Holding Out for a Hero - Ep. 3: Let's Get Physical

Originally Published May 9, 2014

Actually, this is more than about just getting physical, it’s about all the powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men that I’ll be talking about here.  Yes, it’s all about suspension of disbelief.  Again, masked super humans running around in tights and masks doing good deeds.  But let’s talk about those super powers and just exactly, when did they start to go overboard with them?  In the original Superman comics, yes, Kal-El displayed great feats of strength like, lifting a car.  And even the old Superman television show explained the limits of his powers. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Oddly enough, I’m pretty ok if that were the limits of his strength.  But over the intervening decades, he started getting more and more powerful to fight more powerful enemies.  He got super heat vision, super cold breath, he could fly in the vacuum of space and even here on earth, his ability to leap turned into flight somewhere along the way.  So much so, he could stop the rotation of the earth and go back in time.  How? 

Let’s just look at it from pure physics.  How can a person become imbued with the ability to fly without any sort of locomotion to propel this flight?  And not just that but entirely change direction whilst flying?  This not only goes for Supes but every hero and villain that’s come along since.  The ability to just lift up off the ground and move in any given direction without so much as any visible means of doing so.  Hell, even birds need to flap their wings.  At least I’m willing to overlook some super humans (and Norse gods) who require some physical device to propel themselves be it rocket packs or a magical hammer.  But to just up and fly in any given direction?  I think we should get a reset button on that.  

Another one that’s been bothering me for a while is the mutation of the human genome.  Again, I’m perfectly fine with mutants that display variations of normal human abilities.  Super strength?  Sure. Super fast healing?  Why not?  I’ll even give a pass to telekinetics/telepaths.  Hell, I’ll even buy into a kid being bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly be able to climb walls.  But how can human DNA mutate to such a degree that lasers can emit from their eyes?  Or the ability to control weather?   I’d love to see a super hero series focus on what might be in terms of super HUMAN.  Rather than it be about, “What kind of power should this hero have to defeat bad guy A?”