You know, in a lot of superhero comic books and such--whenever someone gains a superpower--they AUTOMATICALLY decide to use it for heroic (or villainous, depending on who it is) purposes. There's very little thought to it. "Hey, I woke up this morning with telekinesis. I'm going to go out and save the world!"

I like writing stories--fanfiction, mostly--where people get superpowers and go on about lives as usual. They have to adapt to having the power, which can't be turned off or gotten rid of. And then there are some who have a power, want to use it for the better of humanity, but can't figure out how, exactly, they're supposed to do it.

In one of my favorite X-men fanfics-in-progress, the cast lives on a hippie commune. They're against violence, and they've got fairly useless powers anyway (i.e., telepathically communicating with plants, growing one's hair long or short at will, the ability to make other people's bodies glow). So they find out other ways to use their powers. The girl who can communicate with plants runs Earth-based spirituality classes in the park. The guy who can make his hair grow... doesn't use his powers, but he plans a lot of protests. The girl who can make other people glow hangs around dark places at night making passerby glow so cars can see 'em. They're not THE SAVIORS OF THE MUTANT RACE! or anything like that. They're just average people with a few enhancements, who don't WANT to become superheroes. They're content to live normal lives.

In another, there are two people with fairly useless powers who want to be superheroes. So they go looking for the X-men in order to join up. One of them--Blue Star--sweats acid that eats through just about anything. The other--Camo--can make tattoos appear on her skin at will. Although their powers aren't all THAT useful, they still wanna help somehow. ("Even if it's just mailing 'donations please!' postcards at Christmas.")

It's fun to write scenes with uselessly-powered characters, too. There's much more strategy to think about. If you read some comics, they have some kind of half-assed plan, which basically consists of, "I go in. I start smashing in some faces, you start breaking knee-caps. Let's see where that takes us." Well, these characters I write about don't really have super martial arts training or anything. They're just random people off the street. They have to THINK about what they have to do to protect their asses.

I wonder if anybody would ever let me write/create/design for comic books...?