a missive from the near future
It started with the superheroes; kids like Terrifica, and Mr. Silent, and Shadow Hare, who had grown up at the height of "realistic" superhero media, and decided that dressing up in a costume and fighting crime sounded like a fun hobby. Unfortunately, they quickly discovered that crime just isn't really as prevelant and easy to find in the real world as it is in comic books, so they spent most of their time helping old ladies across the street, making sandwiches for the homeless, and making sure drunks got home safely.
Next came the challenges. In lieu of real crimes to fight, the superheroes created challenges for themselves and each other, most of which boiled down to a cross between a parkour course and a charity drive. When the city of Toronto sponsored the first Heroathon charity race through the city, the hobby began to attract more athletic and dare-devilish adherents, who subsequently created more dangerous challenges for themselves and each other. Superheroes also more and more frequently stepped into the role of antagonist to add the obstacle of a live opponent to their challenges. These "super vs super" challenges gradually turned into elaborate games of Steve Jackson's "Killer", made all the more dangerous in a post 9/11 America where pretending to be a terrorist or assassin is very likely to get you shot by police. When major cities banned "costumed heroics" in response to the disruption it was causing, this only made the whole activity all the more thrilling for those involved, and forced them to extend the challenges into their personal lives as well, breaking the taboo on discovering and attacking other superheroes' "secret identities". Most called it quits at this point. Others thrived on the constant danger. Some became full-blown paranoid schizophrenics.
Meanwhile, the "super vs super" dynamic also bled over into the BDSM community, which already had a long history and established guidelines for faux torture, kidnapping, and manhunts, which fit perfectly with living out fantasies of being chased, captured, and "punished" by a superhero. The scene did an excellent job of policing itself and making sure that nothing went too far, until a tiny article on Boing Boing -- that spread to Warren Ellis's blog, Metafilter, and Gawker -- suddenly flooded the superhero BDSM sub-subculture with neophytes who didn't know any of the rules or where to draw the line; the bondage equivalent of script kiddies.
As ignoble as it seems, it's most likely that the first supervillians came from this surge of kids who just didn't know the rules. Sadly, the media didn't see that history was being made, so it's hard to nail down the first supervillain since news outlets weren't differentiating between supervilliany and a run-of-the-mill bank robbery or act of terrorism until things were well underway. Complicating matters further is the fact that, although there's no specific confederacy amongst them, supervillians regularly take very violent revenge on police forces that kill one of their kind, so most news agencies have a strict moratorium on labelling anyone killed in a police stand-off as a "supervillian". This revenge dynamic also makes police shy away from confrontations with anyone presenting himself as a supervillian; although arrest is viewed as "a fair cop" (and an opportunity for a daring escape), several of the more charismatic supervillains who have committed suicide when facing arrest or in police custody have been enough to spark retribution from the supervillian community.
Naturally, this state of affairs leaves masked superheroes as the people best equipped to combat supervillians. Most of the first wave of superheroes couldn't or wouldn't make the transition from "Boy Scout in a funny costume" to "killer of killers"; Terrifica has long since hung up her cape, the original Mr. Silent was killed by one of his own former teammates turned villian, and Shadow Hare has gone into hiding since his teammates were killed by supervillains (although it's widely speculated that he's still in the mix under another superhero name with a forged secret identity). It's common knowledge that many police officers moonlight as superheroes, punishing the guilty off the clock that they couldn't touch otherwise, and it's also widely speculated that a few supervillians themselves have double identities as superheroes, taking out the competition and perhaps also atoning in their own way for the terrible things they've done.
This all creates a wonderful spectacle for everyone else; tabloids and blogs are making it big by walking the tightrope between sensationalizing the exploits of superheroes and supervillians, and teasing their readers about their subjects' true identities, and taking care (in most cases) not to spill the beans on anyone's true identity, since unmasking a superhero is a death warrant, both for the hero and for the unmasker. The media coverage fuels the fire; many of today's schoolchildren actually seriously aspire to be superheroes or even supervillians "when they grow up", and more adults are making that dangerous leap every day. Big business, naturally, is hungry for a piece of the action, but after a disastrous superhero sponsorship left GoDaddy literally in ruins with most of their staff dead, the closest corporations can come to the fray is by selling equipment -- via anonymous mail order -- that could be of particular use to superheroes (and which is just as often used by supervillains).
