Scraps of story: Powercut, the lightning hero

(Pictured above, a drawing I did of this guy when I was a teen myself.)

His story begins when he was about 14 or 15. Back then, he was a quippy, carefree little guy, with the power to absorb, generate and shoot electrical energy, and even teleport short distances by momentarily transforming into pure energy.

He was part of a youth superhero group called the Street Sentinels, kind of like the Teen Titans. He wasn't the most prominent member of the group, but he was one of the more powerful. He called himself 'Powerkid'. From the moment he chose the name, he was looking forward to the day that he would strike out on his own, graduating to 'Powercut', the same way that Robin becomes Nightwing. However, that wasn't meant to be, at least the way he imagined it.

There was a conflict - not even with a supervillain, just a turf war with another youth superhero group with an opposing set of values, the Golden League. Somehow it escalated to a big battle in a warehouse on the outskirts of town.

In the final act, there was some kind of electrical bomb involved that could only be stopped by Powerkid, exerting more power than ever before, straining his powers far past their limits. His success struck the final blow of the conflict, but it broke him. He was in a coma for a while, and when he woke up, his powers were gone. He was an ordinary kid again.

The Street Sentinels disbanded, too many of their members hurt or too rattled to continue. The Golden League were also so rattled by the conflict that they turned their backs on the members who had instigated the fight, and gave their spots to the few ex-Street Sentinels that still wanted to be superheroes. The Golden League got to grow up to be a well-respected, major superhero team.

We fast forward 10 or so years. This is where the real story begins, everything up to this point is just flashback material. The guy that was Powerkid is now just a normal, working adult. His loving girlfriend is a superhero obsessed engineer, whose dream is to one day build superhero gadgets, but she doesn't know about his past. It's not something he likes to talk about. He thinks he knows where his life is headed. And then everything changes when he discovers he can make a spark with his fingers, like his powers are slowly beginning to come back.

After confessing what's going on to his girlfriend, she gets to work on making a super-suit for him, with gadgets that can be fuelled by and magnify the energy his body generates. And so begins Powercuts comeback story.