Well, if he weren’t paranoid, he wouldn’t be prepared…
Thank God for Wiki…
So what happened to Linda Danvers? Does she still have powers? Are her and Matrix still one being? I stopped reading Supergirl right around all this God foolishness (I’ll say issue 24). When I read the synopsis in Wiki, I was both intrigued and annoyed at the same time.
It was actually a good story. Peter David tends to do that to characters. He does things noone else ever thought of, and makes a good story out of it. Linda is gone completely, for right now at least. She is supposed to still have the Supergirl powers though. And I wonder why there is no mention of her in the Supergirl book. OTOH, there is supposed to be a Supergirl showing up in Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes after Infinite Crisis. :dubious:
Lok
Same Supergirl, I think. Almost certainly Kara.
There almost certainly has to be some goofy Silver Age story where he’s in drag. It was a staple plot, at the time, for the villains to force heroes into doing humiliating or out of character things.
No wonder the heroes became such dicks.
That’s what I heard, too. 99% sure it’s Kara.
Another Superman question: What is his heat vision, exactly? Is it a laser?
Probably Kara, but they have not actually said it, and they have been kind of cagey about how Supergirl will be showing up. And it would be a nice way to keep Linda Danvers going.
Rhomus, it is much more powerful than a laser. At least when Superman really lets loose with it. But it is basically beams of heat that come out of his eyes. That is the only explanation I have really seen.
Lok
I remember one story where Steve whatsisname, the office jerk at the Daily Planet, brought Lois an orchid in a gift box. Clark, in a whimsical moment, used a combination of X-ray vision and heat vision to burn the flower to a crisp while leaving the outer box/wrap unaffected. Now THAT would be a cool power to have! Imagine a hostage situation where you could shoot a beam harmlessly through the hostage and flash-fry the criminal.
Pre-Crisis, or at least for most of the Silver Age, his heat vision was explained as a side-effect of his x-ray vision. Which was assumed to be real x-rays.
Once the writers realised a significant portion of the readers knew and had become unwilling to ignore that X-Rays Don’t Work That Way, AFAIK, they just began handwaving away the actual mechanism of his vision powers.
Not Superman, but didn’t they explain away most superpowers in that series of novels about Aces/Jokers as being telekinesis manifested one way or another?
Yeah, in Wild Cards most of the powers were supposed to be based on some form of mental powers. And John Byrne went in that direction with most of Superman’t powers when he did the reboot after Crisis. Heat vision = pyrokinesis, superstrength = telekinesis, other things like that. It was never stated that way outright, but he showed how he thought on his Fantastic Four run when Gladiator (of the Imperial Guard (Marvel analogue to Superboy in Legion of Super-Heroes)) showed up and attacked the FF. Reed and Sue took him out by confusing his mind, therefore his powers stopped working right.
Lok
You realize he’s paraphrasing what Jules Ffiefer wrote in the 1965 right?
in this book.
True, and Bill’s view of Superman is a very Silver Age view. Which makes sense, since a guy his age with his particular personal and professional responsibilities probably doesn’t have the time or patience to keep up with current Superman continuity. Plus, he seems like the type of guy who would resist those changes anyway. 
To be fair, this is also the view that the new Animated JLU takes on Supes as well. I managed to see the season finale the other day (had already aired in the UK), and in his big dust up with the villain, Superman has an awesome monologue wherein he describes what it’s like to constantly be holding back- how he lives in a world of cardboard, and that it’s actually nice to be able to cut loose once in a while.
As for the comic…well, I’ve tried to get into DC, but aside from Elseworlds one-shots, and some of the mini-series (Identity Crisis comes to mind) the rest is too much of a quagmire to delve into.
Curse you DrFidelius! For beating me to the reference.
My own damn fault for posting before reading the whole thread.
I believe Alan Moore’s MiracleMan made the almost the same comment.
Which begs the question: doesn’t that mean that ordinary string is holding the suit together?
Nope, the thread used to stich it together was also part of the blanket, unwoven and cut with heat vision.