Thread: Deciding on an Origin

Hey everyone, I've wanted to write a comic book for years and I was thinking about starting it soon. I have thought of several story lines for it so far. It's a super hero comic that starts out with six teenagers gaining super powers and how they slowly become a crime fighting group. I already have mentally developed villains, side characters, major graphic novel-style like story archs to be compared to things like Marvel's Civil War, DC's Infinite Crisis, etc., and even how the comics could be translated into films.

The hardest thing I've been having trouble with is the origin story. I first initially thought I knew how I wanted the origin story to be like. That's still mostly true, but what I'm talking about here is the origin to how they received their powers and their first villains. I want an origin for it that's interesting, unique, and would be liked from the majority of my future fans. I don't want most of them to say, "I really like (Name of comic here), but the origin story's always been kind of lame."

Here are three versions of how the group obtained their powers below. All of these need to be fleshed out some, but Please vote on the concept you like the most.



Origin #1. The main characters are kidnapped while on a school trip to the zoo. Their kidnappers are a couple of men looking for laborers for their drug and human trafficking endeavors. They make the children produce heroin, crack, and cocaine. He molests the two female characters and sometimes offers them up to prostitution. They also serve as the kidnappers' personal slaves. They are held there until they are the ages of 16-17. One day when the kidnappers are coming back from a gambling session, they over hear a man in a business suit discussing to a friend about an invention his company is coming up with and that he should invest in it as he claims that it will change the world. He also offers his friend to take a look at him with it that night.
The kidnappers listen in for the address of the company's building and late that night they head to the building and steal the invention without detection. They bring it back to their house and out of curiosity to see what it does or if it even works, they test the invention on the main characters. An explosion erupts setting the house on fire. The main characters take the opportunity to escape from the house and shortly a few days later they discover that they have super powers.


Origin#2 The main characters are in their 3rd year of high school. They never had any real personal relationships with each other before they gained their super powers. One of the characters gets involved with a gang and makes the mistake of screwing up and owing the gang money. He tries to make up for it by leading them towards one of the female characters who happened to grow up wealthy. A few of the gang members goes over to her place when she is throwing a party. The character that ratted her out is with them and as soon as they see the last person leave they go in to rob it. The house isn't as clear as they thought. Besides the girl, five of the other characters are still in the house. They tie them up while they rob the house. They don't want to leave any witnesses to identify them so they take them with them to execute them away from any straying eyes.
At their holding right before the gang executes their witnesses, several men bust down the door and ask them where their device is. The gang members pretend that they don't know what he's talking about until one of them is tortured enough to speak. The gang member shows them to where they kept the man's stolen property and as son as the man drops his guard, the gang member takes out several of the men and shoots the device, causing it to go haywire and cause an explosion. Most of the gang members are dead and the building is on fire. All the main characters are alive if a bit beaten. The one who ratted out the wealthy female unties the others and escape from the burning building, unaware that the radiation from the blast gave them their powers.

Origin#3 The main characters are in some sort of program for the summer that's for academic achievement, sports, art, whatever. Anyway during their trip the programs' organization needs human test subjects for their super genetic engineering device. They choose those six main characters and cover up their disappearance to the other students by telling them that they went home. The organization has them in testing for about three weeks, with no results. One day the main characters comes up with a way to escape. A few days after they escaped they discover that they have super powers.



1 is my favorite out of the bunch, but I fear that it could cause some problems down the line. Since the main characters were in enslavement for ten years, I was wondering how I could make it work for them being in high school. There's the issue of them being out of school for so long and could they socialize with other students after being cooped up in a couple of drug dealers house for ten years and a couple of them were molested on the regular. I think that might make things a bit difficult to be interesting. I just mainly like the first idea because it's the darkest.

I was obviously lazy on the third one. I feel the concept on that one was overdone, but just vote on the one you like the most or don't. This is for y'all anyway.

All feedback or personal suggestions appreciated.

It seems to me that "origins issues" are often "prequels". You see "Origin of...." on comics and it's rarely issue number one.

Which I mention because it might mean you don't have to be in a hurry. You can always go back and originize things later, depending on how your series is working out.

Or not.

I like Lin's mention. There's nothing wrong with starting in the middle of their lives as superheroes, and going back or not depending on how you want the story to progress.

Originally Posted by lin

It seems to me that "origins issues" are often "prequels". You see "Origin of...." on comics and it's rarely issue number one.

You may be right for modern comics, but for the old Marvel ones that's usually not true for the heroes. For the villains, or less prominent characters, they do usually happen later in the series (e.g. issue #55). But for heroes they often will start off with the origin on issue #1. Examples would be Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Iron Man, and quite a few others.

I agree that some do happen later on in the comic, but I wouldn't say that it happening on the first issue is rare.

Any opinions here? I need some statistics.