The Big Book of Superheroes

by Bart King

  1. Latveria: Doctor Doom uses an entire country as his hideout. Beat that, punks!

  The nation of Latveria at a glance:

  Government: Doctor Doom’s dictatorship (duh!)

  Major Holiday: Doom’s Day (celebrated anytime Doctor Doom says)

  Major Airport: Doomsport

  Capital: Doomstadt

  Money: Doom Dollars[35]

  * * *

  [35] Okay, I made that one up. (But you have to admit, Doom Dollars sound pretty cool!)

  Superhero Teams!

  Picking Teams!

  Think of a famous married superhero couple. Go ahead, take your time.

  *drums fingers, twiddles thumbs*

  It’s not easy, is it? And I’ll bet you either chose Mr. and Mrs. Incredible or Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four. Right? Okay, now think of a famous superhero family with kids.

  *drums thumbs, twiddles fingers*

  You thought of the Incredibles again, right? Besides them, there really aren’t that many superhero families. That’s because the average superhero is an “only child.” But this isn’t a bad thing. Some people think that kids with brothers and sisters are less motivated than only children. So being an only child gives you a head start on superhero-dom.

  But hey, don’t cry if you do have siblings. I mean, I have eight brothers and sisters, and look how super I turned out.

  *thinking*

  Actually, you know what? Go ahead and cry. (I am!)

  *wiping away tears*

  Whew. Okay, I feel better now. Anyway, most superheroes were only children who were also lonely children. After all, their parents were usually “missing.”

  So most superheroes start off as orphan loners—and when they grow up, it’s hard for them to get together and cooperate with each other. And that’s why supersquads always run into the same problem: big egos!

  Lobster Girl: Hey, want to join my superteam?

  Rooster Man: No thanks.

  Lobster Girl (steamed): Huh? Why not?

  Rooster Man: It’s just hard to work with others when you’re as awesome as I am.

  A superhero team is like an all-star squad. All the players are great, but their teamwork stinks. Look at the X-Men. Its members are all loners—and the most popular one might be Wolverine. And he’s the worse team player of all!

  That’s why every superhero team needs a superhero coach.

  So, are you ready for the challenge of forming your own supersquad? If so, start with a team-building exercise, like this:

  Superteam Activity

  Super Tales!

  Supplies: Paper, pens/pencils, some comic books that nobody in the group has read.

  Needs: Three to four players—or more.

  One person is picked to be the superhero. She makes a scoresheet with each of the other players’ names on it and selects a comic book randomly. Each of the other players writes their name on their own piece of paper.

  The superhero shows the group the comic book and lets them look at the cover.

  Then the superhero opens the comic book and writes down the story’s first complete sentence. (No sound effects like “Bam!” or whatever.) At the same time, the other players invent their own first sentences for the comic book, based only on their look at the cover, and write them down.

  The superhero collects all the papers, shuffles them, and reads them aloud. It’s important not to crack up while doing so. The other players try to decide which of the sentences actually came from the comic book.

  If someone votes for a player’s invented sentence, the writer gets a point. If a player votes for the real sentence, that player gets two points! After the first round, the role of superhero rotates to another player.

  The only superhero team to have snack time was the Daydreamers. It included a bunch of superkids, plus Howard the Duck. Their adventures took place in a fairy-tale land called Nevernevernarniozbia!

  Now let’s look at three different superhero teams. You should try to make your team like one of them—but which one? For starters, let’s go with the most famous superhero team ever...

  The X-Men

  Formed: 1963

  Home Base: X-Mansion, Westchester County, NY

  Leader: Prof. Charles Xavier (Professor X)

  Members: There have been over one hundred fifty different X-Men over the years. The original lineup was:

  Professor X (Charles Xavier)

  The Beast

  Iceman

  Cyclops

  Angel

  Marvel Girl

  Later members included:

  Storm

  Wolverine

  Colossus

  Nightcrawler

  Rogue

  Psylocke

  People born with the mutant “X-gene” get superpowers when they hit puberty. (As if being a teenager wasn’t bad enough!) And here’s what makes the X-Men unique.

  The X-Men are less of a team and more like a family. So Professor X is the parent, and he keeps track of all his kids. Mutants. Whatever.

  This superteam always has gobs of mutants coming and going. So cliques form, alliances are made, and there are arguments—lots of arguments!

  There have been many quarrels about who the best and worst X-Men members are. My vote for the worst is X-Man. Yep, his name was X-Man and he was a member of the X-Men. That’s x-tremely lame!

  Speaking of arguments, that brings us to the next team—

  The Avengers

  Formed: 1963

  Home Base: Avengers Mansion, New York, NY

  Battle Cry: “Avengers Assemble!”

