The question of magic

Wavelength loves to talk about "magic powers", "sorcery", and "other dimensions". They like asking the Big Question: "is magic real?" Since it's Wavelength, their default answer is "yes". Of course. But is magic real?

To date, nobody has advanced a comprehensive definition of magic as a distinct power. Part of the problem is that for a large part of human history, any competent scientist would have identified superpowers as "magic".

Webster's gives us: "a power that allows people to do impossible things by saying special words or performing special actions". Anything that actually happened can't be "impossible", so that's unhelpful.

Let's try Wikipedia: "magic or sorcery is an attempt to understand, experience, and influence the world using rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, and language". The original lacked the Oxford comma, so I added it in. 'Cause I'm evil.

Alright, so that's a start. What distinguishes "magic" from run-of-the-mill "superpowers"? It's that last part: "rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, and language". Magic isn't an invocation of your own power, it's a request to some greater power to do something on your behalf, using some specific protocol for the petition.

Based on that, we can rephrase the question of "is magic real". Instead, it's: "is there any greater power out there to which you can petition?" I will go as far as to say there could be. Here's how it would work.

Let's say hypothetically that some high-Stage super, like 7 or 8 or something equally ridiculous, actually existed. Say that he's got something like Beast-Boss, a thing that sits in the human brain and interfaces with the nerves there. So he can read your thoughts, maybe influence them. He'll certainly have a means of controlling some of the fundamental forces. If you give him a power like Cloud, who can affect liquids and gases at range by broadcast from his own body's cells, maybe he can exert this sort of power from the nano-symbiotes in your head. So you ask for something the right way, the super hears you, and you get what you asked for. That's pretty impressive, and I'd even call it a god-like level of power.

How else could it work? Well, there's the little question of how people originally got super-powers to begin with. We understand the mechanisms of inheritance and propagation, but we have no idea where any of this really came from. Like I talked about awhile back, there's any number of potential explanations. It's just as valid to say, I don't know, that Hitler and Nazi occultists released some potential magic energy into the world and that made superpowers possible or something. In that case, magic would be the true origin for super-abilities, and anyone who could directly control magic would have an edge over "regular" supers. But that just opens the door to questions like "how does magic work", and that's not something I feel like wasting my time on writing about.

The education of a young super

"Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man" -- St. Francis Xavier

Some attempts have been made to create "all-supers" schools for general education, at every grade level. As the presence of superhuman potential can be revealed by a blood test at almost any age, it is possible to sweep a population for signs of it.

Currently, segregating superhuman and mundane students is illegal in public schools. Private schools are allowed to make a distinction, provided that they can demonstrate a "significant commitment to the educational needs" of their supers, and they may not turn away mundanes if they take any government funding at all - Title IV of the Civil Rights Act does not extend to private institutions.

Past attempts at creating such schools in the United States have run from the benign (the Heights Academy - see below) to borderline indoctrination and brainwashing (the Miller Mountain Schools). Other countries often have similar cases.

Power High

A specific sort of super-school involves training supers in the use of their powers. Such schools do not receive Federal funding, although groups like the Department of Defense will pay for "scholarships".

There are three such institutions in the United States:

• Black River Mentoring, located in Los Angeles, advertises itself as "a full-spectrum curriculum for transhuman individuals in the modern world". Its instructors are a mixture of ex-soldiers and supers, and it has come under investigation by the Department of Justice in the past. Critics accuse it of being a training ground for super-mercenaries.
• Lydecker Preparatory School, in upstate New York, was created by an endowment from anonymous benefactors. It's geared more for supers to get into business and politics, and persistent rumors of "mind-control rings" usually center around Lydecker graduates.
• Power Pro, in Texas, is organized and run in cooperation by an alliance of paramilitary group. Though it is not publicized, their goal is the training and indoctrination of superhumans. The school has remained out of trouble by offering their students' services to groups like the DEA in hunting down drug smugglers coming across the American border.

School Rivalry

The Cascade mountain range plays host to two reclusive educational institutions.

