Feb 14 2009
How to Give Your Superhero A Day Job
If your superhero has a secret identity, he probably has a day job. Here are some tips for picking an effective day job.
1. It will be easier to pace the story if the day job can set the hero against the villain. For example, if there’s a new supervillain in town, a journalist has to report what happened, detectives have to investigate his crimes, lawyers might be involved if someone got framed, etc.
2. Superhero day jobs are often investigative in nature. Journalists, detectives, lawyers, private investigators and the like are very popular.
3. Superhero day-jobs usually have a distant boss. For example, Peter Parker and Clark Kent do most of their work outside the office. (This makes it a bit easier for them to maintain some independence from their boss).
4. For dramatic purposes, it’s best to have a tough boss. That gives you opportunities for conflict and will help make the character relatable and likable. If the character doesn’t have a boss (because he freelances or owns the company), his obstacles will probably be less serious. (Alternately, he might have corporate obstacles, like Bruce Wayne having to fight to keep control of Wayne Enterprises, but it’s definitely not as as relatable).
5. It will probably be most dramatic if the job is stressful and high-stakes. Would you rather read a story about a superhero that was a professional knitter by day or a superhero that was a detective investigating a grisly string of murders?
If you liked this article, you will probably like Common Superhero Day Jobs.
Could school count? Teen heros would be there most of the time, and another activity might be excessive.
I guess that counts. It’s more of a norm than a day job. Most teens don’t actually work at a day job instead of going to school. I think a part-time job along with school could work.
I think it’s fine to have a hero do school as his only job, but I’d really recommend mixing up your school setting. Most of the students I’ve seen are pretty much interchangeable with Peter Parker: an innocent dweeb struggling with nasty jocks.
You need conflict, but it doesn’t have to be the protagonist vs. jocks. For example, Kim Possible fights to be the top cheerleader. Jake Long spent the first season fighting with a jock, but in the second season his main rival at school was just like him, but better and cooler.
Also, try NOT to do what I’ve done and have a new kid come to the school every now and then, and every single time turn out to be a supervillain.
That sounds pretty awkward, Tom, but to be fair I think that cartoon shows have a lot of leeway to suddenly introduce villains-of-the-week.
If teen heroes can go to school, how can you get a teen zombie to school without the whole school running their heads off screaming? He’s still a hero, so he doesn’t want to live in hiding for the rest of his life…
Maybe put him in a school for special kids (superhumans or whatever), like the Xavier Institute. Since he looks like a zombie, I think regular kids at a real school would probably run away screaming. Unless… maybe he is first introduced to the kids at the school when he stops something truly horrifying? I think Firebreather did something similar with a half-dragon in a random Nevada school.
This helped a lot since I’m writing a novel about a new team of heroes and some of my characters have day jobs. One of my female heroes is a supermodel, so she’s constantly being flown to other parts of the world. This puts somewhat of a damper on her relationship with her teammates because she becomes unreliable. I also have a member who’s in college, so he has to deal with the stress of being a hero and a student.
Yikes, hero and student sounds like hell.
Haven’t seen you around, XoXo, so welcome to Superhero Nation!
I figured out the day-job thing. They work for the gov’t, getting a paycheck and a place to live. That way they can fight crime, and not have to worry about getting fired all the time. You can still have drama/comedy, but the conflict comes from the workplace environment. I pretty much leave kids alone, unless they’re in college, which is easier to explain cutting classes.
The job I had for the last decade wouldn’t give me ANY opportunities to fly off and save the city. Zookeepers can’t sneak away at any time (cleaning takes hours, vet emergencies, possible animal escapes, etc). At least not for more than five minutes at a time. I take my cues from that: most ‘regular’ jobs don’t let you escape, either.
I read comics for the escapism. Sure, having peter parker sew his costume back together helps me relate to him, but I pay rent, and would rather not read about someone else worrying about paying rent. Having powers is the fantasy, not getting evicted.
So does that mean they access government tech to help them with their heroics?
pretty much. I could never figure out how, unless you used a scanner or had super-senses, one could find crime to stop it. So heroes are pretty much dispatched as needed, using comm tech. For example, if you could fly/teleport/run, you’d have an earpiece and HUD glasses. Someone would give you GPS coordinates as soon as something came over the air.
I don’t see how most heroes would be effective against muggings, unless they happened to cross that particular alley. Most of my higher powered heroes would show up for fires, environmental disasters, and the like. Some heroes are guided through mystic means, so can help with earthquakes or purse snatchers. Other lower level heroes are either pro-active, like Justice League Extreme, or the Outsiders; while the UN is benign, there are still terrorists/drug lords/serial killers/super villains.
I’m trying to walk the line between justice and political motives. The UN is pretty much hands off, but since gov’t is still local, there will be abuses of power, and the Court of World Law (COWL) needs to step in once in a while. There is Judge and a Prosecutor on each mission of COWL, to ensure that impartiality rules. COWL is actually made up of specialists from various super teams, to fit the needs of the individual mission. Sometimes a high power hero will accompany them as cover. For example, a politician is enaged in something illegal. It may be a bad move to publicly arrest him, so his office may be quietly infiltrated, with the evidence turned over to the citizens. During the mission, if the building is destroyed (super villain partner no one knew about), a high power hero might show up to rescue other people from the situation.
I know this smacks of rendition, but I conceived of this idea when I was younger and idealistic. I do want to explore how this can go wrong; ultimately stuff like this does lead to the UN fracturing. In the future, there are many more political states instead of the 20 or so in the current time period.
