Over on the HERO GAMES Discussion Boards, "OddHat" (Robert Dorf) started a thread titled "Pictures That Could Be A Super Team." The idea was to take photos of people who looked like real-like superheroes and give them a back story. Initially, most of the pictures were of female fitness models and/or bodybuilders, since they had the physiques one would expect of a female superhero (well, mostly). Another popular source was to find pictures of women with various superhero costumes photoshopped onto them. As the thread grew more popular the style of images expanded, to include cosplayers (especially anime cosplayers), period Victorian strongmen (and women), photoshopped images of all sorts, models (people, vehicles, gadgets), movie and TV props, and so on and so forth.
This pages collections all of my contributions to the thread, as well as a lot of new material I have developed on my own. The object is to take an image, be it a cosplayer (i.e someone dressed up in the costume of a published character), a photoshopped image manipulation, a model kit, official art from a video game, or just any odd picture I find, and build a story around the image. I try to avoid connecting the new back story to anything I know about the original character depicted in the image -- the idea is to use the image by itself for ideas, developing the concept just from what the image shows me, not from what I know about the character (if anything, I still don't know who or what some of the characters are in some of these images).
While the title if this page is "Pictures That Could Be Superheroes," I've tried to go beyond that. As I've located new images, I've started to branch out into pulp-era, fantasy, and science fiction concepts. I also have tried to avoid using any established setting, although some entries do reference each other, and I often default to the official HERO Games Champions Universe in the color text (and any character sheets).
Clicking on a thumbnail will bring you to a larger image and at least a few sentences of "color text." In some cases you will find a link to a Hero System character sheet. As I find (and develop ideas for) more pictures, I will add them here. Donations are welcome!
DISCLAIMER: All images are copyright their respective owners and have been used without their permission or knowledge. Many images were garnered from image posting sites such as 4chan and iichan. I am also well aware that my text descriptions almost never match the actual nature/history/origin of the characters shown in the image. This was done on purpose, as I was trying to develop new ideas based on images shown, not reiterate the old ones
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Surbrook's Stuff is maintained by webmaster Michael Surbrook. If you like what you see, please send him your comments about the page.