The Heights Academy is a private primary and secondary school for children who demonstrate superhuman powers or gifts of any kind. Scholarships are provided at a very generous level. The teachers are well-trained, well-paid, and very capable. There is a small contingent of security personnel, for the protection of both students and staff. The curriculum includes both general education and the practical use of superpowers.

The Boddicker Reform School, very nearby, serves quite a different purpose. Boddicker is where juvenile super-convicts are sent, on the theory that most super-proofed prisons are not equipped for juvenile offenders and certainly not conducive to their education. The school is run more like a prison than a place of learning, but the staff are professional, empathic, and discreet.

The proximity of the two schools is no accident. The Cascades afford an ideal area in which to practice powers, especially those involving mobility or destructive forces, without attracting attention. But there are other reasons.

The founders analyzed the state of superhumans around the world and concluded that what was missing wasn't more law and order, but more understanding. The Heights Academy and Boddicker kids regularly train together, compete against each other in carefully refereed competitions, and even attend events (like sports) in mixed groups. The first generation of graduates seemed to vindicate the founders' theories, at least partially - while several of the Boddicker kids went on to become villains and several Heights graduates took up heroic vigilantism, their interactions were more rivalry than blood feud. Their shared upbringings and common experiences forged a bond between them that spared both the supers and any nearby citizens a lot of bloodshed.

Several groups - including government agencies like ACTION - have "guidance counselors" in place at Heights Academy, hoping to steer graduates toward their respective organizations. And while Boddicker makes every effort to provide legal and safe career options for its kids, the fact is that a few of its career paths are fronts for villain groups who need apprentices, flunkies, or cannon fodder.

The schools have come under heavy criticism, claiming that their structure is set up to encourage conflict, rather than really trying to rehabilitate juvenile offenders or prepare teenagers for anything but the superhuman world. That said, there have been a few cases where students were transferred from Boddicker to Heights Academy without major incident - a sign of actual rehabilitation, and thus success.

Hints of an underwater civilization

Following the last couple of days of archaeological interest, I want to talk about something that I've heard talked about regarding Sea-czar, the Deep One, and Pelagos. The latter, in particular, has made a career out of underwater archaeology, and these three are apparently involved in some sort of power struggle. At the heart of their conflict is what sounds like an entire sunken civilization - and rumors (on Wavelength, naturally) that it's still active.

Here's the intel I was able to intercept from Pelagos' communications with his current sponsor:

• Underwater ruins have been found dotting the Pacific ocean.
• Most of them date anywhere from 12,000 B.C. to 6,000 B.C., but it's not clear what method of dating is being used here.
• The architectural style is unknown but shows proto-Japanese and proto-Mayan characteristics.
• Signs of radioactive elements (such as uranium) have been found in clearly artificial containers, suggesting that the builders found a use for them in the same fashion as the Baghdad Battery.
• Carvings in an unknown language were found and are being deciphered. There is no translation key available yet, so this process is expected to take several years.

Most of Wavelength's speculation about an active civilization concerns Pelagos' requests for a massive quantity of underwater explosives, deep sonar, and messages (so far unavailable to the villain community) sent to the Pentagon. Of course they concluded that this means that he's at war with some sort of underwater civilization, and not (for example) doing blasting that he's concerned will be picked up by Navy sonar installations and misinterpreted.

No current geological theory allows for a sunken continent in that time range, and no existing - and credible - theory of parabiology allows for a whole civilization of water-adapted superhumans during that time either.

What we know of Sea-czar and the Deep One is that they are interfering with Pelagos' operations. How, and why, are answers they haven't deigned to share with anyone who talks to me.

This information has a place in this guide for two reasons. First, to illustrate the interesting things that a villain can run into, even in an unexpected place like the Pacific Ocean. Second, to remind young villains to always look for opportunity. Both of Pelagos' underwater rivals have found some advantage they can gain by messing with him. Once I get more details on their caper, I'll share what I can for educational purposes, but for now, just remember - if your hero is doing something unusual, it's almost never because he is bored or something. Heroes can have capers too, so find out more about his, and try to take advantage of it.

Dragons, dinosaurs, and comments

Yesterday's post generated a lot of controversy. Let's break the comments down into categories.

