Tips on Creating a Superhero: How to Write The Next Spider Man, Spawn, or Superman

Super heroes have a wide base of popularity with youth and adults these days. With the X-Men and Spider Man films it was proved they could find success outside the comic book medium. Other recent hits include "Hulk" and "Batman Begins."

With this success there appears to be a growing movement to write super heroes. The fact is, it's very hard to write out a super hero who can see the pages of a major publisher comic. Still, independent publishing is also growing in popularity, though the money in these enterprises isn't as good.

In this discussion, we will discuss why heroes like Batman, Spider Man, X-Men, Punisher, Superman, and Hulk are successful. The discussion will also relate tips on creating a super hero from scratch.

All heroes start out with a origin story. Spider Man was bitten by a radioactive spider. Superman traveled to earth from another planet. The X-Men were all born different. The Punisher lost his family in a mob hit. Batman had his parents killed before his eyes. The list could go on. Unlike novels, where just about anything goes, the origin story is a must for the character to reach success and become popular. It doesn't have to be a radioactive spider for your character to be a hero; anything that turned them to fighting crime works. The Punisher has no powers and neither does Batman. While most super heroes will have powers, it isn't always necessary; there is also the fact that many of the more popular heroes don't have powers at all. This can be seen in Punisher (who fights with guns), Batman (who uses intelligence and martial arts) and even Iron Man (uses a suit of armor but is a person underneath).

Once the origin story is created, the hero will need a villain to fight. It usually isn't nature or himself but a true person or thing upon which the character will have to fight a protracted battle. Joker is probably the most popular of all villains, but there are hundreds of other minor villains that only appear a few times in a comic. Usually having more than one villain - each with an origin - is necessary in creating the fresh conflict a hero will need.