Why we don’t live in a comic book world
Posted on | March 4, 2004 at 10:51 pm | 7 Comments
It’s a common enough question – it’s asked all the time. If you could have any superpower, what it would be? It kind of bugs me when people just rattle off an answer without thinking about it. There’s almost always a downside to the most popular ones…
Flying
Sure it would be fun to zoom around the skies and not have to walk or drive anywhere. But you just know that some people would try to shoot you down like a duck. You probably wouldn’t be able to go too high because of the thin air. If you pass out, you fall to earth and you’re dead.
Invulnerability
Combine this with flying and you might have something. However, doesn’t being invulnerable mean that you can’t feel anything? If bullets bounce off you, a sensual massage ain’t gonna do much for you.
Running Really Fast
The heat from the friction might be a tad uncomfortable. Wear sturdy clothes! And watch out for those banana peels.
Mind Reading
Do you really want to know what other people are thinking about you? I don’t think I do. And if people knew you could read minds, I don’t think you’d have any friends.
Mind Control
I don’t know if I’d want to go through life wondering if people are doing something for me because of some mental control I’m exerting or not. It would be like being a celebrity.
Shooting Laser Death Rays From Your Hands Or Eyes
C’mon! How often would you get to use this? Unless you’re trying to take over the world, it would be kind of useless. Sure it would be fun to take out the car and the driver that just cut you off, but is that really any way to live? Again, you’d have to be invulnerable also, because everyone’s going to try to hunt you down.
Super Strength
Guess what – every weekend you’d be helping someone move! And after awhile, all the free beer and pizza would take its toll.
Turning Invisible
Aside from the fact that you’d be blind because light rays wouldn’t be reaching your eyes, this is another case where you wouldn’t have a lot of friends. People don’t like to think there may be someone hanging around them that they can’t see. Why do you think they put bells on cats?
Stopping Time
If you did this too much, wouldn’t you grow old while everyone else around you stayed young? And if everyone and everything is frozen and immovable, how would you like open doors and stuff?
Really Fast Growing Hair
Think of the salon bills!
So, next time someone asks you this question, give it some real thought, okay? My choice for a keen superpower: a long attention span.
Latre.
Comments
7 Responses to “Why we don’t live in a comic book world”
March 5th, 2004 @ 11:19 am
well ,what if you could be invisible without being blind,somehow …i mean I would…then I could be an operative for some super secret organization and take out power hungry dictators, and madmen and murderers and stuff..mwahahahahhaha…….i think we talked about this once..didn’t we? :laugh:
March 5th, 2004 @ 12:24 pm
Well, what if your invulnerability weren’t the lack of ability to feel (which would be a drag) but just the ability to heal really quickly and to regenerate lopped-off body parts? Also: about running super-fast – an X-Files episode some years ago was pretty smart about that in pointing out that laws of momentum and force would still apply. Actually, the "power" there was slowing down time (but slowing down time is the same as superfast except you also change the speed of perception). And couldn’t you be invisible only part of the time & just not tell anyone? My preferred superpower? The ability to fold milk.
March 6th, 2004 @ 2:20 am
Invisibility is my usual answer – sure, the problem of transparent retinas is an issue, but we’re not talking science here, we’re talking superpowers. It’s also an issue whether or not you’re also intangible – it’d be tricky in elevators, if not, but how do you keep from falling through the ground?
As for invulnerability, I don’t see why that’d imply insensitivity. I think if you want to consider the downside to that, ask Aron Ralston…
I think stopping time would be useful, and I’ve read and seen various handwaves for the problems of dealing with the outside world – but again, it’s a superpower, not reality.
Perhaps a simpler, more useful question is which superhero you’d wanna be? I’ve not been too into comic books even as a kid, but I was always partial to Spiderman – dexterity, strength, able to virtually see into the future, and a sense of humor too! But I could do without the romantic angst. Now, that guy from the X-Dudes movie, who can control metal – that’s just plain cool too. Superman? Nah – with that much power I’d feel bad just using it selfishly, y’know? And I sure as hell don’t care enough about humanity to bust my hump saving it from crap every day…
What about mind control a’la The Mule from Asimov’s Foundation books? What about precognition – handy for lottery day, especially if you had a caveat that it didn’t apply to stuff like deaths and it was under your control.