OH SHIT SON SUPER DINOSAURS. This was the #1 category of comments. Let's just get that out of the way.

Your source is full of crap. This was the #2 category, close to #1. The story came with what I consider impeccable physical evidence and I'm personally satisfied that the party I spoke with is on the level. I'm not giving out any more information than that. If you don't think that I'm a reliable source, stop reading my guide.

This invalidates <scientific theory X>. Yeah, maybe. So? Scientific understanding gets overthrown all the time. Anthropology, archaeology, biology, biochemistry, history, parabiology and parahistory would all be shaken up by this information. But I'm a villain, not a scientist.

Speculation that the evidence I alluded to is some sort of dinosaur fossil. Maybe.

Speculation that the evidence I alluded to is a live super-dinosaur. Maybe. Let's consider the facts: in humans, progression through the Hashmal stages extends lifespan, provides a healing factor, and mitigates many biological dependencies like food and breathing. Beast-Boss's empowered animals are known to grow, and that's just Stage 2. So you can probably speculate on the traits possessed by a hypothetical Stage 3 or higher dino, and come out with Godzilla - able to live under the water for extended periods, not dependent on food, huge size, probably increased intelligence, and very long lifespan - perhaps even one of the dinos the poster was suggesting. Well, that's all possible, isn't it.

I want to see a fight featuring <random hero or villain> vs. Mega Dinosaur. Well hey, you might get your chance very soon, who knows.

It's not physically possible to clone dinosaurs, there's not enough viable DNA. Yes and no. The upper limit for any DNA viability is about 1.5 million years. The oldest viable DNA on record is between 450,000 and 800,000 years old, and Tyrannosaurus dates to 67 million years old. But people like the Scarab Guardian are able to grow animal body parts through a process called anaphasic synthesis even without access to the original DNA, so it's possible that another super might be able to create "dinosaurs" from fossils, even without viable DNA.

In fact, based on what I was told, I got the random idea that the Scarab Guardian might in fact be a descendant of these "first pharaohs", the super-powered rulers of ancient Egypt described in yesterday's post, based on his power set. How cool would that be?

Dragons, dinosaurs, and giant monsters

I just had a very weird conversation. Someone I thought was an otherwise ordinary independent super presented me with some very interesting evidence, and said the following:

I've found your supervillain guide interesting. While I don't personally promote villainy, if one must be a villian, I prefer that they emulate your example.

Your series included speculation on ghosts, werewolves, and other creatures of myth. I want to add some observations of my own.

Animal mastery powers, such as those held by Beast Boss, Sea-czar, and the Scarab Guardian, are nothing new. In the time of Aharu, now called Horus, the animals served the god-kings of the old dynasty. They knew the rules of power inheritance even then and they married and bred accordingly, to conserve the power of their blood. Their servants were the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, the meaner creatures of the street. Cats were not gods - they were the eyes and ears of the gods.

Familiarity breeds contempt. As the generations passed, mundanes learned our tricks. So we forced our powers to grow, using what we thought were rites of supplication to the greater gods. Today we know it as the Hashmal process. It was torture, plain and simple, but we did it to preserve our dynasty. We even tortured our children, locking them in their youth forever to create envy and amazement from the people.

It wasn't enough. We needed more. We took the lizard, the crocodile, the bird, and we stretched our power to the utmost. We made monsters. Do you think that Stage 2 is the most that an animal master can endow? We learned better.

Our creations struck fear into the hearts of the unbelievers. Our authority waxed again. None dared challenge us.

Well, there was one threat which we still faced - each other. The human heart hasn't changed that much. Jealousy, mistrust, fear. We felt these things. We set our monsters upon each other, and upon our rivals. The common folk thought of it as war in Heaven. Our priests knew better, but dared not question us.

We had long since melded human and animal bodies, created giants of our pets, and even recreated living corpses from dead flesh. We committed the final blasphemy. One of our sand-shifters found ancient bones. The creatures they represented would be monsters in our age, but utterly ordinary in theirs. You know them as dinosaurs. And we resurrected them - and made them more, and mightier, than anything that walked the earth before or since.

