The Fellowship of Heroes
is a superhero webcomic by Ralph Hayes, Jr..
Tropes:
- All Myths Are True: Apparently myths like Hercules, Siegfried, etc., are the accounts of real superhumans who lived centuries ago.
- Fantastic Livestock: After a supervillain overran the southwest states with dinosaurs, many states were evacuated but Texas decided to domesticate them. By the comic's time, prehistoric megafauna such as mammoths and brachiosaurs are commonly raised like oversized cattle.
- Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Averted, the way Super-Strength works (see Required Secondary Powers below) means that it isn't an issue.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left deliberately ambiguous whether the situation that awakened Chris's powers was divine intervention or just the stress of him being helpless to prevent the death of a mother and daughter trapped in a car about to go over a cliff.
- Mugging the Monster: A wannabe villain calling himself "Jackal Lantern" decided to get his start by robbing the bank in Chris's town, possibly wanting to challenge Chris himself, only for the bank patrons to be well-armed (apparently half the local N.R.A. was in the building, and the town was the second to make it mandatory to own a firearm) and blow his brains out when he tried to outshoot them.
- Rage Against the Heavens: Chris, frustrated by the lack of "men of valor" in the modern supers, has a moment of this when trying to stop a car with a mother and daughter in it from sliding off a cliff and feels powerless to keep them from dying in front of him. Cue his powers.
- Religious Bruiser: Chris is a powerful super with strong religious beliefs.
- Required Secondary Powers: Several, like how supers with Super-Strength almost always default to their "normal" strength level, requiring active effort to exert their full physical might, and the same brain activity that prevents sleepwalking keeps them from destroying their bedroom with it while they sleep, for example.
- Superhero Paradox: Discussed after a Joker Expy comes to Cedar Springs seeking to make a name for himself before getting his brains blown out when the bank he's robbing turns out to contain half the local N.R.A. and he tries to outshoot them, and Chris wonders if he's going to have to worry about this. Brain points out that this is possible, but unlikely, given that most criminals, even super ones, want to avoid running into heroes, and want an easy score, not a super-brawl, especially not with a hero who spends most of his time in-costume rescuing kittens and such, and that the "trouble magnet" trope only exists in comics. Sure enough, the next foe he faces only crossed his path by coincidence.
- Superpower Lottery: Only about 500 or so in the estimated 60,000 people with abilities have powers strong enough to qualify as "supers". Chris is a winner based on Brain's tests, in the top 15% worldwide.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: As mentioned above, Chris, already disillusioned with modern heroes after doing research with Brain for a project of hers, is helplessly trying to stop a car with a mother and daughter from going over a cliff in the middle of a rainstorm, wonders where the "men of valor" are when they are NEEDED, and asks why God won't help them. Cue the strength to lift the car back over the edge.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Apparently the large majority of powers fall into this, one example being the ability to generate psychosomatic blisters.
