I know he has all of Superman’s powers, just one at a time. Question is, what’s the point of being superstrong if you’re gonna break your hand punching a steel wall, for example? Does he keep a little back? Or am I overthinking this?
You are probably over-thinking it, but it is a handicap of his. That’s why he uses a flight ring rather than flying on his own, for example. My readings of the Legion are decades old, but I never recall Ultra-Boy getting into a situation where he got bit by the “one at a time” limitation.
While, logically, super strength should require super-durability (and they’re usually part of the same package) the effects of superpowers on the user are usually ignored (unless it’s an intentionally ‘realistic’ take, or the writer has a specific reason to use them).
That said, like Silenus mentions, UB has had issues with it. In addition to his use of his flight ring so he can use other powers (especially invulnerability) while flying, he’s also stated at a few times that he’s good at switching powers on the fly - such as using his superspeed, then switching to his invulnerability at the last second in order to tackle someone.
So really it only comes up when he mentions it.
I recall it coming up any number of times: someone would ask him to lift something heavy, and then knock him out with an ordinary-strength blow to the back of the head while he was holding it in mid-air; likewise, Grimbor once set up an anti-Ultra-Boy trap built around bonds Ultra Boy couldn’t snap without becoming vulnerable to a lethal attack; not to mention how our hero would make a big deal about temporarily stopping his tunnel-through-the-ground effort so he could switch to penetra-vision and make sure he was still on target before getting back to work; plus that time he tried to fly fast enough to go back in time like Christopher Reeve, and could theoretically get up to speed but couldn’t manage it due to the heat he’d need to shrug off; and et cetera.
You have better recall than I do. Like I said, it’s been decades since I read Legion stories.
Well, only when I’m not lifting anything.
Ultra Boy’s powers were said to be a matter of him mentally shifting the “ultra-energy” in his body to the specific body part that needed it, e.g., his eyes, ears or muscles. Presumably this means that when he’s thinking “invulnerability,” the energy is sort of a force-field all over his body, when he’s thinking “super-strength”, the energy is concentrated in the muscles the require it, and by dint of being in those parts, they have that force field on them (e.g., the fist) as well.
(How exactly he shifts to flight or super-speed, when those aren’t in parts of the human body will just have to be chalked up to more speculative forms of comic book science…maybe the energy goes to a part of the brain that would tap into anti-gravity or the speed force for people who have those particular gifts. But in any case, not to the force field protecting the skin.)
In his first appearance he only knew about and used various vision powers. The boy wasn’t so ultra back then, I tell you what.
Ultra-boys ‘penetra-vision’ was better than Superboy or Mon-el’s cause he could see through anything, including lead.
I wish they had extended that with ALL his powers. Make him stronger, faster than those two…but just one at a time. Alas, he was always a third banana. And then they made him a dumb jock.
I have an issue (somewhere) in which Ultraboy lets a villain escape. The perp in question was flying really fast in a ship and left the atmosphere. Ultraboy explained that he could not be invulnerable and use superspeed at the same time.
No, it wasn’t.
He could see through lead, but he’d be stopped by copper.
All three of them could be stopped by plumbing.
… And I think I may have just realized why they chose copper as the blocker for his ultra-vision.:smack:
The one who couldn’t see through copper was Starboy, in his first appearance. He basically had all of Superboy’s powers (plus “electrical vision”). In subsequent appearances the character was reinvented, replacing the Kryptonian-ish abilities with the power to affect mass and gravity.
Oops, right you are.
Dale Sams:
And then they re-interpreted that “dumb jock” as a facade to hide a street-smart, analytical mind, with excellent acting abilities, to boot. But playing dumb so villains wouldn’t suspect just how much he knows about them.
As an incidental, the story that introduced Star Boy is a retread of another Superboy from eight years earlier featuring “Mars Boy”, with the same powers and copper limitation.
I have a lot to contribute to this thread, being that much of a nerdy geek, but for now I’ll just say no one has mentioned his lack of super-hearing. So, no, he does not have all of Kal-El’s powers.
It doesn’t end there. While it is canonical that he can use his ultra-strength for at least one of the three variations of Supie’s "super-breath: making compressed air, the suggestion that he also has an “ultra-brain” only appeared in a caption in the same story, and may have been symbolic of his inventiveness, rather than a literal item on his power list.
Microscopic vision? Super-ventriloquism? Super-healing? None of these, and many others, have been either denied or listed as possible.
(Since his “heat vision” is called flash vision, and his “telescopic vision” has been called distance vision, one could wonder what alternated names he might have come up with for the three possibilities just mentioned.)
However, it has been canonical that he really has only four powers. Or really four power categories:
Ultra-vision (at least two extensions, as above)
Ultra-strength (including ultra-breath, if not also super-suction and freezing breath)
Ultra-speed (augmented by anti-gravity)
And invulnerability (both defensive and what has been called “sealed systems” in RPG)
Microscopic vision possibly works itself in there, but most of the other of Clark’s powers would not.
I do recall picking up a back issue, just about 10 years after first accumulating comics, in which he was definitely handicapped in evading Mon-El, after setting himself up as a re-named escaped prisoner and a Legion traitor.
After wresting with Mon-El and nearly causing a needle-like structure to fall down, he donned a spacesuit while leaving Mon-El to grab the building. Then he had to alternate between looking back at him and pouring on the ultra-speed to keep ahead. Finally, having perhaps bought some extra time for a while, he manipulated Mon-El into immediately rescuing some scientists from their own self-experimentation.
I think, but could be wrong, that Ultra Boy got around the dumb “LSH members must have their own unique super-power rule”, by having penetra-vision.
Of course they drop this rule for the wonnnnnderfulll Cosmic Boy’s little brother.
“Super strength” could be both the ability to generate huge amounts of mechanical force AND the load-bearing ability to handle it. So for example, Ultra Boy wouldn’t break his hand while punching through a steel wall, but if it was a tank of acid, the acid inside would burn his hand.