Tell me about the original superhero universe that you've come up with in your passing day dreams over the years. I know we've all done it, whether or not we ever intended to do anything with it other that escape into imagination with it
Do you have different ages of superhero eras? Do you have a common origin for powers like the X-Men?
No I don’t want you to steal it.
Don't worry I won't, mine is better
Yes, various ages and legacies that carry on into the present (of when the comic takes place). There are the traditional ways that characters get powers but most of mains use weapons or gadgets.
I've always liked that style, when are the various ages set?
There's 13 known Earths (rich and open of their own history) so it's alot of anecdotal info dropped throughout the adventures. But more or less, as easy as it comes - Western, the 40s-60s heroes and so forth.
My imagined universe is more of multiverse of versions of myself but each one has a different super power. If I'm daydreaming about being a superhero, why limit myself to one power?
I've been very hesitant to get into the whole multiverse thing with mine. I love starting with old west vigilantes though, and moving up through the ages, theres so much cool shit you can do with that.
I went with what I described in the OP with the X-Men style unified singular source for all the characters and powers for my world. I made it all centered around fallen angels and secret mystical knowledge and technology derived from discovering the writings and artifacts of fallen angels. It includes mythological creatures and deities from all over the world, but they are all secretly fallen angels
That's pretty rad man, I actually really like the sound of that, hope you show us one of these days.
I wouldn't say it's a multiverse, they're all connected but the branches of their fate shapes them out differently. I am going pretty barebones, and for the scope of how I see it all being played it, I wanna keep a digestive menu.
How close to the path of actual earth history are you going to stick to? Do all of the different branches unfold essentially the same but with different details?
The only one I have a direct self insert character with has super elasticity powers.
After a thousand years a cult of alchemists have discovered the secrets of eternal life and unlimited power, but it requires incredible sacrifice on a global scale. They raise their children to carry out their cause, brainwashing them and altering their bodies to make them animalistic warriors and brutal killing machines, with the goal of creating an apocalyptic bloodbath where only the faithful will survive. One of the children isn't properly converted however and his brainwashing fails. Finding he's been turned into a monstrous, electric beetle in a fleshy man suit, he turns against the people who raised him and his now mind broken friends to try and save the world.
Basically Shotaro Ishinomori's more violent Kamen Rider Black manga mixed with elements of Shin Megami Tensei as the world slips further and further into a seemingly unstoppable apocalypse.
How exactly do they unfold the apocalypse around them? Do they just start randomly attacking different nations? How does this cult operate?
Monster attacks combined with having members in positions of power around the world spreading misinformation and destablizing regions. My intention was that as things in the world get worse they would use their influence to paint the hero as an anti-christ figure and use this to militarize society against him. Ordinary people signing up to become mooks to try and stop him.
To clarify a bit their ultimate goal is to wipe out most of humanity in a ritual that will grant their leader the powers of a god, then establish a holy empire with what's left. The most powerful members become the ruling class and the faithless survivors of humanity become their slaves.
Nice, I like it. Are you talking a full on religious anti Christ, or just using the term to describe the heroes level of global influence and importance in this time of severe crisis?
Full on religious, though ultimately he's just a decent guy being put through hell and refusing to compromise or let them win. It's not like some statement against organized religion but more a tokusatsu inspired story about trying not to lose your humanity. And the corrupt and greedy being kicked so hard they explode.
The basic premise is that back in the 1880s, the nations of the world began to actively research how to cultivate and activate superpowers within people. This culminated in the World Wars, where every nation developed and fielded supermen on the battlefield. But things went awry when in a desperate attempt to create a limitless army, Adolf Hitler ordered his top scientists to experiment on Das Werwolf, Germany's greatest hero. Whatever they did, it caused an explosion the likes of which has never been seen again on the Earth that to this day has rendered over half of Germany uninhabitable, seared by some kind of cosmic energy that saps anyone who enters of their life and soul.
This caused the nations of the world, post-war, to create strict international laws governing superhuman activity and restricting it. In the modern day, the UN Security Council directly oversees a global Superhero organization dubbed the Olympians, while on the national level each country has its own laws and customs.
The "main" characters of this world are a pair of teenage superheroes, twins named Dirk and Daria, that dream of someday joining the Olympians, and meeting their idol, the Superman analogue "Lionheart." But the big tweest is that they're actually two halves of the same soul - Das Werwolf's, reincarnated after his seeming death, and the general thrust of a plot would follow the successors of the Nazis who experimented on him attempting to capture them for nefarious purposes. In a more general sense it would follow them as characters, and how each of them is incomplete without the other - the brother emotionally muted and completely obsessed with his sister's well-being, and the sister an overwrought bundle of emotions and neuroses that has trouble with rational choices, to the point their powers - superspeed and superstrength - do not work unless they're physically touching each other.
Wouldn't it be Kaiser Wilhelm instead of Hitler if this started in the 1880s? Otherwise it sounds pretty interesting and well thought out, if you can actually capture a good character arc for these two broken half characters. That sounds like a lot of stress dealing with two emotionally extreme characters like that. but it sounds interesting at the same time in a psychoanalytic sense
>Do you have different ages of superhero eras?
I've had a universe of sorts that began as a collection of ideas that I refined over the years to the point where I'd essentially just 'reboot' it when it got too messy. Eventually just made that development part of the world itself
One aspect of my own universe is that the entire world was created by a kid who used superhero fantasies as a form of escapism. As he grew up, the world would reboot, characters would get different costumes and teams and shit and pretty much no one's noticed save for its Superman/Spider-Man type. First incarnation of the world he was the most respected hero in the universe, now he can't get any of his former teammates to believe him.
Last time I 'updated' it, he'd managed to convince his wife/hero partner that they were married just as the creator of the world overdosed.
Are there any actual in universe superhero stories or is it all focused around the meta concept of the world being a manifestation of this kids mind until he overdoses?
The details of how things get there are altered, but Das Werwolf's death takes place during the Second World War, and it's still Hitler calling the shots in that regard. I've toyed around a little with Kaiser Wilhelm's role in it, but he's more important to the background setting than the primary plot threads.
A lot of the characters in this setting, I've noticed in hindsight, deal very strongly with concepts of self-control and agency.
>The Superman analogue, Lionheart, received his powers because he's an archaeologist and accidentally came into contact with a primordial Lion God that granted him unbelievable power, but with it a lingering bloodlust that grew every time he fought. He initially retired from heroism to prevent the rage from overtaking him, but came back when his own children developed the same powers, electing to risk becoming lost to the bloodlust if it meant finding a way to stop them from meeting the same fate.
>The Batman/Question sort of analogue is a woman whose face is partially paralyzed, and she can't emote - so she created a skin-mounted viewscreen to display "emotes" in place of the immovable facial muscles she has.
>The Flash equivalent is a sort of zen master that uses her speed not to zip around, but to deftly redirect the motions of her opponents and speed THEM up, throwing them off balance - in contrast to her nemesis, a fellow speedster and her former wife who wanted to use their powers for personal gain, and is a more traditional speedster.
>And the twins' nemesis is a kooky, comical super-scientist called Dr. Dement, and notable for his almost goofy nature from his foggy memory - but the twins are unaware this is because he was originally one of the Neo-Nazi scientists that created them, but had a change of heart and tried to protect them with a machine that literally wiped the memory of their existence from his colleagues' minds - at the cost of his own.
Too many women
I just picked a few relevant ones, user.