How people with superpowers earn money?

[JohnClay]

While starting to watch Superman III for the first time, I was thinking that he could just earn heaps of money doing manual labor rather than earning an average amount being a reporter. Are there any super heroes that earn money using their powers? Maybe some of the X-men do or something.

[runner pat]

Or he could make a few diamonds from coal, mine gold or other precious metals. Break into Fort Knox.
Hell, he could probably super-hack every computer on Earth.

[Der Trihs]

Luke Cage and Iron Fist: Heroes for Hire were as the name implies, for hire.

Wonder Man worked security at some super-science lab for a while.

[Uosdwis R. Dewoh]

I think Superman should get in the putting satellites into orbit business. He could charge, let's say, ten million a pop. He'd be a lot cheaper than putting satellites up the conventional way.

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Wonder Man worked security at some super-science lab for a while.

He was also one heck of a stuntman.

[Max Torque]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

Wonder Man worked security at some super-science lab for a while.

One of my favorite Wonder Man jobs (he's held a lot of odd jobs) was working for a weapons development lab. See, Wonder Man is incredibly invulnerable (his skin is harder than The Thing's, and he can survive in the vacuum of space). His job was testing flak jackets. He'd basically put on a jacket and let them shoot him with a bazooka. Then, he'd tell the engineers how well the jacket performed.

Edit: I've always thought Kitty Pryde would have a great career in construction. She could reinforce buildings by phasing rebar into concrete.

[Jonathan Chance]

Duh...licensing from DC and Marvel.

[cmkeller]

In DC, there were a trio of speedsters called Blue Trinity (I think they were Soviets called Red Trinity and then went capitalist after the collapse of the USSR) who ran a delivery service.

And then there's Buk-50, the (fake) Green Lantern who used his ring to become the greatest furniture mover in the universe. Why doesn't he just use his ring to create the money? What, and give up his time-and-a-half on weekends?

[Mister Rik]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

Superheroes would just make money by sponsorship and endorsements I'm afraid. You'd see super teams split along Coke/Pepsi lines.

Booster Gold has made a good living through endorsements.

Originally Posted by cmkeller

And then there's Buk-50, the (fake) Green Lantern who used his ring to become the greatest furniture mover in the universe. Why doesn't he just use his ring to create the money? What, and give up his time-and-a-half on weekends?

Because the GL ring doesn't "create" anything but "solid light" objects, and those objects can only last as long as the ring is charged. This was covered back in Justice League International in the late 1980s (this was during the "comedic" incarnation of the Justice League). The JLI was helping build a house for a couple teammates who were married, and when GL Guy Gardner ran out of nails he started making them with his ring instead of fetching more real nails. Once the house was built, somebody noticed the green nails ... right about the same time Guy noticed that his ring's charge was almost gone. It ran empty before he could get his lantern out to recharge it, and everybody stared in dumbfounded disbelief as most of the house fell down

[Tom Tildrum]

Originally Posted by Max Torque

One of my favorite Wonder Man jobs (he's held a lot of odd jobs)....

This reminds me of his attempt to be an actor, when he wound up working briefly as, essentially, a super-strong Sideshow Mel on a kid's show.

[kayaker]

Originally Posted by runner pat

Or he could make a few diamonds from coal

I'm sure De Beers would pay handsomely for his promise not to flood the market with diamonds he could produce.

[Alka Seltzer]

The ones who make money are generally called super-villains.

[Chimera]

Mundane Jobs for Supers;

Superman: Demolition, Orbital Delivery, Heavy lifting, security guard.
Flash: High Speed Courier.
Wonder Woman: Wonderful job with that lasso for the NSA, CIA or major corporations, eh? Hell, she could spend a couple of days in Gitmo, clear those who deserve it and learn a helluva lot from the rest. It certainly is not "torture". Hell, I would probably be very amused at the idea of her using it at a Presidential Debate...

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by Chimera

Wonder Woman: Wonderful job with that lasso for the NSA, CIA or major corporations, eh? Hell, she could spend a couple of days in Gitmo, clear those who deserve it and learn a helluva lot from the rest. It certainly is not "torture". Hell, I would probably be very amused at the idea of her using it at a Presidential Debate...

Wonder Woman: Pole dancer. More money than anything the governments of the world could throw at her.

