Because I suck at Google, another comics list-thread. DCU Immortals.

[Askia]

@Number Six

This from someone who clings to the irrational fanboy belief that Batman beats anybody if he’s prepared?

Dude. Don’t attack my religious beliefs.

Depends upon which version of the story you believe. The one you cite is the later version; originally Achilles was annointed by his mother with Ambrosia, which, being the food of the gods, makes anybody who consumes it into a god. Thus, divine by definition; Achilles in this version was a demigod like Hercules.

Wow. How I managed to get this far in life without knowing about the attempt to make Achilles immortal using ambrosia in addition to the river Styx is beyond me. Thanks for bringing it up.
However – while I can’t cite a specfic issue – IIRC, every time they did a Shazam feature on the source of the gods/heroes who bestow their gifts to Captain Marvel, they always show the dipped in Styx origin for Achilles.

The River Styx separated the land of the living from Hades. The Greek gods most sacred oath was to swear on the River Styx, and those who did not keep their oath would lose their voice for nine years. The river was named after Zeus’ first daughter, who was the first to answer his call to fight the Titans. Named after a God, worshipped by the Gods, exists in the realm of a God, posessing the power to render the Gods mute and grant men godlike abilities. The river is without a doubt divine, and thus so are the powers it grants.

Interesting points. However, anal entymologist that I am, “divine” should really ONLY be used to describe living deities and possibly demigods, (e.g., divine intervention, divine plan, divine law). The Styx is neither sentient, self-aware or godlike in and of itself and should be accurately be called “supernatural”, “sacred”, “holy”, “profane”, etc. My quibbling point being that a dip in the Styx makes you more than human, sure, just not truly godlike and decidedly not worthy of divinity.

Wonder Woman, being an Amazon is already well established as being immortal, as is Plastic Man, who can be blown into a few million pieces, lie around on the ocean floor (conscious the whole time) for three thousand years, and be reassembled without any apparent physical harm.

Cite for the Plastic Man story? That sounds like an Elseworlds or something. Wonder Woman’s immortality is assumed, never canon. In fact, she begins to show signs of aging in the KINGDOM COME epilogue right after Batman – I’m sorry, that should be His Lord God Incarnate On Earth THE Batman – correctly deduced she was pregnant.

Not all that familiar with Power Man except for his brief stint in the Fantastic Four.

Y’aint missin’ much. This is my other fanboy obsession.

Paris shot the arrow, but it was guided by Apollo. It took divine intervention, literally, to kill Achilles. His heel and ankle were his only vulnerable parts; everything else that was immersed was immune to all forms of injury. Had he been dipped a second time to cover his heel, his entire body would have been completely invulnerable. The poisoned arrow managed to find the only part of him that was still mortal.

No, see, the arrow found the part of him that was still easily vulnerable. I’m still not fully convinced any part of Achilles was ever immortal. i.e., unaging, due to being in the river Styx. You make a very good point about the ambrosia, though, and if you capuld shw me any proof that origin was ever used in connection with Captain Marvel at either DC or Fawcett. I’ll shut up and concede.

As I understand it, the female gods origin for Mary was Fawcett; in DCU, the three Marvels have the same benefactors, but share the power pool. If two are powered up at once, they each have half the power. All three would have a third each. Or is this Pre-Crisis and has been revised?

Um… good point. I suspect this was definitely a Pre-Crisis ‘shared power’ situation as I seem to remember a couple of stories about folks like Sivana and King Kull in those DC COMICS PRESENTS of the 80s – the villains being empowered by leeching powers from the Marvel family. Post-Crisis, I think they all get their powers from the same benefactors without powers being divided in half or thirds or whatever. The link was meant to show that none of the gods specifically mentioned ‘long-fie’ or 'immortality" as part of their gifts of power.

In Kingdom Come, set some 20 years in the future, Superman is noticably aged, yet Captain Marvel retains his 30ish appearance, not having aged at all.

But that’s because, again, as the Divine Batman explains it, Billy Batson grew up to be a spitting image of Captain Marvel as an adult. Captain Marvel had been inactive for years and simply did not age in all that time. Captain Marvel is killed by that thermonuclear bomb in the story’s climax: so much for invulnerability.

It would be interesting to see Mary or Jr. in the future, to see if they grow to adulthood or stay teens.

It’s worth noting that in Alan Moore’s TWILIGHT proposal, in which KINGDOM COME was partly based, the junior Marvels age. Captain Marvel also ages and dies in the Frank Miller DK2 sequel.