Next came the challenges. In lieu of real crimes to fight, the superheroes created challenges for themselves and each other, most of which boiled down to a cross between a parkour course and a charity drive. When the city of Toronto sponsored the first Heroathon charity race through the city, the hobby began to attract more athletic and dare-devilish adherents, who subsequently created more dangerous challenges for themselves and each other. Superheroes also more and more frequently stepped into the role of antagonist to add the obstacle of a live opponent to their challenges. These "super vs super" challenges gradually turned into elaborate games of Steve Jackson's "Killer", made all the more dangerous in a post 9/11 America where pretending to be a terrorist or assassin is very likely to get you shot by police. When major cities banned "costumed heroics" in response to the disruption it was causing, this only made the whole activity all the more thrilling for those involved, and forced them to extend the challenges into their personal lives as well, breaking the taboo on discovering and attacking other superheroes' "secret identities". Most called it quits at this point. Others thrived on the constant danger. Some became full-blown paranoid schizophrenics.
Meanwhile, the "super vs super" dynamic also bled over into the BDSM community, which already had a long history and established guidelines for faux torture, kidnapping, and manhunts, which fit perfectly with living out fantasies of being chased, captured, and "punished" by a superhero. The scene did an excellent job of policing itself and making sure that nothing went too far, until a tiny article on Boing Boing -- that spread to Warren Ellis's blog, Metafilter, and Gawker -- suddenly flooded the superhero BDSM sub-subculture with neophytes who didn't know any of the rules or where to draw the line; the bondage equivalent of script kiddies.
As ignoble as it seems, it's most likely that the first supervillians came from this surge of kids who just didn't know the rules. Sadly, the media didn't see that history was being made, so it's hard to nail down the first supervillain since news outlets weren't differentiating between supervilliany and a run-of-the-mill bank robbery or act of terrorism until things were well underway. Complicating matters further is the fact that, although there's no specific confederacy amongst them, supervillians regularly take very violent revenge on police forces that kill one of their kind, so most news agencies have a strict moratorium on labelling anyone killed in a police stand-off as a "supervillian". This revenge dynamic also makes police shy away from confrontations with anyone presenting himself as a supervillian; although arrest is viewed as "a fair cop" (and an opportunity for a daring escape), several of the more charismatic supervillains who have committed suicide when facing arrest or in police custody have been enough to spark retribution from the supervillian community.
Naturally, this state of affairs leaves masked superheroes as the people best equipped to combat supervillians. Most of the first wave of superheroes couldn't or wouldn't make the transition from "Boy Scout in a funny costume" to "killer of killers"; Terrifica has long since hung up her cape, the original Mr. Silent was killed by one of his own former teammates turned villian, and Shadow Hare has gone into hiding since his teammates were killed by supervillains (although it's widely speculated that he's still in the mix under another superhero name with a forged secret identity). It's common knowledge that many police officers moonlight as superheroes, punishing the guilty off the clock that they couldn't touch otherwise, and it's also widely speculated that a few supervillians themselves have double identities as superheroes, taking out the competition and perhaps also atoning in their own way for the terrible things they've done.
This all creates a wonderful spectacle for everyone else; tabloids and blogs are making it big by walking the tightrope between sensationalizing the exploits of superheroes and supervillians, and teasing their readers about their subjects' true identities, and taking care (in most cases) not to spill the beans on anyone's true identity, since unmasking a superhero is a death warrant, both for the hero and for the unmasker. The media coverage fuels the fire; many of today's schoolchildren actually seriously aspire to be superheroes or even supervillians "when they grow up", and more adults are making that dangerous leap every day. Big business, naturally, is hungry for a piece of the action, but after a disastrous superhero sponsorship left GoDaddy literally in ruins with most of their staff dead, the closest corporations can come to the fray is by selling equipment -- via anonymous mail order -- that could be of particular use to superheroes (and which is just as often used by supervillains).