Superman's power level

[Man of Steel]

In the classic comics, Superman could go into the past but he couldn't change history. They stuck pretty close to the typically accepted rules of time-travel from that period-that anything Superman would do in the past was actually already part of history, that he couldn't exist except as a phantom if he traveled to a time when he was already alive, etc. So the ending of STM makes no sense with the rules of the Superman comics of the time-something I noticed the first time I saw it.

Actually, I have a Silver Age cimc that states that Superman exists as a Phantom if he goes anywhere in the past before he was born(Part III of the Jimmy Olsen-Magic Totem story).

 

[TDKR]

If you watched Superman: The Movie, Superman went back in time to save Lois Lane after she died in an earthquake and the 2 missiles launched by Lex Luthor were stopped by Superman.

 

[KangConquers]

I want Supeman to be sufficiently built up as ridiculously overpowered to the Nth degree; Planet moving, Earthquake stopping, what have you.

Then I want Zod to come along and slap him around. We should truly believe that these two fighting could mean the end of the world. Their fight should make Abomination vs. Hulk look like a couple of toddlers fighting in a Sandbox over a red plastic shovel.

 

[DarthAlani]

I agree with Kang

 

[Rust]

So what are Supes' official powers these days? Flight, super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, super-breath, invunerability, heatvision, x-ray vision. What else? The power of deception?

Do you think they might make up some new stuff for the reboot or at least show new ways to using / combining them?

 

[jthom19802]

So what are Supes' official powers these days? Flight, super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, super-breath, invunerability, heatvision, x-ray vision. What else?

I'm not 1,000%, but I believe there is some healing ability in there although not sure if that's considered a power. It's more like if something does manage to cut him, or he is exposed to krypto or something, the Sun pretty much heals that instantly. More biology than power really but I suppose the same could be said for the rest of it as well.

 

[Lead Cenobite]

I'm not 1,000%, but I believe there is some healing ability in there although not sure if that's considered a power. It's more like if something does manage to cut him, or he is exposed to krypto or something, the Sun pretty much heals that instantly. More biology than power really but I suppose the same could be said for the rest of it as well.

Yeah, a lot of his powers are basically normal human abilities but magnified. Strength, durability, lung capacity, endurance, speed, senses, intelligence, and healing.

 

[jthom19802]

Yeah, a lot of his powers are basically normal human abilities but magnified. Strength, durability, lung capacity, endurance, speed, senses, intelligence, and healing.

Have to admit I've never really thought about it before he asked, so would we call flight and heat vision his only "powers" while everything else is just a magnified/more intense version of being human? Or are we getting into semantics there?

 

[Lead Cenobite]

Well, it atleast kills the argument that Superman has too many powers when it can be boiled down to superhuman physiology, flight, and heat vision. This is what kindof bugs me about the silver age and all his extra "powers". They're just superfied versions of normal talents that are possible due to his superhuman physiology. It's like calling Batman's toothbrush a Bat-Toothbrush.

 

[JAK®]

Well, it atleast kills the argument that Superman has too many powers when it can be boiled down to superhuman physiology, flight, and heat vision. This is what kindof bugs me about the silver age and all his extra "powers". They're just superfied versions of normal talents that are possible due to his superhuman physiology. It's like calling Batman's toothbrush a Bat-Toothbrush.

Super-ventriloquism and Super-weaving are awesome.

 

[jthom19802]

Super-ventriloquism and Super-weaving are awesome.

Don't forget Super-typing. Can't save the world and be a great reporter without it.

 

[mbnasir6]

I want them to be constant, one thing that was annoying in Smallville was that one moment be could get from Smallville to Metropolis in seconds, but when he's in the Luthor Mansion and finds out there is trouble on the farm, it takes him the SAME time, which is wrong.
Also I hope Green K isn't used that much, it has to be in the film, but it can't be the thing to stop him.

 

[Puckenstein]

 

[Lead Cenobite]

I should have known it existed in some form.

 

[moviedoors]

The extent of his powers isn't a concern to me so much as their consistency. No pulling powers out of his ass because it's convenient for the plot.

I'd like to see regular old physics as a thorn in his side too. Regardless of power level, no continent lifting. Someone already mentioned the issue of balance, but there's also that he's exerting a gargantuan amount of force on one really tiny spot on a really massive object. The whole rock should've fallen apart in his hands. If he catches someone whose falling, he can't fly up from underneath them and catch them. Doing it that way would make the catch more forceful than the impact with the ground. He'd have to decelerate as he catches someone so he doesn't break their neck or turn them into jelly. If he flies too fast through a city, say at half the speed of light, the sonic boom trailing him would be disastrous. It would super heat the air and make a shock wave that would kill thousands. He may be powerful, but physics makes it hard for him to do things that aren't fatal for normal humans, so he has to get creative.

But, I'll go ahead and chime in on power limits, off the top of my head:

I'd like to see no faster-than-light speeds. No breaking the knon laws of physics, and everything we know about the universe says the speed of light is the fastest anything can go, and even then, if you go the speed of light, you effectively have no mass. So, let's say he can go ridiculously absurdly fast, but only at sub-light speeds.