Random question, Mike. Have you done any work with large reptiles (particularly crocodilians)?
“I could never figure out how, unless you used a scanner or had super-senses, one could find crime to stop it.” Here are a few options.
–I think that most readers will give you the benefit of the doubt that a modern (American) city has so much crime going on that a hero can go on patrol and encounter armed robberies without much trouble. That’s probably not realistic in most places, but it’s generally accepted by readers and editors.
–Another option would be connections to a security firm, like one of those companies that does alarms. So the superhero has access (legal or not) to know when the alarms go off. Legally, he might have a friend or partner at the company. Illegally, he might have hacked them or made/stolen a scanner.
–The hero might have excellent sources among criminals. Maybe one of his contacts gives him a heads-up about upcoming major crimes. (For dramatic effect, the information might be vague and require the hero to search for more information on his own).
–The hero might piece together information to predict where/when a crime is going to happen. For example, if he’s been following a known criminal and he observes the criminal parking a car outside of a bank for many hours, it’s a pretty good guess that he’s casing the joint for a robbery.
–You could tail criminals. It probably won’t get you results every night, or perhaps every week, but over a matter of weeks it’s pretty likely that a mob enforcer is going to do something interesting. (This would probably be more effective if the hero is able to follow the criminal inside buildings where he is not welcome).
B. Mac- thanks for the points. I’ve walked through some bad parts of detroit, and never saw anything. Either I was just unobservant or (thankfully) in the wrong place…
I kinda figured on stuff like noticing a getaway car, or contacts with criminals. But it seems to me that some sort of support system is needed no matter what. I get the detective stuff, like searching the news for potential targets, and knowing the Penguin got released last week. That’s all part and parcel, but just flying over the city several hundred feet up wont let you see the mugging in the alley. So either you hack into police/fire/security systems or supersenses (mystical or not) are needed. But you’re right, I should just “BE” and accept the trope that a hero is more statistically likely to come across a crime or get there before the authorities.
As for animals- I’ve worked with just about everything under the sun. I went to Santa Fe Teaching Zoo, where they rotate you through a variety mammals, reptiles, and birds. I spent a year at Birmingham Zoo, AL working primates and large mammals (gorillas, orangs, gibbons, tamarins, rhino, hippos, elephants, camels, cheetah, antelopes) Then I spent the last 7 years at Miami MetroZoo, where I spent a most of my time with antelopes and gazelles.
I’ve been in the water (waist deep) with alligators, wrestled various hoofstock (vet procedures), all pretty much stuff you don’t want to try at home.
In fact- if you want, I just realized, I would be willing to answer animal behavior questions for writing purposes. It would be based on my experience, which isn’t indicative of what other keepers have been through. At the vary least, I could point people toward links they might find useful. I’m just concerned that something could be taken out of context (keepers are not socially skilled), but I would welcome an opportunity to explain things.
Hey I’ve decided to give my superhero a job I think might be rather unique. His essentially a film maker but more particularly a documentary film maker. He works with his graduate friends and family from University who know his secret identity. Using the power of the TV medium he unearths the ‘untold stories’. He also has a close relationship with a talk show host. Strengthened by the fact that they share the same agent.
The first time he properly reveals himself publicly as Superhero. He appears on her show and effectively launches both of their careers into global mega stardom.
Thoughts?
“He appears on her show and effectively launches both of their careers into global mega stardom.” Could I suggest adding more obstacles and maybe more conflict? I’d recommend stretching out the journey so that at least one of them still has something to prove. (So maybe she gets an exciting new job offer, but now has to prove herself in a ridiculously competitive and top-notch organization).
How does revealing himself to the public turn him into a megastar? How does being a megastar make his work as a superhero more difficult? (Also, I imagine that people who were once close to him are at least somewhat annoyed that he lied to them all this time and they might legitimately be afraid that he has put them in danger. And his university would probably be upset, particularly if a supervillain attacks him on campus). Maybe he inadvertently causes property damage or slightly injures someone and his alternate identity gets sued.
I like the filmmaker angle. Does he work for a company or is he indy? (If he’s independent, how does he put food on the table?)
Why does he choose to reveal his identity? It seems like a major step for the character, so it’s definitely something that I’d recommend explaining in-story, probably tying the decision to his goals and character traits.
I’m with B. Mac, I like the idea of a filmmaker who also moonlights as a superhero. Before revealing his identity, does he try to cash in on his own success like Peter Parker?
Thanks for the feedback. Regarding their Journey, I would never let the two of them instantly achieve stardom without earning their success. At first the idea of him using his superpowers to film a documentary on his adventures seems rewarding. Certainly financially as his agent will find out about his identity and together they work on cashing in. The hero, the agent and the tv reporter will form a love triangle. His agent has to fight her own battle with the tv reporter. While he fights the panic on the streets that he causes.
I am working on a rival. He might discover the Superhero identity before the public and films his acts of crime. By doing this he causes moral panic, as he attributes everything he does to the Superhero, who is then blamed for contributing to a ‘copycat killer’. But I do have a habit of being afraid of naming villains and heroes. I’m too worried about them sounding too cheesy. So far I am just calling him Blockbuster. I stress so far.
I was thinking of making Blockbuster kill others in the style of his favourite film scenes. Especially those he has seen the Superhero direct. But my brother thought it was a very poor idea. I’m open to criticisms.
