400 follower Special. I have decided to go & make an advice book on how to make a superhero story. You can fix your hero in your own Universe, or any Universe (Marvel/DC).
PLOTTING 1. The story’s inciting event is most often the murder of a loved one(s). For example, in Spider-Man, Peter’s uncle gets killed because he wasn’t brave enough to take action. One possible subversion is that the uncle got killed because Peter (or the uncle) did try to take action. Another popular inciting event is something which suddenly gives the characters superpowers–common examples include scientific accidents, alien landings, living in New York City, and miracle operations.
2. The superhero usually gets his superpowers before the villain does. Or, at least, we learn about the superhero getting his superpowers first. It’s pretty rare for a supervillain to start his reign of terror before the hero has superpowers.
2.1. The superhero and main villain frequently gets their superpowers either from the same source or similar sources. For example, Green Lantern and Sinestro both use power rings. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin are both biochemically enhanced. Batman and the Joker are both fueled by insanity.
3. Many villains and heroes share some sort of personal connection outside of work. The easiest way to become one of Spider-Man’s villains is to meet Peter Parker. (Green Goblin is his best friend’s father, Lizard employed him as a teaching assistant, Venom is a rival at work, Dr. Octopus once taught him at a science camp, Man-Wolf is J.J. Jameson’s son, etc). This may be explainable if superpowers are mostly hereditary and/or highly visible in your story. For example, mutants are a pretty small group of mostly outcasts in X-Men, so it makes sense that mutants have a better chance of knowing each other and/or being related to each other than random humans would. Alternately, the hero might interact with a lot of people that are relatively likely to develop superpowers. For example, Peter Parker knows a lot of leading scientists and New York City scientists are more or less certain to develop superpowers.
4. Nuclear weapons cannot destroy anything, but hand-to-hand combatants are largely unstoppable. If there’s anything I’ve learned from fiction, it’s that a single ninja is the deadliest force in the galaxy. In contrast, nuclear weapons are hilariously unable to kill anything. Even in Watchmen, where nuclear weapons are the grim doom hanging over everybody’s heads, it’s a giant psychic squid that actually destroys a city. In Heroes, Peter’s healing power can be stopped by a bullet to the back of the head but not a point-blank nuclear detonation. Also in Heroes, a nuclear detonation happens within 10-20 miles of New York City and nobody even notices. In these stories, nuclear romance killed more people (one of Dr. Manhattan’s lovers) than nuclear weapons did.
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5. Nobody stays dead (comic book deaths never last). Almost no superheroes die or lose their superpowers for an extended period in comic books. It will never happen to bestselling characters, unless a reboot is already planned. Novels don’t fall into this cliche as often. A novelist doesn’t need to do decades worth of stories for the same character, so it’s easier for a novelist to alter the status quo.