If you have been to Egypt, you have seen the Great Sphinx. Think of that as... a pet. A toy. We created dragons that darkened the skies.

I would like to end this tale by saying that the greater gods punished us for our blasphemy. The truth is far more prosaic. We destroyed each other, for the meanest of motives, for the pettiest of reasons. Greatness was in our grasp and we were simply.... too human to use it properly.

If you must be a villain, be a superior one. If you must live in your own way, don't be a slave to your baser nature. If the world's ways do not satisfy you, create a better world and challenge your fellow man by your example.

So... yeah. I know most of you are thinking "by Odin, Stage 2 dinosaurs". I can't fault you, because I thought that myself. But, I also want to say that I approve of the rest of the message. We villains have a unique chance to be better than our corrupt society. We don't have to do what they say, as long as we're true to our own code.

Spandex: the whole story

Awhile back, I was asked about wearing tights and I outlined what and when a villain should typically wear. Today I want to go into more detail about skin-tight outfits, also known as "super-tights", spandex, or whatever.

Cost. The worst part about the cost of super-costumes is the expense. If you have a motif, you're basically custom-ordering a new one with your pattern on it every time it gets damaged, which will be a lot. This is why many villains prefer color patterns to distinctive symbols.

Comfort. Spandex doesn't breathe at all. It won't let sweat and body fluids out. This might be rough for mundanes, but for supers - who often have alternate metabolic arrangements - this is a non-issue. What spandex does do is stretch and give, which is something you really need your attire to do.

Appearance. As I mentioned before, spandex will make your toned Stage 3+ body look great. This is important because appearance is a valid tool for distraction, charm, and manipulation. Fuego, the villain turned hero in the 80's, was reputed to have "the abs that launched a thousand ships", and he worked it for all he was worth.

Biology. Wait, what? Yes, really! Many supers have powers that radiate directly from their cells. The effect past the skin is very short - a few inches at most, more often than not. An example is the field radiated by teleporters, or many kinds of defensive barriers. You can learn to push this field further - and usually do, unconsciously - but it can be exhausting in the long term. The solution, unsurprisingly, is to wear thinner clothes and not carry things in your hands.

Protection. Basically nil, but by the time you're ready to wear spandex for the reasons given above, you usually shouldn't need much protection from conventional weapons. My personal rule of thumb: once being shot at point-blank range feels like being punched in the chest, you're bullet proof and can switch over to spandex. Before that, wear body armor. Seriously.

Q&A: Why is 9/11 so significant?

I sometimes get asked - always by supers - "what is the significance of 9/11?" They think that just because there have been violent supervillain attacks in the United States, that a couple of towers coming down shouldn't be a big deal.

9/11 was a big deal for the same reason that the OKC bombing was a big deal: it was done by mundanes. Don't know why this matters? Let me break it down.

Super-terrorism

When a supervillain knocks down a building, it starts a very definite chain of events. The Feds get involved, because any violent crime involving powers is automatically flagged as an act of terror. That opens the floodgates of Federal money, Federal law enforcement resources, and Federal jurisdiction. Next, whoever perpetrated that shit gets his ass nailed to the wall if the local heroes, ACTION, the FBI, or whoever can do it. Next, the owners of the building that got aced call their insurance company's claim representative, hand over the ACTION paperwork, and get paid. Next, the insurance company files the paperwork to put a lien on any stolen property the supervillain had that could have been recovered. Finally, they call up some local outfit, like the MTF, and ask them to do repairs. Again, this usually comes out of ACTION's budget, and is paid for by the American taxpayer. Democrats love this because it gives them an excuse to raise taxes. Republicans love this because it lets them appear tough on crime. Independents hate it, because I dunno, nobody votes them into office so they'll bitch about anything.

What you should have noticed about this sequence is that it's very cut-and-dried, and it centers around one guy - the villain. The Man just has to mobilize some force, ride in like the Lone Ranger, and put boot to neck. Americans lap this shit up like sweet, sweet candy. You think it's a coincidence we're a nation of cowboys? America saves the day in a big, visible way, and that makes everyone happy. Furthermore, it's preventable! You just lock that villain up, and you lock up any other villains you come across, and voila, no more buildings go tumbling down.

