Super Family Team

Who says family time can't be super?

"The Incredibles is not just a superhero movie—it is a movie about a family that just happen to be superheroes."

— Brad Bird

Many Super Teams are made up of unrelated individuals who chose to answer The Call, others at least share a Mass Super-Empowering Event or some form of You All Share My Story. Then there's super teams that arise from, or create their own, Super Family Team. These heroes or villains may have a familial relationship before they gain their powers and choose to stay together because they know and trust each other. On the other hand, a team of unrelated supers may become a super family around a core couple while the rest become True Companions and family by extension. This second one is especially common for the Secret Project Refugee Family or social outcasts made up of unrelated experimental subjects.

It's not uncommon for both versions of this trope to coincide when new supers (or even Muggles) marry into the family or get "adopted". Sometimes the children are raised without knowing their parent's real day job, and receive their Secret Legacy. Other times the kids grow up amidst alien invasions and time travel shenanigans. Though most Super Family Teams are comprised of a Nuclear Family structure (not necessarily with atomic powers, mind), they may substitute an actual mother or father with a Promotion to Parent, Mama Bear and/or A Father to His Men, or go without and simply have a "big bro/sis" as team leader.

This trope is morality neutral, it's just as easy to have a family of crime as it is to have a family of crime fighters. The Super Family Team is likely to use a whole lot of the Family Tropes, and range from being a happy family with occasional scrapes to a Big, Screwed-Up Family that is a snide remark away from family-cide. Evil Super Family Teams tend to have a much more dysfunctional dynamic than that presented in good super family teams. It's not surprising to see evil families fall apart or fail at their missions. That said, it's not impossible for an evil family to actually have better intra-familial relationships than their good counterparts. Still, the general norm is that a good family of supers will have a better chance of success and life expectancy (both as teams and as people) because happy families get along] and stick together.

To keep this trope from being a recounting of "these two supers had a kid with powers", at least two relations have to fight crime, explore Alternate Universes or some other team-based activity.

Usually a Badass Family/Badass Crew.

Usually overlaps with The Fantastic Faux.

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Examples:

Comic Books

DC Comics

• The Marvel Family. (Not the Shazam Family). Captain Marvel (Billy) and Mary Marvel are twins and they "adopted" Freddy into the Marvel Family. They're orphans, so the team consists of just the three of them.
  • Black Adam created the Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain version of this when he created the Black Marvel Family with Isis, his beloved, and her younger brother.
  • The New 52 version of the now-it's-the-Shazam-Family (or Shazamily) has Billy sharing his powers with Mary and Freddy, alongside three new kids, Eugene, Pedro, and Darla, all six of whom have been adopted by the same couple. In fact, Billy's able to share his powers with the others because he sees them as family.
• Team Superman, comprising Clark, his cousin, his clone and Steel. After DC Rebirth, it includes Clark's son, his his adoptive children Osul and Otho-Ra, his Chinese counterpart Kenan, and Comic Book/Steel.
• The Flash Family, which comprised Barry Allen, his nephew, his grandson and his great-niece for a time pre-Flashpoint. Post-DC Rebirth it includes all the above plus his other nephew.
• The Bat-Family is an extended family of choice (save Damian, who actually is Bruce's biological son). Bruce has officially adopted Dick, Jason, Tim and Cass (the latter two only prior to the Flashpoint reboot). That's not counting various other heroes who, while not Bruce's wards, are still True Companions and part of the group dynamic. There's a reason Bruce is such an Informed Loner.
• For a brief period in Wonder Woman (1987) both Hippolyta and Diana were acting as Wonder Woman, and the mother and daughter teamed up together. Of corse Donna Troy is (almost) always Diana's adopted sister and Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark was Diana's great-aunt originally (Cassie's brother Ares is Diana's maternal grandfather) and while they're still related it's become more muddled just how post-Flashpoint.
• Relative Heroes in The DCU; a team consisting of four siblings (two adopted) and their babysitter.
• The Justice Society of America when it returned in the late nineties. With the Justice League now filling the role of prime super team, they decided to fill a different niche by becoming an extended super family team to help their legacies, descendants of various original Justice Society members, along the path to heroism and when needed simply to give them a home and community.
• The First Family in Astro City, an Expy of the Fantastic Four. At the time of this writing, the family spans three generations, with brothers Augustus and Julius Furst, Augustus' adopted children Nick and Natalie, Natalie's husband Rex, their daughter Astra, and Nick's children Sasha and Karl Furst.

