I’m sorry if this title isn’t the most clearly worded thread title ever, but I think the meaning should become clear.
For me, it all started when I was playing Ocarina of Time for the N64. At one point, brave little Link gets the Golden Gloves of Badass Nature or something like that. These enable him to lift huge slabs of rock, that depending on what they’re made of (and how tall Link is, for scale), I calculated must weigh between 75 and 600 tons. Not only can he lift 'em, he can throw 'em about half the length of a football field. Someone who can do that, what would you imagine his biggest obstacle is? Locked doors. Yep, secured with a chain. Now, admittedly some of those might have been magical doors, but still – you’d think that one swipe of a sword from someone that strong would cause you to explode from hydrostatic shock like a rotten pumpkin at the Trinity site.
So I was wondering about favorite examples of overpowered characters who are stopped by a deadbolt, a passage guarded by the lowliest guard (“Sorry, but the road’s closed”) or just generally don’t get all the benefits you’d expect after you work out so much.
Well, I’ve always been personally amused/irritated when playing first persons shooters that feature locked (And usually wooden) doors that withstand having an Anti-tank weapon fired at them from 10 feet away. Or closer. Though it IS funny when the blast radius from the weapon extends to beyond the locked door, so when you finally manage to unlock it, the room is filled with blown-apart furniture and charred corpses. >:)
It’ll be a happy day for me when the technology has progressed far enough to make user-deformable landscapes and buildings commonplace.
Ranchoth
Some years ago, I was in a very high-level, high-power AD&D campaign. If you weren’t at least 14th level, you stayed behind until we had time for “kiddie-quests”. The toughest character in that campaign was a paladin that the player had been running since paladins were first introduced. He was known to call towers of flame down on himself to clear out the riffraff, and to pick his teeth with demon bones.
He died in our campaign.
He was killed by a 1st-level cleric. You see, he was a Catholic, and ran into the Inquisition. He couldn’t kill priests of his own faith (that pesky code of his), so they tortured him and eventually burned him for witchcraft.
I mean, the guy lives underwater, yet is always underrated and always plays the ‘supporting role’ in SuperFriends. The poor bastard is always asked to “stay home and guard the fort”.
I remember one episode of Batman: the Animated Series that focussed on female characters. Batgirl teams up with Supergirl (the first cartoon version of the character I’d ever seen - she looked like a cheerleader) against Poison Ivy, Harlequin and Live Wire (an electricity-based villianess). Supergirl presumably can toss trucks around, but she was having trouble with Harlequin? Harlequin? Thing is, with her strength and speed, Supergirl should be able to snag all three in a few seconds, leaving Batgirl with nothing to do. For the sake of the story, superstrong characters become surprisingly inept at times.
As another example, in the DC vs Marvel mini-series, really just a lame excuse for a bunch of cross-company slugfests, Wonder Woman goes head-to-head with Storm, at one point landing a kick across the back of Storm’s head. WW eventually loses. Excuse me? WW has shown strength nearly comparable to Superman; even a mild kick should have delivered enough force to send a human’s head into low orbit, but Storm (with no special strengh or invulnerability) just shakes it off.
I remember one episode of Batman: the Animated Series that focussed on female characters. Batgirl teams up with Supergirl (the first cartoon version of the character I’d ever seen - she looked like a cheerleader) against Poison Ivy, Harlequin and Live Wire (an electricity-based villianess). Supergirl presumably can toss trucks around, but she was having trouble with Harlequin? Harlequin? Thing is, with her strength and speed, Supergirl should be able to snag all three in a few seconds, leaving Batgirl with nothing to do. For the sake of the story, superstrong characters become surprisingly inept at times.
As another example, in the DC vs Marvel mini-series, really just a lame excuse for a bunch of cross-company slugfests, Wonder Woman goes head-to-head with Storm, at one point landing a kick across the back of Storm’s head. WW eventually loses. Excuse me? WW has shown strength nearly comparable to Superman; even a mild kick should have delivered enough force to send a human’s head into low orbit, but Storm (with no special strengh or invulnerability) just shakes it off.
