I beg to differ! The apocalypse-a-year ultra-dramas come out in the comics due to one-upsmanship. Which sounds more impressive:
*) If we don’t stop the bad guys, they’ll blow up a bank!
– OR –
*) If we don’t stop the bad guys, they’ll blow up the Earth!
Killing Nightcrawler: while he’s gone, fill his bedroom with bricks, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Then, fake a phone call from his girlfriend: “Oh my God! Kurt, help me! I’m in your bedroom and… EEEEEK!!” He teleports, materializes inside brick. Do you suppose there’d be an explosion?
Put any hero you wish into a late '80’s-early '90’s DC/VERTIGO book.
Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, etc…Those guys could croak nearly any character, and get away with it.
I miss those days.
I’m not sure if that last one is an improvement or not.
Hiring a sniper would probably be a good way to take out Green Lantern or Wonder Woman, or anyone else who you couldn’t confront directly. Either stake out some place that your target frequents, or have an expendable henchman lure him/her to the “kill zone.”
As Nash (the Mist from the Starman comics) showed, it’s freakin easy to kill superheros if you just plan on actually doing so without a lot of dootin around and avoiding the final act.
That’s nothing. Aquaman can apparently EXPLODE PEOPLE’S BRAINS at will by beaming “fish talk” at them in the right frequency. Also, he has a swell pointy hand dealie.
And, in the case of Green Lantern, be sure your sniper uses yellow bullets.
Does Wonder Woman have anything akin to “spider sense” that could alert her to the danger and allow her to position her bracelets in the right position before the sniper pulls the trigger?
Not necessarily. Hard vacuum is not instantly fatal: You can survive in it as long as you can go without breathing. Oh, it won’t be exactly healthy, and you’ll probably take some serious damage to your eardrums and other sensitive parts, but nothing that’ll kill you in less than a minute or two.
Now, safely reducing his speed might be difficult, I’ll admit. Is Nightcrawler’s teleportation limited by anything other than line-of-sight? Any maximum range?
Two words: Nerve Gas.
Against Green Lantern, it would have to be yellow nerve gas. The guy can keep a forcefield around himself even when he’s not concentrating.
Well, with MM you could just, you know, light him on fire. Problem pretty much solved. And couldn’t you kill a conventional shapeshifter just by sticking them in an airtight chamber? Unless they’re inhuman, they’ve still gotta breathe.
Well, she can hear really, really well, and she’s pretty darn fast (she can keep with with Flash and Superman, after all), so I bet she’d hear the bullet and turn around to stop it.
What bugs me is why a sniper never bothers to take out, say, Captain America or about half the X-Men.
What about his food supply, then? He’s still got to eat, doesn’t he?
Granted, you might have to wait until he’s at a restaraunt, or orders a pizza, or something.
By the way…does anyone else think that “yellow” is a really stupid super-weakness? I mean, something like “Dead organic material,” “Alloy of a fissile element,” or “High U/V reflectivity” I can see, but…yellow?
Plastic Man: Drug or gas him unconscious and wait for him to go all loose and ropey. Then, tie his neck in a big ol’ Boy Scout knot. May also work for Mr. Fantastic, Elongated Man, and Elastic Lad, but I’ve never actually seen those guys lose control over their forms when they go under.
Well, there was that scene in the X-Men graphic novel, God Loves, Man Kills…
About 2-3 miles.
Now for me, you have to go with the irony factor for killing superheros.
For example, Captain America should die in a Patriot missle explosion.
Dr. Strange should be killed by a stage magician that whips a four of clubs into his forehead.
That sort of thing.
And on the Green Lantern thing, it sounds like a Louisville Slugger painted yellow will take out two of the three.
I asked:
… to which shy guy replied:
Ah, but what if the sniper used a rifle whose bullets travelled faster than the speed of sound? (Such high-powered rifles are actually pretty commonplace, y’know.)
Actually, I didn’t know that, so ignorance is being fought as we speak.
All I can think of is
A) the rules of sound must work differently in the DC Universe anyway, because people like Superman and Wonder Woman can travel at ridiculously fast speeds and still talk to each other
B) Wonder Woman’s powers being entirely magic based and her huge level of power might alter her perceptions in such a way that she just “feels” the bullet coming (perhaps through vibrations in the air)
Of course, I’m with you on the “why doesn’t someone just shoot her in the head” train, but if I were a writer, I might use one of the above thingys for justification.
Beavis & Butthead say:
“Did you say Green Lantern is vulnerable to wood?”
“Huhhuhhuh! He said wood!”
Wonder Woman: Microwave Lasers. Cook from the inside out!
Iron Man: see above, but cooking is much more thorough and sparky!
Superman: Cut him in half-he IS vulnerable to magic!
Spider-Man: Get him a hot date with Spider Woman. She bites his head off in the waterbed.
The Hulk: Get him a week at a health spa. While they are giving him a mudbath and playing Enya on an endless loop-cap his ass.
Captain America: Get him to be a White House Spokesman for 24 hours. His head will explode.
Batman: A toughie- either some kind of poisin like Ricin or Botulin, or a low grade nuke.