Because all that my sad little brain is sometimes capable of is findng minute permutations on a single theme, right after I coined the word “gazrhinophant” in the turducken thread, I began thinking of the comic book hero B’wana Beast, whose sole superpower is the ability to combine any two animals into a highly adaptive functional single superhybrid, irregardless of the particular kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species of the two beasts in question. So you end up with a hero who, having landed a spot on JLU and nothing else to work with except, uh, Gleek the Superfriends mascot and Hawkman… he can at least create a really pissed off man-sized winged monkey with Thanagarian aerial fighting techniques and a prehensile tail suitable for grasping instruments for armed combat. I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s damned cool.
It’s actually a cooler superpower than Beast Boy’s ability to instantly transform himself into any green animal, or even Animal Man’s ability to tap into the morphogenetic field and assume the adaptive abilities of any animal, past, present or future. Unlike the other two heroes, Bwana Beast can instantly mold the animals in question to both de- emphasize and enhance certain innate traits and abilities and mix and match for maximum effect.
It has its drawbacks. Bwana Beast needs to have the animals present before him for his powers to work. He can only combine two animals per hybrid. I’ve never seen him create more than three or four hybrids at a time. I’m reasonably sure that he has a time limit before the hybrids return to normal.
I’ve wanted to see more of Bwana Beast ever since he turned up that Grant Morrison anti-Apartheid ANIMAL MAN issue and became Freedom Beast. Here’s to hoping he shows up somewhere in the DCU soon!
I always thought that Medusa, with her prehensile hair had a great superpower: hair that combs itself. You couldn’t ask for more, espeically for a character whose hair is her main personality trait.
I’ve never understood why Aquaman doesn’t get more respect – the guy is a royal leader who presidesover 3/4ths of the planet, can order all sorts of sea life to do his bidding, has the strength and endurance to withstand the crushing depths of the sea, and (for a while) had a way kewl harpoon hand that he could do major havoc with.
And he gets no respect. Mention “Aquaman” to the typical stranger and you’ll get a joke about how useless “talk to fish” is as a power.
By all rights, you could strip Aquaman naked, dump him in the middle of the worst inner-city neighborhood at 2:00am, and he’ll walk out of there without anything more annoying than having to beat up the three dozen young punks who were harassing him (what are guns and knives going to do against a guy who can go 6,000+ meters under the ocean?). In contrast, if you drop a buck-naked unarmed Batman into the middle of the Pacific, he’s history.
Aquaman isn’t, or at least wasn’t, bulletproof. Deep sea fishes are also able to withstand ocean pressures and are also not bulletproof. Ability to withstand evenly applied pressures is primarily a physiological adpatation and has nothing whatsoever to do with having skin that can not be punctured. Normal humans withstand huge air pressures constantly, that doesn’t mean we can withstand bullets and knives.
Sorry for introducing science to a CS thread but it does explain whay the fish man is seen as so lame. Yes he’s strong but his only other powers are talking to fish and swimming. Scary stuff. His Marvel counterpart can also fly and is really bulletproof.
Actually, in defense of Aquaman, it’s been established during Morrison’s JLA run he can telepathically stimulate the part of the brain inherited from our marine ancestors and cause brain seizures. Maybe not as handy as flying, but daaaamned helpful in a fight nonetheless.
I’m with rjung. Aquaman should get a heap more respect than he does. Consider that when we first saw Submariner back in Fantastic Four he needed a magical horn shell to summon the sea-creature Giganto to attack New York City. Aquaman wouldn’t need the horn to do the same thing.
We’ve seen Aquaman bite off more than he could chew (when he tried to mind-control Starro, for example) but if his telepathic control includes sea monsters, than he can have influence over the Midgard Serpent and creatures like kraken.
Does Aquaman still have to get wet every few hours? I seem to recall that being something of a major limitation on his usefulness to a team and I distinctly remember a Teen Titans story where Aqualad was seconds away from death until with his last feeble bits of strength he knocked a glass of water over on himself. So unless he’s paired up with, say, Zan from the Wonder Twins there’s only so far I’d want to rely on Aquaman in a dust-up.