[Tom Tildrum]

The best example I can think of is probably Peter Parker, who used an automatic camera to shoot pictures of himself in action as Spider-Man and then sold those pictures to the Daily Bugle.

There have also been a couple of minor characters that come to mind. Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, and the Human Target worked as bodyguards. Man-Bat tried to make a living off of reward money back in the 70s.

[Trans Fat Og]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

The ones who make money are generally called super-villains.

Or did you mean that as a joke?? Super-villains usually take money, which isn't usually referred to as making it.

"Making money" is open to interpretation, although the OP clearly meant personal income. In the broadest sense, it would include raising funds for charity. I seem to recall no end of scenes with Silver Age J.L.A. or Legion of Superheroes members performing for an audience with their powers and skills. Phantom Girl with the old sword-through-a-sealed-box routine comes to mind. I just remembered that, more than a publication decade earlier, Superboy threw a huge, heavy cube at her, momentarily shocking the kids in the audience, who wondered if he was killing her. Well, you sometimes can't keep track of powers without a scorecard, I guess. ISTR that they were surprised that Supie could lift such an impressively large object, though. That's harder to believe. Were they sleeping during Ancient History class?

- - -

Wonder Woman was shown at least twice during the Silver Age revisiting of the Golden Age (late 60's) performing feats of power or acting in a movie for charity.

While recalling that it came to me that when the Golden Age version first appeared, she agreed to perform for personal income for an unsavory-looking character.
He witnessed her both outracing autos and using her bracelets, and offered her money for either performance on stage. "I don't care which." He then tried to skip town with her earnings. Bad move. I believe that this was the first encounter with crime for WW, right in the middle of her origin story.

Of course, this was before she settled into her military career.

[TPWombat]

Adam Warren's Empowered is so screwed for money that one of her part-time gigs involved playing herself for a company that hired out superhero lookalikes for promotions etc.

[Musicat]

Super reporter for a metropolitan newspaper. It's a higher pay scale.

[Peter Morris]

Nice little planet you've got here. Terrible shame if anything, er, happened to it. Alien attack. Meteorites. Floods. Tornadoes. But for $10,000,000 per year I'll give you protection. Make sure there are no unfortunate accidents. Know what I mean?

[msmith537]

Dazzler used her powers to convert sound into light and energy beams as part of her music performance.

In the Wolverine movie, Bolt used his powers over electricity to work in a carnivale side show.

I assume The Avengers all collect salaries from S.H.I.E.L.D.


It seems like a lot of superheros either inhereted vast fortunes (Professor X, Iron Man, Batman) or make their living as a brilliant scientist (Mr Fantastic, Beast) which often resulted in their superpowers in the first place.

Originally Posted by Peter Morris

Nice little planet you've got here. Terrible shame if anything, er, happened to it. Alien attack. Meteorites. Floods. Tornadoes. But for $10,000,000 per year I'll give you protection. Make sure there are no unfortunate accidents. Know what I mean?

That would be more of a super villain thing.

[C K Dexter Haven]

The good guys don't want to simply accumulate money (e.g., squeezing coal into diamonds or blackmailing governments), they want to earn money through honest labour: reporter, photographer, scientist, test pilot, etc. Plus, more than the money, they want to live as normal a life as possible (hence the secret identity.)

And of course some of them are just incredibly wealthy IRL (Batman, Professor Xavier, Iron Man, etc)

[A Monkey With a Gun]

Originally Posted by C K Dexter Haven

The good guys don't want to simply accumulate money (e.g., squeezing coal into diamonds or blackmailing governments), they want to earn money through honest labour: reporter, photographer, scientist, test pilot, etc. Plus, more than the money, they want to live as normal a life as possible (hence the secret identity.)

And of course some of them are just incredibly wealthy IRL (Batman, Professor Xavier, Iron Man, etc)

Iron Man is a bit of an exception to that, though. He has no secret identity and certainly doesn't want to live as normal a life as possible. He also uses the suit to make money - at least in the sense that it is walking advertisement for Stark Industries and he'll show up to industry expos wearing the thing in order to push his products.

[kenobi 65]

Originally Posted by A Monkey With a Gun

Iron Man is a bit of an exception to that, though. He has no secret identity and certainly doesn't want to live as normal a life as possible.

