesting back when they were rarer, now its a yearly event - and there's so much build up and teasing for these events that it feels like individual stories have been swallowed up entirely.

I'm thinking of stories like Kraven's Last Hunt or the Death of Jean DeWolff, God Loves Man Kills, The Phoenix Saga. Those stories run the gambit of being small to epic scale, but they each belong to their respective title.

I miss that.

 

I'd like a superhero to be a complete non-conformist. He does not turn his enemies into the police, but, has his own "prison" where he reforms them himself.

 

Alright, let's take a quick detour here into video games. And more specifically, I'm talking Injustice: Gods Among Us. It's a game based around DC Comics, with Superman, Batman and all those, and the game itself comes down to two characters beating the hell out of each other. There are also comic books based on this, and I highly recommend reading them if you like superheroes.

The story, though? Now that's the fun part. As a very short version, the Joker got tired of always fighting (and losing to) Batman, so he decided he wanted a change. So off he went to Metropolis with his girlfriend, Harley Quinn (she's important, but I'll get to that soon.) Once in Metropolis, he managed to kidnap Lois Lane, and injected her with Scarecrow's fear toxin, or something like that. Not sure about the details, but that's irrelevant. Of couirse Superman came to save her, but because of the toxin, he didn't see Lois. He saw Doomsday, easily one of the most powerful villains he has ever met, and the only one who has managed to kill him. (Gotta love superheroes. They just won't stay dead.) Naturally, thinking it was Doomsday, Superman started beating the shit out of him... or her. By the time he finally realized what he was doing, it was too late. Lois was somehow barely still alive, but died in his arms.

Second kicker? She was pregnant... And to top it all of, the Joker had set up a nuke right in the middle of Metropolis, and connected it to Lois's heartbeat. So when she died, the nuke went off. Whoopie, there goes 20 million people or so.

After this, Superman lost it. A whole lot of other heroes had shown up at this time, but Superman didn't care. He killed the Joker in cold blood, right in front of everyone. Graphically too, I might add. He then decided that no one else should ever have to suffer the way he did, so he toured the world and threw all villains he could find in prison for life without a chance of parole, and without even a trial. Once a villain, always a villain. Things took an even darker turn from there, and Superman eventually started killing people for no real reason at all. In the comis, 200 or so people banded together to resist his evil regine, and called themselves the Joker Gang, or something. Superman simply killed every single one of them for using the "Joker" name, and daring to rebell against him.

And it actually gets even darker from there. But it also asks a lot of important questions along the way. Harley Quinn, for instance. She was with the Joker for a long time before all this, and she was with him when Metropolis was nuked. She fortunately got away from Superman in time, but how should the heroes react to her? Was she responsible for the nuke and Lois's death, or was she a victim of the Joker? He didn't exactly treat her well, and love can make you do some really stupid things. We see that all the time in real life. Guy beats up wife, wife refuses to leave because she still loves him. It makes no sense to the rest of us, but it does to her. Love is a powerful thing.

Not to mention the obvious question. Was Superman wrong in killing the Joker? The main reason he did it was because Batman refused to. Joker kills people, Batman locks him up, Joker escapes and goes on killing. Batman locks him up, Joker escapes and goes on killing. At some point Batman has to know Joker is going to escape sooner or later, and he's going to go back to killing people. Wouldn't that make Batman indirectly responsible for the people Joker kills after escaping yet again? All Superman did was to kill the Joker once and for all, so he would never kill or hurt anyone ever again. Sure he turned into an evil tyrant after that, but I'm not so sure killing Joker was a bad thing to do. I've always believed death is the last option, but is an option. Staying alive at all cost can be worse than death. Much worse.

Heck, just look at prisons in the US, as an example (without going into politics here, I'm talking strictly about the inmates.) If you are 18, kill someone and go to prison for life, is that really better than being executed right away? Is living in a small cell with some random person you know nothing about, other than he has a history of violence (and quite possibly murder), always being afraid, always looking over your shoulder and always wondering when, not if, the next fight is going to break out will be... is that really better than having a quick, more or less painless execution and being done with it? Is death really all that bad? Of course, I'm talking someone around 18 - 20 years old with no chance of parole, and no chance of ever being free. Is a life time in prison better than just dying and getting it over with?

Sorry, this got a bit longer than I intended. That tend to happen.

 

@LadyErica
Well, without going too far into personal philosophy, the idea of death, or rather just an empty numbness with no thought or emotion, terrifies me on a personal level far FAR more than any kind of imprisonment...I kind of imagine Hell for me would almost just be like that. Just empty deadness. So frankly I'd prefer prison. But that's just me.

As to the question of "is it wrong to kill Joker"? Fuck no. It's perfectly justified. Just like if I meet a serial murderer, one who is known to have killed AT LEAST several hundred people like Joker, probably more, and has openly admitted he intends to kill more people...and I put a bullet in his skull. Now, what jury on Earth is going to say I was somehow "wrong" in this scenario? It's not even a moral argument, it's a logical one, because this is an admitted murderer, proud murderer, a complete sociopath with no sense of right or wrong and someone who would gladly make a public statement to back up that assessment of his views. In fact Joker has made public statements about his views, he's openly said he likes killing people for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON and will kill as many people as he can just because. So there is literally no reason whatsoever to "spare" his "life" since his entire existence is a senseless, ceaseless parade of murder and rape.

The BTK Killer is looking at this guy and saying "Wow, dude, calm down...you're creeping me out."

Now did Injustice Superman go a tish too far? Yes. But also, I would argue that this is a more realistic portrayal of superhumans. It's kind of what I said, where it seems silly to me governments would even try to step in between beings like Flash and Superman and Thor, beings who realistically could annihilate a country in a few minutes if they got angry one day. At best you could ask nicely for them to leave you alone, and at worst you're impotent and powerless against them. And again, I hate to keep referencing 90's comics, but stuff like StormWatch and Youngblood basically said the same thing: they're portrayed less as "heroes" in a traditional, tights and capes sense and more like this kind of class of celebrities/noblemen who the public look up and who are constantly politicking and backstabbing among themselves more than fighting villains...and when the villains show up, that's when they put the Game of Justice League bullshit aside and have world wars.

And frankly it's the most "realistic" take on superheroes I would say.

 

Bring back the Inferior Five!

 

I'd like to see a funny superhero, and I don't just mean Deadpool. I mean a superhero who has no idea what the hell he's doing, He's confused, he doesn't know why he has his powers, he doesn't know what he's capable of. Like my moron who's ability is he can survive pretty much anything. He's basically a low-budget batman. He can survive almost anything, but he does take damage and feel pain. His gadgets are made by his neighbor who never stops complaining about how "It's always the white guy who gets superpowers". His armor an gadgets are always breaking down. His superhero actions are pretty much his life because he's got no job other than testing video games.
I'd like to see a superhero actually figure this stuff out, rather than just automatically know what they can do