The First Superheroes

"As I have learned since, I was not the first anomaly to exist... but on that day of my freedom in 1939, this world had its first confrontation with the fantastic. The Golden Age of miracles would begin, and in the years to come, the world would know the presence of the unnatural and extraordinary as part of reality."

— The Human Torch, Marvels #0

The Earliest of the Superhero Prevalence Stages.

So we've got a story set in a world which is Like Reality, Unless Noted. It could take place in the past, the present, or 20 Minutes into the Future and in any location on Earth. This world is much like our own up until something very extraordinary happens:

Someone wins the Super Power Lottery.

This is a common trope in most Superhero Origins for superheroes that don't exist in a Verse. When you're the first superhuman on Earth, expect to turn a lot of heads when you fly, stun a lot of people with your ability to read minds, and/or astound a crowd when you throw a car. Expect for some people to see you as a miracle and a marvel, mundane enemies to fear you like a monster, and for others to see you as a threat or a menace. Expect your mere existence to rapidly shift the world around you and change things like never before.

Congratulations, you are The First Super. Bonus points if you aren't the only person of your generation to acquire superpowers.

This origin story has two variations:

• The first superheroes (in a more general sense) who don a costume and fight crime, usually Badass Normal people, the norm in The '30s and The '40s.
• The first superpowered individuals, the norm starting from The '60s, beginning with the creation of the Marvel Universe and its shared continuity between titles.

Most Golden Age superheroes were this at some point, especially before the Massive Multiplayer Crossover became common: the supers may appear individually at first, without them knowing about each other, and only later interact as part of a larger Shared Universe.

Another occurrence of this trope is when superpowered individuals begin to appear due to a Mass Empowering Event.

In short, the key parts of the trope are:

• There's a superhero-virgin world or, if there were superheroes, they were Shrouded in Myth to the point nobody acknowledged their existence by the time the story begins. This is the most important point for the purposes of the trope, as while there is an overlap between this trope and Superhero Origin, the inverse is not always true: if, chronologically, there were in-universe acknowledged heroes before the Superhero Origin of this particular story, then it's not an example of this trope.
• An event takes place that affects a bunch of people.
• Said bunch of people turns into superheroes.
• (Optionally) The superheroes gather in a group.

This trope can overlap with The Unmasqued World: often, the First Supers will discover that there were superpowered people before them, but their existence was either hidden by a Masquerade or dismissed as myth and legend. Which makes the First Super not truly the first of their kind, but the first that the public knows about.

Subtrope of Superhero Origin. Compare with Meta Origin, where an in-universe reason is given for the empowering of so many characters. Contrast Twilight of the Supers, since this represents the beginning of the superhero age while the Twilight represents the end of superheroes age.

Not to be confused with Proto-Superhero, which is about superheroic characters that preceded the introduction of Superman in 1938.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• My Hero Academia: The "Quirk" phenomenon began with a baby born in China that had the power to glow. Following this birth, other people around the world started gaining powers too. This then led to a growth in crime as people started using their new powers for personal gain, which was eventually countered by others who voluntarily began to use their powers to stop these Quirk-based crimes. These early Vigilantes were the ancestors of modern Heroes, and it was their brave acts of heroism that eventually led to Heroes becoming the official law enforcement profession that it is in the modern day.

