worst hero ever
I used to insist the worst super hero ever was Aquaman. I still believe he is the most useless, but he is not the worst. You see, “worst” is defined differently. I define “worst” as the least enjoyable super hero to watch, or read about, or pretend to be. Many heroes are created and thought out in way that makes them very human and very believable, despite that fact that they have extraordinary powers. The suspension of disbelief is all the more possible when these powers, or combinations of powers, or clever uses of powers, make sense. Some heroes, one in particular, is written in such a way, in almost every instance, as to defy all the rules and limitations placed on him by his powers. This ridiculous hero is none other than Superman himself, the father of all super heroes.
His conglomeration of unrelated and unexplainable powers leaves him at the top of my list of unenjoyables. Furthermore, at every harrowing turn of his boring existence, instead of finding clever uses for his already substantial powers, he constantly gets new ones, new ones that just happen to be perfect for the situation at hand.
Now I’m no nerd. I can’t site every comic where each of the following examples took place, but maybe Jonathan Clarke can. In any case, I’d like to point out some of the more ridiculous situations I have seen the man of steel get into and out of in movies, TV, and comic books, in order to demonstrate the utter bore of this “undefeatable” super character.
OK, let’s start by listing out some of his more commonly known powers:
- He can’t be hurt by physical weapons (hence “Man of Steel”)
- He’s immune to cold
- He’s immune to fire
- He can fly
- He can run REALLY fast
- He is super strong, like lift a bus up by its bumper with one hand strong, despite the fact that the bumper would tear right off in the real world
- He has laser vision
- He has x-ray vision
- He has super hearing
- He has super-breath
- He doesn’t need air (he flies through space for long periods of time, but I don’t know his underwater experience. I guess he has to leave something for Aquaman.)
Now, let’s examine some of the odd, out of place, if you can consider anything out of place after place after seeing that list, uses of these powers:
His clothes don’t get destroyed by the physical weapons, however, his cape does tatter on occasion. This annoys the shit out of me. One of Superman’s biggest problems should be his constant need to keep himself dressed. I remember one comic that attempted to explain the phenomenon by saying the invulnerability is cause by a force field covering his whole body and the thin layers of clothes. I hate that reason, and I refuse to accept it. I’ll tell you why. If I were covered in a force field, but not physically invulnerable, bullets would easily bounce off my chest. However, if hurled by some super-strengthed bad guy, you might be able to imagine the mush my body would turn into inside that force shell upon crashing through a building at 300 MPH. My brain would smash in upon my skull, organs against each other and bones, rendering massive internal crushing damage. Therefore, Superman MUST be physically invulnerable, with super strong guts and whatnot, thus rendering the need for a force field only to protect his clothing all the more ridiculous.
I don’t know about you, but my breath is warm, some temperature warmer than the outside air and cooler than my internal 98.6 degrees. Now, I can understand when you are super strong that maybe you have super lungs and blow hurricane force gusts of wind from your mouth. However, we have seen on countless occasions, Superman’s super breath not only put out fire and blow crowds of people down the block, but also turn stuff to ice. To ICE??!!! Where does that come from? How does the breath get cold? Why does the breath get cold? I think it’s fucked up. You don’t need cold air to extinguish the flames, or brittle up the metal bars before a good old fashioned shattering. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s no need for it.
Superman is super fast. There’s no denying it. In fact, he’s faster than a speeding bullet, which is somewhere between the speed of 800 and 3500 feet per second, depending on the bullet. He’s this fast flying or even running in some cases. We know he can run faster than a train at least. Now, I have no problem with him traveling at this speed. However, I can’t sit by an watch as writers extrapolate this power to include traveling at or near the speed of light, rotating the earth in the opposite direction and thus traveling back in time!!!??? Who writes this shit? This is total and utter crap. I don’t want to even start on the completely fictitious physics required to pull off the rotation thing! But time travel!!! What the fuck? Superman can travel back in time??!! He should just do that all the time. This power alone would make him the most powerful hero in the universe.
