After a recent conversation about comic book collecting during childhood, I started thinking about some of the sillier comic book heroes I had encountered in my massive comic book readings. I haven’t kept up with them, and I understand that some of the heroes have been updated to make them a little cooler. I’m focusing on heroes with powers that just seem like they would have very little superhero utility in real life. Not that they wouldn’t come in useful in other endeavors. I think these were the heroes that editors had to throw into story lines to meet a deadline. Mind you, these are not intentionally satirical heroes – or at least not marketed as such.
1. Bouncing Boy.
His power is to will himself into the shape of a ball and bounce. He is a member of the Legion of Superheroes, which is filled with characters with dorky powers. He is the first of two to make this list.
2. Matter-Eater Lad
Also in the Legion of Superheroes. He can eat anything. His jaws and digestive system can handle it. Later, they gave him a little bit of offensive capability – he has corrosive saliva and can spit a hole through a steel wall. Gross, but it comes in handy all the time. No really!
3. The Red Bee
This hero had no powers. He was just smart and tough. What’s lame is his animal sidekick. Most hero animal sidekicks are pretty cool – like a super-powered dog, a winged horse, a saber tooth tiger, or plasma blob thing from another planet that changes shape – or maybe even just a cool regular animal like a falcon or a wolf. The Red Bee’s animal sidekick? A bee. He keeps it in a box in his belt until called upon. Or he kept it. He was actually killed during World War II by a Nazi super villain named “Baron Blitzkrieg.”
4. The Horn Blower
I understand that they’ve improved on his powers, but back in the 1970s, the first African American superhero of record, the Horn Blower, was given a very lame power. He had “Gabriel’s Horn.” When he blew it, he got sort of whatever he needed to get out of a jam, except that he still had to work for it. Or something like that. And he hit people with the horn. That probably hurt.
5. The Dazzler
She was a musical performer who could convert sound into light. And if it was loud enough, she could convert it to lasers which she shot from her finger tips, which is pretty useful for a superheroine I suppose.
6. Cypher
He was a junior member of the X-men who could instantaneously translate any language – even languages from off planet cultures. Again, this would be very useful in real life. But the writers had to contrive stories to make it useful for superheroing.
7. Doll Man
This guy could shrink, but unlike heroes like the Atom and Ant Man, who could shrink to small enough sizes to get into places other heroes couldn’t go, it just doesn’t seem like much of a power to shrink to about a foot tall even if you’re retaining your full human strength. The Atom could shrink so small that he could dial a phone and travel to the destination of his call by riding the electric flow. That’s pretty small!
8. Hourman
Takes a pill which gives him super strength for an hour. No more. And he can only take one a day, or something. How many stupid and predictable plot lines can you get from this? Oh, the suspense – can he save her in less than an hour? Is he still the stuff of heroes once his power runs out? He was introduced in the 1940s and he’s still around. In all the stories I read as a kid, nothing ever went easy and quick. What would be the point? The most interesting aspect about the character is that he always wears a shroud which makes him look like an old time executioner.
9. Squirrel Girl
She looks like a squirrel, with buck teeth and all which can bite through wood and stuff. She’s agile like a squirrel. And she talks to squirrels. Not telepathically like Aquaman talks to fish. She knows squirrel language.
10. Arm Fall Off Boy
He could pull his arms off and use them as clubs. What else can I say about him?
10 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 10, 2012 at 11:15 am
bolithio
Thanks for the good read. Arm Fall Off Boy is the most ridiculous and hilarious to me, I had not seen him before. Dont you think allot of these were intended to be silly? Comic relief?
December 10, 2012 at 11:50 am
Narration
I’m with Bolithio – remembering reading some of these comics, at least in the 1950s. And there were some in the San Francisco attic of grandparents, possibly left by earlier dwellers, which were older.
It’s been my impression that the Superman series had something in it of the originating drive of the movie Westerns — tales told to the young and powerful America from immigrants out of troubled Europe.
There also was a wit and humor often enough bubbling under the surface, even a kind of craziness as in Mad Magazine. I mean, imagination brings all its gifts, doesn’t it. And so Bizarro, for example, and likely a number of these wierder characters.
Real finds, and a nice article to think up, Eric. Thanks for it, and just possibly (but only possibly) we will hew a bit to the topic this time
December 10, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Eric Kirk
I do think there was a little bit of self-satire in Arm Fall Off Boy, as in the writers wondering how they had sold “Matter Eater Lad” and wondering just how silly they could get and still have so many readers. I like the “plorp” sound effect. They should have given him is own title!
December 10, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Anonymous
I always thought Dazzler was cool. In your list she’s the only one who had her own series.
December 10, 2012 at 10:39 pm
Anonymous
Doesn’t everybody eat matter?
December 13, 2012 at 10:17 pm
TR
How about Robin? We’re used to it now, but isn’t it kind of lame to name a superhero after a little bird?
January 22, 2013 at 9:57 pm
Mar Hermas Apollos
Squirrel Girl has defeated Thanos, The Mad Titan, and Dr Victor von Doom… and Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth. Wolverine (James Howlett) is also quite attracted to her in a friend with benefits kind of way. I believe she may have also defeated Wolverine in battle. Dazzler has Omega level potential if she encounters a powerful enough acoustic force such as the voice of Black Bolt or acoustic forces replicated by Galactus. Neither are ridiculous.
January 22, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Eric Kirk
As proud as I am of my own level of geekiness, I am humbled by yours Appollos. I defer to your superior knowledge.
But why do I get the feeling that Squirrel Girl’s defeat of Thanos the Mad Titan isn’t just a little bit of humor from the writers wondering how far they can stretch your suspense of disbelief? Didn’t Thanos mop up the floor with about a dozen of the more powerful superheroes at once?
January 23, 2013 at 6:42 am
bolithio
Didn’t Thanos mop up the floor with about a dozen of the more powerful superheroes at once? I never read that story, but isn’t that a common theme in fantasy? The hero(s) get the ass kicked up until the last moment when always seem to ‘pull it together’ to win the end?
January 23, 2013 at 9:13 am
Eric Kirk
Well, yeah b. I’m going on ancient memory, but the heroes he clobbered were like the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Sub Mariner, She-Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Spiderman, Wolverine, the Destroyer, Silver Surfer – all the real power heroes in one five minute fight. So it stretches credibility for him to have been defeated by Squirrel Girl alone. Maybe she found his one weakness or something.
But hey, that’s fantasy as well.