A recent Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jeremy Renner, featured a (not-particularly-funny) sketch about the Avengers movie, primarily about the uselessness of Hawkeye and the sexiness of the leather-clad Black Widow. When you look at the grand scheme of things, though, “archery” isn’t a bad super-power, and it’s depiction in the hands of Green Arrow and Hawkeye is really no less realistic than the physics-defying portrayal of Batman or Captain America’s martial arts prowess. As much as I mock the Ultimate Universe, they really did it right by giving Ultimate Hawkeye additional genetic alterations (enhanced vision and arm-strength) that make him even more formidable in conceptualization…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) loves that picture of Jetman, even if it is kind of a non-sequitur, asking: If you could give any hero ONE additional ability to compliment those which they already have, what would it be?
6 Comments
I think Tony Stark should build Spidey a giant transforming robot like he had in the Japanese TV series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xi7qJ4MLCaw
I don’t actually find too many superheroes that I think really need an additional power. One of my favorite aspects of a superhero are their flaws and weaknesses. But I’ve always kinda thought it would be neat if Aquaman could actually control water. I think they’ve shown similar in some Elseworlds, but I think it would be a neat ability to give him a bit more of an edge while on land (imagine the water in a sink suddenly reaching out in the shape of a hand to smack a villain aside).
Give superheroines the ability to not have a wardrobe malfunction. Wait… they already have that power.
One thing that I’d love to see for any super-speedster is for them to learn a trained skill in 1/10th the time of a normal person.
It would be really interesting to see Quicksilver mowing through a stack of textbooks on botany during a quiet day and then apply that knowledge in a future battle.
In the 2011 Flash #1, a building was demolished during the fight. Flash read a construction book at ‘Flash Speed’ and rebuilt it.
Give Wolverine long-distance teleportation, because at least then they’d actually have SOME kind of reasoning behind having him in a million books. Wait, sorry, that joke’s at least a few years out of date, isn’t it?
I agree that Aquaman should have the ability to control water if he were to gain another ability. It fits his theme perfectly, after all. (They did give that ability to Aqualad in the new Teen Titans cartoon, but that only goes to show how suitable it is.)
Minor tweaks tend to work better to help compliment and justify a hero doing what they already do. Ultimate Spider-Man has in the past that he has some measure of recuperative ability. Nothing like Wolverine, who has had it cranked up to 11 over the years, but enough of one to justify how he can get beat up all the time and then go to school the next day. Some of that justification for the 616 Spider-Man would not be untoward if kept as a handwave for how Peter keeps all his teeth while being constantly punched in the face.
I would like to see Batman go into recuperative meditative trances every night for similar reasons. His ability to go without sleep is Superhuman by itself. But since Batman has no such powers, if two hours of meditation could equal a full night’s rest, I’d better believe that Batman spends all night fighting crime and can appear in an early morning board meeting as Bruce Wayne.
Lots of heroes could be tweaked a little is some way or other, even the well-balanced ones, if only they’re given a little bit of thought. Mostly I would like the writers to not forget about some of the applications that the heroes already have.