  Original Members: Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Wasp, and the Hulk. (Captain America joined a little later, after he got thawed out from an iceberg.)

  The Avengers are famous for their horrible teamwork problems. I’ve narrowed these problems down to two major stumbling blocks:

  1. Laziness and Distrust. When the Avengers are presented with a problem, no one superhero feels the need to do all the work. (“Why do I have to fix the satellite? Can’t the Hulk take care of it?”)

  2. Keeping Secrets and Bad Communication. Some Avengers are spies. Others assume that the other superheroes have information, even when they don’t!”

  To stop all their bickering, the Avengers came up with rules. Lots of rules! Together, these rules make up something called a “charter.” So whenever the Avengers have a question about something, they check the charter. For example, let’s say they’re wondering if they should take on a new challenge:

  “The Avengers [can act], providing that the threat in question is super-powered, extra-terrestrial, extra-dimensional, sub-terranean, sub-oceanic, or occult, and engaged in an invasion, infestation...piracy, enchantment or any flagrant violation of international law...”

  That’s as clear as mud! And that leads us to our third superhero squad—

  The Justice League of America

  Formed: 1960

  Home Base: Justice League Satellite in Earth orbit

  Spin-Offs: Justice League Europe, Justice League International, Justice League Task Force, Justice League Elite, Extreme Justice

  Original Members: Aquaman, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Martian Manhunter, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

  The Justice League of America was assembled to battle villains that no single hero—even Superman—could take on solo. So who was their first awesomely scary opponent? Starro the Conqueror!

  Starro was a really big starfish from another planet. After he came to Earth, he started mutating our starfish to help him take over our world. And of course, only a team of our greatest superheroes could stop a...giant starfish?

  Anyway, the JLA members rely on teamwork. So here’s how these superheroes tackle a problem:

  Brainstorm.

  Split up into small groups of two to three heroes. These groups take on different parts of the threat.

  Come back together. Members share their work.

  Make a uni
ted stand against the foe.

  Joke League of America: During a JLA meeting, Batman and Aquaman had a big argument. Both superheroes were mad, and after the meeting, Batman tweeted and Aquaman responded:

  Team Leadership!

  Who’s going to be in charge of your team? This is a superimportant question. Here’s the way leadership works in the three teams we’re talking about:

  The X-Men: Strong, fair leadership under Professor X.

  The Avengers: Weak leadership under Captain America. (It’s not his fault, though. You try getting the Hulk and Iron Man to sit down and listen!)

  The JLA: Democracy, with a different leader for each assignment.

  So now we’ve covered how these groups work. But what about their team personalities? A guy named Grant Morrison described it this way: The X-Men are like a bunch of kids in school. The Avengers are like the school’s football team. And the Justice League is like a pantheon of gods.

  So which team’s style can you relate to best? Remember, there’s no wrong answer...as long as you pick the Justice League of America! It has the perfect balance of mind and muscle, spandex and capes.

  But the main reason the JLA comes out on top is because of what a hero named the Shoveler said: “We struck down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of not bickering.” The exception was when the JLA competed as a team in the Olympics. Aquaman was their coach, and he yelled a lot. “Superman, you’re losing...get with it!” “Snap out of it, Flash!” “Strike three? You’re blind as a Batman!” (Okay, I made that last one up.)

  The Bestest League of America (BLA) was a funny take-off on the JLA. Its members included Aquariuman, Lean Arrow, Blooperman, Aukman, and S’amm S’mithh (the Martian Manhandler).

  Picking a Name

  Your next step in getting your superhero team started is to pick a name. Let me just make a few suggestions:

  No X’s or Mutants. The X-Men’s popularity led to lots of other teams made up of misunderstood mutant teenagers. These include X-Factor, Excalibur, and the New Mutants. Enough already!

  Keep It Short and Snappy. And avoid initials! For example, The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves is known as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for short. And the Amalgamated Universal Network to Inhibit Evil is called A.U.N.T.I.E. (Yeesh!)

  Simple Is Good. I always thought the Defenders had a really cool name.

  But Clever Is Better! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have a funny name. And they also spawned the best rip-off name for a superhero team—the Radioactive Adolescent Black Belt Hamsters.

  Getting Members

  Now you’re ready to start signing up superheroes for your team! So please be fair about allowing people to join. That means a superhero’s gender, species, and birthplace can’t count against them.

  But there is one thing that can.

  Four People You Don’t Want on Your Superteam

  In the 1930s, there was a superhero named the Angel. His “superpower” was the ability to cast his shadow in the shape of an angel.

  That’s it!

  Dazzler was a mutant with a weird superpower. She was a pop star who could turn music into bursts of light that dazzled bad guys. (No, I’m not joking.) Dazzler would say stuff like, “Got to boogie these suckers out!” And her foes included villains like Doctor Sax.