The invisible enemy

Now we go back to 9/11. Who did it? It took weeks, months, or years to puzzle it all out. It was the sort of crime that could have been done by anybody with the right motivation. It's the sort of crime that could still be done, despite the security theater the government has put in place since then. It's the sort of crime that an awful lot of people want to do, because of America's absolutely racist, intolerant, violent policies toward other countries. The CIA overthrow the democratically elected government of a country, put a man in place to keep the oil running, and then pundits and hawks talk about bombing them because they don't like Americans for some reason. Imagine!

There's no villain here to lock up. There's no bright costume to point at and say "it was that guy". And deep down, the people in power, and the American citizen, know that they're out of their depth. All of America's mechanisms for dealing with super-crime are useless against an enemy without a face. It costs millions to incarcerate a single super-villain, but it will cost trillions to fully prosecute a war against who America thinks its enemies are - and that war will create still more.

In short, America is dealing with an invisible, intangible, infinitely large enemy that it created, and that grows stronger with every attack. Wouldn't you be afraid?

Veteran villains' reactions

Why were veteran villains like me horrified by 9/11? Why did you see pictures of Professor Pulsar on television, weeping tears through his mask? First is obviously the wholesale loss of life. Few villains are willing to kill so many civilians, and many - I hope most - of us prefer not to murder civilians at all. But secondly, we recognized immediately, like the American All-Stars did, what must have happened, and what it would mean.

The stress of dealing with this new reality tore the All-Stars apart and paved the way for the formation of hero teams like the Icons and Team Lambda. Villains have felt the backlash in different ways. The upgraded security apparatus that America put in place has focused more scrutiny on us, the way it's focused on everyone and everything else. That's one more reason we dress in colorful costumes and battle heroes in casual slug-fests. We know what "serious" looks like, and none of us are eager for the hammer to come down. Pageantry and sportsmanship is better than an angry Fed.

Elemental powers and the Hashmal process

I love working with newbie villains. They always ask the questions that get you thinking, or at least show that they're thinking. Here's my favorite from Pyrepower.

"Rock and fire aren't on the periodic table. The four elements are magical, but if there's no magic, why can some people only control those things?"

The Aristotelian or "classical" elements are air, earth, fire, and water. Control of these elements is common enough that the Transhuman Capability Catalog has a whole section (TCC E) for people who manipulate them. So far there's no known instances of controlling "aether" or "akasha", probably because such things have no physical analogue. Notably, there are fewer wind-controllers in China and more people who control metal and wood, which are the classical elements familiar to Chinese.

During a stage transition, the body struggles to adapt to the trauma that's been inflicted, and is usually still being inflicted - for example, being in a burning car wreck. The powers that you get from that experience are often (but not always) powers that will save your life immediately and forestall future incidents of that type. Someone who is badly burned will get fire powers. Someone drowning or being crushed by pressure can get water powers. That sort of thing.

The really neat - and scary - thing is that your body seems to know what's causing the trauma, on a macro-level. It recognizes the problem from a holistic perspective and adapts. Most parabiologists believe in the Stubbs-Robur hypothesis, which basically says that people have the potential for a range of powers, and that the brain is constantly (and unconsciously) sending out activation signals to the body's cells for those powers. When the mitochondria in those cells reach an energy production threshold, the signals are allowed through and your new powers manifest. Most of these powers will concern the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravity, the strong and weak forces), and as soon as your brain feels the danger has passed, activation signal production ceases. Any limitations on the power from then on are based around your subconscious blocks, not around the mitochondria.

In layman's terms, you get as strong as you need to be to break out of danger, and no stronger. And you get only the power you need, not something more generic. This makes sense from a biological perspective, but it sucks for those of us who wouldn't mind a buffet of godlike abilities and are stuck with something specific. Since the classical elements are ingrained into your subconscious thanks to your education and upbringing, often your brain will accept the limited form of power that controls those elements.