The partial invulnerability could easily be a by product or combination of Atlas, Hercules, and Zeus’ gifts. Hercules’ strength, for example, would by necessity need to include invulnerability sufficient for the body to withstand the internal forces created by exercising that strength. And Atlas. Captain Marvel has the stamina of Atlas, which is infinite. This implies that the muscles never suffer fatigue, which is to say, they do not become damaged with use.

Easily explained? Yes. Already established in continuity? No.

And the “power of Zeus” is pretty vague. Does it just mean the ability to call forth magic lightning, or does it include other things such as invulnerabilty?

Agreed it’s ill-defined. Now, THAT is a compelling argument that Captain Marvel is immortal – that that’s what is meant by the power of Zeus. But I’ve always liked the call forth magic lightning idea. I always wanted to write a story where Captain Marvel discovers that the power of Zeus is the power to generate lightning bolts, but then Alex Ross and Mark Waid beat me to it. Bastards.

[CandidGamera]

Plastic Man is immortal. He hasn’t aged since the 1940’s, and though he may or may not have been stone bits at the time, did more than a millenium scattered into bitty-bits across the globe in a JLA story arc. (The Obsidian Age)

Wodner Woman - She’s kinda animated clay, so… Okay, well, here. There was a one-shot a while back - an issue of one of the Superman titles, where Supes and Diana visited a Valhalla/Asgard-like alternate dimension and battled on behalf of the people there. The story was mainly about how Superman didn’t forget Lois for a very long time, etc. But they were there for centuries.

The Marvels - the base form ages and dies; the empowered magical form can certainly be killed, and may, in fact, age. [Slowly.] Again, I cite DC One Million. Captain Marvel, apparently the modern one, is still alive and kicking - but now white-haired and bearded, filling in for the wizard Shazam.

[Odinoneeye]

And we must not forget that in the DCU, no one is truly immortal, not the Gaurdians, not the Gods, not even the Endless. As seen in the The Books of Magic, some day Destiny will close his book and Death with take him and then herself.

[DocCathode]

@CandidGamera

Plastic Man is immortal. He hasn’t aged since the 1940’s, and though he may or may not have been stone bits at the time, did more than a millenium scattered into bitty-bits across the globe in a JLA story arc. (The Obsidian Age).

Has it been established that Plas is immortal? Or is he just using his powers to make himself look young?

What about Woozie Winks? IIRC he rescued a wizard who rewarded him with invulnerability. I don’t remember if he was made invulnerable as well.

Re Achilles- Different sources give the river Styx, ambrosia, or a being baked in the hearth of Mount Olympus (this last version bears a similarity to a myth of Isis conferring immortality on a human boy)(All are similiar to Sigfried (or was it Sigurd) bathing in the blood of a dragon and becoming invulnerable except for a spot on his shoulder which was covered by a leaf). None of these are things that would ever happen to humans. Achilles is the son of a goddess (OTTOMH Thetis). He is already more than human. She makes him even more divine through the bath.

[CandidGamera]

@DocCathode

Has it been established that Plas is immortal? Or is he just using his powers to make himself look young?

Well, he’d be 80ish these days. Pretty spry for an octogenarian, I’d say. And he still looked pretty unaged in Kingdom Come, which is twentyish years in the future, where he’d be pushing the limits of maximum human lifespan.

He’s no longer even organic, according the the JLA Trial by Fire arc. How the heck would he age? Erosion?

[Kaitlyn]

@Askia

Cite for the Plastic Man story? That sounds like an Elseworlds or something. Wonder Woman’s immortality is assumed, never canon. In fact, she begins to show signs of aging in the KINGDOM COME epilogue right after Batman – I’m sorry, that should be His Lord God Incarnate On Earth THE Batman – correctly deduced she was pregnant.

JLA #75-76. The JLA is 3000 years in the past fighting Gamemnae, an ancient land-based Atlantean who wanted to reestablish Atlantis on the surface and use the sea-based Atlanteans from our time as slave labor. During the battle, Plastic Man is shattered into millions of peices which end up on the ocean floor.

After the league defeats Gamemnae, Firestorm picks up all of the little pieces of Plastic Man and one of the devices in the watchtower puts them back together. He recovers quickly, seems physically unchanged, and reports that he was conscious, but unable to act in any way the whole time.

Thus, in official continuity, Plastic Man is physically over 3000 years old, yet seemingly hasn’t aged at all.