He has X-ray vision, but being native to a planet in a red sun system, he should be able to see in infrared as well, since that's the wavelength red suns predominately emit light in.

No time travel. It's silly.

I think I'd draw the line concerning strength at being able to move a small moon (and that's not counting our moon, which is one of the biggest in the solar system, but a smaller Jovian moon).

A nuke won't kill him, but it'd hurt like hell. A barrage of them would suck immensely.

Distance limits on super-hearing. No floating around in the upper atmosphere, where there's next to nothing in terms of a medium for sound to propagate through, and "listening" to sounds that would be physically impossible to discern.

 

[Lead Cenobite]

I still think that if his lifting feats can't break the laws of physics, he wouldn't be able to lift much of anything. I'm not sure he'd even be able to lift a car. What part of the car could he hold onto that wouldn't bend or snap under that much weight?

 

[Superwoman Prime]

I'd like to see no faster-than-light speeds. No breaking the no laws of physics, and everything we know about the universe says the speed of light is the fastest anything can go, and even then, if you go the speed of light, you effectively have no mass. So, let's say he can go ridiculously absurdly fast, but only at sub-light speeds.

For this to work, you'd have to go with the idea that it took Kal-El many hundreds of years to arrive on Earth and that while in the pod he was in suspended animation. Otherwise, Krypton and earth would have to be relatively close; and it's a big pill to swallow that we never knew about a closeby planet that housed an advanced alien race.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

And if you went with that, you'd have to do away with the fact that Jor-El specially selected Earth for its peoples. Because seriously, if Jor-El looked at earth many hundreds of years ago, he'd see a bunch of primitive a-holes, and would go about searching for a more suitable environment to send his son.

It totally screws key canon.

 

[MOS]

The extent of his powers isn't a concern to me so much as their consistency. No pulling powers out of his ass because it's convenient for the plot.

I'd like to see regular old physics as a thorn in his side too. Regardless of power level, no continent lifting. Someone already mentioned the issue of balance, but there's also that he's exerting a gargantuan amount of force on one really tiny spot on a really massive object. The whole rock should've fallen apart in his hands. If he catches someone whose falling, he can't fly up from underneath them and catch them. Doing it that way would make the catch more forceful than the impact with the ground. He'd have to decelerate as he catches someone so he doesn't break their neck or turn them into jelly. If he flies too fast through a city, say at half the speed of light, the sonic boom trailing him would be disastrous. It would super heat the air and make a shock wave that would kill thousands. He may be powerful, but physics makes it hard for him to do things that aren't fatal for normal humans, so he has to get creative.

But, I'll go ahead and chime in on power limits, off the top of my head:

I'd like to see no faster-than-light speeds. No breaking the no laws of physics, and everything we know about the universe says the speed of light is the fastest anything can go, and even then, if you go the speed of light, you effectively have no mass. So, let's say he can go ridiculously absurdly fast, but only at sub-light speeds.

He has X-ray vision, but being native to a planet in a red sun system, he should be able to see in infrared as well, since that's the wavelength red suns predominately emit light in.

No time travel. It's silly.

I think I'd draw the line concerning strength at being able to move a small moon (and that's not counting our moon, which is one of the biggest in the solar system, but a smaller Jovian moon).

A nuke won't kill him, but it'd hurt like hell. A barrage of them would suck immensely.

Distance limits on super-hearing. No floating around in the upper atmosphere, where there's next to nothing in terms of a medium for sound to propagate through, and "listening" to sounds that would be physically impossible to discern.

I agree with almost all of it, but while the "no light-speed" rule affects Superman, Kal-El's spaceship has to go faster in order to get to Earth in a couple hours.

I still think that if his lifting feats can't break the laws of physics, he wouldn't be able to lift much of anything. I'm not sure he'd even be able to lift a car. What part of the car could he hold onto that wouldn't bend or snap under that much weight?

John Byrne's reboot made perfect sense-tactile telekinesis. He's still super-strong, but when he needs to lift something without it snapping, he uses tactile telekinesis.

For this to work, you'd have to go with the idea that it took Kal-El many hundreds of years to arrive on Earth and that while in the pod he was in suspended animation. Otherwise, Krypton and earth would have to be relatively close; and it's a big pill to swallow that we never knew about a closeby planet that housed an advanced alien race.

That's why the ship has to go faster than light. It's the only way that Kal-El would be able to arrive on Earth in a couple hours(or, at most, three years like in STM and Smallville) and Jor-El meaning to send him to Earth.

 

[moviedoors]

For this to work, you'd have to go with the idea that it took Kal-El many hundreds of years to arrive on Earth and that while in the pod he was in suspended animation. Otherwise, Krypton and earth would have to be relatively close; and it's a big pill to swallow that we never knew about a closeby planet that housed an advanced alien race.

I could totally get behind suspended animation. In fact, now that you bring it up, I prefer it. A trip to the nearest star from Earth would take years, even going at the universal maximum.

You also over estimate our abilities to detect stars around other planets. If the plane of the ecliptic isn't aligned with our view, forget about detecting through periodic dimming of the brightness of the star. The other method, detecting gravitational wobble, only works with planets bigger than the Earth. We've found some sub-gas giant sized planets, but most of those are being detected around red dwarfs, the lowest mass stars, and thus the most susceptible to displaying the tell-tale wobble. Krypton can't be orbiting a red dwarf. They don't go supernova. So it has to be a red giant, the closest of which is 150 light years away. So yeah, we're getting better and better at planet detection, but we have long strides to make. There could be planetary sized bodies in the outer reaches of our own solar system, somewhere out in the Oort cloud, but our technology just isn't good enough to detect it yet (hell, we're still discovering moons around the gas giants in our own backyard). In fact, there's a plausible (and scary) hypothesis that there could be a Jovian mass planet or even a red dwarf star way, way out, as much as a light year out, in the outer Oort cloud in a very, very long, highly elliptical orbit that is causing the extinction level events the Earth has a 65 million year periodicity of experiencing (guess how long ago the last one was? Never mind. The answer is too scary) by disrupting comets and other icy bodies way out there, sending them hurtling into the inner solar system.

So bring on the cryo baby!

I also oppose the idea of faster than light travel because that just begs the question of why the hell the Kryptonions hadn't already traveled to a G-type star system and learned that they become gods there.

These limitations only make the whole mythos more interesting to me. Limitations are your friend. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Holy crap, was that a geeky post.

 

[moviedoors]

I agree with almost all of it, but while the "no light-speed" rule affects Superman, Kal-El's spaceship has to go faster in order to get to Earth in a couple hours.

I'd rather they just jettison the silly notion of him arriving from another star system in a matter of hours. I can accept a flying man who can shoot lasers out of his eyes, but unless we're going to invoke wormholes here, traveling light years in a matter of hours is just too much.

There's gotta be a line somewhere, right? And I think I just found mine.

 

[moviedoors]

I still think that if his lifting feats can't break the laws of physics, he wouldn't be able to lift much of anything. I'm not sure he'd even be able to lift a car. What part of the car could he hold onto that wouldn't bend or snap under that much weight?

A car doesn't have anywhere near the mass to snap itself under its own mass if lifted off the ground. A cruise ship, yeah, but that's more so if he picks it up length wise. Lift it by the bow or the stern, and I'll buy it.

 

[Anubis]

I could totally get behind suspended animation. In fact, now that you bring it up, I prefer it. A trip to the nearest star from Earth would take years, even going at the universal maximum.

You also over estimate our abilities to detect stars around other planets. If the plane of the ecliptic isn't aligned with our view, forget about detecting through periodic dimming of the brightness of the star. The other method, detecting gravitational wobble, only works with planets bigger than the Earth. We've found some sub-gas giant sized planets, but most of those are being detected around red dwarfs, the lowest mass stars, and thus the most susceptible to displaying the tell-tale wobble. Krypton can't be orbiting a red dwarf. They don't go supernova. So it has to be a red giant, the closest of which is 150 light years away. So yeah, we're getting better and better at planet detection, but we have long strides to make. There could be planetary sized bodies in the outer reaches of our own solar system, somewhere out in the Oort cloud, but our technology just isn't good enough to detect it yet (hell, we're still discovering moons around the gas giants in our own backyard). In fact, there's a plausible (and scary) hypothesis that there could be a Jovian mass planet or even a red dwarf star way, way out, as much as a light year out, in the outer Oort cloud in a very, very long, highly elliptical orbit that is causing the extinction level events the Earth has a 65 million year periodicity of experiencing (guess how long ago the last one was? Never mind. The answer is too scary) by disrupting comets and other icy bodies way out there, sending them hurtling into the inner solar system.

So bring on the cryo baby!

I also oppose the idea of faster than light travel because that just begs the question of why the hell the Kryptonions hadn't already traveled to a G-type star system and learned that they become gods there.

These limitations only make the whole mythos more interesting to me. Limitations are your friend. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Holy crap, was that a geeky post.

Or you could just say he shot him into a worm hole or hyperspace or whatever. Billions of light years in seconds. No reason to over think it gents.

 

[Lead Cenobite]

A car doesn't have anywhere near the mass to snap itself under its own mass if lifted off the ground. A cruise ship, yeah, but that's more so if he picks it up length wise. Lift it by the bow or the stern, and I'll buy it.

Well not the entire car, just whatever Superman would have to hold onto while he lifts the car. Would all that pressure on an area the size of Superman's hands against what Superman is grabbing have the durability not to bend or break? I'm just saying, adhere too closely to the laws of physics, then Superman can't do much of anything except claim he's really strong.

 

[moviedoors]

Or you could just say he shot him into a worm hole or hyperspace or whatever. Billions of light years in seconds. No reason to over think it gents.

The idea of making it so advanced doesn't sit well with me. I'd think we'd see more than two survivors, planet wide, if that kind of technology was available. Yeah, yeah, no one believed Jor-El, but look how people chomp at the bit for every crazy end-of-the-world-nonsense-of-the-week we get here. There'd at least be like a thousand who jumped ship, or uh, planet.

Cryo baby FTW!