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Old 09-28-2018, 06:31 AM   #2
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

This is a bit of a minefield, so we'll want to tread carefully. One method would be to come up with something you feel is wrong with the modern status quo, then create a superhero to combat it and a supervillain to champion it. This need not be something you personally oppose, of course. In fact, I think we should open this with a disclaimer that opinions expressed by heroes do not necessarily match those of the poster, and that we should avoid political discussion like the plague here - by necessity, the villains are extreme caricatures of supporters of the status quo, and should not be taken as an indication of how those supporters actually are.

As an example, let's use abortion (told you, minefield). You could actually do this with the hero being on either side (you can oppose the status quo of abortion being available, or you can oppose the status quo of access to it being restricted in some areas; note just about anything you choose could have a hero or villain on either side, and you could even have two different hero/villain matchups where the two heroes are on different sides of the issue), but I think it's easier to make a hero who opposes availability and a villain who champions it, in no small part because availability is more the status quo than restrictions thereof. The villain's actually easier - he (or she) is racist and elitist, purposefully trying to use abortion as a means of ethnic cleansing to rid the world of the "unfit." If your Supers world is one where magic is a thing, he may be using a ritual to turn the pain and death of the unborn into mana or similar. The villain would have a chain of seemingly-legitimate abortion clinics (all seemingly unconnected, so that one getting discovered doesn't result in the whole chain getting shut down), but they'd all be run similarly to Gosnell's "House of Horrors" clinic. Indeed, worse - they'd probably abduct pregnant women of minority races (either through physical means or magical compulsion) and force them into abortions, and they'd also corrupt, defame, or assassinate those who oppose them. The superhero, then, would attack these clinics as they sprung up, freeing the women forced there against their will and restricting their violence to the staff that's "in the know" in some way in the scheme. He'd probably be a religiously-themed super, although that's not strictly necessary.

I feel I should reiterate it at this point, but I'm not at all implying those who are pro-choice are anything like the villain above. Again, he's a caricature for the purpose of creating an evil villain for the hero to oppose.

Of course, you could also take a different route - Captain Planet sort of follows the model you're looking at, with the Planeteers being something like a superheroic version of Greenpeace or similar organizations.

EDIT: Something else a bit less controversial, but somewhat leaning toward dystopianism, would be the webcomic Indefensible Positions. There's a lot more going on there, and the heroes are less revolutionaries than you might want, in no small part because they oppose both the status quo of extreme Order and the counterpoint of extreme Chaos. Oh, and because their primary antagonists are arguably more well-intentioned extremists than true supervillains.
EDIT2: Forgot to mention, but while the comic is itself roughly PG-13 in terms of art and language, many of the themes are inappropriate for children. The first real chapter (chapter 1's just a very basic introduction) involves the main character disrupting a ritual to kill a room full of sexual deviants in order to reduce general sexual deviancy in the world.
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Last edited by Varyon; 09-28-2018 at 06:59 AM.
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