We're carefully tracking their progress, so that one day soon we may gather them together and fight crime. Or maybe commit crimes. We haven't decided yet.

Real Name: Unknown

Uberboy's name is being kept secret, presumably to protect the lives of his loved ones once Uberboy dons a mask and begins patrolling the streets of the world righting wrongs.

Superpower: Bona fide Super-Strength.

One day in 1999 a little baby boy was born in Germany, at first glance no different from any other. But, the nurses noticed that the baby's muscles were twitching and called the doctors to check him out. We can only assume Uberbaby was showing off his guns to the ladies since when doctors examined the kid, they reached a unanimous conclusion: he was ripped as hell.

But how did this happen? Was there a fully equipped gym inside his mom's uterus? No, as it turns out that's an extraordinarily stupid idea. It's actually a real X-Men-style genetic mutation that changes the way his body controls muscle growth. Cattle farmers have been intentionally using it for years to breed huge, muscular cows.

It's not clear what will happen as Uberboy grows up. All we have is this quote that is from The Washington Post despite sounding like it's from a Marvel origin: "But inasmuch as no one has ever encountered a child such as this boy or studied animals with defective myostatin genes into old age, his health--and eventual strength--remains unknown."

What we do know is that at 4-years-old, Uberboy could lift six times more weight than an average kid. If in a few years you see a guy clubbing a bank robber in the head with a minivan, you'll know what the hell is going on.

Scientists, instead of building giant laser shooting robots to hunt him down, decided to study him and try to find ways to use this new knowledge to help people with muscle dystrophy. And by that we assume they mean turn regular people into muscle-bound supermen to populate their Army of Doom.

Real Name: Ben Underwood

Superpower: Super Echolocation

That's a fancy way of saying he can "see" with sounds. Basically he's Daredevil, minus the girlfriends who become porn stars in Mexico, getting killed by ninjas and being Ben Affleck. So much, much better when you think about it.

Human echolocation is not really new. You can ask James "the blind traveler" Holman all bout it, assuming you have access to a working Ouija board since the guy has been dead for a century and a half. There is even an organization called World Access for the blind that teaches people how to use echolocation. But, few people have been able to take echolocation as far as Ben Underwood.

Ben was diagnosed with retinal cancer at the age of two and had his eyes removed at three. While this can easily go into our upcoming article "Top 7 Most Horrible Things God Can do to Children," Ben's story takes a different turn when at five, he learns he can detect things around him by making quick clicking noises with his tongue.

He's gotten so good at it that he's now capable of Rollerblading, skateboarding, playing basketball, foosball and even video games.

Wait, video games? How's he doing that? Actually, we don't want to know. All we know is that if you get this kid and a bunch of bad guys in a completely dark room, only one of them is walking out.

Real Name: Michel Lotito

Superpower: Super-Eating

This basically means the guy can eat and even digest metal, glass and even toxic, poisonous material without going "Oh, shit! What was I thinking!" before puking blood and dying, which is what normally happens when other people try.

Michel Lotito's stomach lining is twice as thick as normal, a rare condition that most doctors agree developed in the womb, though nobody is sure how. Was a pregnant Mrs. Lotito bitten by a radioactive billy goat giving goat genes to Le Fetus Mangetout? We're forced to assume so until prove otherwise.

Lotito knew that fate had endowed him with special powers, so he answered the call and when he was 9-years-old, he started eating a television set. In the years since, Lotito got himself a career in entertainment eating bicycles, supermarket trolleys and even a coffin (there was no body inside ... or so he claims).

Lotito even entered the Guinness book of records when he ate a goddamn airplane. Sure, it took him two years to do it, but he ate two pounds of metal per day during the whole thing. Recent X-rays show he still has pieces of metal in his stomach and even a chain still stuck in there.

As journalists, we feel compelled to draw your attention to the fact that his special power wasn't eating an airplane, so much as it was shitting an airplane. Anybody can swallow a foreign object. The other side of the equation is where it gets hard, and on our team of real-life superheroes, we're thinking the plane-shitting would actually be more useful than anything the Das Uberboy does (hey, we have some specific goals in mind).

Real Names: Numerous Buddhist monks

Superpower: Generating magical heat energy from their bodies.

