I did do a 'Heroes'-like thing where the first superheroes and villains on Earth were created via a Cthulhian ritual. 12 people (6 pcs, 6 npcs) were going to be sacrificed and the ritual went wrong. They were spared the sight of the god Shub-Niggurath, but were bathed in her mutagenic Milk which gave them various powers. All the captives were from a local university (they'd been lured to a party and drugged). They quickly found out that, true to the fecund nature of Shub-Niggurath, that exchange of body fluids could gift random powers to others; sex, blood transfusions, etc would all cause transformations. Things began to balloon out of control, especially since four of the other six belonged to a notorious fraternity, and eventually it came to a confrontation with the US goverment when they basically declared Northern California as a soveriegn nation for the newly powered.
That sounds neat, but a little darker than what I aimed for.
My setting was initially inspired by heroes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, Captain Midnight, etc -- though I ended up incorporating sources as diverse as "Who Goes There?" (the short story, to which Doc Savage is linked to in canon via the character of MacReady) and, later, Cthulhu Mythos stuff.
The idea was that the various pulp novels, radio shows, and funny paper strips based on the exploits of these hereos were, in fact, based on the actual missions of a special OSS group founded to thwart domestic and foreign threats of an unnatural or 'sensitive' nature.
The various media outlets were government owned operations, functioning both as propaganda mills and revenue streams for this secret group. And, of course, with the exploits of the group being fictionalized and offered in a very public market, no sane person would believe them to be
true (and if they did, nobody would believe them).
The group was based in a sub-basement of the Empire State building (it was this group for which the zeppelin/gyro dock at the top of the tower was built) and had been involved with a number of 'doomsday' scenarios, from the rising of sunken R'lyeh to the incident at Outpost 31 as fictionalized in Who Goes There.
Originally, the intent was to play modern day government agents recruited by these now elderly heroes, as the group decides to reactivate after a panicked email from a collegue in Europe. Basically, the original group is in no shape to undertake field operations, despite their enhancments and powers. . . old age has simply caught up to them.
In retrospect, I think that rather than a 'continuing legacy' angle, it might be more fun to dedicate actual play to the group's heyday, with PCs creating the original group's members. Though I will have to remove or otherwise alter a lot of the setting, I think it might be worth it.
The thing about Marvel was that we DIDN'T use the Marvel Universe setting. We borrowed a few things, a few notable characters as NPC's, SOME of the history, but otherwise the game was characters that WE generated, and plots, story lines, NPC's, and locations that the GM came up with himself. Our characters were based in the city where we were IRL (Seattle) and just went from there.
