Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Bryan Hitch has spent so many years illustrating other people's superheroes that it's now time to unleash some of his own.

Hitch writes and draws the new Image Comics series Real Heroes (debuting Wednesday), which tackles familiar archetypes and a realistic situation while also looking at pop culture's obsession with cinematic good guys: What would happen if actors such as Chris Evans wasn't just a big-screen Captain America — and others who are sometimes confused with the roles they play at your local cinema — and were actually tasked with a much higher pursuit?

For Hitch, it seemed like a great shorthand to introduce six archetypal heroes without the need of pesky origin stories.

"These are six very fallible people, and as ill-equipped to be real superheroes as Chris Hemsworth or Henry Cavill," Hitch says. "Honestly, would you ask Robert Downey Jr. to wear some real Iron Man armor and trust him to actually save the world? What about putting Christian Bale in a real Bat-suit and turning him loose on organized crime?

"It gives us characters already familiar with the world of superheroes, just as we are."

The Olympians are the biggest things in Hollywood, with the first movie being a huge success and the upcoming second film potentially coming close to besting Avatar as the top box-office draw in history.

At their latest world premiere, all the actors are enjoying the spoils of their success: Chris Reynolds (who stars as the ultra-strong Olympian), wild child Danny West (super soldier The Patriot), wheelchair-bound Jeremy Roberts (high-tech specialist Hardware), Nichola Fox (ace archer Longbow), Jennifer Sanchez (the size-shifting Tiny Titan) and rap star "King" Leo Washington (the mega-fast Velocity).

However, an alien Devastator like they battle in the movie shows up in real life and starts blasting innocent people and causing massive wreckage. The actors are saved and taken to another universe by the mysterious Smitty, and then told that in this alternate reality, the Olympians are actually the world's greatest heroes and they have to save the day for real this time.

At times, Hitch feels that Real Heroes is the marriage of The Avengers and Galaxy Quest — "though it's far from that loving and gentle pastiche" — and also borrows the "lowly look-alike gets to be the real deal" idea of Stewart Granger's Prisoner of Zenda and Kevin Kline presidential comedy Dave.

Real Heroes is a huge-scale drama, Hitch says, "and whilst there's fun to be had, it's not me poking my tongue out at genre or even sticking my tongue in my cheek.

"I take this very seriously — you have to. If you poke fun at something as inherently ridiculous as superheroes, you immediately lose that willing suspension of disbelief we all rely on so much."

In one of Hitch's big, action-packed double-page spreads in the first issue, he shows the actors — the folks people are told are heroes — running away as fast as they can from the villainous threat. So it'll definitely be a hero's journey.

"Put unlikely people in the position of being the world's only chance of survival and watch what happens!" says Hitch, adding that all six characters will grow over the course of the series but two, Chris and Danny, will get the main focus.

Danny is the pre-Iron Man Downey type, who has been in and out of rehab and the pages of gossip magazines, while Chris' view of a good guy is tied up in grief as his firefighting father died on 9/11 when the South Tower fell.

"Chris watched that all unfold on the news so he has an heroic ideal that's also very much a tragic one," Hitch says.

In many ways, though, Smitty is the most important character of the series. Everything they learn about this parallel Earth, which has been devastated by aliens, is through him — he acts as the Olympians' resident "Q" and mentor.

"He has a lot of information and insight but he has an agenda, of course," Hitch says. "First and foremost, he helped our cast because he wanted their help and just what he wants from them we'll see in issue 2. It's not going to be straightforward, is it?"

Over the years, Hitch has brought his signature illustration style to some major superhero epics, including working with writer Warren Ellis on Stormwatch and The Authority, JLA with Mark Waid, Captain America: Reborn with Ed Brubaker and Mark Millar's The Ultimates, the 2002 reimagining of Marvel's core Avengers group that was a visual inspiration for the Marvel Cinematic Universe of today. (He patterned his Nick Fury after actor Samuel L. Jackson, who wound up playing the character in movies.)

Those are past achievements, however, and Hitch wonders how much he can actually do directly for himself if those projects were really just secondhand.

"That's truly exciting," the Real Heroes creator says. "The future can be an astounding and exciting place, and I'm having the best time possible running towards that future with my arms wide open.

"It's slightly different coming at pre-existing characters," he adds, "as your initial thought is to ask what story you can tell with them and then cross off your ideas as you realize each of them has already been done. I prefer the whole-cloth creation of something new — that's an act of creation whose high is hard to beat."

Hitch's best and most successful collaborations have been with Ellis and Millar, and both have in their own ways pushed Hitch into doing his own writing while Waid told him there'd come a point where he'd want to do everything himself.

However, while Hitch appreciated the encouragement, "stuff happens in its own time. I wanted to write since Day One 26 years ago, and it feels great to be on this path," says Hitch, whose next "solo act" is out June 2015 and before that is doing books with Millar and two other "huge" writers.

After nearly 30 years of "learning to be me," the angst is gone and Hitch is ready to enjoy the new phase in comics.

"These days, I can't wait to get started each day and almost hate to stop," he says. "It's how I always wanted this career to be like and, for once, I'm not getting in my own way. I'm just getting on with it and having the most fun I could ever have imagined."