General question regarding superheroes who emply super-speed (e.g., Flash, Superman): How exactly do they think fast enough to move as fast as they do? Acting at super-speeds means thinking at super-speeds to coordinate those actions. Physically, it’s possible for these superheroes, but none of them really have the mental faculties to deal with life in the super-fast lane. Does time speed up with them or something? Has any Flash comic tried to explain this?
Related side note (and IMHO): In a recent Superman comic, Superman uses his heat vision to perform brain surgery on an Authority-type villian, removing the part of his brain that makes him unstable (or whatever). Now, I know Superman has his heat vision, but where the fuck did Clark “Can You Help Me Program My VCR?” Kent learn to perform brain surgery? I can’t remove your appendix (safely) just because I have a knife and white coat. Any light to be shed on this?
At first I was starting to write about Superman’s brain cells can conduct electrity faster than Earthlings’, about the chemical changes that occurred in Flash that caused his super-speed abilities, and then it hit me.
Lighten up! These are COMIC BOOKS! The writers are not SCIENTISTS! This is super-hero fantasy, not hard science fiction! Trying to answer all of this stuff kind of takes the fun out of it.
jseigle, let me just point out that it is fun to think about these things, so perhaps you should lighten up.
madcowmcoy, even back in the Silver Age days of the Barry Allen Flash, the writers used to point out that the Flash could think as quickly as he could run. In the Silver Age Flash’s first appearance, we got treated with a Flash-eye point of view of a waitress spilling a tray of food. To the bemused Barry Allen, the food appeared suspended in space; all he had to do was reach out and put everything back in its place.
What wasn’t explained in those days was how the Flash could overcome momentum; i.e., once he started running in one direction at Mach 2, how could he make all those 90 degree right turns. I think one of the popular explanations today is that the Flash is not really moving quickly, but instead has some sort of ability to manipulate time. This allows him to appear to be moving quickly, when in fact we’re just moving slowly. Or something.
The Silver Age Superman could deal with high speeds because his brain could work faster than a computer. I think he has similar capabilities today; just not as extreme.
Clark is just a smart as Superman, he just pretends to be a dope as part of his secret identity schtick.
Besides super physical powers, Superman is also super-intelligent. Along with this is a super-fast learning. So learning surgury should be no problem for him.
As for Flash, I gathered two theories on his (their) abilities.
With Barry Allen/Flash, I surmised that not only can his body move at super-speed, but his brain chemistry is also superfast, allowing him to control his powers.
With Wally West/Flash, it was mostly the above. But there also seems to be a time dialation effect. In one story, he was in a movie theatre watching a movie when someone opened fire with a machine gun. He was hit first, but just barely. As soon as the bullet hit the back of his neck, he kinda clicked into super-speed mode automatically. He then “casually” went around the theatre collecting the bullets before they hit anyone else, piled them in front of the gunman, then slowed down to confront him.
Yeah whatever. They may be comic books now but where do you think those came from? Haven’t you ever seen the real-life movie with the REAL LIFE Superman Mr. Superbrain :rolleyes: I have seen all of them and he goes just as fast in real life as he does in the comic books. Why don’t you head down to your local videomat and check him out rather than posting your nonsense on this board.
Um, let me explain this using short sentences. Superman isn’t real. Superman is a comic book character. Superman was invented in 1933 by a writer named Jerry Siegel and an artist name Joe Shuster. The first Superman comic book was Action Comics. It was first published in 1938. The movies you see are based on the comics. They are also not real. They are made-up stories. Made-up stories are called fiction.
This should probably be in IMHO so as not to confuse people like Shagnasty.
In the Flash comic, for about six years now, they’ve been working with the notion that there’s some extra-dimensional “Speed Force” that all super-speedsters tap into. So that would affect their brains as well as their bodies.
I believe that members of the Marvel family are exceptions to this rule, as they derive their speed from the god Mercury, but I suppose that either that affects their brain as well as their bodies, or the wisdom of Solomon compensates.
