Friday, 18 February 2022

Winter Olympic Superheroes

The Winter Olympics inevitably got me thinking about superheroes.

The various sports and varieties of skiing, snowboarding, skating and more could be good power sets or skilled normal abilities.

I wouldn’t make the whole team Scandinavian despite their winter sport success and Norway’s in particular, but they could certainly be based up there. There’s little Scandinavian representation in the US-based superhero universes, and I want to avoid stereotypes while including archetypes.

The most wintry mainstream team is probably Canada’s Alpha Flight, with winter weather controller Snowbird, a furry Hulk type in Sasquatch, as well as hockey pun strong guy Puck. (They were initially led by an armoured hero and included a shaman, an amphibious swimmer and two speedsters named Northstsr and Aurora for less immediately relevant members.) They infamously had a major fight scene in a whiteout represented by seven pages of sound effects and speech bubbles over white panels. (See also Superhero Girl Versus Canadian-ness.)

So an international team based on dealing with cold weather issues.

Skiing, with a suitably radical snowboarding sidekick?
And/or ski jump?
Speed skating speedster.
Figure skating suggests a martial artist and/or superspy type.
Ice hockey obviously suggests a melee fighter role.
Biathlon is already James Bond Norwegian army training.
The sled sports? Armoured sub-team?
Curling (the one discipline I can imagine myself surviving) might be the guy-in-the-chair role.

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