I seem to remember all kinds of bogus super heroe characters, from the comic books of the 1960’s, 70’s-I’m talking about such oddball characters like “Green Lantern”. This dude has superhuman strength (but not at the level of “Superman”)-but he must recharcge his ring from a special “lantern”-sounds hokey as hell to me. How about another lame one-“Aquaman”- he seems to be able to swim really fast, but his other “powers” are pretty weak. Or take “Batman”-he is from all accounts, a fairley ordinary human, who somehow manages to swing off 100-story buildings, suspended from a thread from his utility belt! Must be some gymnast-of course, he has some pretty strange habits-he lives with his adopted “ward” (Robin) in the Wayne mansion-pretty unusual living arrangements.
What other lame superherooes do you remember?
I hope I’m not being too rash, but I sure hope this thread has a good time over in IMHO, where it seems to me to belong.
That being said, I have to tell you that you’ve stepped on 2 of my favorites with that OP. Green Lantern only got lame when the writers Supermanned him, meaning they gradually expanded the limits of what he could do until there was practically nothing he couldn’t do. Omniopotence is very boring.
Batman will forever be the most compelling superhero ever, because he is just a man. An extraordinarily smart, agile, strong man with seemingly endless financial resources, but still just a man. Wanna kill the Bat? Shoot him. If you can.
As KneadToKnow mentioned, this thread isn’t really a General Question, since it doesn’t deal with facts. It does, however, look like a pretty good In My Humble Opinion question. I’ll move it over there.
You might want to check out some of the “heros” on this page before you rag on Batman too much.
Wow, hold on there buddy. Aquaman is the prince of Atlantis. He can breathe both air and underwater. His super powers don’t come from the fact that he can swim pretty fast, any being raised in an underwater enviroment would be able to, but from his ability to telepathically communicate with sea creatures.
Also, DC brought him out to counter Marvel’s Namor the Sub-Mariner, whose storyline is pretty much the same.
…I always thought that the “Wonder Twins” sucked. She could only turn into an animal, and he could only turn into something related to water. And what about Green Arrow? Or Hawkeye? The Silver Surfer? “Power Cosmic,” but he tools around on a surfboard? Ick! Give me people like Daredevil. There was a superhero for you. The dude was blind, but other senses were heightened to near superhero levels. He could tell if you were lying just by listening to your heartbeat. From across the room. And he didn’t win every time, either. The Kingpin kicked his ass royaly a few times.
Wasn’t there a super hero who could be rendered powerless by the color yellow? Now that is a lame super hero.
That would be the aforementioned Green Lantern. Well, Earth-2’s Green Lantern anyway. The original Earth-1 Green Lantern couldn’t affect anything made of wood. The Crisis erased everything I ever knew about DC superheroes anyway, so it’s all moot.
Of course, at least DC has a canon explanation for why their continuity got shot to hell. Marvel doesn’t even care.
I think you mean Hawkman… Hawkeye, of course, had the power of the Sarcastic Put-Down. 
tevya, I believe that was Green Lantern - his archenemy, IIRC, was Sinestro, who possessed a yellow ring…
That was actually Green Lantern. His powers had no effect on the color yellow.
Anybody remember the Legion of Super Heroes? One of DC’s titles. I remember them primarily from the 60s and 70s, but they were a team of heroes, most of whom weren’t (pardon the pun) strong enough to carry their own books. There were exceptions (Superboy and Supergirl, for example), but the Legion included a host of others: Braniac and Saturn Girl are two I remember.
Generally, most of the Legion came from another planet, but they all had some kind of “super” power–and I’ll put “super” in quotes because in at least two cases, the power’s “superness” was questionable.
One was the Karate Kid. No relation to the movie, this Earth-born master of martial arts’ “super” power was karate. And while he was good at it (very good, in fact), I always had a hard time believing that he was on par with the other heroes–he might be able to give Jackie Chan a run for his money, but I never thought he was on par with his extraterrestrial teammates who had unique powers that ordinary humans could never have. No disrespect to those who practice karate and other martial arts, but lumping this ordinary, though skilled, human with superheroes from other worlds was lame indeed.
Another was Bouncing Boy. This kid could become a rubber ball and bounce. No kidding; bouncing like a ball was his “super” power. Not sure why he ever applied to join the Legion; he would have been better off in the circus.
Compared to these two, I think Green Lantern and the other mentioned so far look pretty good.
My question is, on what level of lameness are we considering?
Some heroes are based on a lame concept, but are pretty useful and cool. The Silver Surfer is a good example of that. A surfer? Come on now. But anyone that has the gall to talk to Galactus like he has is ok in my book, and he doesn’t just stop bank robberies, the man saves planets and entire galaxies.
Others are based on a cool concept but are fairly lame as far as heroes go. Aquaman/Namor and Ghostrider are good examples of that.
Then there are the bad rip-offs that don’t even deserve their own comic, like The Punisher. He’s just a Batman wannabe without the trappings of a conscience.
The ones that are actually lame in all respects are few (thank goodness) and would constitute a list headed mostly by sidekicks like Robin.
Wouldn’t the bad guys catch on pretty quick and dress all in yellow? Heck, I’d even paint myself yellow and then laugh while commiting crimes right in front of him. Of course, this probably violates the SuperVillain Bible. It would probably be better to paint myself yellow and then kill him. 