Marvel Comics

• The Fantastic Four, which originally consisted of an engaged couple (Sue and Reed), her brother and his best friend. Once they had kids, they were unofficially included, and Johnny's various superpowered girlfriends are often brought in unofficially. Alicia, Ben's blind girlfriend, is also an unofficial non-superpowered inclusion.
  • The First Family of the Future Foundation consists of Reed, Sue, Ben, Peter Parker (Johnny's friend and rival), Franklin and Valeria (Reed and Sue's kids), Nathaniel (Reed's dad), Leech (a housemate of the Fantastic Four who keeps Franklin's Super Power Lottery in check), and Victor Von Doom (the archenemy of the Fantastic Four, who helped deliver Valeria and once made her his familiar).
• Powers literally run in the family in the MCU, which facilitates this:
  • X-Men member Nightcrawler, and stepsister Rogue and their mother Mystique. This is a borderline case because only Nightcrawler and Rogue teamed up with any regularity.
  • Also from the X-Men, the Summers brothers Scott, Alex, and Gabriel.
    • Scott's time-displaced children Nathan, Nate, and Rachel. (Yes, Nathan AND Nate.) Alternate universe versions of the same guy (but also technically half-brothers, given that Nathan is the son Scott and Maddie, Jean's clone, while Nate is the engineered son of Scott and Jean); lack of Time Travel shenanigans means Nate Grey/X-Man is much younger than Nathan Summers/Cable.
    • Note that this means Scott and Jean have three kids... but each is an only child. Alterations to history means each grew up in a reality that is incompatible with the other two.
  • A minor example from the X-Men is the Kleinstock brothers, a group of siblings whose power involves a Squicky Fusion Dance.
  • Also from X-Men, the Guthrie family (Cannonball, Icarus, and Husk). There was a story that reveals that mutants run in the family; more of the non-superhero members than not are mutants too.
  • Though Monet is the only one who's stood the test of time, the whole St Croix family was heavily featured in Generation X. Monet, her sisters Claudette and Nicole, and their brother Marius, aka Big Bad Emplate, are all quite powerful individually and have the power to combine into all new people who are more than the sum of their parts. Then there's Penance, though we're not sure how her current incarnation is related.^note Penny's complicated even by comic standards, but you might want to skip the details if you've never read Generation X and ever plan to, we're talking that class of spoiler. The Monet we knew for most of Gen X was a fusion of Claudette and Nicole, hence some of her odder moments and habits. The true Monet had been transformed into the until-then-mysterious Penance, who could not talk and had difficulty otherwise communicating, and whose Wolverine Claws-level razor-sharp skin makes Rogue' seem to have minor problems in the touching-people department. Not long after her identity was revealed, the twins took her place in the Penance body so Monet could be free; this is the Monet of the rest of Gen-X, and nowadays X-Factor. Eventually the girls were freed of the Penance body, and have presumably lived happily ever after since their departure from the story. The Penance body should not have remained, but it did, left behind as an empty shell... and then it turned out to be not so empty. This is the Penance (and "Hollow," when Speedball was calling himself Penance during his "Bleedball" phase, as per the One-Steve Limit) that currently exists, and she should probably be considered the fifth St. Croix sibling, as she is either the Penance body, originally created from Monet, having gained sentience, or a new personality shoved in there as can only happen, as far as we know, through the St. Croix's family "merge and be more than the sum of your parts" ability.
  • Most of the main Inhumans are of the royal family.
  • Brother and Sister Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch, both initially of X-Men but more frequently in The Avengers.
  • The Scarlet Witch's marriage to the Vision — now defunct — connected a large number of Avengers, Young Avengers, and X-book characters, and even a few of their villains with their own superhuman families into one sprawling Dysfunction Junction in which characters bounced from team to team. At various points, the Vision, Wanda, Wonder Man, Quicksilver, Jocasta, and Hank and Janet Pym were all Avengers and were treated as related in various (often fantastic) ways. However, as much as half the family tree may or may not count depending on how you and/or the writer view the Vision's connections to other androids and the humans on whom they're based. Even on her own, Wanda's (sorta) kids are superheroes Speed and Wiccan, her estranged father is Magneto, her sister (or half-sister) is Polaris, and her brother Quicksilver was once married into the Inhumans. However, only Magneto, Wanda, and Quicksilver were ever simultaneously on one team; Quicksilver and Polaris were both in X-Factor at a time when continuity said they weren't actually related, and they didn't interact much.
  • Spider-Girl, from the "Marvel Comics 2" future-verse, provides a villainous version, with Ax-Crazy villainess Angel Face as the mother of villainous siblings Crazy Eight and Funny-Face.
  • The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows begins with an Alternate Universe Spider-Man (who is still married to Mary Jane, unlike the Spider-Man of the main Marvel universe) retiring as a superhero to become a Family Man. Certain circumstances had him come back into action as Spider-Man, but this time the rest of the family joins him, with Mary Jane as Spinneret and their daughter, Anna-May, as Spiderling.
• The Incredible Hulks is about the Hulk and all his Hulk-like friends & relations: She-Hulk, Red She-Hulk, A-Bomb (Rick Jones), his son Skaar, and another She-Hulk which is his daughter from an alternate future. Red Hulk is off on his own most of the time, so he's not generally involved.
• ClanDestine probably counts, although Walter in particular would protest the "superhero team" part. All of the Destine siblings have powers, as does their father (Mom is a genie); only the core cast act as superheroes, and most of them would say they're just doing it to keep the twins from getting into trouble by crime-fighting on their own.
• The four siblings of Power Pack in the Marvel-verse.

