Superman's lapsed powers. What old school powers doesn't he use any much anymore?

Superman has Heat Vision and X-Ray Vision (which really ought to be two very different things, but the comics treated them as identical). Supervision is different:

(Actual quote from the long-gone and unjustly forgotten Jay ward series Super Chicken.)

Also telescopic, microscopic, and a much wider visual spectrum than humans (infra-red at least, and occasionally much more depending on the needs of the story).

Superman used to be shown in the earlier comics using telescopic vision, seeing things close-up that were miles (sometimes hundreds of miles) away. No problem with the earth’s curvature for Supie!

Wow, Superman is really kinda gay.

and a dick.

Super-Smooch.

One kiss was able to make any woman swoon like a teenybopper exposed to Elvis.

I haven’t seen Supes squeeze a diamond out of a lump of coal in a long time

No, but he was asked to make a diamond into a lump of coal once. True story.

I don’t guess it counts as a separate power – more just an application of super-speed – but didn’t he once appear as both Superman and Clark Kent in the same room at the same time by changing clothes and positions many times a second?

Yeah, well, cooking/microwaving/liquifying your brain will play all kinds of tricks on your short-term memory, won’t it? Plus, Olsen had a tough enough time keeping reality straight anyhow.

My favorite Superman super-power came from the old TV show: resistance to brittleness. In one episode, some crooks figured out there’s no strength without tensile strength, and used liquid something (nitrogen? oxygen? silly putty?) to freeze him up good and proper. At great personal risk, Superman jumped into a foundry’s blast furnace, which put him right faster than a double-dose of castor oil. Yay, I said.

Possibly the first time the character did something along these lines was Superman #17 (Volume 1, July-August 1942). Lois is trapped in a giant glass pendulum while Clark is tied up underneath. Within seconds, the pendulum will fall. the idea being to kill them both. With a mighty SWISH!, Clark zips out of view “at so fast a speed the human eye can not follow…!” He stuffs his civilian clothes with rags to look like a human body, saves the day as Superman, then SWISH!-es back into Clark before Lois knows what’s what.

Yeah, a long time ago I was watching an episode of Superfriends with an old buddy. They looking for someone or something, but were stumped until Wonder Dog sniffed up a trail. My friend commented “How can Wonder Dog find the scent with his normal dog senses when Superman is there and he can smell you fart from 100 miles away?”.

Well, Fred, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. :wink: