I’m thinking about writing an 18+ superhero story about a young adult superhero who is 21 to 23 at the start of the story. He comes from a millionaire or billionaire family. His parents are alive, his siblings are alive, but the main character’s significant other, who also comes from a wealthy family, is murdered. That motivates my character to become a superhero. His two best friends, a 24 to 26 year old man and a 24 to 26 year old woman, come from wealthy families too, and they help him with superhero stuff.
The reason they come from wealthy families is so they can drive around in nice cars, take yachts out, and go on private jets without having to explain how young people in their early 20s are doing stuff like this. They live in penthouses or nice apartments, and we don’t have to explain their jobs at all.
My superhero could own a nightclub, and his base of operations is under the nightclub. We can just say his friends work for their families or something. The story is really about a superhero and his two friends getting into things, and it’s also a way for me to draw exotic locations.
There can be drama with my main character’s rich parents, who maybe don’t like or support the superhero life. I was also thinking of having my main character be mixed race, so he doesn’t come from a billionaire white family. Maybe his dad is Black and his mom is white, or his mom is Hispanic.
Maybe they come from a wealthy family of color, which can be a source of drama or reflection for the characters. Basically, I’m not gonna lie, the story is basically kind of Spider-Man meets Daredevil, but what if Spider-Man was rich or came from a rich family. Could that be interesting?
The initial setting is less important than what you do with it and the stories you tell that develop from the setting. It does sound like you see their wealth as an easy way to get around story telling hurdles. That's not necessarily a bad thing but you need to come up with more for me to care about these characters if you're giving them easy lives from the start.
An excuse for me to draw nice mansions, exotic cars and locations. His family is actually alive, and so it's about him juggling his double life between being a superhero and doing "high society" stuff. All of his love interests come from wealthy families, so sometimes he's not there for their parties, events or galas due to superhero stuff.
Do his parents know about his superhero activities?
It could be a good source of dramatic tension keeping his secret identity from his superhero-disapproving parents, who might cut him off if they found out what he is up to.
Yeah maybe he secretly hates how they made their money and the wasteful lifestyle. But it they find out they will cut him off from the resources he needs to fund the superhero stuff. He wouldn't necessarily see a supercar but a resource to get around and fool his parents. The yacht is just a platform to launch his operations from etc. When he was younger he always tried and failed to convince his parents to reduce their carbon footprint and help people with their wealth and improve the world.