From Pulp to Golden Age

[quozaxx]

In the Pulp age (up until about 1940), people didn't fly, could lift tanks, or even teleport over vast distances. Some had powers, but they were often weak or had a variety of limitations.

 

By World War II, (often called the Golden Age), people could fly, lift tanks, etc.

 

So what (in your opinion) happened?

[pinecone]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

In the Pulp age (up until about 1940), people didn't fly, could lift tanks, or even teleport over vast distances. Some had powers, but they were often weak or had a variety of limitations.

 

By World War II, (often called the Golden Age), people could fly, lift tanks, etc.

 

So what (in your opinion) happened?

 

In my "universe" there was an atempt to free the "great old ones" that failed, but it did result in WW1, and freed up enough mytical force to let super heros happen again

 

(the old myths of Demi-gods, heroic gods, and heros date from the last time)(Chaining the great old ones was so difficult that most all the mystic energy in the galaxy was required...)

[OddHat]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

I'd suggest reading through Jess Nevins Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, and even more so his Pulp pages. There were actually many stories of people who could move at super speed, fly, lift tanks, etc before the 1940s. Power levels did go up to mythic levels in the comics, but the modern roots for many power sets go back quite a ways.

 

In real world terms, the big change was that the characters with more-than-human powers went from being monsters (or, more rarely, people touched by strange science such as Hugo Danner or Professor Gibberne) to being protagonists.

 

In game / story terms, I justify it in my time line by saying that the higher powered characters were always around, at about 1 in 10,000,000 in the Human population. Sometimes more, sometimes fewer, but generally at that level. As the worlds population has gone up, the number of higher powered Supers in the Human population has gone up with it. Non humans of course add to that number.

 

Other settings use other justifications.

 

Here's my basic timeline:

http://surbrook.devermore.net/herosource/wold_newton.html

[Peregrine]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

I'd suggest reading through Jess Nevins Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, and even more so his Pulp pages. There were actually many stories of people who could move at super speed, fly, lift tanks, etc before the 1940s. Power levels did go up to mythic levels in the comics, but the modern roots for many power sets go back quite a ways.

 

For me, the difference is costumes and equipment. Most of the pulp heroes had no compunctions about using guns, while golden age heroes tended to eschew them; the main exception being golden age cowboys (essentially holdover pulp cowboys). And the golden age was literally started when colorful, circus-acrobat-inspired costumes became the norm.

[assault]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

In the Pulp age (up until about 1940), people didn't fly, could lift tanks, or even teleport over vast distances. Some had powers, but they were often weak or had a variety of limitations.

 

By World War II, (often called the Golden Age), people could fly, lift tanks, etc.

 

So what (in your opinion) happened?

 

Superman, duh.

 

As has been pointed out, all the elements that make up a superhero existed beforehand, but Superman was where they came together - and he became insanely popular.

 

BTW, World War II began in 1939.

[bubba smith]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

in the city of heroes novel the web of arachnos powers were contained in a chest ala pandoras box until the men who woud become statesman and lord recluse opened it hoping to find a cure for the futre statsman's mustard gas poisoning

[fbdaury]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

Superman changed the collective unconcious- before him, being as powerful as Hugo Danner or Doc Savage was the most many people could conceive of, but with Superman, the worldview expanded and people started creating heroes with more and more power as a means of empowerment, and with WWII looming, people had more reason than ever to be afraid and want more and more power so that they could feel protected from Their Dangerous World.

[Peregrine]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

Superman changed the collective unconcious- before him' date=' being as powerful as Hugo Danner or Doc Savage was the most many people could conceive of, but with Superman, the worldview expanded and people started creating heroes with more and more power as a means of empowerment, and with WWII looming, people had more reason than ever to be afraid and want more and more power so that they could feel protected from Their Dangerous World.[/quote']

 

Except that the Golden Age Superman started with exactly the same powers as Hugo Danner, and Golden Age Batman moved quickly from a Shadow pastiche to a Shadow/Doc Savage hybrid.

[Kenn]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

Marketing and mass media happened.

 

As Superman became a hit, other publishers tried to ride the gravy train. So they made their "supermen" perform even more outlandish feats. So National countered and Superman had to do even more.

