There are many comics about superheroes.
There are not so many comics about becoming superheroes.
And I’m not talking about origin stories. When not done right, origin stories are terribly boring. And most of them are done in a speed only resembling the famous power chord montage from Rocky: “Whoa, I’ve got superpowers! Let’s fight crime! Oh, I screwed up. I’ve learned a valuable lesson now. Let’s fight crime again! A-ha! Now I’ve made it!”
I find it amazing that while math and English and other things we learn in school takes us several years to learn, something as complex and difficult as being a superhero is pretty much something you can learn overnight, without a single instructor.
So here’s a twist: What if becoming a superhero was something you actually needed to study and train hard for over years before actually getting to do the “field work”? Okay, I know that’s not a very new idea, considering that at least Stan Lee did it in 1963, but…
… what if we played it for laughs? Young people treating “superhero school” just like being in real school?
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s been done before. So my idea for today is a bit more specific than that. I’m picturing a comic strip superhero driving school.
Here’s a though experiment, dear reader: Do you know how to drive a car? If so, would you feel comfortable getting behind the wheel of the Batmobile?
I know it would freak the heck out of me. Superhero cars are sometimes as awesome as the heroes themselves, and I imagine that would make them really complex to drive. Push the wrong button, and congratulations, you’ve triggered the catapult seat or set everything on the sidewalk on fire. Or both.
So let’s imagine that a couple of retired superheroes start a driving school for young superheroes-to-be. The number of hilarious situations that could come out of that is a very large number.
51 down, 49 to go.
I think that Batman is the only superhero who has his own special car for the moment, so I have the feeling that this is most fun for those who don’t have the huge insight on the modern era superheroes. You know, most superheroes have actual superpowers, and then often flight as a power so cars are made obsolete. It could be a nice parody of the silver age though.
Batman’s not the only one. There’s Superduck, too.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a car though; it could be all sorts of clichéd superhero vehicles, like the X-Men’s plane, a time machine or an Iron Man suit of some sort. Could be fun
Agreeing a bit with Ola – the super-car seem to belong more to the spy-spoof genre than to the superhero one (though the two are very close, when you look at non-powered superheroes/villains like the Bat-family or, as you mention Olaf, Superduck) these days. Even the examples of superhero-cars we come up with are only tied to the not-so-super branch of superheroes, who as I said really are more like James Bond than like Superman anyway.
That said, your idea is a lot more promising if using superheroes (retired spies are funny, but retired superheroes are hilarious, and ditto for young’uns in both categories), so I wholeheartedly applaud it. Would love to read something like this.