We all know Spiderman got his superpowers when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. But what if it wasn’t a spider? What sort of hero would you get? Or would they even become a hero?
It started when I was chatting with a co-worker many years ago. He was into superhero-themed RPG’s, and he was running a campaign using the Champions ruleset.
One evening I posed the question to my friend that asked above: Pick a radioactive animal for Peter Parker to get bitten by, and then describe the superhero. Here are a few to get you started.
Squirrel Woman
Squirrel Woman can fly! Well, she can glide, anyway. That’s something. And she’s pretty strong. Her claws are sharp too, and she’s really, really good at climbing. She likes to climb tall buildings, jump off, and glide down to attack bad guys.
The Bat
“Batman” was already taken, but that guy wasn’t actually bitten by a radioactive bat. We’ll call this guy “The Bat” He really can fly, and see by sonar in complete darkness. The sonar also lets him see through walls to a limited degree, and if he works at it, he can produce ultrasonic waves that can knock out the bad guys for a little while.
The Calico Kid
Callie Johnson was bitten by a radioactive house cat, and became The Calico Kid. She can jump and climb, and has claws on her hands and feet that she can retract at will. She always lands on her feet. And, she can trigger an allergy attack on anyone within 30′.
They Can’t All Be Winners
We quickly disposed of entire classes of animal from consideration. We decided that any sort of fish or marine animal wouldn’t make a very playable character, since they would have to be in the water. Crabs, lobsters, and the like look too weird – they’d be villains in a comic book, not heroes. Birds can fly, but nothing much else about them felt super-heroic. Super Chicken was an old animated cartoon, so we can’t use that one…
A lot of animals sounded good at first, but in the end they all were strong, and had keen senses, and maybe teeth or claws. But at best they were bland (Bear Man), or absurd (Wombat Man).
And then there was…
Cockroach Man
Yes, yes, I know cockroaches don’t have jaws, and can’t bite. Hush. These are comic book characters.
Poor Cockroach Man. He wanted to be a hero. Really, he did. He managed to save a child from drowning in the river, and all the kid’s mom would do was scream for more hand sanitizer. Remember that time he rushed into a restaurant to help someone who was choking, and the board of health closed the place for a month? Nobody seemed to want his help. They didn’t even want him around. None of the superhero groups in town would let him join. And we won’t even get into the whole hotel endorsement debacle.
It’s no wonder he snapped, really. One morning he went on a rampage in a local grocery store. Then he hit the Orkin office, and stamped all the employees to death while allegedly shouting “Ew! Ew! Kill it! How’s it feel now, huh?”
After that he became a hunted bug. He was eventually exterminated by the League of Justice – Topeka Franchise.
Got any others?
I hope you enjoyed this bit of whimsy, and I invite you to play along.
If you can think of any interesting “radioactive bite” superhero origins, please comment below. And “interesting” could mean funny, absurd, or actually playable.
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