His super speed is also occasionally extrapolated to include his molecules. He vibrates his own molecules to make himself pass through solid objects. Pass through solid objects! I am not lying. Some genius over at DC comics though this was a cool idea. Probably the same guy invented the fact that Superman does this all the time, vibrates his molecules, so that he can’t be photographed clearly. Photos are always blurring. Oh god, it’s just like total abandonment of all physics. I want to scream. Why does he need to avoid photographs anyway? Plus, if you can see him clearly with your eyes, the photo will come out fine. It’s all fucking dumb.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot my biggest pet peeve about this lame hero. Kryptonite. This is the mysterious element from Superman’s home planet that is his total weakness. It renders him vulnerable, weak, and will eventually kill him if he is in contact for too long a period. Here we go again with stupidity. They wrote a character so powerful they had to invent some stupid mineral that he is allergic to. It makes no sense. But even if it did, why does everyone and their mother have a fucking piece of this rock. Everybody has it in mass quantities. In fact, I saw one guy who made bullets out of it. Yes, bullets, and no Superman didn’t die. He figured out something I guess. I don’t even remember. Anyway, if it were me, they’d have to change my name to Kryptonite Hunter, because that’s all I’d be doing, day and night, hunting down kryptonite and killing the owners with my laser eyes or some other such dumb power. I would be so careful it would be ridiculous. I would wear lead armor. I would x-ray everything. I would collect and then launch into space, every single piece of that green rock in existence. Then I’d force the government to classify it as a material more dangerous than enriched uranium, and it would be nearly impossible to find. Kryptonite sucks.
Let me add to the kryptonite discussion that if I had Kryptonite, I could kill Superman so fast he would never know hit him. I would just use chunks of kryptonite as the shrapnel in some homemade lead pipe bomb. I would throw it at Superman and he would hold out his ridiculous chest in defiance. The bomb would go off and the Kryptonite shards would embed themselves deep into the Man of “Steel’s” flesh. Then, in his weakened, vulnerable state, I’d walk up to him and empty a magazine of plain old 9mm bullets into his head. Problem solved. No more ridiculous hero. End of story.
You see, if you don’t write yourself into the box that Superman was created in, you don’t need ridiculous gimmicks to create suspense and drama. Superman is by far, the “worst” superhero ever written.
I’ve got nothing else to say about this guy. What do you think?
Well, after that being said……..HIS COSTUME BLOWS TOO!!!!!!
Who’d even want the ‘responsibility’ of even writing for that character. You’d have to know every possible historical scenario from the past and somehow concoct a story that took all of them into account. The problem with Superman is that he is far overwritten. They didn’t have the guts to just stop.
Just like with The Terminator: Wasn’t Arnie just the baddest-ass mutha to ever walk the planet back in 1984? Just that scowl on his face would have made me run 30 mph to get the hell away. Then they wrote that horrible movie (T2) to make him a ‘kinder,gentler terminator”…WTF? I would have preferred to have lived my life with the memory that The Terminator was the baddest-ass robot of all time… that just happened to unfortunately get himself squashed in a hydraulic press one day.
Okay, apparantly it’s my job to defend Superman.
Now I’m not a huge Superman fan. He’s bland, especially compared to Batman but most of Chris’s complaints, while true, come from the 60’s, the smae time when Batman would pull out shark repellant and nuclear reactors from his utility belt. In other words, a silly silly time for DC. Which explains why marvel kicked their ass by creating Spider-Man the X-men and the Hulk.
The problem comes from Superman being the first and king of all superheroes. In the 40’s, he couldn’t even fly. That’s where ‘leap tall buildings in a single bound’ comes from. He was strong and fats and that’s about it.
Then every superhero that came later tried to outdo him. So they kept bumping up Superman’s powers and inventing new ones; heat vision, xray vision, cold breath, flying thourgh space, all of them were a reaction to a newcomer. Flash can vibrate through wallls and break the sound barrier? Then Superman can too. It got so ridiculous that they invented a weakness; Kryptonite. You don’t want to know about green, yellow and red kryptonite.