  The Dazzler was such a bad idea that the cover of the last issue of her comic book read, “Because you demanded it—the last issue of the Dazzler!”

  Archie is a teenager who goes to Riverdale High. He seems like a nice enough kid, but his superpowers are limited to:

  Having red hair with a tic-tac-toe grid on the sides

  Knowing someone named “Jughead”

  Being the only person named Archie in a band named the Archies!

  The character named Poison Ivy can release chemicals that make people fall hopelessly in love with her. Take it from me—that’s not good for team spirit!

  Initiations!

  Before letting someone join up, give the superhero a test they have to pass. This “initiation” will make it a little hard to join your team. That way your new members will value their membership. They will also feel more loyalty to the group.

  Different groups have different initiations. In the NBA, rookies have to wear pink Hello Kitty backpacks for a whole year. But that’s too easy! So you may want to have new members perform good deeds when nobody is watching.

  Of course, if no one is watching, it’s a little hard to know when the initiation is done!

  Remember, an initiation isn’t the same as “hazing.” That’s when new members have to pass dangerous or humiliating tests to join. Hazing is always uncool—so don’t make your membership test too hard!

  That’s all? When Spider-Man wanted to join the Avengers, his initiation was fighting the Hulk. And that’s how the web slinger’s plan to be an Avenger hit a snag. (Shazam!)

  Super Rules!

  If you decide you want a charter (like the Avengers), here are some rules you might want to include:

  Every member should have at least one superpower. If it appears an applicant doesn’t have a superpower, think hard. Do they know that plaids and stripes shouldn’t be worn together? Then they have the superpower of good fashion sense. (They can join!)

  New members have to bring doughnuts to their first meeting. (That includes maple bars!)

  A new team leader will be elected each month.

  Being a coward is grounds for being expelled from the team—unless cowardice is the hero’s superpower.

  Members who get kicked off the team must undergo hypnotic brainwashing. That way, they’ll forget all of the team’s secrets. (Don’t worry, this only causes a little bit of brain damage.)

  Okay, now’s the time to gather your team members together, because I have the ultimate challenge for you punks superheroes! I like to call it...

  Superteam Activity

  Mission: Improbable!

  Supplies: Masking tape, red yarn (optional). (Oh, and a house!)

  Before people arrive at the house, tape long pieces of red yarn at different spots and angles across a stairway or crowded room. (If you don’t have any yarn, long strips of masking tape also work well.)

  When your team arrives, tell them that these “laser lines” will destroy anyone who touches them!

  Challenge your team members to work through the lasers without making any of them move.

  If a teammate does make a laser line move, it’s not the end of the world. After all, it’s just a strip of yarn! So to make everyone take this seriously, if anyone hits a laser line, shoot them with an actual laser.

  Advanced Version: Lay out the laser obstacle course with directions. In some places, the players must go over them, in other spots, they must duck under. (And in some areas, there is hot lava that must be avoided at all costs!)

  Be sure to have at least one spot where teammates have to jump over the lines onto some cushions. Oh, and have one more place where the laser lines are so thick, the players will have to use teamwork to get through them together!

  So, did that exercise join your squad together? Or did it end with the end of the team? Sadly, I’ve seen many superhero teams dissolve over the years. But better for a team to dissolve than for it to become one of...

  The Four Crummiest Superteams!

  4. The Inferior Five was a team of very unimpressive superheroes. For instance, they got around in a used car called the Inferi-Car. But with members like Awkwardman and the Blimp, what do you expect?

  3. Batman’s enemy, Ra’s al Ghul, is a member of the League of Shadows. And it’s not a very nice group. As Ra’s al Ghul says, “[we’ve] been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome...burned London to the ground....Every time a civilization reaches the peak of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.”

  Ra’s al Ghul means “Demon’s Head” in Arabic.

  2. Joining the team of misfits called the Doom Patrol is like signing
a death warrant! As longtime member Robotman said, “Do other superteams lose members like the Doom Patrol? No. Of course not. If they did, nobody would get into the ‘hero’ business.”

  1. The worst superteam ever was known as Justice League Detroit. One of its members was Vibe, a break-dancer who had “the power to vibrate things.” Vibe also liked to break-dance on street corners while wearing baggy yellow parachute pants.

  Wow. The only way I can get that bad taste out of my mouth is with...

  My Three Favorite Superhero Teams!

  3. The Legion of Super-Heroes is a team of superkids from the far future. Its members include Brainiac 5 (he has a “twelfth-level brain”), Triplicate Girl (she can split into three bodies), and Chameleon Boy. (BTW, Chameleon Boy’s father got Yorggian Fever. Try not to bring it up.)