I’ve been thinking lately that I need a hobby, and have been considering doing some superheroics on the side. I’m a thirty four year old male, in relatively good physical shape. I run daily, but am not quite up to a marathon right now (although I hope to be in a few months). I study the martial arts, but am still a year or two away from a first black belt, which I understand standing alone won’t even get you in the door with most of the big name teams anymore. A purely human Batman style superbeing might be a stretch at this point in my life unless I suffer a profound personal tragedy and travel to the Orient where I’m taken in by monks with mad kung fu skillz, which would be okay except for the profound personal tragedy part. A technological wonder of my own design is right out, since I can’t do more than minor repairs on my own car. I’m not married to the costume idea, either; I’d be plenty willing to consider a less flashy John Constantine style. My fatal flaws are relatively poor (but correctable) eyesight, allergies, and a tendency to procrastinate.
Some other factors to consider: my day job is criminal defense attorney so there might be some conflict of interest issues if I’m appointed to represent somebody I busted (although Daredevil seems to deal with it okay). Oh, yeah…I already do some volunteer work, so please no suggestions that I can be an everyday hero by donating my time to the United Way or some such.
There was a story on the public radio program This American Life about a woman who decided as child to become a superhero. She made a list of the skills she would need to acquire and has actually gotten most of them. I think they said she works as a private investigator now. She might have tried for a CIA job; I can’t remember.
I’m confused - I thought the whole point about being a superhero, in most cases anyhow, was not to have a range of skills but rather one or two idiosyncratic and memorable ones. Such as the ability to fly whilst being on fire, or to levitate solid objects.
flight
invulnerability
strength
x-ray vision
heat vision
speed
super icy breath
super hearing
subliminal hypnosis (pre-Crisis explanation of why the glasses worked as a disguise)
rip-off growing criminal-capturing cellophane chest emblem (Superman 2 only)
super ventriloquism
I’ve always thought the biggest problem with being a superhero was the transportation thing. Sure, if you can fly or teleport, not a problem. But if you’re just a regular joe wearing tights, how do you get from the crime scene to back home without blowing the secret ID?
Don’t drive a car/motorcycle/other - by-standers and law enforcement can run the plates.
Take a bus? Yeah, you’ve just destroyed a supervillian and his gang, you’re all grimy and smelly, and have bits of bad guys splattered on your tights. Try getting on a bus looking like that. Besides, a lot of evil lairs are way far away from your standard bus routes.
About the only time of the year you can be an effectively dressed superhero in public is Halloween. But what is the plausible limit to costume parties your neighbors believe you’ve been invited too?
Don’t forget the hand-beams. Ugh. They took one of the best Superman movies there was and had to screw it up by chucking in a half-dozen new things he could do…
Depends on what comic book world you want to be in. DC, kinda difficult. You usually have to be an alien of some sort or related to a supernatural being, unless you’re a wizard, an inventor or some kinda ass-kicky martial artist.
Marvel is easier–you just have to be a mutant or abused by some exotic chemical or previously unknown (or vastly misunderstood) form of radiation. Inventor and wizard also works here. Ass-kicky types usually need some kind of edge.
Me, I recommend being a Tick superhero. Then all you’d need is a grenade. Or cardboard mask and chainsaw. Or both.
Well, obviously if you have Earth-moving Kryptonian powers, you’re in the club. Let’s look at the lower end of the scale, the really un-super people who manage to get into the JLA. The Blue Beetles and Arrowettes of the vigilante biz.
Can you run ten miles in under an hour or twenty in under two? Can you climb fifty feet of rope with a fully-grown man slung across your shoulder? Can you walk into a biker bar, demand information about a murder the previous week, and get it without getting your ass kicked?
That’s kind of the minimum baseline requirement. I can’t do any of that stuff, but there are people out there who probably can.
pravnik – I think your day job is actually an asset. You can get all kinds of interesting underworld scuttlebutt/info from your clients and their associates to aid your investigations.
But the key is that there’s the opportunity for interesting conflicts of interest and moral dillemmas which make for great Peter Parker style storylines (or ER/NYPD Blue style storylines if you’d rather. Or even Buffy/Angel/Spike kinds of conflicts if that’s what you’re into).
But I’m afraid some kind of superpower is probably going to be necessary. I suggest hanging out in lightning storms while dousing yourself with various mixes of strange chemicals. Or perhaps stumbling into the middle of a bizarre experiment involving animalhuman DNA recombination.
A final possibility, though. Do you have any unusual relatives, like the Uncle nobody really knows well who disappears for years on end, only to reappear, tell some strange stories, mention in passing that you’re his favorite nephew and will be worthy of **The Gift **someday, and then vanish again? If so, you just need to wait for the sad news he’s passed on and then receive the Artifact he left you in his will/mailed to you before his untimely death/left with the secret society with instructions to pass it on to you. At 34, you’re just about on schedule to become the semi-reluctant, trying to reconcile your new powers/role with your established life and profession, kind of superhero.
