Hmm. Good point. Running a country would be exhausting. Nix that then. I’d want my own city-state instead.
British Columbia, maybe?
:smack:
I meant Vancouver…
…and Vancouver Island.
If Canada doesn’t like it, I’ll melt all the glaciers in Nenevut, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories!
All of you are thinking too small. When I get my superpowers i’m going to offer to round up war-criminals,stop dictators and prevent natural disasters in exchange for a declaration from the UN transferring ownership of the moon to me.
When eventually humanity starts expanding past this planet the rent i’ll be able to charge will be enormous.
I think you’re the one thinking too small.
What’s the point of using your powers for money when you can just use them to get whatever it is you’re gonna buy with the money?
I might do a good deed now and then just for fun, but mostly it would be superhedonism.
Wouldn’t it be one big guilt trip? Too many people to help, not enough time?
I really suppose it would depend on what kind of superpowers you had.
If I really were Superman, I think I’d have to go completely bugshit listening to 500,000 different songs being played on the radio within a radius of a few miles; listening to radio broadcasts on UHF; listening to a couple of million people talking at once (and saying things about me behind my back); listening to 1,000 out-of-tune pianos and 20,000 out-of-tune guitars and 100,000 out-of-tune shower singers; listening to the squeaks, grinds, scrapes, rattles, shakes, and shocks of every one of a quarter of a million cars, each one with funny high-frequency harmonics; and finally having to listen to the Jerry Springer show with my ultra-sensitive Super Hearing whether I wanted to or not. You think it’s bad listening to the kid across the street practice his clarinet for 5th grade band? You’d hear them all, for miles around. Or how about that annoying hum you always get with fluorescent lights? You’d hear a couple of million of 'em. Ditto with the whine of television sets. And we won’t even get into what a person could see with a distance vision of several miles, plus the ability to see through solid objects. My first command as Superman would be for everybody to SHUT UP. And the second one would be STOP BEING SO UGLY. 
I’d become the grumpy old irascible neighbor who never lets anyone have any fun, and probably go live on the moon, because at least air-carried sound wouldn’t carry there from Earth.
If I were an immortal, like Wonder Woman, I’d probably go crazy every time I heard someone ask the -gry question every 2 or 3 days for 50,000 years; every time I heard the “best baseball player 3var!!!” question asked in a bar; every time I heard something called the “trial of the century.” As Wonder Woman, if I had a nickel for every time I listened to some newscaster say “well, do you have any good weather planned for this weekend, Bob, ha ha?”, then I’d soon be a rich woman. I’d have to grit my immortal teeth when I heard each succeeding generation since Socrates complain about “kids these days.” I’d clench my immortal fists at every funeral when the eulogy contains the blessing that the person “lived a good life as best he could,” as if he were somehow unique for doing so. And don’t you ever tell the why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road joke around me unless you want lasso burns.
And if I were the Flash, I’d have to switch to instant coffee. The darn percolator thing takes too long.
FISH
I think Astro City would be pretty close.
Now now, baseball’s only been around for a little over a century-and-a-half.
And every time a new century rolls around, there’ll be a whole new slew of candidates for “trial of the century”!
Fish… that was hilarious!
A week in the life of Vlad as Superman:
Monday: Superman spends whole day in bookstore
Tuesday: Superman just flies around
Wednesday: Superman conquers a small country
Thursday: Superman picks up some girls
Friday: Superman plays on internet all day
Saturday: Superman disguises self, picks fights in bars
Sunday: Superman visits with friends and fans
It’s hard to extrapolate this to the real world, mostly because superheroes exist ONLY because of the existence of equally powerful opposing forces, ie supervillains, high-tech criminals, aliens, and so on. Putting super-powered heroes in a world without those, with only our mundane problems, would sort of be like swatting the proverbial flies with the proverbial Buicks. Never MIND the sovereignty implications that come up even in the comic books…
Me, I’d be terrified if such a hero showed up, because that would mean that the world/universe COULD develop those opposing forces to balance his/her existence. Frankly, I’m not that thrilled about the prospect of Galactus suddenly knocking on our door…
Paul Chadwick, with his comic “Concrete” based many of his stories on Concrete (a 1200 pound rock-skinned creature with immense strength and endurance)'s appearance on the Tonight Show, requesting people send him ideas for what to do with his powers. Fantastic series; answers many of the more serious questions posted in this thread. Non-serious questions are addressed in (pardon the plug) Alan Moore’s Top 10.
