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 SupervillainWhen 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..."So there we are, sitting knee-deep in muddy water in some irrigation ditch on the way to the town. We signaled for help from the artillery with a flare, so of course it's coming down on our own heads as I realize I'm out of smokes, so I start getting a little mad. As the Bulgarian starts puking, I poke my head out from our cover and see that there's at least three hundred screaming undead charging down the hill towards us, so I cry out in alarm which nobody hears and then I am handed a cheese sandwich."
-Excerpt from 'Irregular Adventures', by Pawel Kowalski
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