…“WONDER WOMAN”-she’s pretty cool (dig that costume!)
-there is also some rather obscure ones, like “BLACKHAWK”-this was a bunch of dudes in funky 1940’s-style military uniforms, who somehow managed to defeat all kinds of nasty criminals.
-wasn’t there a really fast guy (the “FLASH”)-who could run faster than sound?
-analagous to BATMAN, there was some dude who was an archer, who also had a sidekick-forget his name
-finally, didn’t SUPERMAN eventually have a bunch of groupies (“SUPERGIRL”, “SPERDOG”, etc.)!
Damn, this stuff is really coming back!!
Yes, the Super Villian Bible states that all Villians wishing to exploit a Super Hero’s weakness must not willingly keep the means of exploitation readily accessible. Wearing yellow would clearly violate this commandment.
The correct way to take advantage of the Green Lanterns weakness to the color yellow would be to carry a small strip of yellow construction paper, or a banana, at the bottom of a backpack filled with heavy and cumbersome items.
Once the villian has successfully eliminated/countered the hero’s powers, outright and immediate slaying of the hero also goes against the teachings of the SVB. One would have to take said hero prisoner and place them into a wickedly devised trap that promises a slow and torturous demise.
A villian is then required to leave the scene before the ultimate punishment is carried out, but not before revealing his/her ultimate plan for world domination, and making sure that all entrances/exits are left unlocked and easily infiltrated. It is acceptable to leave up to 3 expendible and inept guards to bear witness to the hero’s destruction.
It’s harder to be a villian than you might think!
Y’know, I was never a huge GL fan, so I don’t know about that. I DO know, however, that the Flash (who egkelly refers to…yes, he could run really fast. He could also vibrate his body really really fast to allow bullets to pass through it and stuff) had to take off his yellow boots if GL ever created a bubble with his ring (this was how he’d transport groups of people. Create a bubble with them all inside, and it would take them where they needed to go), because otherwise, it wouldn’t work.
Darn! Spoons beat me to it. I was gonna name Bouncing Boy as the lamest. Of course, DC realized this, and they did some interesting things with BB.
A lot of “heros” in the Legion just came from planets where their abilities were the norm. To people from those planets, their compatriots in the Legion must have seemed pretty lame. Like Triplicate Girl (later Duplicate girl, after 1/3 of her was killed) – her power was the ability to split into three people (all of the same size, somehow). It’s difficult to see how such an ability could evolve. It would have some weird effects on their culture, one would think (“I’m sorry, I can’t make it that night. I’m washing my hair. Yes, all three of us!”). I suspect people on the Triplicate planet have to fill out government forms in nonuplicate. The point is, Triplicate Girl was just an ordinary Jane from that planet. She was just the first one who thought of joining the Legion of Superheros, so she gets the costume and all. The same goes for Shrinking Violet and a lot of the other members of the Legion.
Maybe even lamer than the odd Legion members were the Inferior Five – a “humorous” comic from DC featuring the deliberately dull Funnyman (picture Woody Allen in a jester suit), the Blimp, Dumb Bunny, Awkwardman, and White Feather. They weren’t all that great (although Phil Foglio put them in a wonderful 4-part adventure with DC’s Angel and the Ape in the early 90s).
Also check out the forgotten DC universe as outlined in one of the issues of DC’s “Ambush Bug”. It’s filled with hilarious characters that I’m sure DC would rather you forgot about, like Egg Fu, the Fu-Manchu-like GIANT EGG that menaced Wonder Woman back in the 1960s.
If you’ll forgive a newbie butting in, I think I know the answer to that. As I recall, Triplicate Girl came from a planet that had three suns. Therefore, its inhabitants could split into three people, because…well, just because they could.
See? And you thought there wouldn’t be any explanation!
The Legion is definitely the place to go if you’re looking for lame superheroes, but I think we’re setting our sights too high. The place to look is not the Legion proper, but its back-up team – the B-squad, if you will – the Legion of Substitute Heroes. It was here that we found such paragons as Color Kid. He could change the color of any object he wished. Or the unfortunately named Infectious Lass. She could give anyone she touched a bad case of the flu.
The Legion was also responsible for the absolute weirdest hero concept I have ever encountered: Arm Fall Off Boy. That was his power. He could make his arms fall off. Then he could put them back on again. Unless I was hallucinating, I swear that was an actual character. Surely somebody else must remember this?
You people have barely scratched the surface.
The lamest Legionnaire was actually Matter-Eater Lad. He ate things. Really. Anything. I don’t know how he bit through steel and that probably came in handy, but really . . . Matter-Eater Lad?
Number one with a bullet was Robby Reed in “Dial H for Hero.” He had this little telephone dial which turned him into a different lame hero each time, for a total of three each story.
Prez was as lame as they came – a teenage president. That’s it. (However the entire concept was eventually vindicated when Neil Gaiman used it in a Sandman.)
It’s been awhile since I’ve read Wizard, but in each issue they used to have a feature called “Mort of the Month,” which was a spotlight on one of the truly ridiculous superheroes. IIRC, Bouncing Boy was one of their picks a few years ago. I also vaguely remember one character whose “power” was something like jet-propelled roller skates, but I could be wrong about that.
Does anyone know if Wizard still has this feature?