Hi everyone, I have been trying to create my own superhero and I have recently written a very basic synopsis of the hero’s origin and was wandering if I could get some feedback, thanks.
1. Origin: An asteroid comes down to Earth containing a new material that gives of a new form of radiation. The radiation seems to react randomly with things around it, heating some things up or increasing or decreasing certain objects mass. After discovering and removing the asteroid, the government take it to a special government facility where the scientists there study it. They realise that the effect the asteroid’s radiation has on something depends on the conditions the asteroid is in (e.g. temperature, gravity, pressure on it etc.). They attempt to find away to manipulate the radiation in a way that could help them, like improve quality and size of crops or even create more effective weapons. While experimenting on the asteroid they accidently cause a small explosion so they decide to break up the asteroid and send chunks of it for study to other facilities, each chunk is placed in a special container to stop it from coming into contact with anything as well as keeping it at 10°C because the asteroid chunks are at their least reactive at that temperature. Each container is placed on a military truck which will take it to a different facility in the country.
One truck’s route is blocked by some trees that fall in the way from a storm the night before so the truck has to use a back up route, a few minutes of which is along a motorway. On the motorway the asteroid chunk’s container malfunctions, causing it to drop in the container. The chunk heats up the container and part of the truck; this ignites the fuel tank causing an explosion which acts as a sort of dirty bomb, spreading the asteroid chunk’s radiation. A twenty year old called Luke Taylor who is driving to university is caught at the edge of the explosion; the radiation reacts with his DNA, granting him superhuman abilities. The explosion causes him to crash which causes him to hit his head, knocking him out for ten seconds (just before he falls unconscious he sees a shadowy figure disappear in a blur), when he wakes up he looks around. He starts hearing and seeing things from great distances away which temporarily over whelms him. He quickly learns to control it better, or at least well enough to stand it. He then realises he isn’t the only one in trouble so he gets out of his car and tries to help people. He soon realises he has superhuman abilities when he tries helping people who have also been in accidents such as when he opens a jammed door on a flaming car to save the people, accidently yanking the entire door of the car.
After he helps everyone he decides to go home and figure out what is happening. His car isn’t working so he decides to get off the motorway and get a bus. He decides to try running since if he is so much stronger that maybe he has stronger leg muscles so he should be able to run very fast which turns out to be correct (he also realises that his stamina has improved because he runs very fast for a while without getting tired). So he gets off the motorway, gets on a bus so he doesn’t show off his powers too much and goes home. Once home he tries lifting things and bending things. When he tries to remember what happened he realises that he has a perfect memory of everything from the moment he woke up in the accident.
Not sure what he should do with his new found abilities it occurs to him that the motorway accident and his actions might be on the news so he decides to have a look. When he puts on the news the accident is on it as well as people who were in the accident who survived who described him and his actions. Although due to the fact that they’ve just been in car accidents, the people have trouble remembering what he looks like, but the people who he saved praise him, some saying he was like a guardian angel. This encourages him to use his powers to help people so he decides if he’s going to use his powers to help people he needs a disguise so that no criminals come after him a home, or any fans or the government who would probably want to study him. He learns how to make a suitable costume (which thanks to help videos and his superhuman memory is easy) and designs and makes his costume.
On his first day as a superhero he witnesses a car-jacking so he chases down the car and jumps on the side, he asks the carjacker to stop and get out of the vehicle but the carjacker just opens the window and shoots at him, which is when Luke discovers he is bullet proof (which leads him to think what a way to find out he is bullet proof). He pushes the guy out of the driving seat after crushing his gun and stops the car, he then pulls the guy out of the car, locks the car and goes back and gives the person who owns the car the keys and takes the criminal to the police.
Leaving the police station he sees a shadowy figure standing on a tall building so he goes to see what it is but when he gets to the roof of the building the figure is gone which is strange especially since Luke only takes seconds to get to the roof thanks to his powers. Confused he continues with his superhero patrol but as he leaves the figure is watching him again.
A week later everyone is talking about the new superhero (Luke has taken to calling himself the Olympian). The mayor makes a televised speech about the city’s government’s reaction to this superhero, which involves him saying the U.K. government will be trying to find out who he is and his intentions (though the government knows that he must have gained his powers from the exploded asteroid chunk since that’s when stories of him first appeared and there is no other explanation they can think of). While making his speech something attacks the building he is in, causing the ceiling to collapse killing seven people and injuring fifteen others. People on the outside see a figure move at incredible speeds to the building that then starts wrecking the building with his bare hands, due to the nature of the attack it is assumed Olympian is the attacker. It is thought he does it as a warning to the government to leave him alone, after this a hunt is on for Olympian.