Comic Books

• DC Comics
  • In most continuities of The DCU, Superman is first introduced to the world making a dramatic save, giving the world something to hope for and kicking off the Age of Superheroes. (Or bringing back superheroes, if the Golden Age heroes are in continuity).
  • Superboy-Prime was the first and only superhero in his universe of Earth-Prime.
  • In Kurt Busiek's Superman: Secret Identity, Superman is a fictional character, and a boy named Clark Kent one day suddenly discovers that he has superhuman powers.
  • In a way to streamline their decades-long continuity since 1938, in 2011, DC Comics resorted to a full Continuity Reboot of their universe in an attempt to reintroduce the characters as "first supers" for a new generation. This attempt was named the New 52.
    • Superman heralds the dawn of superheroes, while the Batman, the Badass Normal, is secretly already active for some time.
    • Action Comics (New 52), by Grant Morrison, restablishes Superman's history in The New 52: Clark is still in his early years, and is chronologically placed in the first six months of the New 52 timeline.
    • The first arc of Justice League (2011), "Origins", is situated early in the five-year timeline of "The New 52". Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and the Flash band together for the first time, though under a lot of personal friction. The same arc reimagines Cyborg (Vic Stone) as a founding member of the League in this new continuity.
    • In Earth 2, a reboot of the Justice Society of America, Wonder Woman is the first superhero to make a public appearance (unlike the main universe). As such, the heroes are called "Wonders", instead of "Supers".
    • Teen Titans (New 52): Tim Drake, a.k.a. Red Robin, assembles a group of teenager superheroes against mysterious organization K.N.O.W.H.E.R.E. At the time of their publication, the issues did mention previous Titans groups, but trade paperbacks and reprints excised those references to the past in order to establish that Red Robin's group was the very first gathering of young heroes.
  • Doomsday Clock: It is explained that, after every reboot of the DCU, the universe places Superman as its chosen champion. As such, Superman always crashlands on Earth, becomes an inspiration to others and brings forth the age of heroes.
    Dr. Manhattan: The world was introduced to Superman on April 18th, 1938. He was the first of the costumed heroes. The first of many on this world... (Doomsday Clock #10)
  • Watchmen: The story takes place in an alternate universe where superheroes have existed since the late 1930s, with an actual superhuman appearing in the 1950s, altering the course of human history. While the brunt of the story takes place in the then-present 1980s, portions of it expand on the moment the superheroes first appeared:
    • There are excerpts from a book written by Hollis Mason, one of the original superheroes, explaining how the first costumed vigilantes started to appear after the 1938 debut of Hooded Justice, the first vigilante, and how they came together in the Minuteman superteam.
    • There is an extended flashback sequence showing the origin story of Doctor Manhattan, the nuclear physicist who gained godlike powers in 1959, becoming this reality's first public superhuman. The sequence includes the first months of Doctor Manhattan's public career as the world reacts in astonishment.
  • In Astro City, the first superhero depends on who you ask, as all of its history is related firsthand by either bystanders or modern heroes, with all the inaccuracies and biases that entails (that the timeline has been repeatedly warped because of Infidel's multiple attempts to erase his nemesis Samaritan from existence does not help.) It's generally held that the first supers emerged in the late nineteenth century, and that, for whatever reason, many of them came to Romeyn Falls, a bustling Midwestern city that became a Weirdness Magnet. These heroes would eventually inspire other heroes, ultimately transforming Romeyn Falls into the modern Astro City.
  • In Superman: Red Son, the Soviet Superman was the first known hero. His unveiling in the fifties set off an arms race that either attracted or created every other super-powered being on that Earth, including Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Brainiac, Bizarro, and Batman.
  • Earth-C, originally encountered by Superman in 1982, is an alternate Earth inhabited by anthromorphic animals, where the first heroes appeared in modern day after being given powers by meteor fragments raining down on Earth, including Captain Carrot and five other known super-animals. However, this was eventually retconned when it was revealed that the adventures of The Terrific Whatzit, an anthromorphic turtle version of the Golden Age Flash published in the 1940's, had actually taken place on Earth-C, giving it a similar Golden Age as the regular DC Earth.
• Marvel Comics:
  • While there were earlier superheroes, the age of heroes in the Marvel Universe is generally considered to have begun with the appearance of the Fantastic Four, with many of the other modern heroes emerging shortly afterwards.
  • Fantastic Four: Life Story: The miniseries starts with the Fantastic Four making their debut in 1961, shortly followed by Marvel's other well-known Silver Age-era superheroes in the background. While the setting likely had heroes operating beforehand like in the main Marvel Universe, the story does emphasize the FF as the start of the major superhero era.
  • In Marvels, we get to see the Marvel Universe through the eyes of the ordinary person. The first issue is set in the Golden Age, and we get to see the emergency of superhumans in a world that has never seen their like before. A sequel called Marvels: Eye of the Camera, does it again, this time detailing the beginning of the Silver Age.
  • Miracleman: The British government uses technology scavenged from a crashed alien ship to create the first five superhumans, but they remain secret and are supposedly all killed when the experiment starts to get out of hand. It's not until Miracleman resurfaces in the 1980s that the other survivors come out of hiding and the world begins to radically change.
  • The New Universe (1986): When the line was created in 1986 by then editor Jim Shooter, the premise was that the world was like our own, until a strange astronomical happening called "The White Event" occurred on July 22, 1986. The White Event is a giant, blinding flash of light that irrupted somewhere on Earth and causes the origin of many of the superbeings of the setting. Star Brand #12, reveals that the White Event was caused by a former wielder of the titular Starbrand, who tried to get rid of his powers by channelling them to an asteroid near Earth's surface. Some of the literal first supers that appear following the White Event are:
    • Nightmask: the White Event wakes him up from his coma and grants him dream-walking powers (Nightmask #1).
    • D.P. 7: a bunch of random people around the USA gain powers from the White Event. They will only form a group of outcasts (the titular DP7) after they are brought to the clinic (DP7 Annual #1).
    • The Witness, a ghost-like figure that is the soul/ghost of Nelson Kohler, who was driving around Wisconsin when the White Event's flash blinded him and he crashed into a tree. Declared braindead, his mind survived as an invisible, intangible green entity (DP7 Annual #1).
  • Ultimate Universe (2023) portrays a Marvel elseworld where most superheroes straight-up do not exist thanks to an alternate universe counterpart of Reed Richards (calling himself the Maker) interfering with the timeline. Peter Parker never gets bitten by the radioactive spider, the rest of the Fantastic Four are murdered out of spite, Tony Stark is framed for a major terrorist attack that the Maker precipitated. One of the first super-heroes to appear in this continuity is Spider-Man, having been gifted the radioactive spider from a future version of Tony Stark.
  • Uncanny X-Men: One of the first concepts used for the title way back in the 1960s (when the title debuted) was to refer to mutants as "the children of the atom". This was not without reason, for, at least for that time period, radiation was established to be the Meta Origin for other superhumans of the Marvel Universe:
    • In the very first issue, Xavier explains to Jean Grey his parents worked in the A-Bomb, and the radiation may have caused his mutation. He then states he believes himself to be "the first mutant".
    • Beast's backstory in issues #49-53 establishes that his father worked in a nuclear power plant, and, one day, was bombarded with radioactivity. He survived, but his doctor suggested that his genetic material was altered by the event. Thus, "a Beast is Born".
    • In issue #64, Beast surmises that Japanese Sunfire is a mutant himself since his mother was present at the Hiroshima bombings, and that must have affected her, thus explaining his solar radiation powers.
• Inverted in The Boys: An extended flashback to Colonel Mallory's service in World War II shows he was around for the debut of Vought-American's first superhero team: the Avenging Squad. Since their generation grew up before superhero comics became popular, Mallory and the other soldiers were completely unaware of the concept, and thought that sending people in neon spandex to fight the Nazis with zero combat training or experience was utterly idiotic, superpowers or not. He's proven right—the Avenging Squad unwittingly give away their position to an SS tank battalion, and are killed to a man in the ensuing battle. Vought-American abandons the concept for a decade before reintroducing superheroes in the 1950s solely for domestic crimefighting purposes.
• Inverted in The F1rst Hero, the first known superpowered human in this world was John Hinckley Jr., who attacked Ronald Reagan and his entourage by shooting lightning at them from his fingers. What's more, anyone who manifested powers from that point forward was driven insane by them and becomes a threat to everyone around them. In response, the Extrahuman Task Force is formed to deal with the threat that these people, dubbed "extrahumans", pose to the public. As a result, Jacob Roth is surprised when he manifests powers and doesn't go insane, as he's the first person in history (that he knows) that's had this happen to them.
• In Milestone Comics's universe, there was the "Big Bang", a massive gang war on Dakota Island. The event ended when police used tear gas unknowingly tainted with the mutagenic Quantum Juice, killing 90% of those caught in the gas and giving various superpowers to the rest. Virgil Hawkins aka Static was among the 10% of people who survived the Big Bang, and received his electric powers as a result. Other survivors become known as "Bang Babies" and feature in publications of the "Dakotaverse".
• Next Men: as part of a decades-long secret eugenics project, babies were taken from their mothers and placed in a virtual reality simulation named "The Greenery", where they were to develop their powers in a controlled environment. One day, five of them escape from confinement and, due to being naïve in the ways of the real world, begin to wreak havoc in a small town, until they are officially introduced to the public eye through a comic book company.
• Rising Stars: a bright flash of light (depicted as a comet on the first issue cover) passes by the Earth's atmosphere near a small American town and powers up 113 babies still in utero. This leads to a generation of powered individuals developing their abilities in early childhood.
• The Tick: In The Tick #7, Arthur shows The Tick the autobiography of The Sultan, stated to have been the world's first superhero and one of Arthur's inspirations to become a hero himself. Also shown are Ulysses Bang and Visible Man, two of the Sultan's fellow "Golden Age" heroes.