Experts have been studying Buddhist monks for more than 20 years, trying to figure out just how in the hell they're doing what they do. By using a meditation technique called Tum-mo, these monks can lower their metabolism by 64 percent. To put it in perspective, your metabolism only drops 10 to 15 percent when you sleep. And yes, you should feel bad that there are people who make you look uptight when you're asleep.

But far more awesome than that, the monks can also increase the temperatures of their fingers and toes by 17 degrees. No one knows how.

After hovering there for a few seconds, the ball burst into flames

This control over their body temperature allows the monk to comfortably survive in temperatures experts call "scrotum-negating, penguin-urine cold." Not only that, in an experiment that sounds more like outright torture, a group of monks were put in a cold room with cold, wet sheets draped around them. We're not sure if some asshole scientists simply yelled "Hey, I found Nirvana inside this room," and then slammed the door shut after the curious monks went in to check. But using their body-temperature-controlling meditation the monks managed to avoid becoming very holy popsicles.

It's believed the monks' techniques can one day be taught to astronauts to be used during space travel, since during their meditation they consume far less resources. And once the astronauts arrive on another planet, they'll likely find a group of Buddhist monks waiting, having effortlessly teleported themselves there with their minds. 

Real Name: Yves Rossi

Superpower: Flight, via a rocket pack strapped to his back.

Yves Rossi is a Swiss professional pilot and aeronautical engineer (we hope, since he designed his own jet pack) who, claiming to be inspired by his hero Batman, realized the first jet-pack-powered flight.

At this point someone should write the man a nice letter explaining to him that Batman doesn't really fly at all. We'd do it ourselves, but we don't like to argue about comics with a man who jumps out of a plane wearing nothing but a flammable death trap strapped to his ass. For all we care he can say Superman talks to fish, as long as he keeps flying homemade jet packs while he's saying it.

As you see, he doesn't just run along the ground and wait for his jet pack to lift him into the air. He throws himself out of a fucking plane, knowing either his invention will work or men in hazmat suits will be raking him into a trash bag in a few minutes. If you're still wondering where the mutant part of this guy's super power comes in, than you obviously haven't considered the size of the balls it takes to do what he does.

Jet-Man's jet pack is capable of flying at a speed of 160 mph for up to six minutes. After those six minutes, Yves has to activate his secondary power, the Go-go-gadget-oh-please-God-don't-let-it-fail-parachute since there is no way to land the jet pack without becoming a red and chrome stain on the ground.

There's no word on his plans to add a laser-shooting suit of armor to the jet pack, but of course you wouldn't let that information get out until it was time to use it. That time is coming soon, Mr. Rossi. We'll be calling.

Real Name: Tim Cridland

Superpower: Super Pain Tolerance

Tim Cridland is an entertainer and a former member of the Jim Rose Circus, which you may remember as that really creepy circus from that episode of The X-Files with the murderous conjoined twin fetus thing.

Anyway, Tim specializes in sword swallowing, fire walking, sleeping on beds of nails (once even with a Toyota over him), body skewering and electrocuting himself. Tim says he can do this because he has mastered mind over matter. Researchers on the other hand call bullshit and say it's because Tim was born with a mutation that makes it so he doesn't feel pain the way normal people do.

It's not that Tim and his ilk can't feel anything, because they can feel when they are touched, and they can feel temperature. They simply do not register pain thanks to malfunctioning receptors in the nerve cells that tell your brain "Ow-fuck-get-the-hand-off-the-stove!"

We assume this also turns off the "you just got punched by a supervillain" receptors that make most men shy away from a life of superheroism.

Real Name: Choi Yeong-eui, later changed to Masutatsu Oyama

Superpower: Super-Karate!

Masutatsu Oyama was born in Korea in 1927 and later moved to Japan, where he studied karate. Unlike most famous martial artists, Oyama is not famous for his movie roles, where stunt men and clever editing can make anyone look like a badass.

No, Oyama preferred a different sort of theater. He used to have live public demonstrations where he would fight and kill a bull with his bare hands. Just because it bears repeating, let's write that again: He could kill a bull with his hands. If you want to know how idiotically hard that is, we cordially invite you to go out and punch a bull in the face. Go on, we'll wait here. OK, we're not really waiting since whoever just went out to try that isn't coming back.