Anyhow, I hope the above demonstrates that I’ve at least thought about it per your request, so if that decreases your annoyance level, then my work here is done.
(BTW – for the ultimate set of superpowers, check out Dave Bowman in 2010/2061…)
March 6th, 2004 @ 12:24 pm
The power to heal fast is not the same as invulnerability, though I admit it might be more useful, especially if you buy into my theory that invulnerability equals insensitivity. I feel a need to defend that. I just don’t see how you can have skin that bullets bounce off of and yet still be able to sense pressure, pleasure, or pain. You don’t see Superman yelping in pain every time someone hits him point blank with a firearm. I just don’t think you can allow pleasure and disallow pain/pressure.
Don’t get me started on Aron Ralston – what an idiot. Anyone would go out rock climbing by himself deserves to chew his own arm off.
I think it would be really hard to hide (so to speak) invisibility . Someone’s bound to find out eventually. Unless you can also suppress all noise you make (inaudiability?) and not leave any tracks. And can become intangible, as InfK says, so that doors and walls aren’t a problem.
Precognition wouldn’t do much for me. Whenever it’s used as a device in stories, it doesn’t really mean anything, because the person having the future visions almost always has the ability to change the future also and make those visions not come true. So it’s not really the future you’re looking at anyway. And besides that, it would make life simultaneously boring and scary to know what’s going to happen.
I already addressed Mind Control. Yes, there’s a certain segment of the population who might prefer to have everyone under their control. But I would prefer that people exert free will around me, and to know that they are doing something for me because of me and not because I made them.
But yeah, being able to "nudge" someone in the right direction now and again might be pretty cool… I can think of certain members of the current administration who could use a push or two.
Latre.
March 6th, 2004 @ 1:08 pm
You said, "Don’t get me started on Aron Ralston – what an idiot. Anyone would go out rock climbing by himself deserves to chew his own arm off."
I’d go further: hardcore mountain-climbing generally is monumentally stupid and, well, decadent. I mean, what the fuck: the people who pay thousands of dollars to potentially kill themselves by climbing Everest and the like? How messed up are we that we have to artificially create situations in which our lives are at risk? Anyone who believes all the defensive crap about "the human spirit" and "testing the limits of one’s endurance" yadda yadda…well, look, do something useful by donating to charity the money you’d spend to climb K2 and then stick your tongue in an electric socket. It’s quicker, and less painful. Sheesh.
March 6th, 2004 @ 8:19 pm
For a type of invulnerability that doesn’t imply insensitivity, check out Louis Wu’s body armor in the Ringworld Engineers – it sensed kinetic impact and instantly stiffened, yet was flexible a fraction of a second later.
And I don’t see why you have to presume that if you posess the power of mind control, everyone around you would be ‘controlled’ – if you don’t wanna control someone, just don’t. But it’d be handy for driving – at intersections when some jerk in front of you just won’t make that left turn, you could make him do it!
I think omnipotence, a’la "Q" from Star Trek, would be a bad one. They’re a good example of what intelligence and immortality gets you in the long run – you turn into an asshole who toys with lesser beings to amuse yourself just because you’ve run out of other ways to kill time and you’re afraid your peers will razz you if you just play Freecell for eternity…
March 8th, 2004 @ 9:45 am
The Invulnerability with sensitivity aspect was handled pretty well in Marvel’s Power Man if I recall correctly. Early issues made a point of the fact that it really hurt when Luke Cage got hit by bullets, but once he realized they weren’t hurting him, it was much less "Shocking" in a nervous system sense.
My choice for Superpower would be the ability to create mobile space rifts of any desired size linking my location to any other. These would automatically compensate for Inertial differences of course. Make a tiny one so you can check out your desired destination for witnesses before widening it and stepping through. Pop a lense over your end and send the other end scooting around the universe to explore.