The first real recorded instance of what can be considered the modern Superhero can be traced as far back as the First World War, though there is a fair bit of scholarly debate (and yes, there are university courses about this kind of thing) about it, as these 'Proto-Heroes' were markedly different from their caped contemporaries in a few small, but notable regards.

For one thing, they weren't exactly paragons of "Truth, Justice and the [-insert country here] Way", they were soldiers, the monikers we know them by today weren't self-given titles and indicators of their power, but clever nicknames bestowed by their comrades, often in jest and the masks weren't there for show or to hide their indentities (though they often did), but to keep the mud and blood off their faces.

On the side of the Central Powers stood the 'Vengeance Corps' ('Das Rächer-Korps', in German), the first known major organized unit of superhuman or otherwise exceptional individuals in modern history, so named for their widely-acclaimed mission statement of seeking payment in blood for the assassination of the Archduke, Franz Ferdinand.

Opposing them on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, came the First Irregular Company, a dysfunctional, unruly but no less gifted gaggle of soldiers drawn up from across the armies of the Entente, colloquially known as the 'Mad Lads' for the tendency of their operations to lead them head-long into harm's way, and for the simple reason that, to stand against the Vengeance Corps who'd been efficiently tearing the Entente a shiny new asshole, they'd have to be completely bugfuck crazy.

True to the nature of that war... near it's end, not many were left on either side. Then, in 1918, barely a week before the armistice of November the Eleventh there came a new, profound development-

The First Supervillain

When Dr. Siegfried Holtz, A member of the Korps recently disfigured and driven mad in a gas-attack, heard the news from his hospital bed... he didn't really take it well. Butchering the staff, guards, and patients in the military hospital, Holtz took on the name 'Arzt Abscheu', locked himself in the building, started raising those he just killed with a perversion of science to attack the town and began working on what is only known to history as 'The Time Weapon'.

Now, when some guy starts calling himself 'Doctor Abomination', raises an army of zombies and begins building something called THE FREAKING TIME WEAPON, it generally warrants a fairly serious response; And so, with surprisingly little bickering by their respective commanders over the details (people back then tended to stop fucking around when zombies and the space-time continuum were involved, it was a simpler time) both the Korps and the Lads were sent in to put an abrupt stop to that shit. This is generally the part where Superhero Scholars (again, a real thing) from either side of the fence begin gushing about the very first time in recorded history a team of super-powered individuals banded together to take on some cackling madman and his doomsday device.

Though the exact details of what transpired there remain classified to this very day, the fact that we're all not being eaten by zombies right now or worshiping our melty-faced overlord should tell you who came out on top of that little rumble.

What we do know, however (thanks to a certain heavily censored book), is that only three men came out of there alive and, after having just saved the entire frickin' planet, went their separate ways-

'Oversight', Canada's regenerating sharpshooter, came back from the war and simply vanished into obscurity.

'Herr Feuersturm' of the German Army, an aristocratic Fire Mage of Saxon origin, would return to Germany after the war for a few years, before emigrating to Oslo, Norway to become a History Professor during the troubled Weimar Era.

Pawel 'The Wall' Kowalski of the French Foreign Legion went home to his native Omaha, reconnected with his estranged parents, got married, moved to New York and started writing a whole lot of books.

Though these men had no idea at the time, they had sewn the seeds for something that would echo across history for years to come.

And history, for it's part, wasn't quite done with them yet...

Name:
Alias: (Bearing in mind, in some cases you might not have one; like if you're a fresh-off-the-ship alien/dimensional traveler or just some guy on his first day of wearing a mask and hasn't thought up a catchy name yet)
Age:
Gender:
Nationality/Place of Birth: (Pretty self-explanatory. If you're an alien, or something else not from the world as we know it, put it down here anyway and elaborate in your backstory)
Base of Operations: (Where you usually work. If you wanna make somewhere up for this, go ahead, just elaborate it in your backstory)
Occupation: (Unless you're doing the hero thing full-time, you've probably got some bills to pay and some dumb shit you do every day to make that possible. Not everyone has the fortune to be born a millionaire, after all.)
Appearance: (Pictures are fine, but if you want to write out a description that's cool with me)
Personality:
Skills: (Stuff you've been taught or just know how to do that doesn't necessarily involve eye-lasers or some shit)
Abilities: (This is where you tell us about your character's eye-lasers or some shit. I'll be pretty lenient here, so have at 'er, just bear in mind we're playing characters on the bottom wrung of the superhero world, so don't go too crazy.)
Bio: (A few paragraphs, if you'd please.)
Other: (If you wanna add a theme-song or anything else, this'd be the place to toss it.)