I have various thoughts on a squeal to this story. I want him to continue filming his heroics and making films. I think in real life if a superhero did this, ignoring the ethical implications, it would be an instant success. The superhero genre would become a strange and exciting reality. Forget going to the cinema to see the latest filmed action/superhero movie. Although I think the foreign sales will be higher than the domestic. I can’t see a lot of people enjoying watching the superhero smash through their local buildings and causing mass damage to their own beloved cities. I got an idea how he manages to invent a nifty way of following his antics too.
“The superhero genre would become a strange and exciting reality. Forget going to the cinema to see the latest filmed action/superhero movie.” I think that’d be borderline-plausible, but it might be more believable as an underground sort of thing. (Like going to a fight club rather than watching a boxing match or, God forbid, professional wrestling).
Borderline-plausibility despite our love of reality tv shows? If a superhero of the likes of Superman or Iron man filmed their adventures. I imagined the whole world would be glued to their screens. Especially if he or she refused many interviews and that was only one of the very few ways you could see them. Or maybe its just my wish-full idealistic vision.
Violent reality TV becoming a mainstream hit? It doesn’t strike me as particularly plausible. Ignoring the geeky network censorship issues, I don’t think that many people like watching total, no-holds-barred combat*.
For example, here in the US, the record for UFC is 5.7 million Americans. There are some people that like dogfighting, but there’s no conceivable way you could get even 10 million Americans to watch it.
We’re talking about really, really small numbers of people that like watching anything approaching real, stabby violence. I anticipate that the audience for this product would be guys that think UFC isn’t hardcore enough. But UFC itself peaked at less than 6 million Americans. So we’re talking about less, probably drastically less, than 1/50 of the population being open to watching real fighting.
I checked around on major TV markets (US, UK, Brazil, India, China, etc) and I’m having trouble finding any highly violent sports that crack 1% of the population on a given basis. And, realistically, there is no conceivable way the Chinese government would sign off on broadcasting entertainment featuring vigilantes solving problems with violence.
Now, like I said, I think it’s semi-plausible in a sort of sci-fi story that the masses get hooked on super-violent fare. (See The Running Man or Battle Royale or Untraceable, for example). But I don’t think it’s remotely realistic. Times have changed considerably since the days of the Roman Colieseum. The good news for your book is that plausibility is far more important than realism. If readers can believe it, or at least suspend their disbelief, it doesn’t matter whether it’s realistic.
Unless you’re writing nonfiction, heh heh.
No no I agree, I typed that message when I was pretty sleepy ha. But in seriousness the Superhero won’t be recording his violent clashes with his enemies. I don’t know what country you are in, but we have a programme in the U.K called Panorama on the BBC and its very successful. It’s a documentary programme where investigative journalists tackle a single issue every week. They go undercover a lot of times and delve deep into the heart of the topic.
On the other hand the villain will copycat his methods but instead cater to the underground market. I like the idea of the general public blaming the Superhero for causing this. I want the hero to become the victim of his success and stardom.
Plus his love of film making presents great opportunities. Admittedly his able to fly and resist radiation from space and is pretty durable. Anyway he uses his camera to film space and unexplored regions on earth. He sells this to various tv channels. His literately taking humanity where it can’t currently go
A new era of nature documentaries has begun.
I thought this will be a perfect way his jobs allows him to encounter various threats to earth. In the jungle, in the desert or even in space!
Yeah, I was going to try and have a student who use to be an average A-B grade at school. But when his mother has a nasty siezure, he stops caring for school grades and does what he can for her when her aide isn’t working.
Back at school, he struggles with it and usually gets D- and below. I was planning for a potential love interest to come and help him with his work.
I just got this idea so it might sound alittle crazy and stuff.
This may sound dumb, but I don’t care cause mine is a comedy, but does owning your own Mini-putt count :/
It may be hard to tie directly into the plot (i.e. stopping the villain or whatever), but I think owning a miniature golf course sounds interesting. Sort of like managing a McDonald’s, I think it has a lot of comedic potential.
It’s unusual, but doesn’t strike me as dumb. More whimsical than the average job as a journalist or scientist, yes. However, if it fits the mood of the story, I don’t think that’s a problem.
I’ve noticed something: while many of the DC and Marvel superheroes are adults with jobs, most anime and manga superheroes are youngsters who attend school.
Overall, I think that an adult protagonist is better than a teenage protagonist because while schoolkids are limited in how much they can experience the world, adults are able to go out and about on a whim, interacting with everyone from co-workers to store clerks to cops, etc. This is especially true in alternate history and fictional universes, as it allows the writer to introduce the setting’s details to the reader without infodumping.
Yeah, there’s probably something to that, Contra Glove. A lot of anime/manga superheroes are students. Just as a matter of personal fancy, I prefer adult characters because I feel that most schools are cesspools for cliches. For every interesting school like Hogwarts or Xavier’s academy or the one in Mean Girls, there are a hundred schools where the only students seem to be The Likable-but-Unpopular Protagonist, The Bully, The Love Interest, The Nerd, etc.*
I don’t feel that adult characters fit into such archetypes as tightly nor as often.
Just because characters are younger than 18 doesn’t mean they can’t have personalities.
*And, at the risk of gravely offending any junior high students reading this, that may be based on reality. I think my life has gotten vastly more interesting since high school because I have more options, more capability, more responsibility, less sobriety, etc. There are only so many ways to be a student, but I think adults (even college students) can put much more of an individual stamp on their lives.
