Funny you should bring this subject up--I just watched the Dialogue Series DVD with Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz who wrote Splash--very entertaining and recommended, as is the entire series (it's on Netflix). One of them quoted John Cleese, "Have you ever seen a real fish out of water, it's horrifying".

John, I posted the 5-minute tease for the Ganz & Mandel Dialogue interview here.

There's another DVD interview series out called The Write Environment, focuses mostly on TV writers, but does include Joss Whedon and Sam Simon (The Simpsons and The Simpsons Movie).

Seems to me that many of your superhero origin stories fit here.