What Is A Superhero?

There are two conflicting definitions of hero:

1. The real-life hero
2. The literary hero

The Real-Life Hero

The real-life hero is an ordinary person who finds themselves in extra-ordinary circumstances and finds some expression of humanity within them that enables them to face up those circumstances.

This is someone like Johnson Beharry, the only living VC holder or a fire-fighter who goes into a burning building to rescue a complete stranger and then goes and does it again the very next day.

The Literary Hero

The literary hero is an entirely different beast. The "Hero With A Thousand Faces" defines a literary hero as some one who chooses to undertake The Hero's Journey:

1. The hero-to-be starts off as an ordinary person
2. There is a threat to those the hero-to-be cares for (big dragon, alien invasion, approaching eco-failure)
3. The hero-to-be becomes a hero by going on a quest to gain a power to defeat the threat. The quest must involve sacrifice and effort so the harder the quest, the greater the hero.
4. Once they gain the power, they choose to use it for the intended purpose (ie defeat the threat) rather than any selfish purpose
5. And then the really great heroes give up that power once the threat has been defeated and go back to being ordinary people again.

Perseus from "Clash of the Titans" is a classic example. His story starts with him as a fisherman and once he has defeated the kraken,his gives up all powers and returns to being a fisherman.

There are three anti-heroes:

• The person who has greatness thrust upon them but doesn't desire it and even runs away from it. This is almost every single Marvel superhero except, Punisher and, maybe, Dr Strange.
• The person who seeks greatness for their selfish and personal revenge against the monster for the pain it has already inflicted. That is, they can't stop the threat because it has already happened. They merely want "justice" (revenge). An example is Punisher.
• Then there is the anti-hero who finds the power consuming them. A classic example is The Shadow whose power comes from the evil within him that would consume him if he allowed it. To some extent, this is also Batman. He could easily reduce crime by killing criminals but that would make him a worse criminal. You could also include Hulk in this category.

This probably explains why all of the Marvel heroes are so whiney - because they didn't choose to become heroes. So they go on about how much of a curse it is and how they'd love to be normal. At least the DC heroes have the decency not to whinge about being heroes.

Well, that's disappointing. I have just claimed that there are no such things as super-heroes because they didn't choose that path. At best, they are super-anti-heroes.

And here we have the problem of virtually every single super-hero: no real threat.

They get their super-powers by accident and then later choose to use them fighting evil - but what evil? The solution is to have multiple threats or an ongoing threat. This is why I say the supervillain is the most important part of the story not the superhero. The villain gives the hero purpose - a reason to put the tights on and cruise bars, oops, sorry wrong tights. The villain is necessary to create the hero

However, multiple threats are hard work because you have to create so many new villains or you have to keep recycling them.

But the problem with a recurring villain is he/she/it must be stronger than the hero so the hero cannot defeat it right away. But the hero must win or he isn't a hero. So the hero must partially defeat the villain but not completely.

Now you can get around that by making the villain an organisation. So you have S.P.E.C.T.R.E., T.H.R.U.S.H., Hydra, A.I.M. and others. In this way, you can defeat part of the organisation and still have the threat continue.