Mon-El was trapped in the Phantom Zone, and lead is commoner than Kryptonite. It’s like J’onn J’onz and his thing about fire - it is less of a deus ex machina for a bad guy to whip out a match and freak the Martian Manhunter* out than to just happen to have the fragments of an exploded planet in your hip pocket.**
Ultra-Boy could only use one super power at a time. Although that was sort of a cheat - he could lift stuff using super-strength and fly with his Legion ring at the same time. That ring must have had a heck of a lot of lifting power.
Regards,
Shodan
*This always sounded vaguely homoerotic to me.
**Why did all the pieces of Kryptonite wind up landing in the USA? Kal-el traveled for some undefined period of time in the spaceship that brought him to earth. Even Alpha Centauri is several light-years from earth - how come a planet, which presumably exploded in all directions, wound up with so much of its mass on one planet waaaay far away? Can you imagine hitting the earth with a rock from Proxima Centauri?
That’s not really true, or fair. Churning out a monthly comic book that’s acceptable to kids, parents, and editors and isn’t too repetitive or derivative can’t be an easy task. Writers and artists are always looking for new and interesting twists and ideas. But you don’t want to box yourself in too much, or try to get too technical, so some things you leave vague.
I’m a little surprised that they never did do things with exactly how the flying worked, or what the limitations on his powers were in any reasonable way – but saying that “he has super-hearing, and x-ray vision, and can’t see through lead” is probably better and easier to remember than setting definite restrictions. I DO remember fan letters from the 1960s pointing out how there were denser materials than lead, for instance, that Superman oughtn’t to be able to see through. It didn’t affect the stories.
IIRC the Golden Age explanation was that the space drive in the baby rocket Jor-El built opened up a warp in space (today we’d likely call it a wormhole). The rocket made it through the wormhole, but so did a lot of chunks of exploding planet.
I always assumed that Superman could fly and do other fantastic things because he was not subject to the normal laws of the Universe. That pretty much opens the door to anything and everything.
In my old copy of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Firestar is listed as being able to fly essentially by shooting out microwaves behind her. I think at one point I made a rough calculation of how much power it would take to allow a 100 lb girl to take off using only photons as power.
I don’t remember what I calculated, but I do remember that I wouldn’t want to be behind her.
Ah, The Official Handbooks! My personal favorite, in the entry for almost every shapechanger ‘It is unknown where he gets the additional mass. It may be from an extradimensional source’. Fer example, Ursa Major changes from about 175 pound human to a bear that weighs something like half a ton. The OFHOTMarvel Universe generally attempted to make things scientifically plausible and ended up being less convincing than ‘A wizard did it’
My question How does Iron Man fly without breaking his legs? I’ll accept that the power source in the suit obviates the need for jet fuel. But, how does he have all that thrust pushing on his feet and not have his knees crushed?
They officially get the extra mass from Hammerspace???
Me – I’m always amazed that shape-shifters can always replicate the shape they want so perfectly – without even being able to see the result. I think the worst fate would be to be a perfectly capable shapeshifter, only with absolutely no artistic talent. You’d try to make yourself look like the person you’re following, but you actually end up looking like a five year old’s clay model of a human being, with the proportions all wrong and no symmetry. Your mere appearance in any guide but your own would terrify people. You’d end up spending a lot of time as puddles of water and discolored splotches and random walls, because those require any artistic skill. Or you’d assume a shape that lets you hide inside of suits of armor and things, because that doesn’t require you to look any good.
I DO know of one character who has that problem. I can’t recall his real name, but he goes by “Shape”. Shape is a mentally retarded supervillain who has some stretching and shapechanging abilities. It does seem that he could do much more with his powers if he had a normal intellect. As it is, he has trouble holding a standard human shape and does indeed look like a sculpture done by a five-year old.
ETA Shape appeared in the classic Squadron Supreme 12 issue series.
The suit is some sort of intelligent, selectively-hardening armor…I imagine it becomes stiffer through the legs, locking the knees in place. Although most artists probably don’t draw it that way.
For a rational examination of powers, read MiracleMan (MarvelMan in the UK). Once the title character realizes he has super powers, he and his wife go about testing them and seeing just what powers he has.
‘You must be telekinetic. MiracleMan is muscular but you’d need a body like a mountain to lift that’
