Leave us not be ree-dickle-dockle! (Yes, there’s also some very nice Pogo porn out there.)
re Kryptonians not being able to “turn off” their powers, there’s an oldie where Myxyzptlk gives Superman a sneezing powder, and Supes must fly into space, lest his sneeze destroy the earth. He would have been unable not to sneeze with the full power of his super-strength.
There’s a lot that John Byrne did wrong…but his re-design of Superman was one of the best things that ever happened in comics.
Eh, I can almost maybe buy that, since sneezes aren’t really under voluntary control.
And how many re-designs of Superman did Byrne did? Because the only one I’m aware of was the stupid, idiotic “it’s all psionic” nonsense he foisted.
One for Supergirl?
Actually, I’m old enough to remember the original Superman baby blanket explanation. Martha unraveled the threads of the blanket and reknit them into a costume.
Does anybody see some possible problems with that scenario? Was the blanket one continuous thread (as was implied)? If so, how did she cut it? If she couldn’t cut it, how did she fashion a supersuit exactly the right size? How did the suit, meant to fit Superboy, also fit Superman perfectly? Where did all the extra fabric come from something the size of a baby blanket to begin with? Why didn’t the indestructible thread rip her fingertips open? The mind boggles. (Yeah, I know. It was conveniently super-elastic; there were enough blankets to create a circus tent; and heat vision. Superboy comics were the worst.)
I’m with Chronos. I don’t understand this at all.
:eek: I am pretending you never said that.
The really key thing in the re-design was that Clark Kent was the real man, and Superman was just a job he did. Instead of Clark Kent debasing himself and being meek and mild, Kent was assertive and brash and a highly skilled reporter. In the olden days, he was a nonentity. In essence, in the old days, Kent was the mask, and Superman was the real man. Byrne had the genius to reverse that.
The rest is just window-dressing. The psionics was a way to deal with the invulnerable costume and cape issue, or why he could fly carrying a greater weight than he could lift. Those were established; Byrne just made up reasons for them.
When we first saw Clark Kent in the gym, doing fitness exercises, that was a moment of absolute sheer genius. He has a great body. Why pretend otherwise? Why spill milk on himself and then, all flustered, back away (so he can change costumes) instead of saying, professionally, “Let’s go see if we can get some coverage of this incident” and running on ahead so fast he loses the others (so he can change costumes)?
Brilliant, and it (almost) pays for all the crap Byrne has barfed up over all the years.
(Also “Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor.” Absolutely brilliant Star Trek background story.)
I’m a pretty big guy, and people do tend to bounce if they run into me. If I’m not moving when it happens, they only have their own momentum to deal with, so there’s no reason they’d fall down. Still, I learned long ago how to move through a crowd without making contact with anyone, despite my size. I would think a relatively petite girl with access to superspeed and the associated reflexes should be able to do it rather better than I can.
Even so, there would often be situations where it would be noticeable if her skin were hard as diamond. Of course, if it’s weren’t pliable…how would she move at all?
Are you suggesting she’s sometimes depicted as a non-Newtonian floozy?
Does Supergirl ever make love, and how does this work?
The only way she could do that and not have it be, in essence, bestiality, would be to do it with another Kryptonian. Which, in normal course of things, means Superman. And that’s “unlawful”. Otherwise Kal-El would, apparently, be totally up for it. Granted, he did say “marriage”. MAybe boffing is still on the cards.
Oh, and I’m trademarking “Thixotropic Girl” poste-haste…
I don’t understand this claim. Sure, if we were dealing with superintelligence, we might have supersapience, with Kryptonians being as far away mentally from humans as humans are to animals. But Superman’s superintelligence has mostly been retconned out, and, when it does show up, it’s not not that much smarter–at least until the end of his life. If Superman becomes Dr. Manhattan, there’s not much more for him to do.
So they’re just mentally normal people in superstrong bodies. I don’t see how that makes it bestiality.
It depends on whether you consider the relevant aspect of bestiality to be the difference of species, or the difference of intelligence levels. In our world, we’re the only species with our level of intelligence, so we’ve never really had the need to distinguish between the two concepts. In a world with sapient aliens, though, it’s a perfectly relevant distinction.
There were many times in the 50 years before Byrne that Clark was “assertive and brash and a highly skilled reporter.” Jimmy Olsen used to worship him as a reporter. The Superman TV show had a Clark who was more imposing than the guy in colorful pajamas. I don’t see Byrne as being at all innovative.
Since the sun powers him up, it would also power up either his force field (post crisis) or baby blanket costume (pre crisis), thus flying through the (yellow) sun would only make his costume more indestructible.
Do note that his cape was not protected by his force field post crisis, and would often wind up damaged (but pretty much only when the artist wanted to have it ripped so it would look cool).
Of course post crisis Supergirl wasn’t Kryptonian anyway, she was a gentically modified shape shifting clone of the Lana Lang of a pocket universe (she was created by that universe’s heroic Lex Luthor) that later merged with a human and became an earthbound angel (whatever that is). Then Superboy Prime started punching reality and things got confusing.
This was particularly effective in the long story cycle where he went off planet, into deep space, and had grand adventures among alien empires, including being a gladiatorial slave.
Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I vaguely remember that Ma Kent had the toddler cut the threads with his heat vision.
They’re not really people.
Interspecies sex, then, if you feel the need to be coy.
Why not? They walk and talk and have beliefs, which they can communicate successfully to others. They can do and keep jobs. If you say, “Can you fry me an egg, please?” they can fry you an egg. (The big difference is that they don’t need a stovetop.)
(If we had robots as sophisticated as C3PO of Star Wars, I’d say he’s “people” too.)
They are sapients or sophonts, but not people - people in this case meaning members of the species Homo sapiens (including its subspecies*, sapiens, neanderthalis, denisova and any others)
No, that’s inter-species sex between variously-diversified members of genus Homo. It’s still within-clade, as your own cite acknowledges: “sexual practice outside one’s own species** but within the intelligent hominoids**”. Common descent is the key.
Someone fucking Speaker-To-Animals would not be doing rishathra. Or Nessus shudder.
Kryptonians are not hominoids, they just look like us. Unless panspermia is a thing in DC-verse, I would expect to be closer to a bristlecone pine, genetically, than I would to a Kryptonian.
*IMO, not settled science.
Note - IMO, Kryptonians are persons, as would C3PO be, but not people. Which is weird since people is the normal plural of person (but note the existence of “persons” - and “peoples”)
In certain continuities, Lois and Clark can have kids, which is close enough for me.
