The Society of Super Heroes

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basilisk
Teams form for lots of reasons - to fight villains no single hero can withstand (e.g. Avengers, JLA, JSA), to fight for a common cause (e.g. X-Men), against a common foe (e.g. X-Force), against specific types of threat (e.g Shadowpact) or because of common bonds (e.g. FF). But teams can only get so large because they become unwieldy, or too many members have nothing to do, and who has the time to commit to teams? What about heroes who aren't interested anyway?

I think the Secret Society of Super Villains were on to something when they had the idea of ganging up and being able to call on each other for assistance against the heroes. So what about the idea of going beyond regular super teams and forming something along the lines of a Society of Super Heroes?

It would go like this:

1) Heroes that join go on the register of available heroes.

2) Any hero who joins gets a communicator that provides instant communication to central HQ.

3) When a hero (or small group of heroes) is in trouble, they activate the communicator, sending their position and id to central comms. They also send a voice or text message providing some sort of detail about the problem or villain. Maybe the comm can also send video footage of what they are seeing, and a chosen priority level.

4) The call goes out like a pager system to all members of the society (members can choose to turn their comms off for any period of course). Anyone who wants to look at the threat details can choose to respond. Like a taxi system this registers back, so that members can see who has already responded.

5) Backup members arrive and deal with the threat. Then everyone goes home, stops for a beer, whatever. No strings attached.


So an example might be Spider-Man is fighting a major battle against Morlun. He knows the Avengers are on a mission. He recalls that the FF are out of town. His arm is broken and he is in serious trouble. He activates his Society comm-link: "I'm fighting some guy named Morlun. This guy hits like the goddamn Hulk and he's tanking anything thrown at him. Nothing is stopping him he's gonna kill me and the civilians - EMERGENCY priority. I need heavy hitters!"

Thor - on a mission with the Avengers. Non-responder.
Wolverine - interested but too busy with other things. Non-responder.
Hercules - "at last, a challenge!" - responder.
Photon (Monica) - "I can get there the fastest." - responder.
Quicksilver - Never really liked Spider-Man. - non-responder.
Rogue - "I can make that." - responder
Wonder Man - "I can do that." - responder.
Ms Marvel - "See you there Wonder Man!" - responder
Mockingbird - "Hits like the Hulk? F*** that." - non-responder.
Hulk: "Hits like the Hulk? We'll see about that." - responder
Blue Marvel - "Be there in a couple of minutes" - responder.
Iceman - "Cool. I'm in." - responder.
Storm - "Sounds big, I'll go too." - responder.
Colossus - "Then I will go also." - responder.
Ghost Rider - responder.
Hawkeye - "Looks like Spidey's covered. Out of my league anyway." non-responder.

Then Morlun gets a major beatdown, the civilians are saved, and everyone goes their separate ways.

At the other end of the scale, a fight by Hawkeye and Mockingbird against an ambush by Crossfire and his gang of villainous street levelers and low metas might just result in a group of idle street levelers responding to help them out. Or it might be finished REALLY fast by Thor, Iron Man, or Blue Marvel showing up if they happened to have nothing on.

So the benefits are:

- It should decrease the number of successful attacks by villains and outright discourage them from even trying anything, knowing that even if they run into an individual non-team hero a major beatdown could be only minutes away.

- It makes good use of spare time, because at any given time there are probably hundreds of heroes sitting around doing nothing. Especially the non-affiliated and obscure heroes.

- Heroes are never out there alone even if they don't want to be on a team, or no team wants them. They get the benefits of the team and backup without having to devote spare time to a team, and without any internal politics or disagreements.

- It gives the more obscure heroes a chance to see some action and some exposure to the big league because normally they don't have arch-enemies or the resources of a team to find the bad guys. It might even encourage newbies who haven't quite had the courage to take that first step to finally step up.



Disadvantages:

- Maybe it would encourage villains to team up. But then traditional superhero teams (and even individual super heroes) have been doing that for years.

- Unlike a real team, no guarantee of a response. But if the Society was large enough, also drawing on the resources of the large numbers of less well known heroes, this may not be such a big problem. There are quite a few skilled and powerful lesser known heroes out there and they might jump at the chance to get some contacts and backup. In any case, the Society costs nothing and you take your chances - it's better than no chance at all when you are about to be killed by the Red Skull.

- Freeloaders, heroes who constantly call for help but never respond to calls. Maybe like Quicksilver. It could happen, but the Society would rely on the ethics that made these guys go out and be heroes in the first place. But flat out wannabees and losers get banned from the network fast.

- Probably needs some established heroes to volunteer some time to screen members. But that would be the extent of their involvement, kind of like forum or wiki moderators. And members don't get access to any HQ, databases, info on other members etc. - in fact they don't get anything - so there is less security risks than say joining the Avengers.


So could it work? Should it be done?

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