Heinz Trucking

Long before reading any Joseph Campbell I had a conversation with somebody about Star Wars. I explained to them that the first movie in particular was a fairy tale complete with Evil Sorcerer, Dark Tower, Fair Hero, and Damsel in Distress. They replied something along the lines of, “Oh yeah. Everybody knows that Lucas was friends with Joseph Campbell.” I hate that. Just when I’m really grooving on an idea and all its potential, someone pops my balloon by playing the song or loaning me the book that details the idea, all its potential spent. It hurts to admit it, but usually the person who worked the idea out accomplished their task better than I ever could.

A young Artist tends to stall in the face of What Has Gone Before. He stands agape, hypnotized by the eye of the White Bull. When he looks away he wonders, “What has not gone before? How can I contribute to this in any worthwhile way?” At this point some might choose to shed that Identity and drift away. Without form or persona, an uncarved block might play music and never aspire to Musician. After a time unleashing Silliness on Universe she might notice that her songs were becoming quite good through the doing. Over time she had played out her bad notes and learned What Not To Do.

Well, along with my intuitions of Star Wars I had been hard at work in my subconscious dissecting other pop culture icons, such as my beloved comic books. I realized long ago that every good super team has an archetypal formula. Amend “long ago” to “mid-eighties,” “every good super team” to “the three Marvel rags I read,” and “archetypal formula” to “sorta kinda archetypal formula that you can shift around.” Some super-teams are exempt from this. I’ll elaborate.

Starting from your basics. Two categories of archetype will be used. Different characters can be conceived as different combinations of Power and Personality. Examples of Power archetypes are Genius, Strong-guy, Elemental, Flyer, Sneaky, Fighter, and Telekinesis. There is almost always one Flyer other than the leader. Strong-guys usually have a Gentle Giant thing going on. Maybe they decorate miniatures. There are subcategories in the powers that should be filled. There should always be a person with a Ranged weapon.

The basic, four-member Personality archetype examples include Leader, Yes-man, Maverick, and Silent Type. Perhaps they need a bit more flesh.

The Leader is always a serious figure, often an orphan. The mantle of leadership weighs heavy on (usually) him. Usually he doesn’t want to let anyone get too close because they might be hurt by his sheer leader-ness. Often he spends time brooding about how his decisions put his teammates in danger or got the Red Shirt killed. Often the Leader can Fly.

The Yes-man, usually the strongman, might occasionally argue with the Leader for dialogue’s sake, but after all, he or she’s the Leader’s best friend and somebody has to keep the Leader in line. In broader Team arguments, the Yesman always has the Leader’s back.

The Maverick is often a Loner, and questions the Leader’s decisions at every turn. Often the Maverick is the youngest male in the group.

The Silent Type is usually a woman. Her role is most often to be the Leader’s girlfriend. Nobody listens to her. Her ineffectual power will get her killed so that the Leader will be forever a slave to his guilt. When the Silent Type is not the Leader’s girlfriend then they are secretly working for Next Years Badguy.

Both Maverick and Silent Type can be Loners, but only one Loner per team. Loners should brood a lot. It also helps if they are “the best there is at what they do.” Also there is another subcategory of Comic Relief. This system can be expanded to accomodate one or two more members.

Super-team model number one: the Fantastic Four.

Mr. Fantastic; Leader-Genius: Yes, I know his genius is not supposed to be his power, but it was his function. Nobody runs from a guy who has the power to make any part of his body flaccid, but they will run from those ray guns. He created devices to fly for him.

Invisible Girl; Yes-man-Telekinetic: I also know she’s not telekinetic, but for the purposes of classification mentally creating invisible force fields and using them to manipulate objects is TK. She can turn invisible, which almost makes her the Silent Type but Mavel did try pretty hard to make Sue into a tough lady. They just couldn’t help failing. They’re comic book guys, not PC Paladins.

Human Torch; Maverick/Comic-Elemental/Flyer: In this case the Maverick is the Comic Relief. His role was to irritate the Thing, who would punish him or chase him. Hilarity ensued. He is also responsible for rushing ahead into battle without listening to orders.

The Thing; Silent Loner-Strong-guy: Thing was made out of rock 24/7, so he felt sorry for himself a lot. That was his Loner trip.

Duos and trios just don’t count as teams, sorry. The majority of teams seem to keep active membership at about 4 to 6 characters. Definitions get a bit fuzzy, but the Fantastic Four illustrates the basic setup nicely. Many super groups don’t adhere so tightly to the rules, such as the Justice League or the Avengers. These teams usually fight a different class of bad guy and are more likely to be found fighting alien invasions or threats of that order. However the Avengers and West Coast Avengers have at times used five-member rosters that fit the illustration.

The best illustration of the five-member team is the X-men. The faces change over the years, but the archetypes remain the same.

So I’m shaping a continent on a planet in my head. Pretty cool, huh? It started as a D&D world, but I never play D&D so what’s the point? I’m going to use fictional planet as a setting and for character races and use the super-team archetype system to churn through the dross and bad notes while I learn What Not To Do if’n I wanna write real good. I’ll be using my favorite version of the X-men, which consisted of Cyclops (Leader/Elemental Ranged), Storm (Yes-man/Elemental Flyer), Colossus (Silent Strong-guy), Wolverine (Loner Maverick Sneaky Fighter), and Nightcrawler (Comic Sneaky). We’ll see what happens.