Professor Pulsar described it to me like being an Olympic athlete. There's Olympic-caliber runners, jumpers, cyclists, shot-putters, archers, yadda yadda. But the specific things about their bodies that make them Olympic-caliber for their sport aren't the same. Look at the abs of a top-quality runner vs. a top-quality bodybuilder some time and you'll see what I mean. There's no "general athleticism" quality. In the same way, everyone's power development tends toward the specialized. The body doesn't know you'll want a big spectrum of powers for later, it's concerned with keeping you alive now, and it adapts accordingly.

I do know a guy who tried to work this system. He used hypnosis and conditioning to try and deeply convince himself that a certain type of power would be the most appropriate response to any sort of injury. I know what happened to him, but I won't talk about that here. Buy me a drink some time and I'll let you know how it turned out.

Beyond, Between, Before - alternative explanations for superpowers

Yeah, more boring education stuff, then back to the discussions on money laundering - I promise.

Today is Mr. Big's guide to how supers came to be. Some of these are my own thoughts. Others are pulled from wackos like Wavelength, or from actual reputable scientists.

By the way, if you read people online talking about the origin of powers, and they start talking about "the meta-gene", ignore those guys immediately because they're full of shit. The actual modification that makes people have powers lives in the mitochondria, and it's passed from mother to child as the zygote begins the process of mitosis. There's no gene for this. If it was that easy, we'd have some sort of weird super-power cyberpunk world where Monsanto was engineering supers or something.

Beyond - the alien theory

The basic idea here is that superpowers came from aliens. There's obviously a million variations to this, but that's it. There's life elsewhere in the universe, and some of it came here and plugged the super-mutation into our bodies.

It's hard to find biologists who will admit to being on board with this theory. Dr. Chastity Williams in the United States put it like this: "You can accept the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which has zero direct evidence but great predictive power. You can suggest an origin through evolution, which violates every piece of evidence we do have. Or you can win the Nobel."

A popular variation is that supers are actually aliens, and that their powers are normal for their alien species. This usually falls apart the first time a power jammer or jacker takes your powers away from you. Proponents of this theory sometimes dodge that problem by claiming there's only one alien species, and that obviously the power drainers are of that species as well. However, self-proclaimed "alien supers" are on record as saying they're from about two dozen distinct alien species, so somebody is wrong.

With that out of the way - there's some fairly credible theories on how and why this would work. It would also neatly explain a lot of myth and legend, or so the folklore folks hope, so you see a lot of support for aliens-did-supers in the soft sciences. The most reasonable theories usually claim that power potential was seeded thousands or millions of years ago, and for some reason only now is it activating in large numbers.

Between - the non-biological evolution theory

This one says that there is some mechanism out there which is also subject to evolution and mutation, that somehow intersected human bodies and now acts as a symbiote of sorts with us. If you hear people talking about "mitochondrial visitors from between the dimensional boundaries" or "aberrant quantum biology", this is the theory they are talking about.

The holy trinity of this quantum-supers theory are Norman Ryan, Barbara Fall, and Tom Richard. You can find any or all of these three writing for alt-science blogs. There's a healthy amount of actual physics mixed in with some frank speculation, but at least it's entertaining.

There's some crossover with the aliens theory in the form of the Alpha-Omega people, who claim that human supers inherited... something.... from "quantum visitors", and that they are observing our progress from a pocket dimension. In practice this may as well be aliens. I first heard about these guys while reading stuff on Wavelength, in a story where Lee Harvey Oswald use magnetic control powers to kill Kennedy with a magic bullet, because Kennedy was actually a super-powered shapeshifter. Seriously, I have no idea.

Before - alternative evolutions and ancient supers

This is the most boring of the lot, so unfortunately it's probably true. Here's my best understanding of this idea: once upon a time, multi-cellular organisms did bond with single-celled organisms. The single-celled creatures were things similar to bacteria. Multi-celled organisms lived thousands of times as long per organism as the single-celled ones, so the latter got the benefits of evolution and mutation much more. Complex life simply snapped up this advanced evolution and co-opted it.

The cranks who inhabit the fringe of this theory have an interesting answer for "where are they", meaning what happened to the progenitors of all these super-bacteria who let us bend physics and tank explosions with our faces. Basically, they could burrow into the earth, live in the mantle, or float into space. Because they individually could survive in environments where humans have never been able to explore, it's logical that nobody would have found them. Alright, so far so good.

