I was getting a series of vaccination shots today in preparation for travel abroad when I had a thought. Are there any superheroes or super villains who got their powers from vaccines?

There must be! I’m just not geeky enough to know it! Billions of people having dead and/or weakened viruses pumped into their systems, sometimes mixed or given closely enough to mix, mostly at a young age when their bodies are still developing. There’s zero chance of anything ever go wrong in a fictional universe to give somebody superpowers, right? 😉

I’d be utterly shocked if no characters with superhuman powers had been created this way. The fact it’s such a common act with scientific mystique should make it one of the most common ways to get superpowers, even if only 0.000001% of people have it happen to them! How many people do you know get subject to cosmic or other weird radiation, for example? Seems like everybody who does gets something that it’s like the cheap way out to explain how someone got their super powers.

I’m asking some really geeky folks in Halifax’s own “Con” community, Hal-Con, to get me answers. When I do, I’ll share here. Captain America and others getting an injection like Super Soldier Serum doesn’t count, by the way. That’s like a secret project gone right, not disease fighting vaccines gone wrong. And supposedly, Super Soldier Serum isn’t even a serum!

In the meanwhile, let me ask this theoretical question. In light of all the anti-vaccination craziness, do you think it’d be taboo now to introduce a superhero (or unlikely a super villain) who got his/her powers from vaccination?

Vaccination gone bad to make bad people certainly would not be well received I don’t think. But even if it went bad to create super powers for the good, do you think vaccinations not doing what they’re supposed to would be well received? Disappointing a lot of kids into thinking getting vaccines would give them superpowers is probably not going to go down well, either. 🙂

What do you think?