Masks

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Masks is a series of stories (currently spanning eleven long issues) written by Rodford Edmiston, which is based in his own comic universe. The story follows the adventures of a superpowered young man named Randy, who never really wanted to be a masked and costumed 'super' -as superhumans are called- but would rather commit good deeds anonymously whenever necessary. When he rushes in to help save a super team in distress, little does he suspect he's about to embark on the journey of his life.

Randy has a set of powers that are best explained with a comparison to a CPU. Randy is the CPU, with a fixed amount of power. He can divert this power between any of his super powers (see next paragraph), but they can never exceed 100% of power. For instance, if he's fighting using 50% in strength and 50% in resilience but suddenly needs to fly away fast, he'll have to drain his strength and put that power into flying, or balance power levels over these three powers.

Randy's powers (quoted from the story) are: "Speed, flight, independence, resilience, strength and agility". Independence can be used to prevent having to breathe (among other uses), but is never very well explained. Resilience means how much damage he can take, which means that if he puts all of his power into resilience he can take a lot of blows before going down, as well as being impervious to small-caliber firearms.

Not to be confused with the Transformers fanfic of the same name.

Tropes used in Masks include:
  • Gadgeteer Genius: This is one of the possible mutant powers.
  • Gender Bender: Randy also has a limited shapeshifting ability which he uses to become female as a disguise to protect his Secret Identity. It's meant as a temporary measure, but "Template" winds up with a full-time superhero career of her own.