So in this version, humans might have had super powers since they were definably human, or maybe longer. But because we hate and fear the "other", we'd usually kill or reject such people - or at least not breed with them - as they expressed their abilities. These days, yeah, we get what's going on. But in the Middle Ages, or the Stone Age, forget it.

Anyway! Sorry for all the boring crap. We'll be back tomorrow with something good.

Villain History: How we came to be

Aside from the skills I recommended every serious villain should have, I want to talk about the history every serious villain should know. For those of you who are just reading my guide to see how to make money fast, skip ahead, this won't interest you. Some free advice: when you get hauled off to prison because you didn't care about investing effort in excellence, you'll have plenty of time to educate yourself in the slam. For the rest of you, tally ho!

Mythological origins

Human history has stories about people with extraordinary powers. Saints, angels, demons, and monsters. Obviously there's a ton of interest in anthropology and archaeology and folklore, because contemporary super research could answer a lot of the questions posed by these accounts.

Siegel and Shuster wrote "The Reign of the Super-man" in 1933. Legend says that they based some of their stories on an actual guy they knew. This isn't the first confirmed superhuman, but is probably one of the most interesting, because their fictional creation was originally planned as a villain. Go us!

The "Super-man" that S&S wrote about was a guy who had powers given to him with a serum. Mythology is full of "deals with the devil" that require you to drink something, or wear something, to gain power. We know vampires are real - not necessarily the vampires of myth, but something like them. There have been Children of Lilith that strongly resemble mythical werewolves or other monsters, like Wolf 359, the Jersey Devil, and that guy in the Antarctic who calls himself "Frank".

Some researchers think that there's some sort of transition point, where the super-mutation went from something communicable to something inheritable. That's where we come in.

Post-War

Most supers today gain their power in stages. The first that's on record is obviously Apollo. Everyone should know his story already, but here goes. He was a test pilot who survived the breakup of his plane in 1962. He was already one of the most physically and mentally fit guys in his unit, definitely astronaut material already, and then the crackup advances him at least to Stage 3. He got magnetism control powers and a package of secondary abilities out of the deal. In 1967, he goes to the moon without a spacesuit.

By 1970, the Wiezmann Institute in Israel has figured out the biological basis for superpowers. They have no idea how to replicate powers at all, but the signs are obvious. That's how we got terms like "Children of Eve", "Children of Lilith", and "Hashmal process", by the way.

More supers have been appearing. With nothing else to go by, many of them model their actions on the comic books that people were reading at the time. None of the "new" supers were too cautious about their identities - yet.

Friedel

That changed in 1976 with United States vs. Friedel. This woman, an Eve, had eight children and sold them all. All those kids had potential for power, obviously. The FBI figured out that the people she sold them to were also kidnapping other such kids and taking them all out of the country. The whole scandal shocked the nation, and made people a lot more aware of the risks they were taking.

This meant that 1976 to 1996 was one of the worst times for villainy. Anyone who wasn't using their powers for society-approved purposes got branded as a baby-kidnapper or spy or terrorist or something. There was a big push to institute a draft of some kind. The Army ran a series of ads to recruit supers. That failed miserably, because of a simple truth: processing a kid into a soldier requires instilling discipline. The usual boot-camp regime - fear, stress, and so on - is a total loss when tried on supers. So the Army had something like a 50 to 1 ratio of dropouts to usable soldiers, and those kids who'd been put through the wringer went and worked off their accumulated resentment on the nearest city. Nobody was happy.

Oklahoma City

In 1996, the Oklahoma City bombing happened. A lot of civilian supers jumped in to try and help with the cleanup. Most of them were untrained, but even without that, the first responders did an amazing job of coordinating them.

The public loved these "heroes". And that led to the UNCLE SAM Act being passed, and signed by then President Clinton. This also led to the creation of the group ACTION. Though ACTION has been a real pain for villains, the shift of public perception was vital. Supers as a class weren't despicable and distrusted any more. We were legitimized.

