Although the setting seems to work like a superhero comic book, other than Chess there are no superheroes or supervillians at the start. There's also no aliens, mutants, magic, or any other kind of superhero comic wackiness. Obviously Chess is a supervillian refugee from a universe with all of these things, and he's starting to infect the real world with comic-book themes, maybe without knowing it. Palm City is a real-world city that just changed its name to something more comic-booky when he arrived, and the circus folk didn't start robbing banks until he started influencing them.