ender2003's Comic Book Blogs

Spawning from one of the forum threads about characters that people don't like, a lot of people picked Superman and cited his overpowered nature. That got me to thinking about other overpowered characters.

Superman is the most obvious example, he can fly, is invulnerable, super-strong, super fast, heat vision, cold breath, and super senses (vision, hearing, feeling, etc) as well as an eidetic memory. Those are just the most frequent powers, he has been granted temporary use to too many to count as one-offs. His power levels have varied over the years but he is pretty much always the strongest hero by a wide margin. The only way that they can make his character interesting at all is basically by giving him a vulnerability to kryptonite, magic and psychics. One of his other weaknesses is the fact that he is always holding himself back. Pretty much every battle starts off with him gauging the enemy and then using the least amount of power to stop them, because if he always went full-bore he would kill everything in his path. That would reduce repeat offenses... Anyway, there have only been a handful or characters that have been shown to truly go toe-to-toe with Supes and match him physically, but his other powers always win out at that point.

Not that Superman is the only one overpowered, there are others that are guilty as well. Let's flip back and forth between Marvel and DC and go for the Hulk for a minute. With strength that can rival Superman's, Hulk gets stronger the madder he gets. This has been taken to the point where he has broken planets with his strength. While he does not have the multitude of powers that Supes has, Hulk also has been shown to have healing on par with Wolverine, or possibly with Doomsday (DC) because it is basically the ability to adapt and survive. In other words, the Hulk will survive pretty much anything and then pummel the out of it, no contest.

I thought I would try some more questions about how super powers work in the comics. 

First off is Spiderman. I'm not going to tough the webs at all, my question is for his ability to climb walls. In the movie they showed tiny hairs on his fingers and hands that let him cling to surfaces. I can't remember what explanation (if any) they gave in the comics, but I have this question. Whether it is the hairs or some type of sticky residue or whatever, how does it work through the suit? When they zoomed in on his hand in the movie, those hairs looked like they were about 2mm long. I can't see them poking through the suit, especially since it appeared to be a pretty tough material. And the same thing goes for his feet. There are scenes in the comics where he is in civilian clothes and sitting on a wall with only his back and feet touching it. Somehow he is sticking to the wall either with his back through his shirt, or with his feet - wearing shoes? How does that work?

Next lets focus on the Hulk. When you want to talk about big bads, this guy is the biggest and baddest. However, I have a couple of questions about how he works. First off, how does a 150 lb. scientist suddenly turn into a 500 lb. monstrosity able to destroy entire planets? I know the gamma radiation is what caused the change in the first place, but as Bruce Banner gets mad he suddenly morphs into a giant Hulk. Where does all the muscle come from? How does he grow 3 foot taller? How does he keep his pants from shredding like the rest of his clothes? 

Even if we overlook that first question, how does the Hulk get stronger the madder he gets? He has to have a base strength that is "normal" for him. Even taking adrenaline into account, he should have a max limit. However, it has been stated that he literally has no limit to his strength. Somehow anger just makes him stronger and stronger to the point where he has overpowered every other hero and villain in the marvel universe except the Sentry, who has the power of a billion exploding suns. Even then, they were evenly matched.

Another power that I have wondered about is with the characters who can absorb energy or kinetic blows and tranform it into other energy like Bishop. Have Storm hit him with a lightning bolt, and he somehow aborbs it and can shoot energy back out. Same if you hit him with Cyclops' optic beam (which is more physical than energy). Same with Gambit's exploding cards, Sunfire's flames, etc. No matter what energy force you hit him with he can absorb it and send it back out in a different form. I am curious how that works. Normally, all of those attacks would cause severe damage. Bishop is able to just take it in and use it to his benefit instead. His entire body is some super form of solar cells and can absorb any energy?