You, sir, are a huge yawning chasm of no fun.
Hm.
I recently read Superman: Peace On Earth, by Alex Ross. In it, Superman decides to do something about world hunger, once and for all. After all, what could be more right than eliminating world hunger?
Doesn’t work.
He runs up against situations where hunger is used as a weapon or political tool. He runs up against situations where the hungry people themselves throw rocks at him, having been propagandized into believing that Superman is attempting to take over, or destabilize their government, or whatever.
The people themselves stop him. Superman realizes that world hunger is largely a problem of people… caused by other people, not weather, climate, or bad luck.
The moral of the story is that no matter how super one guy is, he cannot seize the reins of power, the wheel of destiny, and FORCE the world to behave… even for its own good. Not unless one IS prepared to take over completely, and run the whole world like a super-Hitler. The end does NOT justify the means.
I agree that powerful people would waste no time whatsoever in seeking leverage of some kind over a super-being of any sort, if only to protect their own interests… although the idea of forcing his recruitment into the existing power structure is also an option. Frank Miller beat this one to death in his “Dark Knight Returns” series, both of them.
Which brings us to another line of thought. You want super-beings? Let’s talk about Lex Luthor.
In all of his incarnations and continuities, Lex Luthor has been an evil genius, a criminal mastermind, right?
His first two incarnations were both super-scientists, brainy chaps with an inclination towards evil, and a hate on for Superman.
He later developed into a more traditional supervillain, after using his superintelligence to build a battlesuit with a variety of superpowers and weapons, for the apparent purpose of kicking Superman’s bright red butt.
His next incarnation was an evil mega-businessman… a corporate overlord with no scruples and no interest in anything except obtaining power and using it for his own self-satisfaction. At least until Superman humiliates him by arresting him. Then he makes a hobby out of trying to kill and/or break Superman in a variety of ways.
Actually, this made sense to me. If I was a superintelligent evil genius, would I make a habit out of operating out of an abandoned warehouse? Or a secret hideout in the swamp shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet?
…or would I use my superintelligence to amass legitimate power and wealth, and live the high life in my downtown penthouse, while brewing my evil schemes?
Hell, there’s no contest. How the heck am I going to hire concubines, pastry chefs, or laundry service if I’m living in a Darth Vader helmet out in the middle of the bayou?
Made perfect sense to me that Luthor would choose to operate in a way that allowed him to have clean laundry without doing it himself.
…and I always thought it was kind of interesting that Lex Luthor was elected President Of The United States around the same time that George W. Bush was, here in the real world.
Maybe we DO have secret evil superbeings living among us.
Then again, I’d like to think that Lex Luthor wouldn’t come across like a total blithering idiot.
Then again… maybe he’s doing it to fool us…
Then again… if he can’t keep the press off his back over that uranium business, how evil-geniusy could he BE?
Hm.
Gonna take some thought, this…
Hm.
I recently read Superman: Peace On Earth, by Alex Ross. In it, Superman decides to do something about world hunger, once and for all. After all, what could be more right than eliminating world hunger?
Doesn’t work.
He runs up against situations where hunger is used as a weapon or political tool. He runs up against situations where the hungry people themselves throw rocks at him, having been propagandized into believing that Superman is attempting to take over, or destabilize their government, or whatever.
The people themselves stop him. Superman realizes that world hunger is largely a problem of people… caused by other people, not weather, climate, or bad luck.
The moral of the story is that no matter how super one guy is, he cannot seize the reins of power, the wheel of destiny, and FORCE the world to behave… even for its own good. Not unless one IS prepared to take over completely, and run the whole world like a super-Hitler. The end does NOT justify the means.
