Analysis of Comic Book Superhero Powers

To say that I love comic books is a gross understatement.

Ever since I was a child and had the opportunity to read comics the books some of classmates back in Grade School, I’ve been hooked.

And though I haven’t had the budget to buy any for collections as an adult, I try to read the latest ones whenever I get the chance.

And when such an opportunity materializes, I am transported back to those days when I thought how cool it would be to be a comic book superhero.

Looking back at my childhood, life was a lot simpler back then. The same goes with being a superhero.

In the past century, all one had to do was flex a little muscle, shoot out a few eye beams, and zap! The bad guys were down and the city was saved.

But as I got older, I have come to realize that having superpowers isn’t always a positive thing.

Nature, after all, strives for balance. And if we apply this adult rule to comic books, superpowers would have pluses and minuses if they existed in the real world.

So in a simple attempt to analyze the true worth of super powers, I have listed some pros and cons of a few choice heroes below.

Analysis

Superman

Flying without noisy, and probably smelly, wings is as graceful as it gets. All I need to do is stretch out my arms, bend my knees a bit, and up, up and away I go.

I’d be invulnerable to most weapons and can be a real bad man if I wanted to. And if I were a really bad Superman, just might take my x-ray vision to new lows.

The negative would strongly involve my super hearing as I would hear everything twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

I’d hear the couple down the street fighting about not keeping the toilet seat up at nights. I’d hear the high-pitched squeals of chalk on blackboards in every classroom across the country. I’d even hear those pesky groundhogs copulating meters underneath my house on the farm in Smallville.

Submariner

Imagine being able to breath in water, dive to depths that would crush the strongest submarine, and command sea creatures with but a thought.

I would have super strength to bend the strongest steel and fly in the air with little wings on my ankles.

Unfortunately, I’d have to deal with eating the creatures, which became my playmates as we grew up.

And though I just had a conversation with them a while ago about the changing tides and lack of kelp, they’ll end up on my dinner table as Calamari for Christmas.

Another problem I would have to deal with is the stench of garbage that ships dump in my backyard before they enter port.

Imagine drinking all that feces and urine as they come down in clouds to envelope my giant clam of a home.

Allow me to further put things in perspective. Stick your nose near a tail pipe of a diesel engine and just breathe in all that soot. Many people say it isn’t bad since they have to deal with smog all the time.

Now stick that tailpipe in a glass of water then gun the engine as the water darkens with the same amount of soot and drink it. That’s what I would experience as I breathed underwater.

Wolverine

There’s nothing like having an indestructible skeleton and claws to do it. Just like in the movies, bullets would bounce off my adamantium skull.

And if that bullet should miss my skull and hit another part of my body, my ability to heal quickly would prevent me from critical injuries.

Also, my heightened senses would allow me to track down my prey through their scent before I hack and slash them with my retractable claws.

One of the only negatives I see is that with my heightened senses, I can smell things all around me. Imagine having to work near someone with serious body odor or sweaty feet.

And if my boss should get mad at me and put my table right close to a rest room, I would be able to hear the grunts of people releasing their loads and smell them before they even hit the water.

Finally, an entire skeletal system made of adamantium would set off all the metal detectors in airports when I fly.

And with today’s heightened security, I would probably end up getting cavity searches every time I had fly to another country to save the world.

Conclusion

I don’t know about you, but my conclusion is that it’s terrible to be a superhero as a grownup.

Life was always much better as a kid. The only thing I had to worry about was how long my battle against my arch nemesis was going to take.

I didn’t have to worry about smells, sounds, and even my personal property under the sea.

So maybe comic books, and even movie writers, should keep the stories a tad bit more simple by ditching problems of having children out of wedlock, or heroes addicted to drugs, or even heroes that get married.

Those are real-life problems.

And since superheroes are not that real, I prefer to keep them separate from my actual life. That way, they remain the heroes I can dream about even as an adult.