All in all, Oyama fought and killed 52 bulls, three of which were killed instantly with one blow. Forty-nine had their horns chopped off with karate blows. He gained the nickname of The Godhand and was considered the living manifestation of the Japanese warrior's maxim "One strike, certain death."

If you're thinking his skills only worked against livestock, you should know that Oyama once tested himself in a kumite, a series of two-minute fights against different opponents, each of which you must win to continue. Oyama took on 300 men over the course of three days. According to some, the only reason it didn't reach 400 was because opponents started to get tired of getting punched in the face.

There have been three movies made based on his life: Champion of Death, Karate Bearfighter, and Karate for Life. That's right, there exists in the world a movie based on an actual man's life that wound up with the title Karate Bearfighter. Why? Because it's probable Oyama actually fought a goddamn bear once, and that bear is buried in a shallow grave covered in dirt and the tears of his relatives as we speak.

Thus we introduce our superhero squad: Super-strong babies flying in jet packs, navigating with surgical precision through the darkest and coldest of nights, tearing your tanks apart with super strength karate blows and eating them, only to fly back up into the air and shit your own weapons back on top of you.

Good luck sleeping, rest of the world. We hope our maniacal cackling doesn't keep you awake.

All of the above from  http://www.cracked.com/article_16449_7-people-from-around-world-with-real-mutant-superpowers.html

The concept of Chicanafuturism, which the author (Catherine S. Ramriez) introduced in Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies in 2004, borrows from theories of Afrofuturism. Chicanafuturism explores the ways that new and everyday technologies, including their detritus, transform Mexican American life and culture. It questions the promises of science, technology, and humanism for Chicanas, Chicanos, and other people of color. And like Afrofuturism, which reflects diasporic experience, Chicanafuturism articulates colonial and postcolonial histories of "indigenismo", "mestizaje", hegemony, and survival. While it is indebted to Afrofuturism, the concept of Chicanafuturism was also inspired by the work of New Mexican artist Marion C. Martinez. Instead of applauding science and technology or condemning them altogether, Martinez's work shows how they have transformed Native American and Hispanic life and culture--and how one self-described "Indio-Hispanic" woman has transformed some of the tools of science and technology. Like black people, especially black women, Chicanas, Chicanos, and Native Americans are usually disassociated from science and technology, signifiers of civilization, rationality, and progress. At the same time, many Chicanas, Chicanos, and Native Americans have been injured or killed by and/or for science and technology. In addition, Chicanafuturism interrogates definitions of the human. El Teatro Campesino's "acto Los Vendidos", first performed in 1967 and thus one of the earliest examples of Chicanafuturism, offers a more expansive definition of "human" as it criticizes racist and classist perceptions of Chicanos and Mexicans, especially Mexican workers, as automatons. Finally, Chicanafuturism defamiliarizes the familiar. Like good science fiction, it brings into relief that which is generally taken for granted, such as tradition, history, or the norm, including normative gender and sexuality.

Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism:  Fictive Kin

Now they weren't ready when I hit them with Vimanarama (don't know what I'm talking about then you need to hit my back blogs). I had to dig a little in the archives and bring out 'Battle Gods: Warriors of the Chaak'. This is a great 9 issue series that is now collected in one graphic novel so you can get your fill all in one setting (unlike me who had to wait every month for the new one to come out).

This story is like none other. The setting first off is unique. It is set in the near future after ancient Mayan kingdoms have been 'resurrected' in the midst of technology. The landscape is a cut of up of Mayan manga technology industry. The ancient and the futuristic side by side and many times intertwined. It has a slight cyber punk edge to it and at some points looks like a Chicano Blade Runner. The book itself is done by an all Chicano cast from story, to art, to coloring. It looks incredible.

The book centers around a fighting tournament (yes..like Mortal Combat and Street Fighter) called the Luche Libre in Mexico. Fighters from around the world come to compete. Now those who are familiar with Luche Libre know that it is THE sport in Mexico nowadays. It is the whole masked wrestler phenomenon. It is highly popular. In the book it has been expanded to include an intense fighting tournament where you can use every form of fighting, weapons, and magic. The story revolves around several fighters and their particular journey into the Luche Libre. What makes this Luche Libre so important though is the back story. By the acts of one man the Mayan Gods are being called back to earth and some of the contestants have to battle the Gods! The whole story being a modern take on the apocalyptic portions of the Popol Vuh or the 'bible' of Mayan religion.