Since the 80’s Superman’s powers have been toned down. He’s still real strong and flies. Heat and x ray vision I think are still there. Super breath is gone and he has to wear breathing apapratus underwater and in space.Also, if a guy is strong enough, Supes can get his ass kicked. Lobo does it a lot and Doomsday killed him by punching him in the face for seven issues straight (how he came back I don’t even know). Check out the 90’s animated series on cartoon Network and you’ll see a more human Superman.
Kryptonite’s a little more interesting. It’s radioactive so it will give humans cancer if they hold it long enough. Lex luthor had a kryptonite ring that infected his hand. Batman stole it just in case Superman gets out of hand (which again is why batman is better). Lex Luthor is now the President which makes things interesting in DC (and not wanting to get political on this blog I’m not going to say whether that’s an improvement from real life).
Oh but the glasses thing? Still really stupid.
Patrick, every 20 years or so DC wipes it’s continuity (along with most of its staff) so that kids reading the books don’t have to have spent the last 70 years reading Superman stories to understand what’s going on. Marvel’s trying to do the same thing since the X-men movie made 150 million and the books didn’t go up one copy.
And I liked T2. Eddie Furlong was a pain in the ass and I could have lived without the hugging but Robert patrick was cool. T3 looks to be the biggest piece of crap since Rambo 4, Mad max 5 and Die Hard 4 (all being made now).
Chris,
I’m could not agree with you more! Superman blows donkey’s. Forget the annoying spit-curl in the middle of his head and his goodie two shoes attitude – he takes ALL the fun out of superheroes. Think of every superpower anyone has ever had, and superman can surpass it, or create a reasonable facsimile of it. What fun is that?
What used to REALLY kill me is the OLD Superman (before Christopher reeves) when Superman would fight bank robbers and purse snatchers.
…think about that for a moment.
One side is a bunch of 2 bit hoods from Canarsie or Ozone Park with bats bricks and zip guns that could get their ass kicked by either the sharks or the jets…
…on the other side is a SUPER MAN from another planet that has EVERY SINGLE SUPER POWER YOU COULD THINK OF.
How is this interesting? It’s the comic book equivalent of me rolling into a hospital and beating up blind and deaf paraplegic kids! And who decides to commit a crime in a city where this guy lives??? Move to Detroit or something!
SO FRUSTRATING!
Thats why Green Lantern is the best – all his powers stem from one word:
Aliens.
Sorry Rossi but Chris hates Green Lantern too. I once showed him an old Neal Adams book that Chris dismissed immediately when Green lantern created a gorilla with his ring.
This is why Martin Man Hunter rocks! He is not so cheesey and he knows his weakenesses. He can walk through walls, alter his appearance and read minds, but when you met him he tells you he is from Mars. And he walks around proud as his green self!
Of course, with a name like “Man Hunter” you have to be nice to him; just in case he really is one.
Wait. Green Lantern created a gorilla with his ring once? WTF?
See? There are no limtations on the stupid Green Lantern either. It’s like the same dick from Superman was writing those too. I saw the comic with my own eyes. He held out his hand and formed a full scale green gorilla with the ring. The gorilla ran around smashing people. Not good. Not fun. Just stupid. Again, I would like the Green Lantern if he would have some limitations to work within. Instead, he could form a jumbo jet to carry people to safety. God, he sucks too. Now my list is:
Superman
Aquaman
Green Lantern
Mr. Fantastic (strethy guy from Fantastic 4)
Sue Richards (invisible woman from Fantastic Four)
-don’t even get me started on the fantastic four. I HATE them too. Useless. I’ll write something else about them soon. There’s no room here to go on and on about how dumb stretch power is, and how powerful invisibility and force fields could be if written correctly…
How about the Wondertwin who could do anything with water? His sister can be any animal (fantastic) and he gets to be a form of water. I saw one once where she became, like, a Bengal tiger, and he became a bucket of water. No joke. Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of gyp is that? I’d add him on the list just for getting screwed so badly.
Oh, were we talking only about comic books? Never read those. All T.V., baby.
Dude, Superman fucking bites the ass of the great one. The great one, which is the Bats. Batman is possibly the greatest of all the superheros. WHy? Because he can kick supermans ass and anyone elses if given enough to think about it.
