In Philadelphia in 1961, Elijah Price is born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease that renders sufferers bones extremely fragile. As revealed later in flashbacks, Elijah - who grows up to become a comic-book art dealer - develops a theory, based on the comics he has read during his many hospital stays, that if he represents extreme human frailty, perhaps there is someone "unbreakable" at the opposite extreme.