One way that some superhero series have been getting around this recently is to let the student have a super-competitive job or internship on the side, one a high school student wouldn’t be able to get in real life. For example, different versions of Peter Parker have interned for a leading biochemist and a major New York newspaper as a high school student. The stakes are higher than just working for (say) a random student newspaper, I think. Similarly, it’d probably be a lot more interesting working for New York’s mayor than as the student body president, Assassination of a High School President notwithstanding.
Also, I’ve noticed that the protagonists of most anime and manga that really hit it big are young but not functionally different from real-world adults:
In One Piece Luffy is going on an adventure with a crew. As far as I know, they do not have any kind of outside aid; they have to acquire their own supplies.
In Dragon Ball Z, the main character Goku is an adult with a family. For most of the series, his son Gohan did not attend school, making do with private tutoring. He also fought the various alien and robotic menaces alongside his father. Also, in the preceding series Dragon Ball, Goku himself did not attend school.
In Naruto, the story begins with the titular character graduating from school. Despite being a teenager, he is essentially a man in the eyes of his society; he lives on his own and he has a job (as a ninja in Leaf Village’s security forces.)
I’d say that Sailor Moon and the Pretty Cure series are the only major exceptions I can think of.
The protagonist of Bleach starts out as a student. I’m not sure what happens when he takes on the mystical guardian position, though.
The protagonist of Inuyasha starts out as a student and somehow maintains that despite all of the supernatural strangeness that befalls her.
Point taken, so I guess there’s no correlation between the success of an anime/manga and the social standing of the protagonist (I would have said “age,” but situations like the ones in Naruto complicate that.)
My initial point still stands, though. One can get more mileage out of adult protagonists than teenage protagonists, especially if the teenager has to attend school.
Any thoughts on a super-powered protagonist whose alter-ego/day job is technical support for other heroes?
JennyAnn, this would be a main character, right? What sort of plot would put this logistical assistant front and center? One possibility would be that unusual circumstances force him to take on a role much more like a hero than he’s used to (and/or, probably, than he wants).
Alternately, if the character remains as a tech support character for most of the story, I would recommend giving him a central goal to help orient the story. According to the editors at Strange Horizons, one recurring problem about tech support characters is that they feature in aimless stories where wacky stuff just sort happens without much point. Some plot possibilities that come to mind that would make the tech support character central:
–For whatever reason, the tech support character is targeted for death by a villain.
–A dangerous mission is unfolding where the heroes need advanced technical help in person. (For example, if an 100-foot robot or a boron bomb are about to destroy a city, it might be preferable to have the technical guy actually in the line of fire rather than have him describe what needs to be done over a telephone to one of the other superheroes).
–The story is about superheroes, but not mainly about superhero action. The main conflict is the tech support character fighting for respect against superheroes that are more impressed by who could rip the 100-foot robot apart. This could have a romantic angle pretty easily: perhaps the tech support character and one of the more disrespectful heroes are romantic rivals, or perhaps the tech support character is trying to date a superhero or heroine but it’d be like the head cheerleader dating the treasurer of the math team. (Even if she did love him, there might be social pressure to not date an alleged loser).
What did you have in mind?
Making a character that does tech support for other heroes is kinda cool, but if he’s a leader or tough guy of any kind it would be inconsistent with his personality…
Plus it’s more of a DC thing, DC has a habit of making heroes with big time jobs or lifestyles or well just out of the ordinary kinda people; an alien, a billionaire. Or if you’ve watched JLU, their lives seem so cool, heroes hanging out and stuff and gives the audience something to idolize but its not really that relate-able.Who on Earth can say they work with superheroes?!
But there are lots of ways to make it work, but your character just sounds a sidekick or a bigshot who doesn’t like to fight. You could give him normal relationships with his superhero allies to make it seem relate-able to audiences but Idk, it all depends on how you wanna go about it.
I was thinking about making my tech support be sort of a clean up crew for the heroes. I’ve got one plot where it’s actually a villain who has two supervillain parents who harassed them into doing evil, where they’re half-hearted about the evil and creates the security system for heroes as a lark. The plot comes from the struggle they have keeping their good guy identity secret from the villains and villain activities secret from the heroes.
Another possible idea was for the tech to be hugely unimpressed by the heroes, with the majority of the heroes being DC-esques. One of their parents was the butler figure of an earlier hero, so they’ve been around them their whole life. In that case, I’d probably make them the narrator of the story, but the action is the standard heroes. Sort of an everyman smacking the back of Captain Savior’s head when he keeps hitting the self-destruct instead of the power button, then figuring out that the ‘weapon’ Queen Victorious destroyed earlier was actually a cappuccino machine. A figure usually forgotten until the big climax when a hero goes to dismantle a bomb by cutting the red wire and they’re all blue. (I figure it’s a chance to poke fun at all the superhero stereotypes.)
I figured out a good way to use a teenaged hero without resorting to school: set the story during summer break. It’s what I’m doing right now, and it has worked out well for me. I imagine that this is only applicable in America, though, since from what I’ve heard, other countries’ summer breaks are far shorter than three months.
Summer break sounds good…
Here are some other ways to get around school in the story.
–There’s school going on in the background, but almost no scenes take place there.
–The character is of school age, but is in a work-study program so that he spends more time at a job than school.
–If the character is, I think, 17 or 18, he can be in the military rather than school. (Depending on circumstances, maybe younger than 17–for example, some 15 or 16 year olds lied their way into the military during WWI and WWII).
