Idea #99: Cigarette superhero

One good starting point for coming up with new comic ideas is telling yourself “Okay, if I take the society we live in and change one thing about it to the polar opposite, what will happen?”

Of course, what you change is up to you – it can be a moral guideline, it can be a law, it can be a law of physics, it could be the effect of an object.

If you have a scientific mindset you could probably try creating a comic set in a world exactly like ours, but with no gravity.

If you want to be wacky, you can create a universe where it’s encouraged and perfectly normal to not wear pants, and you can be arrested for not wearing pants.

If you have a sick and twisted enough mindset to do something really dark, you an create a universe where it’s encouraged perfectly normal to molest your children, and you can be arrested for not molesting your children.

But I’m not here to tell you how to come up with ideas, I’m here to give you one idea for free. So here’s a scenario for a possible universe.

You know how smoking is really bad for you, and it weakens your body, and you die faster, and how some countries have banned tobacco advertising because smoking kills, and all that stuff? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed any of that. But just for laughs, wouldn’t it be fun to create a comic where tobacco gives you superpowers?

Yeah, tobacco. And it doesn’t even have to be special super tobacco, just regular tobacco. Smoking cigarettes makes you stronger, parents encourage their children to do it at a very early age, and athletes aren’t allowed to smoke cigarettes six hours before they perform because it’s considered cheating?

And that one specific tobacco brand is so awesome and powerful that it serves as the power source for a superhero? Obviously, this specific tobacco brand wouldn’t be for sale in stores, it would be a private supply that only this person had access to, otherwise the villains would buy it too. But still, tobacco would be the awesome stuff that made everybody stronger.

And the moral of every story would be “Remember to smoke your cigarettes, kids – that’s what builds muscles!”

I think that the result could be pretty fun. Some people are guaranteed to disagree; they will say that a comic that encourages to smoking is a really bad thing. But hey, then you can yell at them for not understanding the irony. Come on, it’s obvious you don’t actually mean this. And then you can tell them to be happy you didn’t pick the “molest your children” idea instead.

99 down. One to go…