I agree that powerful people would waste no time whatsoever in seeking leverage of some kind over a super-being of any sort, if only to protect their own interests… although the idea of forcing his recruitment into the existing power structure is also an option. Frank Miller beat this one to death in his “Dark Knight Returns” series, both of them.
Which brings us to another line of thought. You want super-beings? Let’s talk about Lex Luthor.
In all of his incarnations and continuities, Lex Luthor has been an evil genius, a criminal mastermind, right?
His first two incarnations were both super-scientists, brainy chaps with an inclination towards evil, and a hate on for Superman.
He later developed into a more traditional supervillain, after using his superintelligence to build a battlesuit with a variety of superpowers and weapons, for the apparent purpose of kicking Superman’s bright red butt.
His next incarnation was an evil mega-businessman… a corporate overlord with no scruples and no interest in anything except obtaining power and using it for his own self-satisfaction. At least until Superman humiliates him by arresting him. Then he makes a hobby out of trying to kill and/or break Superman in a variety of ways.
Actually, this made sense to me. If I was a superintelligent evil genius, would I make a habit out of operating out of an abandoned warehouse? Or a secret hideout in the swamp shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet?
…or would I use my superintelligence to amass legitimate power and wealth, and live the high life in my downtown penthouse, while brewing my evil schemes?
Hell, there’s no contest. How the heck am I going to hire concubines, pastry chefs, or laundry service if I’m living in a Darth Vader helmet out in the middle of the bayou?
Made perfect sense to me that Luthor would choose to operate in a way that allowed him to have clean laundry without doing it himself.
…and I always thought it was kind of interesting that Lex Luthor was elected President Of The United States around the same time that George W. Bush was, here in the real world.
Maybe we DO have secret evil superbeings living among us.
Then again, I’d like to think that Lex Luthor wouldn’t come across like a total blithering idiot.
Then again… maybe he’s doing it to fool us…
Then again… if he can’t keep the press off his back over that uranium business, how evil-geniusy could he BE?
Hm.
Gonna take some thought, this…
I know that the OP specifically mentioned “Not Batman” but anyway…
Can you imagine the situation where the Chief of Police of your city makes a statement along the lines of…
“Look, we the police cannot cope frankly. Fortunately, there is a vigilante out there who has some cool stuff, so were going to let him handle most of the big crime. We’re going to advertise how inept we are by sticking a big signal in the sky every time the police department gets stuck, runs out of manpower etc. We’re giving him law enforcement powers, but we don’t know who he is. He appears to have a psychotic sense of justice, so don’t worry, he’ll probably not abuse his new powers.”
Comissioner Gordon would be sacked within seconds.
Ranchoth: I mean, if any one of “us” had Superman’s powers, how many of us would still stand by and let developing nations be run by corrupt dictators? Or murderers or sex offenders escape prosecution on a legal technicality?
Depends on the personality/politics of who suddenly got the powers. A lot of people might start by settling personal scores - hunting down people who bullied them at school, employers who’d chewed them out, celebrities they dislike, etc - before bothering with world issues.
I imagine it would be very lonely. Assuming that the person had their powers from birth, and had a strong moral compass and didn’t abuse their powers, life would suck. People have a hard enough time dealing with different skin colours, imagine someone who can fly and see through walls and is amazingly strong.
How would such a person go about being a hero anyway? We live in a society where the rights of the accused are as important as the victim, where you’re innocent till proven guilty. So either the hero is a killing machine vigilante or delivers criminals to the cops only to see they get out eventually. So on the one hand you’re a mass murderer and on the other everything you do is eventually futile.
The only kind of superhero that would actually help would be a kind who doesn’t take a direct role. They use their powers and Super Morality to quietly push humanity toward better things. They’d always have to hide what they are when around other people of course, a single superhero would be the ultimate in the unappreciated.
Yeah, but just think of what a great career Superman could have in the NFL!
…even when the “end” involves keeping women and children from starving to death?
It just…seems to me that our hypothetical superhero’s view of morality would be skewed if he came form, say, sub-saharan Africa, rather than the First-World United States.
Say, that’d be an interesting concept…a starving Ethiopian suddenly becoming the most powerful being who has ever lived.