Syfy pilot Three Inches reminds me...

After the recent announcement of The Cape and No Ordinary Family, the thirst for superheroes continues on the smallscreen, with Syfy now taking Three Inches to pilot. The premise involves a character who can move objects with his mind (but only for a distance of three inches), who recruits other inferior superheroes to form a team.

This reminds me; in 2001 I wrote a spec script called The Misfits, about a group of teenagers who were the third-generation offspring of superheroes created by a Nazi experimenting on POWs during WWII. Their inherited abilities had been diluted through the years, so by now the descendents were pale imitations of their famous great-grandparents. These "misfit" grandchildren therefore only had trivial superpowers -- one girl could turn her left foot invisible, a boy could skip forward in time by 5 seconds, another could rotate his head around 360°, etc. Anyway, it was meant as a kind of commentary on how modern kids can feel inferior compared to their "war hero" elders, but perhaps all they need is a purpose larger than themselves to bring out their best.

Naturally, that's what they got when they became the only people who could possibly defeat an immortal Nazi who has spent the past 60 years keeping his unnatural longevity a secret, unaware of his identity because of some shrapnel lodged in his head, which is finally removed after pioneering brain surgery.

Nearly a decade on and we have Misfits (the title, the age group) and, potentially, Syfy's Three Inches (the inferior superheroes conceit), and I'm once again reminded how ideas seem to swirl around the ether. But do those shows have a Nazi supervillain!? Well, do they?!