 

Then as Superman became animated and got on the radio and into the funnypapers, things kept getting bigger too. I don't think anyone had worked out his limits.

 

And then after 7 years, the Bomb was dropped and Superman had to be made more powerful still. Everyone was afraid of the Bomb. To be an effective symbol of might making right, Superman had to be tougher than the Bomb.

[assault]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

Or, to put it another way:

"In the endless reaches of the universe, there once existed a planet known as Krypton, a planet that burned like a green star in the distant heavens. There, civilization was far advanced, and it brought forth a race of supermen, whose mental and physical powers were developed to the absolute peak of human perfection. But there came a day when giant quakes threatened to destroy Krypton forever. One of the planet's leading scientists, sensing the approach of doom, placed his infant son in a small rocket ship and sent it hurtling in the direction of Earth, just as Krypton exploded. The rocket sped through star-studded space, landing on Earth with its precious burden: Krypton's sole survivor. A passing motorist found the uninjured child and took it to an orphanage. As the years went by and the child grew to maturity, he found himself possessed of amazing physical powers. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the infant of Krypton is now the Man of Steel: SUPERMAN! To best be in a position to use his powers in a never-ending battle for truth and justice, Superman has assumed the guise of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper."

 

(Quote from the Fleischer animated shorts.)

 

This raises an interesting point though: Superman wasn't human. His appearance didn't mean that humans in his continuity gained new capabilities. Everyone else still had the same limits. Yes there was a mad scientist or two - but they had been around in the pulp days too. So Superman's world didn't actually change much.

 

Other continuities saw lots of actual superhumans emerge, of course. Even there, though, most superheroes lived in their own little sandpits with little crossover with other characters. The JSA was a partial exception, showing that many of DC's then-published characters notionally existed in the same world - but you wouldn't have known that from their solo stories.

 

By and large, the difference between the Pulp and Golden Ages is the emergence of a relative handful of superhumans. Not so radical a change, in other words.

[quozaxx]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

But in the Champion's Universe there is no Superman, except in comic books, radio, and other media.

 

So, what happened in the Champion's Universe?

[fbdaury]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

Well, since you're asking for an in-gameworld reason and I didn't catch that the first time around, let me try again: Necessity. As the world became darker and more troubled, between the depression and the events in Europe, people started looking more and more to the skies for some hope, some ray of light.

 

I've always liked the thought that the belief of humanity empowers its heroes- the powers may have come first, but the belief in them over the years has caused the powers to steadily become more potent to allow mankind's heroes to face the threats that mankind fears, be it war, supercrime, or attack from other worlds/dimensions.

 

Is that a little more helpful?

[bubba smith]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

But in the Champion's Universe there is no Superman, except in comic books, radio, and other media.

 

So, what happened in the Champion's Universe?

kal els' rocket ws either destroyed in flight or was diverted to a red sun world were he had no powers

[Peregrine]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

But in the Champion's Universe there is no Superman, except in comic books, radio, and other media.

 

So, what happened in the Champion's Universe?

 

 

See Champions Universe, p. 11. Short version: In 1938, Nazi mystics performed a ritual that resulted in the "return of magic" to the HERO Universe, which allowed true superpowers to manifest.

[assault]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

What Peregrine said.

 

It would have been nice if the original post had been clearer about the fact that it was talking about the published "official" CU. That would have allowed a simple reference to the official explanation.

 

Of course, I don't use the CU. I tend to follow the "Superman's universe" model, where the presence of a handful of superhumans doesn't imply any particular change in humanity itself.

 

The key difference is "handful of superhumans", as opposed to thousands of superhumans. Obviously the official CU needs to lean towards the latter, to allow players to feel that they are part of a bigger world. A GM's sandpit world doesn't require that element.

[Peregrine]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

What Peregrine said.

 

It would have been nice if the original post had been clearer about the fact that it was talking about the published "official" CU. That would have allowed a simple reference to the official explanation.

 

Of course, I don't use the CU. I tend to follow the "Superman's universe" model, where the presence of a handful of superhumans doesn't imply any particular change in humanity itself.