Batman is god. He’s been kicked out of the JLA for indirectly beating the living crap out of everyone. He’s smart, he’s handsome, he’s angsty, he’s nice to kids, he puts up w/ a lot of crap, and he’s a fucking awesome martial artist and weapons guy. He’d make just as good a bad guy as a good guy, and he can fight all the same villians as the dudes with powers but HE doesn’t need them. The other guys? They’re fucked if they lose their powers for a day. Batman rules. I’d totally marry him. Too bad he’s not real. *cries*
Whats with Clark Kent he puts takes off his glasses and hes Superman he puts them on hes Clark Kent. Why on Earth cant anybody tell the difference!
jon good for you good job defending the worthless piece of crap to ever hit the comic world, ganted I well give superman this he started it all but if he wasent cutting it then why dident DC kill him off insted of makeing tons of terrible powers.,Mavel did this with the submariner(for a time) and what kind of fag runs around with red underwear on the out side of light colored blue tights.
and as for you guys how think batman is god his frist comics where the same way! probublums being sloved by a simple clike of his belt and rideing of to the bat cave in the ever unbelevible batmoblie and being rich!!!
Know he has come a long way since then and he is the coolest DC hero and his costume ohh man!
but spiderman can kick his @$$!! mavel has all ways been the way to go they have a hero who’s blind!!nuff said
oh and you left out the part of how he hides who he is with his glasses
First off, I’d like to proclaim how much I think Terminator 2 rocks. It was great, not because it had the coolest visual and special effects ever, but because they were used intelligently and sparingly, like condiments in a well made stew. After all, the T1000 is a real badass, and the only thing that stopped him was a combination of an M-79 blooper to the gut, and a pit of molten steel, but I digress.
Sure, Superman is powerful, but he lacks the grand detective skills of Batman, the energy of the Flash, or even the dark nature of Martian Manhunter. The way Superman is so powerful, with only the weakness for Kryptonite, you’d think the bad guys would band together to figure out how to stop him. Here’s my plan: Since Parasite is the only one who knows Superman’s secret identity, he could share it with the rest of the group. Then, they all would know he’s really Clark Kent. That way, Lex Luthor could move forward, using Lois Lane as his pawn to get to Superman. Then, lead him to the trap. Use Kryptonite handcuffs on him, and that’s where the fun begins. They could take a gun (a 9mm, a sawed-off shotgun, whatever) to the head. They could just run over him with a car. They could even take a baseball and take turns using him for batting practice.
I say, ease off making comics superhero movies for a while, and make a movie about the bad guys, like the Joker. They should even make a movie about the greatest badass to grace the comic book scene: Lobo. Make a well written film about him, and I’ll gladly pay $10 to see that one.
I think superman in the gronkest and stupidest superhero because I have seen anyone wear his underwear on top of his pants(hahahah)and batman is following his example…
Wait a second.
Batman rarely gets beaten. Batman is the world’s greatest detective. Batman can beat ANYONE with prep-time. Batman has the most street smarts. Batman’s mastered 120-odd martial arts and is trained in science and magic. Batman is considered one of the greatest leaders of all time.
And it’s SUPERMAN that’s too powerful?
Try again.
your an idiot
but i believe that his clothing doesnt rip b/c it was made from material that wa in the space craft when he came to earth. and i dont think that kryptnite is that only thing that can physicaly harm it only harms him alot faster, Doomsday beat him by just pounding the shit outta him till he died and his clothing got ripped. but then again i dont read comics and im just bored at work so i may be wrong.
Great post. I so totally agree with you in every aspect! And what’s with the gazillion colors of Kryptnite??!!! It’s so ridiculous, it’s not even funny.
Also, we have no indication of just HOW BADLY kryptonite screws him over. Sometimes it near paralyzes him, and sometimes it just “SLOWS HIS REFLEXES”….what the hell?
I’m stumbling this post. I just love it.
Bhagwad Jal Park
I thought the molecule vibrating passing through solid objects thing was a Flash power. Am I wrong?