Though, that hasn't always been the case...at least in the 1980s, when I was reading Iron Man, Stark still maintained the fiction that the guy in the Iron Man suit was his bodyguard (and, for a while, it was James Rhodes in the suit, while Stark was battling alcoholism).

[Arabella Flynn]

Originally Posted by kenobi 65

Though, that hasn't always been the case...at least in the 1980s, when I was reading Iron Man, Stark still maintained the fiction that the guy in the Iron Man suit was his bodyguard (and, for a while, it was James Rhodes in the suit, while Stark was battling alcoholism).

Wasn't he still pretty well out as a major supplier of tech for the government (read: the Avengers), though? Given that his only real "superpower" is having enough IQ points for two or three normal people, that might kind of count.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by kenobi 65

Though, that hasn't always been the case...at least in the 1980s, when I was reading Iron Man, Stark still maintained the fiction that the guy in the Iron Man suit was his bodyguard (and, for a while, it was James Rhodes in the suit, while Stark was battling alcoholism).

And at one point during the "Armor Wars" arc Stark publicly fired Iron Man.

[davidw]

CEOs in Comics: Villains Earn, Heroes Inherit

[Zsofia]

Wasn't there a thing where the Avengers got told that since they're government employees they had to abide by government regulations?

[drastic_quench]

Treasure hunting and deep sea salvage would be lucrative, exciting, easy, and morally sound.

[waynemcdougall]

Originally Posted by drastic_quench

Treasure hunting and deep sea salvage would be lucrative, exciting, easy, and morally sound.

Sorry. Sole rights go to Aquaman. You didn't think the fabulous riches of Atlantis were accumulated by hard work, did you?

An Aquaman is a hoarder - doesn't put it back in the economy.

[drastic_quench]

Originally Posted by waynemcdougall

Sorry. Sole rights go to Aquaman. You didn't think the fabulous riches of Atlantis were accumulated by hard work, did you?

An Aquaman is a hoarder - doesn't put it back in the economy.

I'd place my bet on Namor if it's all the same to you.

[cmkeller]

Mister Rik:

When did this Buk/Guy encounter take place?

A Guy-G'nort story that ran in Green Lantern (1990 series) # 9-12. I'm not sure precisely which of these issues that happened in. Most likely one of the middle two.

[Wesley Clark]

Peter Parker made a living as a wrestler at first, but after letting a criminal get away (who ended up killing his uncle) he decided to become a crime fighter.

Also Thor used to go to amusement parks and use his hammer to max out the high striker games then sell the giant stuffed animals on ebay. Made a few hundred a month I believe.

[pravnik]

In the first X-Men movie Wolverine earned money fighting in bars, which now that I think about it is pretty much a dick move for a guy with metal knuckles who heals instantly.

[Peter Morris]

Originally Posted by Wesley Clark

Peter Parker made a living as a wrestler at first..

I thought that he failed to make money doing it.

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by Peter Morris

I thought that he failed to make money doing it.

As I recall, the promoter made out the check to Spider-Man, and he couldn't cash it without ID.

Regards,
Shodan

[Ranchoth]

Superman could dig a five mile deep mine shaft in an isolated, geologically stable area (presumably one where no Mole People or anything were living—this is a comic book world, after all), and ferry nuclear waste there a couple of times a year. Bam. Easy living, and you solve a couple of energy crises.

Or he could just cut out the middleman.

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by Ranchoth

Superman could dig a five mile deep mine shaft in an isolated, geologically stable area (presumably one where no Mole People or anything were living—this is a comic book world, after all), and ferry nuclear waste there a couple of times a year. Bam. Easy living, and you solve a couple of energy crises.

"Superman, be a dear and hurl these 65,000 tons of nuclear waste into the sun. We'll pay you $1 billion for your time."

Things like that would then allow The Superman Foundation to be liberally funded and do good works that one really strong and fast guy couldn't do.

Of course, we'd have to live with the ignorant morons who would then picket Superman and spam websites claiming we were damaging the sun...

[cletus]

Originally Posted by Wesley Clark

Also Thor used to go to amusement parks and use his hammer to max out the high striker games then sell the giant stuffed animals on ebay. Made a few hundred a month I believe.

What a horribly inefficient way of using superpowers to make money. Did anyone else get a big laugh out of this or just me?