The book is non-stop though with Jaguar men, Mayan Brujas (witches), motorcycle races, Aztec zombies. The grand appearance of Tul Can Chac, Chel, Pak-at, and Pauahtu is grand. Many portions of the book are as if you are watching it on a big screen. So, if there is nothing at the movie theaters that catches your eye try this movie in graphic novel. It's worth it.

Man the Brown Hornet

One of the interesting influences that this book has had on popular culture goes beyond the movies into comics as the Stepford Cuckoos. They are a group of mutant sisters in the X-Men comics. They were 5 sisters who physically resembled the children in the Midwich Cuckoos. They were allowed to age into their teen though. They shared a hive mind and telepathy. Eventually it was found out that they were the cloned children of Emma Frost, a powerful telepath. They also found out later that there were thousands of clones that were going to be unleashed into the world. Now the other part of their names is a bridge into another science fiction novel and movie, the Stepford Wives.

Now the story takes place in the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut (I live in Connecticut and I can tell you there are a few Stepfords up here). The book came out in 1972 and the first movie adaptation of it came out in 1975. You know the story. A new family moves into this quaint town in Connecticut. All of the women super duper Beaver Cleaver mom like. It is a little TOO good to be true. The wife of the new couple in town starts to investigate and finds out that the women have been replaced by androids. In the end she is replaced also. The 2004 version was more comedic so it lost a lot of the subtext of the book and first movie. You can see elements of the alienation and sterility of suburban living taking place. Also the clash between genders. This is important to recognize in that the book came out in 1972 which was an era of great change in terms of gender roles in America.

By merging Stepford with Cuckoo you get the group mind mixed with 'traditional' gender roles. In all versions there always appears to be a threshold. In both the Stepford wives and the Mitchford Cuckoos they are trying to establish a new norm. Yet for both there seems to be a built in time limit for both situations to implode. I guess that I need to cancel my order for a Stepford wife.

In the family of classic Halloween monsters the zombie used to be down there low with the mummy. Dracula was smart, suave and classy. The werewolf had the fresh transformation, could only be killed by silver, and was a wild fighter. Frankenstein had the cool neck bolts, the lumbering walk, and the face stitch work. On the evolutionary chain thought it appears as though the zombie has taken a step up as the techno zombie (a zombie birthed via technology vs Voodoo) has been taking center stage in science fiction media. You can see it everywhere from the Resident Evil franchise and 28 Days Later.

The zombie is a weird beast. On the symbolic level it causes fear because it extracts and personifies being a cog in a machine. It is an apt metaphor for the West's fear of communism. It represents being caught in corporate America. It is the clear image of being a slave and not in control of one's actions. The added bonus of rotting skin plus dingy clothes comes with the territory.

From the positive polarity of zombism is the notion of one mentality or one mind. It's where everyone is moving in harmony toward one goal. The notion of 'oneness' is apparent in many levels of our life from politicians working to get a consensus to mediators working people to get along to the West's love affair with monotheism.

Mass telepathy is a theme approached in science fiction a lot of times. The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov touches on it. With it's huge sweeping themes of the prediction and control of history you can see the obsession with 'one path' being played out throughout. By the time we get to Foundation's Edge we come in contact with a far future version of Earth called Gaia which in actuality is Gaia, a super organism, where all beings, organic and inorganic are linked into one consciousness. That is a science fiction extrapolation of the Gaia Theory that postulates that the living and non-living organisms on Earth can be seen as acting as one giant organism. With the Foundation series Isaac Asimov added consciousness to the mix.

There is omni super duper master plan planning going on in today's society. Look at flash mobs where someone sends out a mass text message on cell phones to a group of people telling them all to meet at a particular spot at a specific time (usually for some political or artistic statement). Our current technology creates the venue for a lot of smart mob interaction from twitter, to Ims, etc. We are starting to be able to communicate at 'the speed of light'. The Internet is referred to as ONE place and ONE thing. The Argentinian writer, Jorge Borges spoke of this in one of his stories, the Aleph. The Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet yet in the story it was a mythical device through which you could see every point of time at the same time. Now align that up with the Internet of today, hyper links, instant information, and the constant shrinking of the world village.