–If the character is an orphan or a runaway or otherwise on the fringes of society, he may be dodging school.
My heroine is actually part of my fictional world’s equivalent of the Girl Scouts, though it’s politicized in the manner of the Hitler Youth or Komsomol (no girls are required to join, though.)
Is anyone here familiar with what Girl Scouts typically do, whether during the summer or during the school year?
I can maybe do some more research in a bit of time but my daughter is getting ready to attend Girl Scouts for the first time. But from years ago when my sister participated, generally Girl Scouts have regular meetings (anywhere from weekly to monthly) which tend to be mother-daughter groups. They work on badges (similar to Boy Scouts) which involve being taught certain practices and hobbies (i.e. camping, cooking, sewing, ect.). It’s basic principals taught by volunteers, often relatives of troup members. During the summer (and occasionally on weekends during the school year) most troops will participate in at least one week long camping trip.
@ Sean Higgins
The little info you just gave me proved really helpful. Now I know what information to look for and how to continue my story’s plot.
How do you portray, or rather, what’s plausible in terms of jobs when a protagonist cannot work or be in public.
For instance, a Jewish person during the Holocaust, Evy in V for Vendetta, or a public hero that needs to make money and lay low.
Perhaps he has a fake identity and is able to work that way?
Alternately, a Jew in the Holocaust might be able to work at a job that the Nazis have set aside for Jews (probably because it’s too dangerous, dirty or otherwise undesirable for Germans).
Alternately, if the character cannot be in public because the bad guys would immediately kill him, perhaps he’s working the black market or doing something else illegal. If the character already has a death sentence hanging over him, there’s not much incentive to get a legal job.
If it’s just a case of a superhero needing to make money but was really concerned about laying low, I think any job that kept bad records would work well. Preferably something mobile, in case his enemies found out. For example, I imagine being a roaming salesperson would work pretty well.
Depending on how tough he is, he might be able to work as a day laborer or quarry miner. These positions are frequently filled by illegal immigrants, so the records tend to be rather bad. (Bad records will make it harder for a villain and/or the police to follow the hero’s tracks).
As stated previously, my superheroine’s “day job” is as an A.M. coroner. (I ove the C.S.I. Series, but I want her to be more of a profiler/criminal coroner. Sort of like what you see now on C.S.I.: NY or Criminal Minds. Any help would be nice. Btw, I’ve read Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta book series. Amazing job,there. I want to do something similar but in the line of a Superheroine “criminal coroner profiler”-If there is such a thing.)
What do you think of rich idiots with no day job? I’m in the middle of trying to make my main character more Bill Gates than Bruce Wayne, in that, instead of being born into money, he started a company with some friends (I have no idea what the company *does* at the moment…), made it big, and now doesn’t have to work (he does a lot of charity stuff, including volunteering at the pound). I don’t really want to give him a normal job because, well, how do you work full-time and go out all night? And
His son, who is going to end up being a support position, is in college (I think) and does computer work.
It’s all right except you don’t want a copy cat of Bruce as in using the money to buy ridiculously expensive crime fighting gadgets. I think you should be all right.
“What do you think of rich idiots with no day job?” Personally, I’m a bit more interested by superheroes that have to at least go through the motions of maintaining a regular life (whether that’s a day job, school, or whatever).
“I don’t really want to give him a normal job because, well, how do you work full-time and go out all night?” It’s a challenging obstacle, which is why I find it interesting. (That, and I think it helps keep the character more relatable than he’d otherwise be). That said, if you wanted a job that presented less of an obstacle, you could give him something with a really flexible schedule.
If you do go with a rich guy without a day job, I think it would really help to distinguish him from Batman/Bruce Wayne. (BW is the CEO of his company, but most versions of the character aren’t shown as particularly involved on a day-to-day basis there).
I have a superotagonist that I’ve been working on, and I wanted him to be the son of a very wealthy man (he owns a company that supplies raw materials to industries). I’m worried that if I do that, people won’t care for him because of his family’s wealth. How should I avoid this? I’m thinking using a variation of the “trying to fit in” idea, i.e.: People are antsy around him because of his father’s status (think of the “honorable grandson” in Naruto).
Also, should I put him in regular school, or a private school or tutoring? Would people have trouble relating to those?
(I don’t know if this really relates to the topic of the article)
Also, this is rather unrelated, but what do you think of having a universe with an already established hero who is starting to wear down? He isn’t the he isn’t the main character, but he’s well known and looked up to by citizens (like superman).
“Also, should I put him in regular school, or a private school or tutoring? Would people have trouble relating to those?” I think it depends on the story you’re trying to tell. Public school would probably be more relatable but I think you could tell an interesting story at private school if you wanted. (Tutoring, maybe less so–I think there’s less potential for conflict if the tutor is working for the family rather than the student going to a school that isn’t entirely beholden to the father).
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I think it would really help to develop his personality. For example, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne are both rich guys, but they have personalities besides being rich.
…
I like the idea of age wearing down on a superhero. It’s an approach I haven’t seen very often.
How about one who is unemployed? Then, they not only have conflict with supervillains and criminals, but also have to deal with pressure from the \real world\ to \be successful\.
That sounds interesting. If you’re doing a comic book, your target audience is probably in the age ranges of 18-30, and I think it’s a demographic that can probably relate to chronic unemployment. (I would guess that most everybody in that age-range at least knows somebody that is unemployed–in the United States, unemployment is higher than 50% among 16-24 year olds).