Films — Live-Action

• Zig-zagged in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each individual superhero makes quite an impression when they first show up. However, the SHIELD agents which appear in each film make it clear that none of the modern superheroes were the first. Also, considering that Norse Mythology is true in this universe, humans have had some contact with extranormal beings for some time, even if it's no longer common knowledge. Other examples within the universe include:
  • Eternals, which reveals the real "first supers": the Eternals arrived on Earth during the Stone Age in pursuit of their enemies the Deviants and have lived among humans ever since; their names and exploits inspired many pagan mythologies.
• Thunder Force (2021): It's explained in the opening that one day in The '80s, an asteroid with unique properties fell to Earth, giving a certain group of infants superpowers. These infants all grew up to become supervillains known as "Miscreants." In the present day, Emily uses her scientific research to genetically engineer superpowers of her own. She and her friend Lydia become the first superheroes.
• X-Men: First Class: being a timeline reboot of the film series, the mutants are reintroduced. In this case, mutants exist in modern times (1960s), but few and far between. Some already joined forces as the secretive Hellfire Club with the intent to influence the political fate of nations, while Xavier, Mystique and Magneto (who were already shown to have their powers from childhood/early adolescence) meet Hank McCoy (in this continuity, a CIA aide) and use his Cerebro creation to gather a handful of mutants. The mutant groups clash during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962).

