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howtohero · 7 years

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Today we’re going to cover a subject that I believe, in a perfectly sensible world, wouldn’t need covering. In my opinion this subject is the source of countless instances of unnecessary reckless endangerment and the cause of numerous deaths throughout superhero history. It’s a topic that I’ve voiced my opinion on before yet is still, despite my best efforts, a prevalent enough aspect of superhero culture that it bears covering. Today, for our fiftieth post, HowtoHero presents:

#050 Child Sidekicks

Children Acquiring Powers You should never submit a child to some sort of experiment with the hopes of having them acquire powers so they can fight crime alongside you, but the fact of the matter is that children are just as likely to stumble across superpowers as any old old person. For this reason, it’s important for adult heroes to keep an eye out for children displaying signs of superpowers. If you do come across a child who can lift busses or turn into a mountain lion you actually should take them under your wing. Super children should be nurtured by an older superhero who has more experience that can help guide them through the often tumultuous and quite frankly, terrifying, road to mastering their powers. If they’re not they could very easily turn to a life of a crime and become full-blown supervillains. Powered children of all kinds including magic wielders (kids who stumbled upon magical artifacts, natural born wizards, reanimated mummies of Egyptian princes, etc.) aliens, sentient androids, mutants, or your run-of-the-mill survivors of freak accidents should be carefully monitored and evaluated by trusted psychologists and experienced superheroes before being allowed out into the field to actually start fighting crimes.

Codenames and Costumes Sidekicks should be given codenames and costumes that are evocative of their older mentors’. This isn’t just a cutesy brand-building thing to do. It’s actually important. Especially when you guys first start working together. This way if you and your child sidekick get separated people will know who they belong to. “Oh your name is Hatboy and you’re wearing a beanie, clearly you must be Hatman’s sidekick, I’ll call him and tell him I’ve found you.” It’s basically the equivalent of putting your name and phone number in your underwear in case you lose it. Or some other analogy that doesn’t conflate children with underwear. You get the vibes. Oftentimes this is as simple as switching out the “Man” or “Woman” in your codename with “Boy” or “Girl” (or “Lad” or “Lass” if you’re Scottish) or even just slapping the word “Kid” in front of your actual codename. As far as costumes go, your sidekick’s costume should at the very least incorporate your emblem in some way. Regarding color schemes, many sidekicks simply use the same deco as their mentor but this is not strictly necessary (none of this is actually necessary tbh). Some sidekicks wear costumes with colors that are inverted from those of their mentor’s or complete different colors that are complimentary. An important thing to be aware of is that for children, having a cool costume is much more important. If their costume is lame or doofy they’ll be made fun of by the other child sidekicks (children sidekick? Kiddiekicks?). Children are mean. Make sure your child sidekick has a cool costume. If they’re made fun of it will mess with their self-confidence and that’s no good when you’re fighting Halloween-themed Australian assassins. That’s when you need your confidence to be high. Outside of all this all of the regular superhero costume rules apply. Note: All child sidekicks should have full pants as part of their costumes if your child sidekick parades around without pants that’s only going to raise questions.

Secret Identities Maintaining your child sidekick’s secret identity is extremely important and this needs to be inculcated within them from a very young age. Children need to be reminded constantly not to blab about the super cool fact that they’re actual bona fide superheroes. Their friends might think it’s cool but do you know who else is gonna think that that’s super neat? Bad guys. Especially bad guys who enjoy murdering superheroes and their sidekicks. They’re just gonna love that. To maintain their secret identities children should continue attending school even after they fall in with a superhero. If they can they should be enrolled in a secret child superhero private school where they can be watched over by the faculty which is made up of retired superheroes and other non-active-superhero-superhumans. Some superheroes officially adopt their child sidekicks in their public personas, especially if they’re orphans or in the foster system. If your sidekick is perfectly happy living with their biological, adoptive or foster parents do not whisk them away against their will. [This is called kidnapping and is, in fact, a crime.] If your child sidekick has some other legal guardian whom they like and trust they should be kept in the loop about their child’s superhumanness and their super-activities. Maybe even have them sign some sort of permission slip. On a separate note, you yourself are also taking a tremendous risk in entrusting some snot nosed child with your secret identity. So make sure you’ve found yourself a trustworthy child. Make them pinky swear that they won’t reveal your secret identity. For children a pinky swear is the strongest form of oath.

Child Care Remember the huge hassle finding a doctor to patch you up on the down low was? Well now you’ve gotta do that all over again, but with a pediatrician. Do you know how hard it’s going to be to convince a pediatrician that taking a child with you to fight sewer-mutants is a good idea? Honestly, any doctor who agrees with your side of things is probably not a doctor you want to entrust this child’s care to anyhow! You’re better off just bringing the kid to a different random doctor every time they get hurt. No doctor is going to turn away an injured child. If you do this though you need to make sure that you’re very aware of the child’s medical history, allergies, and weaknesses since you’re not going to have a regular doctor who can keep all that stuff on file for you. Additionally, child sidekicks are especially appealing to supervillains, they make for easy hostages and bargaining chips and they present a ludicrously easy avenue for psychologically scarring a mentor. Do not let a supervillain kidnap your child sidekick. It won’t end well. Most likely it’ll end with your child sidekick being beaten to death with a crowbar. Nobody wants that. Well the bad guys want that. But I try to never take their opinion into account when I make sweeping general statements. Weave some sort of tracking device into your sidekick’s costume so you can always find them. Well I guess in that case you wouldn’t be able to find them if they took the costume off. Inject them with a tracking beacon. Make sure you can always find them. Another thing you could do to discreetly protect your child sidekick is to team them up with a highly trained pet sidekick. This is good for a number of reasons. Children love having pets so it will do wonders for a child sidekick’s morale. Plus, presumably if you’ve got an animal sidekick its already really good at fighting crime so it can help protect this practical infant from the harm you’re so recklessly putting them in!

