Dr. Hanson

Warning: not enough explosions. Warning: complex character development.

Certain aspects of mental illness are very, very well explored in the world of superheroes and villains. Hallucinations, paranoia, megalomania: done to death. Most mental illnesses have been utterly neglected due to their tendency to not cause quite as much spectacle. It's just so much easier to entertain by having your villain start throwing people around because he thinks they're demons than by having him steal and horde food because he was punished by starvation in a POW camp.

In a world where there are hundreds to thousands of people with superpowers some of them are mentally ill. In this serial Dr. Hanson finds mentally ill people with superpowers and helps them stop hurting normal people. Sometimes he encourages them to become superheroes. Where absolutely necessary he helps the authorities imprison or kill them. The excitement comes from the moral pressure and drama, not from the villain killing hundreds of people, robbing banks, or making a huge doomsday device. Think Dr. House but he's a shrink and possibly a superhero*. And one of his patients can turn invisible.

Here are some potential villains: A woman is keeping extremely strict order in a school: no one is physically able to break any rule in any way, and no one can leave. A man walks into a store every day and steals two carts of food, delivering them to a nearby homeless shelter. He cannot be stopped due to his super strength. A man runs naked through Times Square every twenty minutes. He's too fast and too sneaky (when he tries to be) to catch. A woman with superpowers is a serial rapist. A man refuses to get out of bed and hasn't paid his rent in eight years. He is impervious to tazers and tear gas and the cops physically cannot move him. You get the idea. These people are much closer than typical to normal people who have acquired superpowers, but they're not all there.

*Actually it would be a more compelling story if he weren't a superhero.