The following have their own pages:
Other Comic Books
Some comics in both Marvel and DC (and possibly other publishers) have toyed with the idea that all superpowered characters really have the same power:
reality warping. The apparent differences between them are the result of limits in how they can express that reality alteration, and why winners of the
Superpower Lottery can have different powers that would seem logically unrelated to each other.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), the reason for the mutant animals and people is because thousands of years prior, some aliens called the Xorda sent an ambassador to Earth to discuss things with other life forms, but the humans instead killed the ambassador and dissected it for research. The Xorda were angry about this and gene bombed the Earth, destroying any and all humans (except for a few who escaped underground). The humans effectively melted into pools of DNA that mixed with the animals and eventually evolved into the anthropomorphic animals we have today, such as Sonic.
- The Catalyst Prime Shared Universe kicked off with a one-shot issue "Catalyst Prime: the event" in 2017 released as part of Free Comic Book Day. The comic centers around an asteroid that's about to hit the earth and the attempt to stop it by a group of 5 astronauts (three of which are the title character in one of the 7 titles in the initial line-up). They succeed in saving the world, but chunks off the astronaut do hit the earth and give certain people powers. These people are called "enhanced" in-universe.
- The Valiant Comics universe was a fairly ordinary universe with no supernatural aspects until a scientist named Phil Seleski accidentally created a "wish machine" that gave him god-like powers. Due to events too long to summarize, he wound up collapsing the entire universe into a black hole. He tried to restore it, but, because he was a superhero fan, he subconsciously recreated the universe as a more fantastic version of the original, complete with invading aliens, evil robots, sentient Powered Armor and mutant-like "Harbingers".
- In PS238, metahuman powers, which come from a *huge* variety of sources, are inborn or obtained in an equally large amount of ways; it is eventually revealed that an unknown cosmic determinant appears to be responsible for whether or not humanity will have access to metahuman powers. The process is circular; ever so often, humans will start to develop/be exposed to superpowers, and then, following a short 'trial period', this determinant will select a 'chooser' from humanity to decide if this state of affairs will continue. If the chooser says no, those with powers will retain them but no new metapowered individuals will emerge and humanity will have a century or two without them. If yes, metahumans will continue to exist and increase in numbers. Tyler Marloch AKA Moonshadow was the first chooser to ever say yes.
- In Defiant Comics' shared universe, the powers could all be somehow traced back to "dreamtime" — humanity's collective ID that existed on another plane of reality. All super-powered humans either learned to tap into dreamtime and wished superpowers for themselves or got powers from dreamtime's native lifeforms.
- In Supreme, the White Rock Supremium has the convenient property of changing the laws of physics, and is therefore used to give characters superpowers, power Darius Dax' technology and be responsible for Heel Face Turns, Time Travel and so on.
- In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series from Mirage Studios, a chance leakage of radioactive mutagen led Splinter and the Turtles to be mutated from a random sewer rat and four turtles that had been abandoned in the sewers of New York. In the more recent IDW series, the Turtles' origin story is reworked to involve nearly every significant character in the TMNT mythos. Splinter and the Turtles start out as test subjects in a lab owned by Baxter Stockman, the mutagen is an alien substance developed by Krang, April O'Neil is an intern in the lab, and the Turtles escape into the sewers with Splinter after Shredder's Foot Clan attempts to steal them from the lab. Even Casey Jones plays an important role: after Raphael fails to escape with the others and ends up separated from his brothers on the streets of New York, Casey is the one who helps him find his way to the sewers.
- The Mega Man (Archie Comics) series ties together several alien elements and characters who were largely unrelated in the source material; Shadow Man from Mega Man 3 (thought to be an alien robot in the games) is explicitly the creation of Ra Moon from Super Adventure Rockman, who also created the Stardroids and Sunstar from Mega Man V, and all of them are opposed by a group of robots that Duo and the unnamed evil robot from Mega Man 8 belong to.
