They’re pretty much synonymous, I think. The distinction I drew isn’t really one. Metahuman is just the pseudoscientific term.
You can’t create rules in a universe where god cheats. That’s what the writers of comic books are: they are the gods in their universes. And they cheat all the time. That’s the only way the title character ever lives to see another issue.
No matter how you try to parse it, a superhuman is whoever is wearing the costume and featured in the comic. Both the Punisher and Batman are super because they consistently do things and survive things that you or I, no matter how fit, could not. Captain America was an adult who got the super-soldier serum. Bucky was a teenager who didn’t. Yet, he did everything Cap did. Robin was originally a pre-teen who could operate on his own and be the equal of Batman. (Although the Boy Blunder got captured in seemingly every issue.) They are fantasy figures with the powers of fantasy. For the most part they never encountered anyone with actual super powers. Few if any Batman or Superman villains had super powers until the 1950s. Does that mean Superman wasn’t super because he had a monopoly in Metropolis?
You can’t even complain that I’m spoiling the game. There is no game, if the game requires cheating to exist. Comics are whatever the writer decides they are going to be in that issue. If you want to complain about continuity, that’s the place to start.
Well, that’s about as much fun as answering “Why did character X do action Y in book Z?” with “Because the writer wanted him to.”
Superhumans are “above human.” They don’t exist by definition in the real world. I suppose you could say that a cheetah has superhuman speed, since no human can run as fast as a cheetah, but it would be an odd usage, since cheetahs lack many abilities humans have. If at some point a human in real life developed the ability to run as fast a cheetah (70 to 75 mph according to Wikipedia), that would no longer be a superhuman ability. If at some point human descendants become so greatly modified by evolution, genetic manipulation, technology or something that they are no longer regarded as human, and they also possess abilities “above” those of humans, they may be regarded as superhuman. Same goes for aliens that we regard as being “above” us in ability. But if a human does it, it’s not superhuman.
What this means for Batman depends on the context. In real life, no human could possibly do the things that Batman does. Of course, no human being could really do the things Jack Bauer, Homer Simpson, or Barney Stinson do either. In that sense, it would be reasonable to call any of them “superhuman” from a real-world perspective. It would seem weird in the cases of Barney and Homer because they are portrayed as normal or sub-normal in their respective fictions, and their abilities come simply from being fictional, not from any special characteristics their creators attribute to them. Jack and Batman, however,–especially Batman–are portrayed as having exceptional abilities that place them “above” most people in their stories and above anyone in real life, so it makes more sense to refer to them as superhuman characters, even though within their stories they are very clearly not superhuman but merely exceptionally gifted humans.
Yep.
Except for, you know, surviving. And I don’t think he ever did the whole shield-throwing thing, either, which is really a large part of Cap’s schtick.
See “all writers cheat” above.
In the UK show Misfits, a character has lacto-kinesis. Does the ability to move dairy products using the power of your mind qualify as a super power?
I’m picturing Katara, except carrying around a skin full of milk instead of water. Yeah, that would certainly be super. Not quite as good, since you’d have less opportunity to improvise using ambient material, but still pretty useful.
But consider Jeff Mace, who filled in as Captain America – shield and all – for years with no powers, since the US Government really wanted the continued propaganda value but (a) Steve Rogers went missing near the end of WWII, and (b) nobody else proved able to handle the job, except for a two-fisted costumed adventurer who could move like an Olympic champ.
It could.
LEX LUTHOR: :mad: Who moved my cheese?!
Batman is a superhero but not superhuman.