Other Publishers

• Marvelman, Young Marvelman and Kid Marvelman — which were Alternate Company Equivalents of Captain Marvel et al.
• The Strong family from Tom Strong, consisting of the nominal Science Hero Genius Bruiser, Dhuala, his Jungle Princess wife, Tesla, their Kid Hero teenage daughter, robot butler Pneuman and pet sapient gorilla King Solomon.
• The premise of Dynamo5 is that the world's greatest superhero dies, at which point his wife discovers that he had numerous affairs and illegitimate children. She gathers five of them together to form a team, with each kid having one of their father's powers.
• PS238 has the Nuclear Family, which includes Suzi and Julie. As their name suggests, most have nuclear-themed powers; Julie is a Flying Brick, but then her parents seem to be Muggles, so apparently her powers just cropped up randomly.
  • Tyler is a Muggle Born of Mages, son of two world-famous superheroes. Eventually, they're joined by Tyler's clone/"brother," Toby, who does have powers after getting Touched by Vorlons.
  • There's also the Von Fogg family of supervillains, all of whom have super-intelligence. They rule a massive airship that is legally recognized as its own country. They mostly work separately, but kids Victor and Alexandria are shown to work together sometimes.

Fan Works

• "Superfamily" is a popular category of The Avengers fanfiction. Some of these fics involve slash in order to pair all the heroes together; others simply have the team take on a family dynamic. In many of these fics, Spider-Man is either the child of one or more of the Avengers or is adopted/mentored by the team.
• The Loud Awakening sees the Loud family become one after gaining super powers.

Films — Animated

• The trope image and quote are about the Parr family, otherwise known as The Incredibles.
• Peter B. Parker and his daughter Mayday in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse falls into this mainly because Peter reunited with Mary Jane when he returned to Earth-1610 and thus Mayday was born. Compared to the Mayday from Earth-982, the Mayday from Earth-1610 just discovered her powers and abilities as an infant.

Films — Live-Action

• The Stronghold family in Sky High (2005).
• This is the premise of many of the Spy Kids films, and becomes a superhero genre example in one of the 3-D instalments.

Literature

• Many noble families in A Song of Ice and Fire qualify at least partially, having most or all of their male members be fighters. The Mormonts are probably the straightest example. Since Lord Jeor Mormont joined the Night's Watch, and then Ser Jorah Mormont went into exile, the family consists entirely of Action Girls. They also get bonus points for refusing to bend the knee to either the Boltons or Stannis Baratheon, and still claim loyalty to House Stark.