Literature

• In The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry is the only time traveller in the novel and has difficulty convincing doctors that his condition is real (and convincing his friends why he acts so oddly). Later on he jumps into the future where he is referred to as Chrono-Impaired by his ten-year-old daughter, who has the same condition basically revealing that by that point, time travel has become accepted as a thing.
• The premise of the Wild Cards series of novels is to present a realistic world where superhumans and deformed mutants exist. The first stories in the first volume describe the Mass Super-Empowering Event: the release of an alien virus in New York City in 1946. The first half of the book details the exploits of Doctor Tachyon, the Four Aces, and the Sleeper, the first generation of superhumans in a world not yet used to their ilk. However, even some later material also has shades of this trope. Superhumans go into hiding due to the Red Scare of the The '50s, and the origin story of the Great and Powerful Turtle in the The '60s marks the reintroduction of the public superhero. A later volume in the series shows how the Wild Card virus affected the United Kingdom, and we get this trope again, as 1940s Britain deals with superhumans for the first time.

Live-Action TV

• River Tam from Firefly and Serenity (2005) is most likely the first really powerful psychic in the Verse, since she's a unique prototype Super-Soldier who escaped from a top-secret lab. Too bad that the technology for training Psychic Powers is still very crude and involves brain surgery and other cruel and invasive experimentation resulting in madness.
• Heroes: The story starts with a group of seemingly ordinary people slowly discovering that they now have superpowers after a solar eclipse, and now they must learn how to control their abilities, decide how to use it, and for some they choose to investigate how they acquired these powers in the first place. As shown later, there have been supers throughout History before. In the very last episode of the original series: Claire jumps from a very high Ferris wheel to her "death" in front of reporters. However, as she has Healing Powers, her body begins to mend itself in front of the cameras, basically revealing their existence to the world at large.
• Smallville: Its original premise was to depict Clark Kent's early life in rural Smallville as he is still growing into his powers, but is not the legendary superhero he will become. The premise is kept for the first four seasons—and he is the sole major hero to appear on screen until other heroes begin to appear by season 5.
• Superman & Lois: Superman makes his debut as his Earth's first superhero in the first episode, decades prior to the start of the main storyline. His sons, Jonathan and Jordan, have grown up in a world where Superman is normal, not knowing he's their dad until they are 14. There are in fact no other active superheroes in this universe until John Henry Irons becomes Steel in Season 1 and Jordan starts making appearances as Superboy in Season 3, meaning Clark missed much of the boys' childhood saving the world.

Video Games

• The First Soldier chapter of Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis depicts, as one might guess, the first mission of Sephiroth, the first super-powered SOLDIER. The SOLDIER members before him, called "Passive models", were just well-trained special forces officers, while he was a part-alien artificial human with super strength, super speed and heightened magical powers. The POVs of the chapter are the "Passive models", observing the strange youngster and trying to guess what the hell he is and what does it mean for them.

Webcomics

• Strong Female Protagonist takes place in an alternate timeline where a Mass Empowering Event in 1991 causes children to be born with the potential to develop superpowers. As their powers tend to become apparent around puberty, history continues largely the same until 2006, when the existence of supers becomes known to the public and the world undergoes a major superhero vs supervillain war. However, a later chapter reveals a superbeing well into old age, implying the existence of supers goes back much earlier.

Western Animation

• Episodes "Beginnings Part 1" and "Beginnings Part 2" of The Legend of Korra show the origins of benders and of the Avatar in the world of the series. Where elemental bending was once a temporary ability gifted to humans by lion turtles to protect them in the spirit wilds, Wan and Raava's battle with Vaatu not only turned Wan into the Avatar, the first and only bender able to hold all four elements (and starting the line of reincarnation) but also made the lion turtles decide to leave humanity to its own devices (since they no longer needed protecting from spirits), leaving those who still had bending abilities with them permanently to pass on to future generations.
• The Loonatics Unleashed started out as ordinary workaday Funny Animals, until a meteor struck the planet of Acmetropolis, emitting bizarre energies upon impact. These energies gave the six characters their superpowers, which they use to fight crime. This isn't so easy, as the bizarre energies also gave superpowers to greedy criminals as well. The only inkling that Acmetropolis ever had another super resident is Zadavia, the mysterious manager of the Loonatics, who has similar powers, and is revealed to be an alien from planet Freleng living in exile after a coup d'etat.

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