I’ve just finished reading ’All My Friends are Superheroes” by Andrew Kaufman, a brilliantly funny, cute and endearing book about a guy who just happens to become friends with a superhero and then falls in with his wider group of superhero friends. Here are 2 of the superheroes that Kaufman creates in the book:

The Perfectionist
The source of her power is her need for order. She needs it so badly she can will it to happen with her mind.

The Battery
All through her youth, Battery had two things: an over-powering father and an over-rebellious mind. In combination, these forces gave her the ability to store great amounts of emotional energy and release it in one blinding bolt. But beware: the Battery’s allegiances aren’t to good or evil, but simply against whatever stands in her way. Friend, foe or innocent bystander – the Battery’s emotional energy outbursts are unpredictable and she will strike at will.

Recognise those?! You might identify with one of them and I guarantee you’ll know someone who could have that very same superhero power. The point is that true confidence has just as much to do with knowing your quirks and flaws as it does knowing your strengths, talents and values.

I’ve come up with some more; are you any of these superheroes?

Unattainable
This hero wants nothing more than to settle down with a good man who she can share the best of herself with. She possesses two powers: the first is the unparalleled ability to draw the attention of men through her looks, her charm and her flirting ability. At parties, she’s the one who men will work up the courage to ask out.

Her second power is an extraordinary sense of smell. She can smell when a guy is wanting to have an exclusive relationship, at which point she teleports to a random global location with her phone memory erased.

Hotshot
A compelling desire to achieve at the highest level is the driving force behind this superhero. Going from challenge to challenge and project to project without ever seeming to relax, Hotshot is constantly proving her ability to the world and to herself.

Some scientists say that that at some point in the future Hotshot will reach a point of critical mass, where the level of her achievement and energy will swamp any personal relevance. At this point she’ll implode completely, leaving only stories and a ripple of hollow applause.

The Pleaser
The Pleaser has the unique ability to sense precisely what other people need, and buries her own needs in preference of delivering others’ needs.

This hero’s power derives from seeing a smile on someone’s face once she delivers a need, and she almost perished when nobody smiled or said thank you to her for six days straight.

Miss Fury
With a deep sense that the world is against her at every step, this hero possesses a rage that drives her to pursue ever more glory, in the hope that the next rung of the ladder will be the one to quench her rage and bring her the peace and success she secretly craves.

She will cling to her sense of being right in the face of all doubters and even inconvertible evidence, releasing her rage if anyone crosses her path.

Backstabber
The Backstabber is an average woman in her family and social life, with a husband who she feels deep down she settled for and a collection of old friends.

It’s in her career that she turns into the Backstabber: a woman who hides her mediocrity by leveraging her ability to be cold, manipulative and sometimes vicious in order to succeed in business.

The TruthShaper
This hero is able to shape the Truth of things to serve her goals and aims. She has the ability to look at any situation and select which facts will work for her, which facts can be discarded and which facts can be shaped to serve her.

Her mind is also able to take other peoples’ words and ideas to build a new version of the Truth that works better for her; a version of the Truth which she then delivers with unshakeable belief.

Sabotage
This hero has big dreams, many ideas and wants a lot from life. Whenever she goes after something she wants she creates an exact duplicate of herself who will get in her way and stop her from getting what she wants. The duplicate will use its knowledge of Sabotage to talk her out of doing anything, and also possesses superhuman strength and will hold Sabotage in an inescapable headlock to physically prevent her from going somewhere she wants to go.

Each time the duplicate stops Sabotage, the number of desires she has left shrinks. She has just 3 left.