That said, it might not fit into all stories as well. For example, Peter Parker has been fired and evicted before, but that doesn’t really make sense given how many multi-bajillionaire friends he has. For example, Tony Stark paid several million dollars to cover Aunt May’s health costs–why would he let Peter go homeless? Reed Richards owns a NYC skyscraper and could surely offer him a room, although I don’t think I’d be brave enough take a room in the Baxter Building or over at Xavier’s place.
The teenage heros in my story attend a school where they learn to be hero’s and do all sorts of cool stuff with the main characters being part of a special group that investigates crimes. Is that okay instead of a job?
I think a school setting worked well for X-men but this school is a lot different and is much pickier about the caliber of student it allows in.
all thoughts and suggestions are appreciated
Normally, my main concern would be that the school should have some sort of personality. For example, Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University is absolutely oozing with style and wackiness of the most spectacular sort. Here are some excerpts from its Wikipedia page. (By the way, if your setting is so interesting that Wikipedia users are putting tens or hundreds of hours and thousands of words into describing it, you’re probably on the right track).
“Wizards grade magical ability in a series of levels, the highest of which is eight. People without magical ability are “level zero.” It was the opinion of many tutors at the time Rincewind was a student that he had a level that was possibly negative, and that the overall magical potential of humanity would actually increase after his death.”
“The Octavo is the Creator’s own grimoire and thus the most powerful book of magic on the Discworld… The Eight Great Spells are imprisoned on its pages, giving the book sentience. It somehow came into the possession of Unseen University, where it was stored in a little room off and under the University’s Library. Given the nature of the book, the room is full of precautions; not so much for the protection of the book as much as for the protection of its visitors.
“While in his first year at the University, Rincewind tried to open the Octavo for a bet. Miraculously managing to bypass all safety measures, he succeeded; whereupon one of the Eight Great Spells leapt from the book and lodged itself into his mind. No wizard could coax it out. Unable to learn any other spells, which were afraid of sharing his head with one of the spells of the Octavo, Rincewind was dismissed from the University. Eventually, the Spell returned to the Octavo and Rincewind recited all eight Spells to prevent the Discworld’s imminent destruction. The book was subsequently swallowed by Rincewind’s Luggage, but it was spat out a few days later.
“Archchancellor Ridcully… loves hunting, owns several crossbows and is much given to using the corridors of Unseen University as a shooting range… Since wizards’ favourite sports traditionally are things like Competitive Eating and Extreme Napping, other wizards find him very tiring. He is not stupid but finds it very difficult to deal with unexpected information, and generally ignores it until it goes away or becomes someone else’s problem. He holds the view that if someone is still trying to explain something to him after about two minutes, it must be worth listening to, and if they give up earlier, it was not worth bothering him with in the first place…”
“Dinwiddie became the Bursar after the previous Bursar was killed trying to save the Library from destruction in Sourcery. Dinwiddie expected to spend the rest of his life quietly adding up rows of figures. Unfortunately, shortly after he became the Bursar, Mustrum Ridcully was appointed Archchancellor. The brashness of Ridcully’s personality wore away at the Bursar, a man whose idea of excitement was a soft-boiled egg, and Dr. Dinwiddie is now almost completely insane. He is kept functional, just, by experimental dosages of dried frog pills, though the effect is sometimes erratic. The pills are actuallyhallucinogens, the idea being that a proper dosage will cause him to hallucinate he is sane. An improper dose causes him to demonstrate symptoms of catatonia or disorganized schizophrenia, or cause him to believe he can fly. The last case is relatively easy to deal with; the other faculty members simply have to keep him from flying higher than the walls.”
“The Librarian was transformed into an orang-utan in The Light Fantastic as the Octavo fired a beam of magic upwards. On discovering that being an orang-utan had certain advantages for a librarian – he can climb up to high shelves, for example – he refused to be transformed back into a human and has remained an orang-utan ever since. The other wizards have gradually become used to the situation, to the extent that, from Night Watch: ‘if someone ever reported that there was an orang-utan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he’d seen it.’ Being an ape, he is known for his violent reaction to most people calling him a “monkey.” He speaks a language whose vocabulary consists primarily of the single word Ook (originally Oook), inflected for simple affirmations and negations. Eeek is also occasionally heard, particularly in moments of panic or rage. Nonetheless, most people seem able to understand him.”
“The Librarian’s name has never been given in any of the books; he is always simply ‘the Librarian.’ If the Librarian’s true name were known, he could be changed back into a human, and he has since The Last Continent carefully excised his name from the records of the University. The Discworld Companion hints that he may once have been Dr. Horace Worblehat, which goes most of the way to explaining why he is happier as an orang-utan.”
So, here are some questions about your school.
1) If you had to describe it in a few sentences, what would you say?
2) What are some things that distinguish the setting from other schools for people with superpowers? (For example, the Unseen University is developed enough that I could come up with several major ways it is distinct from Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, even though both are magical schools).
3) I really like the idea that it’s selective. (In contrast, there are apparently only two qualifications to being at Xavier’s Academy, being a mutant and not being a homicidal psychopath, and I think they gave Wolverine a pass on the second). How does its selectivity affect the school? For example, are students under more pressure to succeed? How much harder are the classes? What are some of the difficult students are expected to learn and/or do?
4) What are some of the most notable adults like? (E.g. instructors, principal/leader, ninja tutors, NASCAR-dropout-turned-driving-instructor, security personnel, etc). What sort of things do they do that conflict with the students? In particular, how is the leader of the school different than Xavier?