Someone mentioned recently in a thread about the old Superman shows how the thugs would fire their guns at him with no effect. When they were out of bullets (which bounced harmelessly off him), they would throw their guns at him and he would duck. That always seemed a bit backwards to me.
Speaking of Superman… well, let’s face it, the guy is billed as so strong that he can fly through planets (and not just gas giants) with no ill effects. He can take a hydrogen bomb on the chest and keep coming. He’s supposedly so powerful that he can violate the laws of physics, being able to fly faster than light itself.
Hell, at one point in the Golden Age (admittedly, they “revised” him from this), he was able to tow a chain of planets across the galaxy in a matter of hours.
So… with all this in mind… how, exactly, is Lex Luthor any sort of threat?
It’s simple – ricochets from an oddly-shaped gun are different from bullet ricochets. He’s not “ducking,” he’s presenting a slightly different surface so the gun doesn’t bounce the wrong way and hurt someone.
Seeing as how Superman’s the topic of choice right now, video games about superheros really piss me off. I don’t see how the likes of Superman and Spiderman, who can chuck cars incredibly long distances, have to punch your typical street thug a number of 50 times before knocking him unconcious. Or the fact that such street thugs are even able to deliver damage is unbelievable to me. To my knowledge, a single full on punch from Spider-Man should be enough to rip a hole through the punchee’s face. Lord knows what would happen to someone Supes decided to smack around.
It seems to me that if Professor X was a little less shy about using his mind-control power, none of the problems in the movie would have taken place. One quick blit of mind control as the Senator is driving home, and Magneto has no reason to attempt Evil Scheme #189.
Spider-Man. Here’s a guy who’s performed amazing feats of strength such as lifting a train’s passenger car over his head or supporting a 10-story building to keep it from collapsing. He also has his precognitive ability to know when to duck or react to an attack. He’s gone toe-to-toe with the Hulk. He’s beaten the everloving crap out of a cosmic guy known as the Firelord.
And yet it’s amazing who’s been able to take him down. Once he walked into a room and was rendered nearly unconscious by his very own Aunt May. She hid behind the door and whacked him with a vase.
Once he thumped a mugger in the forehead and knocked him out cold. But Doctor Octopus? The Vulture? No, they’ve each been hit by Spidey more times than Black Cat and MJ put together.
:Sigh: And I won’t even go into how many times he’s been held prisoner by being chained to a small wooden chair…
This only happened in the live action show (not any animated show or comic book) because the actor could not be hurt by the blanks in the gun but could be hurt by having the gun thrown at him.
all the damn superhero stuff drives me nuts. if i had superstrenght or could fly and do all the shit these guys could do, fighting, especially hand-to-hand would be the last damn thing i would be wasting my time with.
stupid comic-book shit! (oh, wait! these are comic book charecters! :D)
In addition to taking out Firelord, Spidey also went toe-to-toe with (and kicked the ass of) a time-tossed Iron Man 2020, who had a suit presumably much better than the “current” version.
That makes Spidey’s repeated defeats at the hands of Daredevil even more mysterious.
A surprising display of comic book strength accuracy featured Strong Guy (aka Guido) from the Peter David era of X-Factor.
At one point the team had to take down every individual copy of Multiple Man. For the unfamiliar, MM lacked any real physical enhancement, he could just instantaneouly create multiples of himself for the purposes of pig piling an enemy. I always thought that was a highly improbable mutant superpower, even for the comic world. But anyway…
While Havok, Polaris et al were delivering right hooks and whatnot to knock the MM copies unconscious, Strong Guy was seen casually finger-flicking each guy on the jaw, knocking them out one by one.
But Peter David seemed to put more actual thought into his writing than other comic auteurs.
FWIW, I believe there was some (lame excuse of a) line that said that Magneto’s helmet was blocking his powers.
Of course, it’s probably for the best. After all, in the comic, the one time Professor X goes hardcore and wipes Magneto’s mind, he creates Onslaught, who then goes on to wipe out the majority of the Marvel Universe.
