Follow us on Twitter
Six Superpowers Not Worth the Trouble They Cause
There are indeed some pretty awesome comic book superpowers like flight and invisibility. Then there are the really stupid ones which should never have been created.
In no particular order:
Shrinking
Let’s face it. Shrinking is possibly the most useless superpower imaginable. The golden rule of a superpower is that it makes you more powerful? Most superpowers do indeed follow this rule but instead the people who came up with shrinking for whatever reason decided to break this rule. Think of it like this:
“Oh my god! The most evil villain of all time is about to destroy the world with his doomsday device! Quick superhero person stop him!”
“I’ll stop him!” shouts the superhero before shrinking to the size of an ant.
Doesn’t really help does it?
Telepathy (Mind Reading)
This one would actually make your life worse. How much would it suck if you had to go through every day knowing everything single bad thing people think of you yet not being able to do anything about it for fear of being called a freak? Plus you’d probably be confused for a schizophrenic if you tried to talk to a doctor about it which obviously wouldn’t be fun.
Matter Eating
This is perhaps one of the weirdest superpowers ever conceived for a comic book character. Being able to eat anything? Yeah sounds like fun at first but then you think about what happens when you go to the toilet…
Yeah not so fun now is it? Not only do you look lame to your laser beam firing and flying buddies, you also have to deal with unpleasant and possibly hazardous toilet trips
Magnetism
This might be surprising to some people but when thought about carefully, magnetism would actually suck. First of all you’d mess up credit cards wherever you go so be prepared for hundreds of lawsuits. Second, you’d have to be able to control your power extremely well or else you’ll have every lamppost, car bumper, ATM machine and every other metallic object nearby speeding at your vulnerable body whenever you try to part a mugger from his knife. Ouch.
Super Intelligence
Now this would normally be considered pretty awesome to have but like magnetism, becomes lame when thought about more carefully. Remember the smart guy from your class from school? Remember how he (usually) barely had any friends? Wonder why? Because nobody likes being wrong. Now multiply that by one hundred and you get the kind of social life you have with this superpower.
Wearing A Mech Suit
In spite of the recent completely awesome Iron Man movie and how cool it made this superpower look, once again, I prove its more trouble than it’s worth. First of all, because it’s mechanical, it will eventually break down so sooner or later you are either going to have a large repair job on your hands or if you’re unlucky, wind up in a pile of useless metal while a guy is firing missiles at you. Not fun.
Second, although it looks cool, it weighs a ton and you have to keep it somewhere. No matter how big your garage is, you’re not going to fit a three ton metal suit in there with your car hence the reason why all the comic book characters who possess this power are billionaires.
Lastly, because it’s mechanical, it’s going to need power which also means there’s always the risk of running out of juice in the middle of a battle. Just imagine this: You’re flying ten thousand feet in the air completely smashing Doctor Apocalypse. Suddenly, your battery dies and you plummet ten thousand feet where you are stopped by the ground. Enjoy being a human pancake.
And there you have it. Six Superpowers which you’re better off without.
Liked it
6 Comments
But i am smart and i have friends
Lol, but i do agree with all of them. Great Job
Wait wait wait wait a second. Since when does Chris have friends?
It’s funny for sure
And the best was the Magnetism one :O
Well, the ant could crawl behind the Villain’s glasses and make him smack himself in the face…
They get me everytime! LOL!
Of course you realize this is a classic (even if hilarious) case of special pleading. EVERY superpower (like every engineering solution) has its advantages and disadvantages. Besides:
1) Being able to turn into a fly sure enabled the shapeshifter in SPACE: 1999 to destroy a nearly indestructible robot when no bigger form she took could. (She flew into its head and short-circuited its brain.)
2) Which telepaths in comics can’t control their talent? I’ve never heard of any. (In one of Anne McCaffrey’s books, the plot revolved around one who couldn’t stop hearing dragons, but such a telepath is rare.)
3) Maybe matter eaters are 100% efficient at matter conversion and don’t NEED to use the toilet. One comic book hero I ran across had just such an ability.
4) Admittedy, this one is seldom thought through enough. But when was the last time you saw Magneto care about collateral damage when he really got going?
5) This social isolation may explain why most super-intelligent comic book characters are villains, not heros. But they make the trait work for them. Who needs friends when you can have slaves and flunkies?
6) Well, even Spider-Man runs the risk of running out of web fluid in the midst of battle. But helicopters and fighter jets (and starships) have fuel and ammo limits too — often serving as important turning points in the plot. (Presumably there are 5-minute warning lights and backup batteries in mech suits?)
That said, this is also a great example of following things to their logical absurdity.
I suppose it would be the way you use the super power to consider if its not worth the trouble. I’d take matter eating — of course I would prefer the matter to be chocolate than buildings.
Cute read…thanks for sharing.
Well, some of that makes sense. But…
For Telepathy and Magnetism, all that is needed is to learn to control the powers. For Super Intelligence, if one wants to remain a social person, one would have to limit the use of her/his super mind, AKA, use it only in emergencies.
In the case of the mech suit, we could say the same about every single weapon and vehicle in existence.
And if there’s a bomb around and it’s risky to disarm it, eating it could work. It does for Taz.
Now for shrinking… well, it has some potential disadvantages… but if it can be applied to others, the hero(ine) could shrink all the hostages/enemies and fit them in a small container, for a safer escape/capture. Nice article though.