If you go keep swinging the pendulum you can also see the negative one mind portrayed in science fiction. Remember Village of the Damned? (Both versions are ill. I grew up with the remake starring Christopher Reeves directed by John Carpenter. It was only later that I saw the original black and white 1960's version). It was based on the book The Midwich Cuckoos. The short story is that an alien intelligence causes a generation of children to appear around the world who are blond haired, blue eyed, have extreme mental powers and are developing at an astonishing mental rate. They work together as 'one'. What is great is that the preternatural children are the focus verses the alien. It comes off more as a supernatural foundation rather than a science fiction one in tone. It's like a bunch of Damien's (from the Omen) playmates got together to throw one on the grill.

Science fiction elevates the notion of one mind past the base physical desires. See the classic Voodoo zombie is usually driven by his desire to eat human flesh. The mummy is usually driven by love of his lost beloved. Science fiction applies consciousness to the mass thought process. To a degree this is a new age interpretation of many religious notions of us 'all being on one accord'. If chaos is infinite diversity that is often times ascribed to 'the devil' while order as uniformity is ascribed to 'god'. Either polarity isn't 'worshiped. In fact the 'god' universe is feared just as much as the 'devil' universe. The 'devil' universes are usually presented via post apocalyptic science fiction stories while the 'god' universes are the one's where robots and order rule. That is why the robot in many movies graduate to the level of the classical monsters. You can't talk with them. No they aren't moved by blood or flesh yet they are singular in thought and action. The mass one mind telepathy of science fiction many times seeks to solve that problem by presenting a medium between the two where we don't descend into confusion yet we still hold onto a sense of individuality. Now watch Michael Jackson and the zombies dance!

I love big butts and I can not lie....oh...sorry..wrong blog. Well, not really. See, America doesn't corner the market, yet we have huge stock, on sex and violence. We love it, eat it, import and export it. Our media is saturated with it. Growing up as the young straping male that I was (well maybe as an urbanized hip hopified black nerd) there was one periodical that fulfilled my youthful urges. No, I am not talking about playboy (yes, I peeked at playboy yet that standard of beauty, super waif, wasn't really doing it for me. I was more into Vanessa Del Rio).

 The magazine that was doing it for this Tar baby geek was Heavy Metal!

Now this is where you could mash it all up at. The covers revisited the covers of pulp fiction men's magazines from the early parts of the 20^th century. In a sense this is where science fiction first got its start. John Carter of Mars and early Conan always had the pictures on the cover of the bikini clad 'princess' who needed saving. This is where I first really understood the phrase 'buxom babe' (no this is not blg post about women's bosoms (or is it) though it may appear to be).

The women on the cover of Heavy Metal put sex and science fiction together. They were the precursors of today's 'gamer chicks'. They epitomized the sexy woman who was ALSO interested in your fiction world. That was any nerd or geeks dream growing up (or so I heard). And yes there is the overtly Freudian symbolism of ½ naked women holding a BIG gun or BIG sword.

The nudity and violent content was WAY past rated R. What was also beyond the current scope of the the general public was the variety and richness of the stories presented. Graphically what was presented in Heavy Metal would not hit the general public through stories, art and movies until the late 90's. I am talking about stuff that I was looking at in the mid 80s. I would argue that those who experimented with those forms of writing and art in Heavy Metal magazine as just as much the architects of the current climate as the more established authors and artists.

It reached cult status due to the legal wrangling that kept it out of the then emerging video tape market. It came out in 1981 and it took 15 years for it to be readily available. It did appear a couple of times on HBO so people taped it and passed around a few bad copies of the tape. The same type of legal troubles followed the soundtrack. It was released as an LP initially yet it wasn't moved to CD until 1996. And I won't even go into how shorts of Heavy Metal inspired “The Fifth Element” and various other sci-fi flicks. I know that your memories of the 80's may be filled with images of A Flock of Sea Gulls yet look at the landscape and you'll notice that a lot of what is being touted as original is actually rooted in the 80's.