[Centurion2000]

I thought that, in contrast to stars, they sucked all matter that came within their gravitational influence into them as opposed to the way matter achieves an orbital balance around stars. The more matter they draw in the heavier they become. So where do the super massive black holes come from? The article indicated they are the result of the collapse of fat stars.

Not quite. They operate on the extreme macro scale just the same as stars. Orbital mechanics and all that. It's just that when you get closer in, like within half an AU or so that the gravity pull goes up like an asymptotic graph of y=1/x.

They do become heavier with the more mass they take in, but most of that mass is going to have an inpendent velocity and can orbit at a far distance just like it would any other stellar sized object like a star, neutron star or exotic matter star.

Supermassive black holes start from collapsed stars (10-100 solar masses or so) but OVER geological scales of TIME in the galatic core, these black holes start colliding and merging. So eventually you get one uber-huge black hole oscillating around the center of the galaxy.

Stellar collapse is how they start; collisions and merges later is how the really big ones show up.

[TigersEye]

Supermassive black holes start from collapsed stars (10-100 solar masses or so) but OVER geological scales of TIME in the galatic core, these black holes start colliding and merging. So eventually you get one uber-huge black hole oscillating around the center of the galaxy.

That makes good sense to me and so does the explanation that objects maintain orbits in similar fashion. A gravitational body is a gravitational body.

But the explanation of geological time scales begs the question I put forth before. When we look into deep space and see young galaxies they should look quite different. Before the colliding and merging take place there should be some galaxies that look rather swiss cheesy or in some way less organized.