Vehicles Is your super-mobile even equipped to carry two people when one of them isn’t a prisoner? Is it child-friendly? Does it have seatbelts? It should really have seatbelts anyway but I don’t know if you’re invulnerable you might not care about that sort of thing. But if you have a child sidekick you need seatbelts. You also might need to be able to fit a booster or carseat. I don’t know how old this child is. You’re also gonna want to invest in a “child sidekick on board” bumper sticker so that in the event of a car accident, or if a giant robot steps on your car, paramedics will know that you’re a horribly irresponsible person who brings children with you to fight crime.

Training Taking on a sidekick is a full time job. When you’re not out fighting crime you need to be back at base training the kid to deal with anything that might come up while out in the field. For the first couple of months (or years!) you shouldn’t even let your sidekick out into the streets to (side)kick criminal butt. You should do your utmost best to prepare this child for any possible scenario. This way they’re never caught off guard and put in more danger than necessary. They should be given dossiers to study on every supervillain the super-community is presently aware of. You should conduct lessons on monster fighting and ancient-temple infiltrations. They should be taught how to perform exorcisms and given basic first aid training and be taught how to protect themselves from most superpowered attacks. Once you believe they’re ready to go out into the field they should at first be given support roles such as crowd-control or police and press liaison or debris-counter and cataloguer (this is the guy at every crime scene who has to go through the rubble at pick out all the pieces of detritus that resemble celebrities and/or prominent fictional characters). Then as time goes on you should find them a good and easy starter-villain to fight. Go see what Smuggles is doing. I’m sure he’d be happy to fight your sidekick. Nobody ever invites him out to do things anymore. Poor Smuggles.

Bringing a Child Sidekick to an Active War-Zone Don’t. Just don’t do this. They will not survive the experience. And if they do somehow survive they’ll probably be captured by some shady evil organization and brainwashed into a super soldier assassin that murders people and that is also bad. Just don’t do this.

Comic Relief Child sidekicks can often inject a healthy dose of humor and quippery into regular bad guy bashing proceedings. This is good because it can allow you to focus on the actual important matters at hand such as strangling mad science mud monsters or trying to push a giant eldritch abomination back through a portal to another dimension with your bare hands.

Sidekick Teams Sometimes, if a bunch of sidekicks get together and decide that they aren’t being treated with adequate respect by their mentors they’ll band together and form their own sidekicks-only team. This is so dangerous. For everybody. Children don’t know how to operate and coordinate a superhero team. Somebody’s going to die. Maybe everybody. This is why you need to make sure sidekicks are never in the same room as one another. They can never be allowed to meet and commiserate. Or, as a compromise you can let them form their own team but with guidance from older superheroes. They should have a some kind of live in mentor who can help guide these fledgling superheroes and mold them into a cohesive crime fighting unit.

Growing Up and Moving On Child sidekicks won’t be children forever (in most cases), eventually they’re going to grow up and want to strike out on their own. They’ll most likely take on a new codename and design a new costume for themselves and, depending on how your breakup goes, they’ll move to another town that they feel is in need of a defender. When this happens, and provided that you think that they’re capable of taking this step, you need to be supportive. The more supportive you are of this move the more likely they’ll be to still consult with you and seek your experienced superhero wisdom on matters pertaining to their new careers. If you get offended that they want to leave you and throw a whole hissy fit and change your phone number so they can never call you, you’re only putting them in danger. And I get that if you had a child sidekick in the first place you probably don’t care too much about endangering them but if by some miracle they’ve survived their entire tenure in your care wouldn’t you want to keep that streak going? It’d be such a waste for them to die now. You’ve accomplished an impossible thing, don’t blow it now!

Super-Families Some superheroes are so good at successfully training and mentoring sidekicks into full-grown superherohood that they create a sort of empire or super-family with themselves as the patriarch. These heroes are often a more loyal and cohesive unit than the average superhero team with members viewing each other as family whom they would go to extreme lengths to assist. Former sidekicks can also bond with each other over their shared mentor’s personal brand of training through psychological scarring and perching on rooftops like he’s a gosh danged gargoyle.

Legacies If this young, minimally trained, frail child somehow outlives you they may decide to take on your name and carry on your legacy. That’s pretty neat I think. They’re especially likely to do this if you leave them a cryptic trail of clues that sets them off on a wild goose chase that leads them to a storage facility that contains a recording you left that tells them you think they’re ready, not to step into your shoes, but to take your name and turn it into something greater. And then the back wall of the storage locker magically slides back to reveal a costume that is a blend of your two costumes that looks totally baller. If you do that they’ll definitely carry on your legacy and continue you to perform acts of extreme heroism in your name. Just something to think about.

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