5) Is there an in-story reason why they use kids rather than adults to solve crimes?
6) What are some things that happen at your academy that wouldn’t happen at most other superpowered schools?
@ B. McKenzie
1) The school is called ISIS (International School for the Inherently Skilled) The school is like a hybrid of a super elite private prep school (complete with uniforms) and a military boot camp. The academics are very demanding and the physical training is intense. The building is an old plantation style mansion and doubles as a home for the kids who bored their though many of the students live off site with their families.
2) As super humans are an excepted part of the society the school doesn’t have to pretend to be anything other than a school for super heros in training. They won’t take students who have very passive powers unless they excel in other field (like math or science) and brainless jocks are not tolerated.
3) Being very selective means that the school takes the most skilled young heros but not necessarily the ones with the most raw talent. The pressure to succeed is very high and those who struggle are often ostracized by those who come by success easily. The classes very in difficulty (ie. the lowest math class is algebra and the highest is some form of advanced calculous) but are all are taught at an AP level. Students are trained heavily in the use of their power because the schools goal is to make sure the next generation of heros is the best and the brightest.
4) The staff isn’t terribly fleshed out yet but the principal/head mistress/dean lady is very strict and rarely shows a soft side or sense of humor. (I’m open to suggestions for interesting teachers)
5)The general reason kids are used instead of adults is that their powers and/or skills are better suited for the job. They are supervised by adults because letting them run around alone would be irresponsible.
6) I can’t think of any other schools where you have super villain attack drills and extreme survival train courses. P.E. class consists of running obstacle courses that would make a marine cringe and and playing freeze rag with freeze rays.
On a side note ISIS has two rival schools. On functions a lot more like Xavier’s where they take just about any kid with powers and the other is like a reform school for troubled young super humans.
Thoughts?
–”I can’t think of any other schools where you have super villain attack drills and extreme survival training courses…” Well, I would think supervillain attack drills are pretty standard for an academy that’s training superheroes. However, the extreme survival training sounds pretty fresh. Most superheroes do most of their work in cities, so wilderness survival is distinct.
–”The classes vary in difficulty (i.e. the lowest math class is algebra and the highest is some form of advanced calculus).” If you’d like a name for the higher classes besides something like Honors Calculus, you could try Advanced Algorithms, Analysis and Manifolds, Topics in Stochastic Processes, Discrete Mathematics, Nonlinear Dynamics and/or Combinatorial Analysis. (Why, yes, I did steal those from MIT’s course catalog).
–What happens to the not-so-bright students that get rejected by the school? (Maybe there’s a less prestigious superhero academy that some of the students transfer to if they can’t cut it and there’s some bad blood between the schools*. Or maybe there are no academies for lesser students and they end up either becoming freelance superheroes on their own and/or get seduced by criminal organizations).
*For example, some Notre Dame students chant “Backup College” when Boston College comes to play football. I’ve never been to a BC home game, but I’m guessing they have their own chants and jokes. (E.g. “OOOOO-VER-RATED,” “Mr. Delusional Irrational Irish Football Fan,” etc.
I mentioned the two rival schools underneath 6. Students of these schools often view ISIS students as snobs and ISIS students tend to view other school #1 as a bunch of slackers and losers and other school #2 as a bunch of savage criminals.
Do you have and suggestions for interesting and unusual teachers? So far I only have the principal and the the semi-crazy ex-hero with total distain for rules and regulations and a soft spot for the underdogs of the school.
PS: thank you so much for your helpful comments
“I mentioned the two rival schools underneath 6. Students of these schools often view ISIS students as snobs and ISIS students tend to view other school #1 as a bunch of slackers and losers and other school #2 as a bunch of savage criminals.” Ah, good call! Sorry I missed that.
One interesting combination that doesn’t come up as often as it does in real reality is tough-but-likable teachers. Far too often, authors have a hard teacher, but he’s hard because he’s “mean”* or he hates students. Very one-dimensional/cartoonish. Another possibility is that he’s hard as hell on his students because they’re training to be superheroes and because NOT learning it right will probably get someone killed (maybe them). Also, I think after the fact, many people come to appreciate their harder teachers more–I don’t think I can remember any of the “easy ‘A’” professors I had, but the ones I do remember were all very demanding. (Which is not to say that every hard teacher is likable, just that hard-and-unlikable is used so often in fiction that you’d have to execute the teacher really well to avoid coming off as a cliche).
*Pet peeve: I find it hard to take anyone seriously that uses the word “mean” as an adjective, ESPECIALLY in a setting where lives are on the line. (E.g. if Jane thinks that a drill instructor can be “mean,” it is insane for her to try to join the Marines and she could never possibly have any chance at succeeding there and her teammates would probably push for her transfer someplace she can do less damage).
Another possibility would be if the school brought in someone with a decidedly unusual background. I had a teacher, let’s say “Mr. Doe,” who worked as a trader at the Chicago Board of Trade. On the first day of class, he said something like “Yes, it is true that I became a teacher because three of my coworkers committed suicide on the same day. No, it is not true that I earned the nickname “Mad Dog” because I bit someone’s ear off in a pricing dispute. I barely broke the skin.”
I like the idea of a hard but likable teacher. I can think of a few teachers at my high school that are like that.
What about this: the female tactics instructor is very hard on her pupils but she is fair. She’s hard on them not because she is *”mean” but because a plan that is full of holes or easily foiled could lead to the injury/death of innocent people and her students lives my depend on coming up with decent **plans.
