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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m sure De Beers would pay handsomely for his promise not to flood the market with diamonds he could produce.
The ones who make money are generally called super-villains.
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…
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.
Super reporter for a metropolitan newspaper. It’s a higher pay scale.
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?
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)
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.
That would be more of a super villain thing.
Wonder Woman: Pole dancer. More money than anything the governments of the world could throw at her.
Wasn’t there a thing where the Avengers got told that since they’re government employees they had to abide by government regulations?
Treasure hunting and deep sea salvage would be lucrative, exciting, easy, and morally sound.
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.
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.
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.
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…