 

The key difference is "handful of superhumans", as opposed to thousands of superhumans. Obviously the official CU needs to lean towards the latter, to allow players to feel that they are part of a bigger world. A GM's sandpit world doesn't require that element.

 

And yet the CU holds on to the "like our world, with a Superhuman World grafted on but not making fundamental changes" trope like a drowning man on a piece of flotsam...

[Lord Liaden]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

See Champions Universe' date=' p. 11. Short version: In 1938, Nazi mystics performed a ritual that resulted in the "return of magic" to the HERO Universe, which allowed true superpowers to manifest.[/quote']

 

To elaborate slightly more: in the official Hero Universe (including all the eras, past and future, in the timeline unifying Hero Games's published settings) there is "ambient magic" in the universe, the level of which waxes and wanes over time and in specific areas. Magic has the potential to "loosen" physical laws, allowing extremely improbable events to occur and phenomena to exist which aren't normally possible. Past eras of high magic on Earth have allowed monsters, mighty sorcerors, and even gods to walk the land; while when magic is very low such creatures can't even exist in Earth's dimension.

 

The ritual attempted by the German government's cabal of mystics in 1938 to find magical artifacts to help with the war effort went out of control, raising the ambient magic on Earth to a level not seen in millennia, allowing for all the superhuman origins we see in comics: "radiation accidents," genetic mutation, radical technological innovations, mystical martial arts or sorcery training, drugs and chemicals with extraordinary properties, etc. Note that most of these things aren't "magic" per se -- magic just makes more things possible than in our mundane world.

 

And yet the CU holds on to the "like our world' date=' with a Superhuman World grafted on but not making fundamental changes" trope like a drowning man on a piece of flotsam...[/quote']

 

As does Marvel, DC, and any other "mainstream" comic-book world. The appeal, of course, is that readers (or gamers) can easily immerse themselves in this largely familiar reality.

 

With all the suspensions of disbelief required to enjoy the superhero genre, I never considered this one to be particularly onerous.

[assault]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

As does Marvel' date=' DC, and any other "mainstream" comic-book world. The appeal, of course, is that readers (or gamers) can easily immerse themselves in this largely familiar reality.[/quote']

 

This was easier, of course, back when characters either mainly existed in their own little continuities, or in a "big" continuity that only extended back less than a decade.

 

The Marvel universe circa 1963-1967 would probably be the ideal situation in many ways - there's a continuity, but it's not so complex as to collapse under its own weight.

 

Personally I think that a nice continuity could be build up out of the Club of Heroes stuff from 1950s DC. Add in a bit of the very early Legion of Superheroes (referred to as a "superhero club" in a couple of stories), and you're good to go.

 

Or, of course, you could dig up a copy of Superhero 2044, and work up a continuity based on it.

[bubba smith]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

This was easier, of course, back when characters either mainly existed in their own little continuities, or in a "big" continuity that only extended back less than a decade.

 

The Marvel universe circa 1963-1967 would probably be the ideal situation in many ways - there's a continuity, but it's not so complex as to collapse under its own weight.

 

Personally I think that a nice continuity could be build up out of the Club of Heroes stuff from 1950s DC. Add in a bit of the very early Legion of Superheroes (referred to as a "superhero club" in a couple of stories), and you're good to go.

 

Or, of course, you could dig up a copy of Superhero 2044, and work up a continuity based on it.

superhero2044?

[Guest steamteck]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

In my supers game world ( which isn't Earth) Supertech and alien tech HAS vastly changed society as we've gamed over the years. The trick is things started out Victorian Steamteck so now we've got a sort of future through the lens of the pass going.

[OddHat]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

In my own setting, there are all sorts of changes, from consumer tech to political boundaries to communities (known and unknown to the public) on the Moon and Mars (and at the bottom of the sea, hidden in jungles, in caverns underground, etc.).

 

But I'm sure my players are picturing the everyday world plus whatever I'm describing; I don't have a special effects budget.

[assault]

Re: From Pulp to Golden Age

 

superhero2044?

 

The first superhero roleplaying game.

 

One of the early influences on Champions/HERO, FWIW.