Olympian decides to figure out who the real attacker is but out of costume since the government is after him. He goes to the site of the attack; he sneaks in to see if anything in the wreckage that might help, that the police may have missed (which he wouldn’t thanks to his enhanced senses). While there he hears people talking about how he apparently had just attacked the police station. He quickly makes his way to the police station in costume, which he’s been wearing under his clothes, ready to confront the imposter. By the time he gets there the attacker appears to be gone but then in the distance he sees the shadowy figure so he immediately gives chase. When it seems like he would lose him he rips a door from a roof entrance off its hinges and throws it at the shadowy figure, knocking him momentarily to the ground. This gives Olympian the chance to catch up with him. He pins him to the ground. He then sees that the figure looks like a living shadow, with inky black skin, bald head, he wears clothes the same colour as his skin, and then with a cocky smile he seems to melt into the floor. Olympian is confused but before he can react two hands reach through the floor, grab him and pull him down, causing him to smash through the floor into the building (the building being the storage room of a super market).
The Olympian tries hitting him but he keeps passing through him. The shadowy figure then starts hitting him, he then hits him so hard that he sends flying across the room, the shadow figure then super speeds over to him, picks him up and when Olympian asks who he is he says “your demise”. He hits him so hard that he leaves him dazed. He then creates a knife out of the same inky black material as his clothes and he himself seems to be made of. He’s about to stab him when someone comes into the room. He looks like a supermarket worker. When he comes in the shadowy figure throws the knife at him, hitting him in his chest, killing him. The knife flies back to his hand like metal to a magnet. When he turns back Olympian hits him in the face, sending him crashing out of the building into the street.
Olympian then jumps into the street after him, realising that he now knows that the shadowy figure can only become intangible when he consciously decides to, can move at superhuman speed, has superhuman strength, can take punches from him so he must have some degree of superhuman durability and can create constructs from an inky black substance which he guesses is what his clothes are made of and finally that he must have gotten his powers the same way he did. He then asks why he did these attacks but the shadowy figure just attacks him. They fight a bit and Olympian is winning so he asks again why he did these attacks to which the shadowy figure replies he did them to weaken the city’s government and police to reduce the threat to him, he tried to make it look like Olympian did it so everyone would go after him causing to either get imprisoned, killed or force to flee thus eliminating him as a threat. He has been spying on him to mess with his head but to also learn about him, he then says it is really easy to distract him. He then tries to stab him with a knife like before but Olympian dodges the attack, grabs him and throws him across the street. He then tries one last attack by throwing a large spear-like construct at Olympian, Olympian dodges and the spear-like construct goes into a lamp post (which is on since by this point it’s getting dark). The spear is electrified which also appears to hurt the shadowy figure as if the two things were connected, the shadowy figure is so hurt by this point that he tries one more attack and then escapes. He then seems to turn into smoke which disappears off him until he reveals his human self, a small runt of a man, not much older than Olympian. He limps off and blends into the crowd. It is later revealed that the shadowy figure, dubbed the shadow by the press, is now thought to be the real culprit of the attacks on the city government and the police because of his confession and the fact he displays sufficient power to do them . At the very end it goes to some government agents who are talking in an office, one sitting apparently the boss, and one standing, the standing one says they don’t know who the shadow is but that they think they know who the Olympian is, he then puts a file on the desk which is for The Olympians civilian identity and the one standing says that it’s believed that he is The Olympian.
2. The Shadow’s super powers: his primary power is the ability to transform into a larger, more muscled version of himself with the appearance of being made of an unidentified inky black substance; in this form he has the following powers:
· Superhuman strength (can lift/press 20 tons)
· Can make parts of him or all of him intangible but has to be consciously thinking it, if he becomes unconscious he would become solid
· Superhuman speed (can run at 300 mph, but does not have the reflexes to match)
· Superhuman durability (can take small calibre bullets without harm but medium calibre bullets causes bruising)
· Can create constructs made of an unidentified inky black substance (he can determine the density and flexibility of the constructs hence why he can make some work like clothes and others and bladed weapons) which he can attract and repel at great speeds, he also has a physical connection to the constructs he creates so that he feels whatever happens to his constructs as if it happened directly to him.
3. Olympian’s Super powers:
· Superhuman strength (can lift/press 20 tons)
· Superhuman speed (can run 150 mph)
· Superhuman agility (far beyond the human limit)
· Superhuman reflexes (can react fat enough to dodge machine gun fire)
· Superhuman stamina (can perform at peak ability for 24 hours without fatigue)
· Superhuman vision (can see farther with greater accuracy and detail than any human, he has some control of how well he can see so that he isn’t overwhelmed)
· Superhuman hearing (can hear better than any human, he has some control of how well he can hear so that he isn’t overwhelmed)
· Superhuman durability (can take machine gun fire though it causes bruising)
· Superhuman self healing/immune system (is immune to most diseases, poisons, etc. and can heal from any wound except loss of limb)
· Superhuman memory (has photographic memory as well as increased memory capacity) (Though I didn't go into it in the story above I intend to make Olympian become a scientific and technology expert, not because of his intelligence but because he reads about the subjects and remembers everything he reads and that he would use this knowledge in his adventures e.g. hacking into computers, using what he knows in science to figure out how to defeat a villain etc.)
Log in to comment