For a detailed discussion on the Speed Force, as well as great background on all super-speedsters, check out the Those Who Ride the Lightning site at http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/
Well pointed out. Sorry, this sounded a little more jarring than what I intended. I did read these things for many years so have no issue with enjoying comic books. I also enjoy analyzing such things as the science behind comic book characters or Star Trek or what have you (the science in Back to the Future made me throw up my hands). I won’t dispute that there is some fun in that. But this stuff is only as good as the guys that make it up.
OK, take this example. How is it physically possible for Superman to fly? There’s no propellant, no opposite and equal action causing this flying reaction, no wing flapping. And Flash–when he runs so fast as to be imperceptible to those around him, why doesn’t he cause sonic booms, etc? You can only spend so much time thinking about this before you get to the real answer: This is written by some guy who never took physics.
Sorry, I guess I’m being kind of a wet blanket. But this kind of reminds me of Bill Shatner’s “Get A Life” skit on Saturday Night Live.
This character has one of the coolest powers ever, and if I were to choose, it would be superspeed. But let’s discuss some of the problems with superspeed.
[list=A]
[li]Making contact with anything visible would be destructive to both parties. In the instance where “time flows slower for the hero”, if said hero were to touch a wall with his fingertip, it would have a similar effect to a bullet hitting the same spot on the wall, causing both damage to the wall and destruction of the finger. Read Dean Koontz Dragon Tearsfor an example of this happening.[/li][li]Normal life, which you are forced to be around, would bore you to death. The town clock’s bell would ring for hours inside your head, waiting for elevators, crosswalks, and that little blue “progress” bar at the bottom of your loading web page would all be a great nuisance (more so than now anyway.) Basically everything would be too slow for you. Madness would follow, then who knows…[/li][li]You have to eat like a Japanese Sumo Camp and NFL team combined for every meal. In the 80’s series “The Flash” (a good show), Barry ate alot of food to replace the calories he was burning so intensely. An expensive and disgusting-to-watch situation.[/li][/list=A]
Those are just a few problems, there are others. But the “no touching anything” would certainly be a wavy red flag when the time comes for you to choose you powers.
Evno, the fine print at the bottom of the thread view pages lists features that are available and unavailable. AFAIK, the image code is always off–the boards are slow enough without it most of the time.
When the Flash goes faster than sound, he does cause sonic booms. As a matter of fact, he’s used this as a strategy more than once.
In the early days of the Wally West/Flash comics (early 90s), Wally did have to eat a lot in order to keep himself from literally running out of energy. Through some combination of a new costume (that keeps in some energy) and the introduction of the Speed Force idea, Wally found out he didn’t need to eat as much.
Not really about the subject but interesting enough:
I read somewhere the reason Superman’s outfit and cape are usually indestructible. It’s because the Man of Steel’s powers branch away from his body a couple inches. But then again, I’m sure there’ve been times when he ripped his cape in stupid situations, like getting it caught in an escalator or something. At least make it a Kryptonite Escalator!
Correct about the costume, not about the cape. As you correctly understood, the “invulnerability field” that protects him extends a few inches out from his skin to protect his skin-tight clothes, but this does not protect most of the cape…only the parts of it that are closest to his neck.
This is correct - there’s a very recent Flash comic (within the past three months)that confirms it. Essentially, Wally west has two “time perception” modes- normally, he thinks and perceives things at the same rate as anyone else, but when he’s using his superspeed, his thoughts (and his time perception) speed up, so he tends to see things as happening very slowly. This same effect is also reflexively triggered by stressful situations such as the one AWB mentions - in the comic I’m referencing, his father-in-law comes to visit, which causes him to stress out, which involuntarily triggers his “fast” perception - which of course means that the whole experience seems to crawl on endlessly :).
Dunno about any other DC speedsters, although Impulse, at least, probably only thinks in “fast” mode, given his attention span.