"Form of...a Puddle!"Truly Stupid Superpowers

We suck big-time!
Even as little kids, we were always attuned to lame superpowers. For those of us who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, the poster child for superpower stupidity was undoubtedly Zan, the "male" half of the Wonder Twins on The All-New Superfriends Hour. You know the drill: Fist bump, "Wonder Twin powers...ACTIVATE!" Then Jayna can turn into any animal, real or imaginary. Not bad. Totally respectable power. Zan, on the other hand, could turn into any form of water. Yep. "Form of...an ice...um, skateboard!" "Form of...uh, steam!" The dude was only able to travel because their pet monkey carried a handy bucket around. No wonder (ahem) the Wonder Twins replaced Robin as the putz the real superheroes inevitably had to rescue in every damn episode. (There's really nothing I can say about them that Seanbaby hasn't said better.)

Now before anyone leaps to Zan's defense, I grant that there are always ways to make even the worst superpower deadly or useful. I suppose Zan could enter through someone's nostrils as steam and then turn back into his regular form, exploding the person's body and leaving himself covered in his victim's tattered gore. But there's useless and then there's stupid. No one has to explain why flying is an awesome power. But a fair amount of thought has to go into the relative benefits of being able to turn into an ice dildo.

Even flying isn't always cool. Everyone wants to fly, but probably not if it means having actual wings. Having wings is a cumbersome, socially awkward "power" (some would say affliction), and it's all but useless in a fight. The dude who's power is "wings" is the dude who gets beaten up first. The X-Men's Angel always made it seem fairly cool, but it helped that we was in the X-Men, was rich and good looking, and rocked an awesome costume. (Plus they finally butched him up big time by turning his wings into flying razor blades and changing his name to Archangel.) But why would anyone actively pursue having wings? Falcon and The Vulture always struck me as completely moronic. (And what's sadder than an old bald man in a vulture suit??) If you can invent wings that make you fly, maybe you should invent, like, a mind-control helmet. Or at least a gun.

Hawkman, at least, had the right idea: If you're going to get stuck with wings and a ridiculous, laugh-inducing costume, it's best to discourage mockery with a massive, brutal weapon.





Stupid superpowers tend to be the province of villains, for the simple reason that you have to come up with so many villains just to populate one ongoing title. That's why Batman, for example, fought guys like The Calculator, who could perform various feats of villainous mathematics, and Calendar Man, who managed to turn his preternatural awareness of today's date to nefarious ends. I am not making these guys up, by the way. On the Marvel end of things, Iron Man and Captain America routinely tussled with such victories of the human imagination as Gorilla Man, who had a man's head and a gorilla's body. What superhero can't beat up a gorilla?
And don't forget Batroc the Leaper (again, not made up), who's leaping was ever-so deadly. (In fact, leaping and bouncing constitutes an entire category of stupid superpower, as typified by the Legion of Superheroes' formidable Bouncing Boy and Marvel's deeply irritating Speedball.)

More recently, the (seemingly innumerable) X-Men spinoffs have provided the Marvel universe with a panoply of "special" (in the shortbus sense) abilities. The proliferation of mutants required that writers come up with ever more outlandish powers, giving us such anti-winners as Masque, who has the power to make people ugly; Blob, who is so fat he cannot be moved; and Tar Baby, who is very, very sticky. Yes, someone decided that the floor of a movie theater would make a great superpower. One of my all-time faves is Unus the Untouchable, who had a forcefield so impenetrable that he soon asphyxiated. And let's not forget the inexplicably popular Jubilee, scourge of X-Men fans throughout the 1990s, whose superpower consisted of the ability to shoot colorful sparks from her hands while annoying the shit out of anyone within earshot. (Jubilee was the X-Men's Poochie, a youth-oriented stab at cultural relevance that involved big earrings and rollerblades.) Another X-mutant who always got a lot of slack for his power was Cypher, who could read and speak any language he came in contact with. Not too useful in a knife fight, to be sure, but I would not kick that power out of bed for eating crackers.

And then there are the astoundingly retarded powers that just pop up on high-profile teams from time to time, the likely result of drugs, booze, or lack of sleep. On The Avengers, for instance, there was Starfox, a goofy gingernut Lothario with impossible hair and the ability to "affect the pleasure center" of others. They were always a little vague about that, but if I'm not mistaken it means he incapacitates villains by making them horny. While that's not very intimidating, it is also a power I would not mind having myself. On the Legion of Superheroes (again), there was Matter Eater Lad (also a future entry in the Worst Superhero Names list), who can eat all matter. While not terribly imaginative, his abilities would come in very handy on Fear Factor or during fraternity hazing. And finally there is the queen of the Inhumans, the aptly named Medusa, who has complete mental control over her own hair. Insert Pantene joke here. As luck would have it, Medusa's husband is the ultra-badass Black Bolt, whose voice is so devastatingly powerful that he can never speak for fear of destroying everything around him. Between them, there's enough on-the-nose poetic justice for a hundred O. Henry stories.

There are thousands of superheroes out there, so the swelling ranks of stupid superpowers comes as little surprise. Besides, what these sad misfits represent is really mankind's struggle to escape the shackles of the standard narrative tropes we've been stuck with for centuries. Our desires to fly, possess great strength, become invisible, or (especially for contemporary Americans) make things happen without lifting a finger are classic reactions to our limitations as human beings, and so they permeate our myths and legends. Stupid superpowers, then, represent our desire to escape the limitations of narrative. In that sense, turning into an ice dildo is a liberating act; useless superpowers are truly avant-garde.