I’d buy a black suit for the long-lost Uncle’s funeral now, so you’re ready.
Well, you could just go the “violent paramilitary vigilante” route, like the Punisher. I think you’d need to serve a few tours in the Marine Corps. to gain the skills for that, though.
Or you could go the “Rorschach” route (warning: link has some SPOILERS). You’d have to be a natural badass, and a borderline psychopath with a heart of gold, but you wouldn’t need too much specal equipment or super powers.
The Lone Ranger had a mask, white horse, silver bullets (in case of werewolves, I always presumed) and a faithful Indian companion. But those were the simpler days of yesteryear.
On the serious side, a couple of decades ago there was an unknown “hero” who was trying to fight the companies that were polluting the Fox River in Illinois. He would break into the headquarters at night and dump a sackload of crud in their lobby, with a note (IIRC) saying that this was what they’d been dumping into the river. He became known as “The Fox” (in honor of the river and also an obvious Zorro-reference.)
I dunno if you’d call him a “super-hero” (some of us did) or if you’d call him a deranged loonie (others did.) I don’t know whether he was ever caught or whatever became of his crusade. I’m just sayin’.
Hmm. I asked my running coach/dad if he thought I could run ten miles in under an hour in the shape Im currently in, and he gave me a flat “no.” In the best shape I was ever in I could run that pace, but that was in 1996. My cousin is 47 and does triathalons and I’m pretty sure he could do it, but he trains like a zealot and doesn’t drink at all, and I really like beer. It seems like if you were to start training enough to be a superhero, you won’t have enough time for superheroics.
The fifty feet of rope? No idea, but it sounds pretty damn hard. I’m nearly positive I can do it if I’m allowed to rig up some kind of pulley system.
The last one is surprisingly easy, for exactly the reason Quercus says: the day job. I’ve actually had to do things along those lines, and most of the time people are pretty helpful after you give them a business card. If not, shady contacts are always useful.
Throw things at targets all the time. I mean all the time! Pretty much have to keep a pocket full of stuff, too, so you can do it as you ride the bus to work, etc. Twenty years later, you’re Sureshot who foils crime by hitting criminals in the eye with pennies from fifty feet, every damned time. Criminal wearing goggles? No problem, we chuck a nickel down his throat, and kick his ass while he gags. You use your high tech spy stuff by putting it on darts, and flipping them through small opening into the unsuspecting villain’s lair. Quarry ducks behind a corner? No problem. Bank shot!
You need to change legal specialty, though, to civil tort law. You are gonna spend a lot of time in court, defending yourself from civil suits.
Tris
“You can’t always get what you want.” ~ M. Jagger/K. Richards ~
Actually, I did both of these pretty regularly in college, and I never got any lasting superpowers. To be frank, I’m probably lucky I didn’t catch something.
This sounds promising. I have just one Uncle, he’s a retired Air Force general who used to work at the Pentagon. He was in Vietnam, though, although he never spoke of any Artifact. I suppose that’s the point though. So maybe some sort of top secret program from which the Artifact was stolen before falling into my hands, you think? I could do that.
Well, even the most mundane superheroes have the physical ability of a peak athlete, the fighting skills of a Green Beret, and some type of specialized knowledge (criminal forensics, chemistry, applied physics, engineering) that’s on a par with the best in the world. Anything less than that, and you’re basically the Neighborhood Watch.
Well, I guess I’ll have to work out more and just hope for the best. Can I be borderline all of those things, but also have astoundingly good luck? I ask because I’ve been working that angle pretty much all my life.
By being a bit crafty, you could work this to your advantage. Stay on the lookout for a defendant who looks like a sure prospect to be guilty, and likely to continue committing crimes after you’ve sprung him. While you’re defending him, sneak in some references to a specific institution that is a surefire spot for a successful robbery. Work your ass off to get this guy sprung from all charges against him. Then, after he’s on the streets again, arrange for some dear, Beloved Family Member of yours to be at the aforementioned institution that you think could get robbed.
With a little luck the Guy You Got Off The Hook will take your ‘wholly unintended’ suggestion & carry out a robbery at that institution, at the precise time that your Beloved Family Member is there. Naturally your Beloved Family Member will get shot & killed in the ensuing meelee. But you can arrange to show up on the scene just as he/she lays dying. Then you can gasp in horror at the thought of how the Guy You Got Off The Hook then went out and killed your Beloved Family Member. Cradle him/her in your arms, raise one fist in the air with righteous indignity and “swear by all that’s holy you will spend the rest of your life righting wrongs, protecting the just, and etc., etc., blah, blah, blah…” and presto! One tragic tale that’s tailor-made to inspiring a life of masked-man heroics.