Modern Influences

Since 2002, when the All-Stars broke up and the idea of an "official government super-team" fell by the wayside, villainy has experienced a renaissance. We took our cues from the original comic-books, because people have an instinctive sympathy for pageantry. We stole from professional wrestling and they stole shamelessly from us in return. We got a lot flashier and a lot less deadly, but a lot more effective at getting what we really wanted: money, fame, and freedom.

Modern villainy owes a lot to Lucha libre, or Mexican professional wrestling. More than a few masked rudos are actual supers, and Stage 2 wrestlers compete in their own brackets. This interest spills over into the States in places where Lucha is a thing, like southern California. Because of LA's Hispanic population, a lot of showy villains play Robin Hood in the hood. There's a lot of dollars on the table for anyone who can figure out how to legitimize these spectacles.

Finally, reality television shows - as surprising as it may sound - are contributing a lot to the culture of villainy. We tune in to see ordinary people do dumb, sneaky, or spiteful things. We celebrate vice through our feelings of moral superiority at the people on the tube. We judge, but we keep watching. A lot of villains have taken to pulling "nested capers" to take advantage of this trend. They'll go for their real objective, but they'll stage (and deliberately fail at) a larger one, in which the hero is easily able to thwart them. This makes for good television (everyone likes to see the hero win), and for good villainy (several media-savvy villains are polling extremely well, and some who got captured have been granted clemency on the basis of write-in campaigns from fans).

Supervillains of Note

I'll be starting a series of biographies on supervillains you should know about. As usual, file your questions in the comments section, and I'll answer them as soon as I can!

Suggested villain skills

Here's a rundown of what I personally think every serious villain should go learn. Take some community college courses, read stuff online, do whatever it takes. MIT and other places of learning are putting some of their courses up for free, so you have nothing (like enrollment paperwork) identifying you. This is safer, but harder since you lose the benefits of having a teacher.

Acrobatics & Athletics. Get trained in all this stuff, whenever and however you can. You've got a lot of natural agility and potential, you just need experience in using it. Also covers skills like parkour, for those who don't have movement powers already. Being able to get around, and get into (or out of) hard to reach places is super helpful. Let's see the cops chase you when you can jump rooftops and they can't.

Economics. I don't mean macro-economics. Nobody's asking you to predict the next recession. I mean things like: how budgets work, how to plan your spending, but more importantly how money flows through the financial system. A lot of amazing capers have been pulled off because some villain noticed an obscure detail about how money moves.

Martial arts. Go join a dojo and work your way up the belts. You don't need the physical fitness (your body is super, duh), but knowing leverage, striking, and control will let you make use of your natural strength and agility in better ways. And if your powers are suppressed or drained or something, you'll have it to fall back on.

Law. Every villain should be passingly familiar with civics, due process, and other niceties of the legal system. Being on the wrong side of it makes it important that you know your options.

Police procedure. A related topic. Knowing how the cops work, the rules of evidence, chains of custody, and so on will be a big help. A skill you can't learn at school, but you'll need anyway, is the unofficial rules of the police in your chosen city. Find a more experienced local villain and ask respectfully, or go hang out with some gang members for a bit.

Psychology. Learning how people think lets you predict them, and prediction provides control.

Public speaking. We covered this earlier, but I mention it here again for completeness.

Science. Specifically, the sciences that cover your powers. I got into physics to understand electroweak forces and what I could do with them, and I discovered a few neat things I never knew I could do.

Don't whine at me in the comments with stuff like "Mr. Big, I became a villain to have fun! I don't want to go to school to do that!" My advice to those people is: cut the crap. Doing anything well requires some investment. Don't look at this advice as a burden. Look at it as an opportunity.

Besides, it's not anywhere as bad as you think. What, are you worried about repaying student loans? Get real. Is sitting in class not your idea of fun? I totally understand, but after class, all those schmucks are going back to the dorm to get drunk, or returning to their homes to watch "American Idol" and feel miserable, while you are heading to Vegas to carve your name in the side of the Luxor! You have a more exciting life than 99% of the people you will ever encounter!

Mr. Big's words of wisdom: education plus effort equals excellence.