10 Grim Realities Of Superhero Origins

Look, we don't expect our comic books to be realistic. Far from it, in fact - the escapism afforded to readers by flipping through the adventures of costumed superheroes is entirely dependant on them being nothing like our own lives. Why would you read a comic that was just the same as the things you experienced? That would be boring. You want to be transported from the humdrum day-to-day mundanity of your existence, to be distracted from the grim realities of the world, to make believe that a guy dressed as a huge bat driving his sports car into a clown is a normal thing to happen. It's fun. It's silly. There's a suspension of disbelief because superhero comics happen in a fictional universe which looks like ours, but operates on its own internal logic.

What happens if you do bring reality crashing down on these fantasies, though? The people who make comics aren't scientists, or sociologists, or whatever - that's why they're making comic books. Which means that whilst they'll throw in some smart-sounding mumbo jumbo or barely-believable justification for a character's power set and motivations, we just blindly accept it, ignoring any implausibilities should these people exist in real life. Well we're blinded no more, because we've put a bunch of the most famous superhero origin stories under the lens to see how they hold up in real life conditions. And it's not pretty.

These are ten grim realities of superhero origins.