Lately in spare moments I’ve been thinking about how to divide superheroes into categories by types. I guess it’s the librarian in me…. No doubt there are many different possible ways to classify them. My taxonomy organizes them according to the nature of their powers. I’ve come up with four “families.” They are:

Superhumans—Superheroes who possess powers that are in some way inherent in their bodies.

Costumed Athletes—Have no powers in the strictest sense—just really, really good training.

High-Tech Heroes—Employ tools, weaponry, or vehicles beyond what we see in our mundane world.

Magic Users—Have powers derived from supernatural, as opposed to science-fictional, sources.

Below we will go into some of the many representative genuses and species in each superhero family. I’ll also note the existence of borderline cases or characters who don’t fall strictly into a single category. It ought to be fun!

So let’s get started….

Superhumans


They get their powers through all sorts of methods—bizarre accidents, mutations, membership in some superhumanly powered race, scientific experiments gone wrong, scientific experiments gone right, etc. We’ll organize them into genuses by powers:

Superhuman Strength—Super-strength varies widely. Some superhumans can lift “only” a few thousand pounds, others a few tons, still others far more. Marvel’s “Official Handbook” series used to have a “Class 100 Strength” category for anybody who could press over 100 tons. Now that’s strong! Of course that pales in comparison to the mightiest species of all, the Silver-Age Kryptonians. Superman was known to muscle planets around back in the day.

Invulnerability—Tends to go along with super-strength, and also varies widely. Some supers are merely bulletproof. Others can survive machine gun fire or small missiles. And again you’ve got Silver-Age Superman, who could shrug off a nuclear explosion. No wonder later writers felt a need to de-power him for the sake of storytelling and suspense.

Characters like Wolverine who have a normal vulnerability to harm, but can heal at extraordinary rates, might be considered another “species” within this genus.

Super Speed—Once again there’s a wide variety. Some speedsters run hundreds of miles per hour, some can break the sound barrier, and some can nip over into the next state to buy a newspaper and get back before you even notice they’re gone. You’d think a being moving at that speed along roads and city streets would create devastating air currents everywhere he or she went, but never mind….

Flight—If I could have a superhuman power I know this is the one I’d want. It looks like fun! It can be effected through several methods. Some flyers levitate, some have actual wings, and some—like Prince Namor and his tiny ornamental ankle-wing thinguses—fly through means that have never quite been explained.

Psychic Powers—We speak here of such abilities as telepathy, telekinesis, assorted forms of ESP, and so forth. For purposes of classification here we assume that the powers are non-supernatural in origin. Not always the most visually interesting powers, but they certainly come in handy for those who’ve got them.

Energy Manipulation—This includes projectors and projectrixes of force fields, shooters of destructive energy beams, and those who can create flames and radically manipulate temperatures. We’re counting only those whose powers are strong enough to be of actual use in combat. This rules out those annoying kids who like to scuff their feet on the carpet on a winter day and then deliberately give people a static shock. They’re a form of (very) minor-league villain anyway.

Shapeshifters/Transformers—These characters can dramatically alter their physical forms, by turning into animals (by non-supernatural means), stretching like crazy, getting bigger or smaller, turning into metals or other elements, etc.

Water-Breathers—They can breathe underwater, and are in most cases amphibious. The amphibians are usually hybrids of some sort. For some reason undersea princesses are very attracted to surface-dwelling men and want to have their babies….

There are of course powers that don’t fall under the above main categories. The world has witnessed superheroes who could destroy things with their voices, eat absolutely any kind of matter , project darkness, etc. There are also many super-beings who possess powers in more than one category. For example, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has superhuman strength, a psychic “spider-sense,” and can stick to walls, which may perhaps be considered a form of energy manipulation.

Costumed Athletes

Theoretically costumed athletes have no superhuman powers. In practice you have to wonder. Real-life Olympians and stunt performers accomplish amazing feats—but they do so under controlled conditions and after lots and lots of practice. Costumed athletes routinely perform incredible stunts on the fly, one after another, without breaking their necks or ruining themselves physically. It’s enough to make one wonder whether low-level “healing factors” and probability-altering “good luck” powers aren’t rather widespread in worlds rich in superheroes.

Though they officially are without powers, costumed athletes have several areas of specialization:

Acrobats—Each of these is like an Olympic gymnast, a trapeze artist, and a parkour champion all rolled into one death-defying package. They constantly strut their stuff on urban rooftops, in treetops, and on the exteriors of fast-moving vehicles. Some of these people are often shown holding their own in combat against much more powerful opponents. If they represent the peak of non-super human perfection, then that peak must stand a bit higher than it does in our world.