Live-Action TV

• The Petrelli family in Heroes. The patriarch, Arthur Petrelli, is an evolved human but he's evil. Mom's an evolved human too and she's sometimes a team player, it depends on the objective and what's at stake. Their sons, Nathan and Peter, as well as Nathan's daughter, Claire, all have super-human abilities too. Claire has teamed up with her equally idealistic uncle, Peter, to save the world several times and their family (Nathan, Peter, Claire, Angela, and by extension, Noah) have gone on a few missions together.
• The premise behind No Ordinary Family.
• Super Sentai: Super Sentai occasionally has an all-sibling Five-Man Band, with one parent (the other often strangely absent though their missing presence often ends acknowledged as the series progresses) as Mission Control.
  • The first are the Hoshikawa siblings of Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, whose parents left them on Earth and for most of the series are unaware of their status. Until the series finale that is.
  • The Tatsumis of Rescue Sentai GoGoFive are five siblings (Matoi/GoRed, Nagare/GoBlue, Shou/GoGreen, Daimon/GoYellow, Matsuri /GoPink)who are mentored by their father, Professor Mondo Tatsumi. Their family relationship serves as a mirror to the Psyma Clan's generals, who are a team of siblings and their butler led by their horribly abusive mother.
  • Mahou Sentai Magiranger features the Ozu family, all five core members are siblings with 3 boys and two girls (Kai/MagiRed, Tsubasa/MagiYellow, Urara/MagiBlue, Houka/MagiPink, Makito/MagiGreen; their mother, Miyuki Ozu/Magi Mother is also part of the team initially though she is kidnapped at the start of the series and doesn't rejoins until the latter half of the series when her children rescue her; their Sixth Ranger, Hikaru/Heavenly Saint Sungel/Magi Shine isn't initially part of the family in any way but eventually ends up romancing and marrying Urara which rectifies this; and finally their long-missing father, Isamu Ozu/Heavenly Saint Bragel joins them as the 11th-Hour Ranger Wolzard Fire joins them after being freed of the darkness cursing him to be the Evil Wolzard. This series is thus far the last to use a full five siblings dynamic to date.
  • Shuriken Sentai Ninninger is a variant, as the heroes are all cousins with a shared grandfather (except for Takaharu and Fuka, who are siblings, and Sixth Ranger Kinji, who is unrelated); and like with Magiranger the grandpa and Takaharu and Fuka's dad join in near the end.
• Power Rangers: The franchise so far has not yet used any of Sentai's five-sibling structures (presumably to maintain the Five-Token Band), though a few sibling relationships do remain:
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue has the Pink and Titanium Rangers as siblings, and their dad as Mission Control.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force had a smaller version of the one from Magiranger with Vida and Madison as siblings, and as it turns out, Red Ranger Nick and his long-lost biological parents Udonna and Leanbow. Udonna's niece (and therefore Nick's cousin) Claire has also helped out, just not on the field alongside the Rangers.
• The Thundermans is about a family of superheros.
• Black Lightning (2018) is moving in that direction. Already, we have Jefferson (Black Lightning) and his oldest daughter Anissa (Thunder) acting as a father-daughter team. While his other daughter Jennifer (who is supposed to become Lightning, according to the comics) is reluctant to use her newfound powers, it's likely all three will end up fighting the bad guys at some point. Averted with the girls' mother, who is a normal person.
• In The Umbrella Academy, Reginald Hargreeves deliberately engineers one of these after adopting 7 superpowered children, although he himself doesn't have any powers as far as anyone knows.
• In Kamen Rider Revice, the Igarashi siblings use the power of their inner demons to fight as Kamen Riders. It turns out to literally run in the family, as their dad was a former Super-Soldier test subject after he was implanted with demon genetics in an experiment to save his life, and he passed the genes down to his kids.
• The titular Ultraman R/B is made up of the Sibling Team of Katsumi and Isami (and also their sibling Ultras, Rosso and Blu). But eventually they are reunited with their mom who acts as Mission Control and in The Movie, their sister (both to the Ultras and hosts) joins the fights too.

Tabletop Games

• The Atom Family in Freedom City, another FF Expy. The Psions (Professor Psion and his grandchildren) are the supervillain version, and the Atom Family's nemeses.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: When Flashlight and Weasel met and got married, everyone said it wouldn't work. They were both mutants working for the C.I.A. and how could they raise a family? They managed. Three kids, all of them turning out to be mutants. The oldest and youngest are now in training with the C.I.A. and work with mom and dad. The middle one is Person of Mass Destruction Tennyo who is in training at Superhero School Whateley Academy and dwarfs everyone else's power sets.

Western Animation

• Bionic Six is centered on a family that was enhanced with bionic technology and use their abilities to fight evil.
• Kim Possible's Team Go!, Shego's not-so-successful without her do-gooding family.
• The family in Norman Normal 1999 ...sans the titular character.
• The X's are a family of super-spies.
• For a while in the 1970s, Plastic Man had a cartoon where he fought crime alongside his wife and their offspring Baby-Plas. Decades later, the comics introduced Plas's estranged son Offspring, but they never worked on the same team.
• The Crystal Gems from Steven Universe are a team consisting of three nigh-immortal alien superheroes, and Steven, a relatively ordinary human kid whose mother, the fourth alien on the team, decided to die in order to give birth to him. While none of them are technically related (Steven's dad is a human and gems' Bizarre Alien Reproduction doesn't create biological families as we know them), the three older Gems raised Steven and tend to act as parents or siblings for him, and are occasionally mistaken as such by the locals. The team eventually gets a few new members whose relationship isn't as directly familial (including Steven's friend and Implied Love Interest Connie).
• The Defenders of the Earth are a team comprising four classic comic book heroes and their respective children. The youngsters in question are Rick and LJ, the sons of Flash Gordon and Lothar; Jedda, the Phantom's daughter and Kshin, a young orphan whom Mandrake the Magician is raising as a son.

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