[A Monkey With a Gun]

Originally Posted by cletus

What a horribly inefficient way of using superpowers to make money. Did anyone else get a big laugh out of this or just me?

I laughed, but... did you get whooshed? Thor doesn't even know what e-bay is. It never happened in any continuity.

Wesley Clark's post was funny as hell, though. It almost inspired me to start a new thread about what ridiculous jobs superheroes should have.

[Alka Seltzer]

Superheroes would just make money by sponsorship and endorsements I'm afraid. You'd see super teams split along Coke/Pepsi lines.

[JThunder]

Originally Posted by Alka Seltzer

Superheroes would just make money by sponsorship and endorsements I'm afraid.

The Booster Gold approach.

[Chimera]

I'm not certain what kind of moral issue there is supposed to be with Supers using their powers to make money other than the whole "selfless" ideal, and it seems rather silly to me to require anyone who might remotely be a "good guy" to go around using their powers for free at all times.

Flash could earn some serious cash in a very short time moving some important expensive or sensitive materials around. Why would he not do this?

Superman was a reporter because that's where the news is/was. It kept him informed and in the center of events. Given how the news business has changed, it seems unlikely that he'd be doing that in 2012. Hell, with his abilities he could be another Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark billionaire in the field of Mining or treasure hunting. Not by showing off his abilities, but simply by his "incredible luck" at finding mineral deposits or shipwrecks.

I don't see any problem with scientists offering Thor a small stipend for assisting with a study of Lightning. Not like he's secretly Ted Thunderson, warehouse worker...

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Captain Amazing had corporate sponsorship and logos all over his uniform.

[Arabella Flynn]

Some of them have utterly mundane day jobs. Iceman, IIRC, grew up to be an accountant. Pretty sure Kitty Pryde and Johnny Storm went to college; some of the other teens may eventually have done, too. The "Doc" part of Doc Samson refers to his MD -- he's a working psychiatrist. She-Hulk and Daredevil are lawyers; I think both normally handle criminal defense cases, but they've also both been known to dabble in corporate law, i.e., fix Tony Stark's life for him. I think a fair amount of Northstar's income is from his previous work as a professional athlete, and then a memoir he wrote about it, although its popularity was partially because he talked a lot about being a mutant. Beast is a semi-professional researcher, but his supergenius isn't part of his mutation, just an amusing coincidence.

Being on the run also tends to interfere with long-term employment. Bruce Banner, who is chronically stuck avoiding the authorities, does a lot of anonymous odd jobs while hitchhiking around. (One of his alter egos, Joe Fixit (the gray Hulk), likes to work for the mob, much to Banner's horror.) Wolverine used to do much the same hitchhiking-and-picking-up-work bit, but as he was not a weenie government researcher, his work tended to be... er, a little rougher.

A few of them do actually use their superpowers. Nightcrawler used to be a circus performer before he got sucked into saving the world, as did his foster sister Daytripper. Stephen Strange sort of works as a consulting sorcerer-for-hire. Captain America started out fully owned and operated by the US Army, and I imagine all of the active Avengers are getting their paychecks, openly or otherwise, from someone in the government specifically in charge of paying unusual but useful people like them.

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

One of my favorite Wonder Man jobs (he's held a lot of odd jobs) was working for a weapons development lab. See, Wonder Man is incredibly invulnerable (his skin is harder than The Thing's, and he can survive in the vacuum of space). His job was testing flak jackets. He'd basically put on a jacket and let them shoot him with a bazooka. Then, he'd tell the engineers how well the jacket performed.

IIRC, Captain America has used his steroid-enhanced physique to work not as a professional boxer -- which would presumably be unfair -- but as a professional boxer's sparring partner. (He's also earned paychecks as a comic-book illustrator, gaining praise for drawing fight scenes as if he'd experienced them first-hand.)

[smokey78]

I can't recall Wolverine having a real job in comicverse.

However, the X-men really fought/worked/defended universe/taught for free. Not only Prof.X funded his school, but his former student, Warren Worthington/Arcangel was of old money. So was the White Queen, Emma.

Other members had side gigs: Gambit-thief, Rogue-owned property inherited from Mystique, Banshee-NYC cop, etc.

(20-year-fan of X-Comics)