Martial Artists—Nearly all superheroes can fight, of course. We refer here to those whose schtick emphasizes exotic disciplines like karate, kung-fu, savate, and assorted fighting styles that exist only in writers’ imaginations. These got to be a big craze in the West after Bruce Lee came along, and have been going strong ever since. In a pinch most of them can draw upon their inner strengths to perform feats that push the human potential envelope farther than normal, as when Iron Fist is shown knocking superhumans off their feet.

Brawlers—Back in the Golden Age of superhero comics any pulp-style tough guy could put on a costume and get to work pounding evildoers with nothing but his own two fists. That seems to have worked well enough in an age when most of the bad guys were two-bit hoods and not-so-bright German and Japanese soldiers and agents. As the villains became more powerful and exotic in subsequent eras the brawlers either retired or upped their games by adding martial arts and/or acrobatic skills to their resumes.

Weapons Masters—Some of those old Golden Age brawlers carried firearms, but these folks arm themselves with more archaic weapons. Archers are the most popular. They’ve been around since the beginning of comics—quite a bit longer, actually, if you count forerunners Robin Hood and William Tell. Comic book archers’ ability to stop crooks non-lethally by pinning their sleeves to the wall with an arrow loosed while leaping through the air make them some of the most far-fetched non-supers of all. It gets even better when they pull out their trick arrows, with the boxing gloves, grappling hooks, smoke and gas bombs, high explosives, even, on one memorable occasion, a tactical nuclear warhead (This reviewer still wonders where in the world the Silver Age Green Arrow obtained that one. Fortunately it appears to have been the only one he ever had).

Besides the archers there are a few sword-wielders—Zorro is the best-known example—who combine Three Musketeers-style swashbuckling with identity-concealing superhero masks. There are also assorted characters who throw stuff, like boomerangs and throwing stars. Usually these are auxiliary weapons and not a superhero’s principal specialty. Throwing specialists tend to be villains for some reason.

Some costumed athletes, though they rely upon their well-honed athletic skills in battle, do have acknowledged superhuman powers. Daredevil has those heightened senses that compensate for his blindness. Captain America does not tire like ordinary mortals, and when frozen goes into suspended animation instead of perishing (As far as I know he only did that once—but he REALLY needed that power when he used it).

Again, there are also those who fall into more than one of the above categories. Batman, for example, is a master of all four categories—because he’s Batman.

Sounds like you want to start a superhero RPG!

Seriously, check out the manual for Heroes Unlimited, it's full of stuff like this.

Here are their hero categories --

01-10 Experiment
11-20 Robotics
21-30 Bionics and Implants
31-40 Special Training
41-50 Mutants
51-60 Psionics
61-70 Physical Training
71-80 Magic
81-90 Hardware
91-100 Aliens


More here -- http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewto ... &page=last

Looks like they've spent a lot more time thinking through their taxonomy. I was not aware of this, since I'm not an RPG-er. But I'm not all that surprised.

Yeah I have the Villians Unlimited editi. It was very detailed about the powers, abilities, limitations, and back stories of their characters. I wish they had bben turned into actual comics because they were so interesting. My favorite characters were The Masters Of Speed.

High-Tech Heroes


Superheroes have long been associated with science fiction. It would appear that the state of the art in quite a few fields of science and technology is considerably more advanced in the world of superheroes than in the world we know (Of course the world we know is doing its best to catch up, at least in the areas of IT and biomedicine.). The laws of physics don’t seem to be quite the same in most superhero universes either….

Spacers—Buck Rodgers is the great archetype here. Golden Age comics were home to a host of futuristic adventurers equipped with a panoply of spaceships, spacesuits, jet packs, and ray guns with which to bring the bad guys to justice. They were by no means unknown in the Silver Age either. In recent decades they have come to be considered corny and tend to be seen mainly in parody form.

In their early form, that is. The media are still full of space adventurers who are their descendants. The Star Trek and Star Wars franchises are obvious examples. Ironically real-life space travel is one area of contemporary technology in which things are falling far short of expectations, instead of catching up with them. It appears that we are fated to continue mostly dreaming about it instead of actually doing it.

Robots, Androids, and Cyborgs—These artificial beings have appeared here and there since at least the original Human Torch in 1939. They are far more often villains than heroes, perhaps because the idea of artificially created beings with independent thought (or of being turned into one, as in the case of cyborgs) is deeply threatening to us. Still, there have been a number of good guys and gals who weren’t made entirely out of flesh and blood as we know it.

This genus hit the popular culture big time in the U.S. with the fondly-remembered “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bionic Woman” TV shows of the 1970s. Real-life bionics were in fact being pioneered around that time. Bionic replacements are still undergoing development and show promise. They are still no doubt not moving fast enough to suit those who stand to benefit from them.

Jet-Age Knights—We’re speaking here of characters who wear armor, not Jedis. With the right armor a character like Iron Man can exhibit an array of powers—flight, invulnerability, strength, destructive rays, and enhanced senses—worthy of Superman. Strength-enhancing exoskeletons have been undergoing development since the 1970s, by the way. Like bionic limbs they still don’t quite seem to be here.