I think part of the reason he comes off so badly is hangover from the old Superfriends episodes, especially the original Wendy/Marvin/Wonderdog-era episodes. His involvement always struck me as so forced, like the bad guy just had to build some portion of his scheme on or in the ocean because otherwise Aquaman wasn’t going to get off the bench for this week’s show. Plus he always looked so worried all the time, like he knew he was on the bubble and one more screw-up and he was off the team. I do have to say, though, I liked the fish telepathy sound effect quite a bit.
As for powers that don’t get much respect, there’s a totally obscure mutant from an old mini-series called Beauty and the Beast (starring Beast and Dazzler) whose power involved inducing color changes. I always thought, if you had to get stuck with a minor-league power, that would be a cool one to have. You could make a fortune in the fashion industry making custom clothing, you’d have a near-infinite wardrobe since you’d have every outfit in every color. I also thought Gypsy Moth, who could manipulate any sort of fibrous material, had sort of a cool minor-league power.
You have to understand that originally, Aquaman episodes were nearly always taking place in the sea or near the shore. It was when he joined the JLA that he had to leave his element. Most of the time, the summoning fish power was actually quite useful.
There is a tendency to scoff at superheros because of limitations, but people who do are missing the entire point. So what if Hawkman couldn’t fly if things were indoors? It didn’t matter.
I always liked Matter-Eater Lad. It was a silly power, but certainly could be useful, since you could eat your way out of any trap.
About Matter-Eater Lad: What exactly happened to all of the stuff he digested? I imagine with all the metal, stone and other stuff he ate, he’d occaisonally drop a grogan that would crack the toilet.
Not anymore, although he still needs to get wet every once in a while (during the JLA Tower of Babel storyline, he was afraid of water and they had to stick him in a tank so he didn’t dehydrate). Supposedly he can draw the moisture right out of someone else by touching them, but I’ve never actually seen him do that.
Speaking of Medusa, Karnak has a pretty cool power, too. He can pick out weak spots and pressure points in anything. Granted, it’s not useful for much besides breaking stuff, but hey. He could break a lot of stuff.
Here is a nice, detailed page about Matter-Eater Lad. It doesn’t directly address what kind of shit, if any, he would produce. But this RPG site lists “Doesn’t Need To Excrete” as one of his special abilities.
Well, the one time I recall seeing them scuffle, Aquaman put the smack down on Namor… by dropping a whale on him. (One of the Marvel vs. DC miniseries)
I swear I think Aquaman is bullet-proof as far as small-arms fire is concerned, as well.
I always felt Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel got the short end of the stick. Even though her power was splitting into 2 or 3 bodies, in certain situations that’d be enough to accomplish what you set out to do. Light Lass and Star Boy also got glossed over, the potential of their powers was never fully realized or utilized. Perhaps their powers were too quickly “final”. I mean, if you could make the bad guys light,so as to float away[to jail, maybe] or so heavy as to be unable to function, then the action /story would be over too quickly.
As an aside, what was the name of the Legion of Super Heroes guy[I believe he was a sub of some kind] who could make plants grow quickly, using rays that emanated from his fingertips.
I always thought Manuel de la Rocha, aka Empath, from the X-Men mythos had a fascinating power. Talk about playing with someone’s emotions – Manny did just that, manipulating people (often maliciously), even forcing women to fall in love with him.
The thing that annoyed me about Triplicate Girl was that she was from a planet where everyone had the ability to split into three parts. She was, apparently, jst the first one from that planet who had the desire to join the Legion. But imagine if there was some Legion of Super Heroes elsewhere in he Galaxy where nobody else could, say, spit. I could join as Spit Lad (or Expectoration Master, or something). But people from Earth wouldn’t be impressed.
(and, as I’ve remarked before, what evolutionary pressures would cause such an ability? Or were they genetically altered, like the Protys? And, on Triplicate World, do you have to fill out all government forms in nonuplicate?)
Would help with hunting, and defending yourself (assuming the humanoids are the only ones on the world with the ability…I’m ashamed to admit I can’t remember if that is so or not) - one predator will have a much harder time taking down 3 prey-creatures who are fighting to Not Be Eaten, and you can take down bigger prey animals with a much smaller group when you can split in 3.
