Author JD Cowan warns writers against making the same mistake with superpowered heroes that Toriyama did with Dragon Ball Z.
There’s always been a problem getting superpowers across in fiction. For instance, Superman has almost no defined limits to his abilities, which is fine for a Superman tale but it tends to water down tension in any crossover story he appears in. Batman can be the strongest martial artist, the smartest guy in the room, and the guy with the right tool at any time to the point that “Batgod” is an actual saying. Certain character are just clearly above others and it does wreck a lot of tension.
But it’s also a problem in Japanese entertainment, too. In Dragon Ball, Goku becomes more powerful than the demigod of space, Frieza, and then the only tension becomes that the next villain is somehow stronger than Frieza. Or you can have Fist of the North Star where there’s obvious fodder that serve no challenge to Kenshiro and where the main villains are the only ones that stand a chance against him. These are all limitations to the sort of stories one can tell with powers or skills.
But there’s a whole other way to write powers, a better way, that will help raise the stakes, keep powers unique and mystifying, and will allow the writer far more freedom. Some may scoff, but there is a clear answer to the question of how to avoid the superpowers overtaking the story.
The solution is to limit the powers.
Yes, my solution is limiting the most important part of a superhero story in order to avoid limiting the types of stories that can be told with them. I admit it’s confusing, but stick with me here.
Superpowers are fascinating. Having the ability to do crazy things you couldn’t do in real life can obviously give you great story ideas. Invisibility, heat vision, flight, or super strength, are typical abilities used in any number of stories. Then there are more specific abilities like growing claws out of your hands or charging playing cards with kinetic energy. You can do anything. This is all great.
But what do you do after that? When the initial story is told, what will your character do next? Sure he beats the villain with his flashy power, but what about the next villain after that? Does the defeated villain merely get craftier and/or stronger as well? I suppose if your villain doesn’t have any powers he could, but why would you hobble your poor bloodthirsty sociopath of a bad guy that way? And if your villain has powers, what stops him from not just going out and taking what he wants when the hero is not around? Very little. If this was a world of powers it wouldn’t be like many comics portray it, it would be utter chaos. The only way to temper chaos, is with order.
The principle that JD talks about here doesn’t just apply to superpowers. It’s essential to every other kind of magic system. And make no mistake–superpowers are a category of magic system.
Limiting the scope of superpowers is necessary for maintaining dramatic tension in a systematized magic context, but it’s not sufficient. Two other ingredients are required:
- The limitations of superpowers must be introduced to the reader early in the story.
- Going beyond that, all of the rules governing how superpowers work must be explained insofar as characters will use those powers to overcome obstacles.
For an award-winning example of a secondary world where multiple magic systems interact with one another according to painstakingly crafted rules, check out my superpowered Soul Cycle.