Armor-wearers have been increasingly common in American pop culture since the 1980s. Much of this is evidently due to influences from Japan, where merchandisable teams of suit-wearing, giant-robot-piloting warriors have been hugely popular since at least the 1970s.

Super Drivers—Superheroes like Batman often have cool rides of one kind or another. For some, their wheels (or in some cases wings) are their main specialty. David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight would be just another secret agent without his talking TransAm.

While American comic books have few superheroes who are so completely identified with their vehicles, they are seen a good bit in other media. Here again the phenomenon seems to have spilled over from Japan (think of the Gatchaman team and their individual vehicles) into such Western manifestations as the M.A.S.K. team. Some of these mecha, of course, transform into giant robots and battlesuits, making them a subset of the Jet-Age Knights above.

Gadgeteers—Most superheroes use gadgets and do-hickies not found in stores. Batman has a whole cave full of them; Spider-Man relies on his web shooters to supplement his spider-derived powers. Some are especially dependent on them. Rip Hunter owes his fame entirely to his time machine. Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards, though a bona fide superhuman, is far more impressive as an inventor. And of course Henry Pym went through that “scientific adventurer” phase where he used his shrink/grow powers mainly to carry several tons’ worth of cool and useful stuff in his pockets. Sure makes one glad they’re on our side!

Magic Users


As was noted in the previous section, superheroes tend to have a science-fictional orientation. However, a large minority look to the supernatural to make them super. They include:

Sorcerers—Many magic users do their thing through incantations and the like that must be learned. Golden-Age superhero lines usually had at least one swami or mystic who employed skills they had learned somewhere in “the East” for good. The 1932 movie character Chandu the Magician was a notable (and still quaintly enjoyable) early example who no doubt inspired many of these. There were also super illusionists like Mandrake the Magician whose real power consisted of their ability to make their enemies THINK they were performing all sorts of magic.

Since the 1960s we’ve had several full-fledged magi like Doctor Strange and lots of minor mystics representing voodoo, Native American, and other traditions. Most of these more modest figures can draw upon an assortment of psychic powers, some useful artifacts, and the ability to appear and disappear mysteriously (Although this last ability isn’t necessarily magical—I’ve found that one can earn quite a reputation merely by wearing rubber-soled shoes and keeping one’s mouth shut while moving around. I’ve overheard staff members warning new hires that they can never know when I might be lurking about observing their work—a handy reputation for a boss to have….).

Magical Shapeshifters—Now and then a werewolf or vampire will break with the usual trend and become a hero. Demonically-possessed individuals have occasionally done likewise. Marvel created several such characters in the 1970s in an effort to combine superheroics with horror (Dell had an earlier superheroic Dracula; he turned himself into a bat through a chemical mutation formula, not through magic). The creepy world of supernatural “urban fantasy” romance has lots and lots of these. Who says female readers don’t like superheroes?

Magically-Powered Superhumans—The Marvel and DC universes established long ago that the pantheons of ancient mythology were actually tribes of extradimensional superbeings who occasionally involved themselves in the affairs of men. While they sometimes work spells, these gods and goddesses mostly seem to channel their magicks into physical combat.

Now and then a little of the magic manages to be bestowed upon mortals. Billy “Captain Marvel” Batson, for example, gets Superman-like powers by uttering a magic word, but otherwise knows no magic. He’s the best-known example of this type, though there have been others.

Ghosts—Vengeful ghosts have long been staples of supernatural legend and literature. Most can only appear to those who have wronged them or their descendants, and are limited to making their lives miserable by haunting them. Once in a while one actually dons a costume (or is slain while wearing one) and becomes a superhero. Deadman and the Specter are the best-known examples here.

Artifact Wielders—There are lots and lots of objects charged with magical energy lying around out there, just waiting for somebody to stumble across them. The Golden-Age Green Lantern found one of these. So, in a sense, did Johnny Thunder (Granted, the “Living Thunderbolt” isn’t technically speaking an artifact). At a humbler level Marvel’s White Tiger gained greatly enhanced fighting prowess by wearing a set of jade talismans.

Demon, vampire, and general-interest monster hunters are a popular variety of artifact-wielder. Most of them aren’t much for casting spells, but they usually have some special tools on hand. In the right hands, against the right foes, ordinarily non-magical items such as holy water and silver bullets can be formidable weapons. The granddaddy of this type of hero was Abraham Van Helsing, the nemesis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The old scholar wasn’t originally what one would call a superhero, but he has been reinvented as such over the years.

As always there are those who don’t fit perfectly into one category or another. Where would one place the young witches at Hogwarts School? Are they sorcerers—they have to learn and practice to do magic—or superhumans by virtue of their having been born with magical abilities? Such are the questions that geeks ponder.