As for interesting backgrounds, I’m thinking ex-Russian spy with a limp who now teaches deception detection and acting. He is now making up for years of living a covert quiet life by being as loud and rowdy as possible. He likes to throw thinks at student (to keep them on there toes) and bangs his cane on the desk of students that fall asleep(my sister had a teacher do that).
*mean is and awful word to describe a person. Its incredibly generic and says nothing about them.
**this could lead to her initially disliking my main character but coming to respect her intelligence and quick wits later on.
As always suggestions are welcomed with open arms and cookie
“Mean” says more about the user than the recipient, particularly if the user is older than 12.
I personally haven’t used mean to describe a person in years because it sounds really childish and uneducated.
Any suggestions or comments on the above mentioned teachers?
Journalism, law enforcement and law are actually poor choices for a superhero’s day job because members of such professions generally have deadlines to meet and have to make reports about what they do during the day (law especially, ever here of billable hours?).
From my own limited experience in journalism, I got the impression that a roving reporter would have a relatively easy time of doing superheroics on the side.
1) Stories can be sent in remotely and somebody like Clark Kent can type quickly enough that he only needs a few minutes to finish a day’s worth of work.
2) What few in-person commitments he has (like staff meetings) can probably be worked around during crises. For example, something like “Brainiac is hitting STAR Labs again! I’ll have the writeup by print-time, Chief.” Any editor that would rather have your star reporter in a newsroom meeting rather than covering a major story probably won’t be an editor for long.
3) Even if a superhero didn’t work at Superman speed, he could prepare for sudden emergencies by having some major articles stashed in case he needs to take off of work for a while. E.g. he can say something like “I’m sorry I didn’t do that underwater mortgages piece you wanted, but I happen to have Lex Luthor confessing on tape. Can I get back to you on that mortgages piece?” If anybody finds out that he sat on a huge story for weeks (or maybe even months), he can claim that he needed to double-check his sources to make sure everything was legit and he didn’t want to get his editor’s hopes up until he knew for sure. (It totally makes sense that you’d want to be EXTRA careful about double-checking a story with Lex Luthor. Libeling a powerful businessman with a charge that turned out to be bogus would, at the very least, damage the newspaper’s reputation and might result in a massive lawsuit against the paper.
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As for law, I think a lot of superhero attorneys run their own law firm or are at least partners. The hero might need to deceive the other partners, but I assume that oversight of one partner would be much looser than what the average lawyer gunning for partner at Baker & McKenzie (yeahhhh Chicago) would get. However, let’s say the character IS a fairly low-ranking lawyer (e.g. a junior associate) and is expected to pull 60-80 hour weeks. Maybe he bills a lot of that as something nebulous like “field research.” As long as he comes up with major breakthroughs on a fairly regular basis–and I assume that being a superhero would give you a major edge in exonerating the innocent by finding out who is actually guilty*–I assume his bosses will cut him some slack on where exactly he was during all of those 60 hours. Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was seen as valuable because he’s unusually eager to do in-person work in extremely bad neighborhoods.
*Unless, of course, the client actually is guilty. However, even if the client is guilty, a superhero might be able to get him a lesser sentence by finding evidence that shows the client’s role was more minor or more innocuous than it originally appeared. For example, maybe he was blackmailed into committing the crime or he had been told that the gun was firing blanks and he just wanted to scare the victim, but someone else set him up by putting real bullets in the gun or he played a minor role in the crime than someone else but can’t prove that without the superhero’s help, etc.
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Yeah, being a police officer moonlighting as a superhero would be damn tricky, unless the character had a regular 9-5 desk job (like guarding the evidence lockup) or maybe even a roving job without a partner (like doling out parking violations).
If Officer Hernandez was a patrol officer and expected to respond to emergencies, I think it’d essentially require at the very least the acquiescence of his partner (Detective Doe) and, more likely, the active collaboration of his partner Detective Doe to falsify police reports and commit various other acts of fraud to hide what the superhero was doing at particular times. Hernandez could do a LOT of “canvassing the neighborhood” to explain why he’s not present at the crime scene, but it’d be precarious.
Even something as mundane as another officer or a police informant noticing something weird (like “What’s Detective Doe doing without a partner in a neighborhood this dangerous?”) might lead to awkward questions. In such a case, Hernandez and/or Doe might have to make up some wild-eyed story so that his bosses only slap him on the wrist rather than hammer him. For example, maybe Doe claims he was secretly tailing his partner because he was worried Hernandez might be up to something shady. (But he didn’t want to go to Internal Affairs or the lieutenant until he was sure). Or maybe it’s sort of rumored that Hernandez is having a really hard time coping with some personal disaster (like the murder of his wife, parents, kids, yoga instructor, and/or dog that convinced him to become a superhero) and Doe was trying to help give him some time off when he needed a breather. (They can claim they didn’t explain what was going on to the lieutenant because Hernandez is a real tough guy and didn’t want anybody to know how hard the catastrophe was).
I made my character Vulcan into a scrap yard junker. Even though he’s named after a god, it’s the most blue-collar god in the entire pantheon, and that’s an aspect I wanted to convey. He’s a very down to earth and “human” character. It also just really fit with his powers and since it‘s a really small part of the story anyway it doesn‘t need to be high-stakes or glamorous. (Plus there’s the practicle bonus of, if a bad-guy attacks, what’s the harm?)