Superheroes are a huge part of our culture and entertainment — even if lately, only the greats like Batman, Superman and Ironman tend to hog the limelight. While there are many other great superheroes out there, there are also those that completely fail in the superpower department. Some superheroes had great powers, but still managed to be the epitome of lame, and then there are the folks who had no choice but to be lame. Does a superpower make the superhero? You be the judge. Here are 15 of the lamest superpowers we could find.
Of all powers to grant a superhero, changing the color of things is definitely not on our list of awesome. How could this even be useful? Apparently Color Kid liked to confuse his flying enemies by switching the colors of the ground and the sky, but any enemy stupid enough to fall for that would probably get creamed anyway. It might be a fun “superpower” — for a six-year-old. And really, with such a lame power, he could have at least made a better costume.
This one made our sides hurt from laughing, which is about all the damage he is capable of. The Red Bee’s shtick was beyond ridiculous — that in a fight he’d open up the little compartment in his belt, and release a single bee. Not a radioactive super bee, or an exotically poisonous one, but a regular, trained bee. It would fly out to sting his opponent, and that’s it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, his costume makes our eyes bleed.
Making people do things would turn out to be an interesting superpower to wield, as a general rule — but only being able to make people run? Lame. Maybe if Tag had a cliff at his disposal every time he battled an opponent, he might be successful, but that’s not the case. It might be amusing to make people run in circles or into things, but it just seems like too much hassle, and just plain silly to boot.
So we don’t want to say Mr. Fantastic is completely lame, because he’s a genius — that almost makes up for his ability to stretch. Now, if he only had the ability to stretch, he’d be completely lame. How is stretching super, really? You might be able to avoid a few injuries, but other than that, fighting crime by stretching seems a bit sad.
Now, shrinking isn’t always lame. The Atom, a far cooler superhero, can shrink to the subatomic level, which would be very cool — and useful. But Ant Man’s ability to shrink to the size of an ant is nothing but lame. For one, people could crush him pretty easily if they bothered. Wouldn’t you think there’d be some kind of loss of strength too? Come on, look at the comic book cover above — do you really think something that small would be able to knock teeth out? Useless.
Marvel tried to make an excuse for The Blob, saying that his mutant power was creating a gravitational field, but we think he was just plain morbidly obese. He was so fat that his skin and tissue was known to absorb or deflect bullets. That’s pretty serious cushioning, and although it might have come in handy, it just seems far too unhealthy to even be worth it at all. Besides, anyone can get fat, and how is this guy any different from the guy who got pulled from his house in a forklift?
Bouncing Boy could turn himself into a ball by inflating himself — like Kirby. He came across his powers by accidentally drinking some plastic solution that he thought was soda pop. Well, serves him right for not paying attention, and now he’s stuck with one of the lamest superpowers ever. He has to run, err, bounce away from all of his opponents, which is not really all that cool.
Cypher was a mutant with the ability to translate anything — written, spoken, or computer language. It seems like it would be one of the more bearable superpowers on the list to have in the real world, but as a superhero … not so much. How often could he have come across a chance to be useful at all? Maybe if Professor X needed a manual translated, but after deciphering stuff he’d have to completely depend on the other superheroes to do the real work — he was useless in battle.
Tommy had the ability to render herself into a two-dimensional state, taking on the shape of a piece of paper. There are only two ways we can think of to use this superpower: Giving people paper cuts or sliding under doors/through mail slots. OK, so paper cuts kind of hurt, and they’re pretty annoying, but sliding under things is pretty useless. For those not convinced, she was the first person to die in the Mutant Massacre. On the plus side, Kate Moss could always play her in a movie.
For one, having four arms is just plain grotesque. Anyone remember Goro in Mortal Kombat? Forearm managed to buff up to lessen the lame factor, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he had to drag around two more arms. It might be easier to knock someone out and lift things, but we don’t think being horribly disfigured is worth the mildly better chances in a wrestling match.
Goldstar and his “niceness vibes” have to be one of the lamest things ever concocted in an industry packed full of lameness — especially because they’re considered a superpower. You can even see him on the cover of this comic, wagging his finger at the evil, skull-crushing creatures surrounding him. That’s it? Looks like his favorite thing was to tell everyone to get along while pretending to be a Boy Scout.
Alright, so it might be neat to be able to eat anything without consequence — those late night Taco Bell trips would be a lot easier, for one. But when would you ever really have to eat through a wall though? Maybe if you’re a superhero, but it just seems like it’d be a funny thing to watch. Especially when one stops to consider the truism that what must go in must come out. Not to mention, he wasn’t a cannibal — there goes any chance of using his powers to beat up the bad guys.
Squirrel Girl seems like early evidence of the Furry Fetish — but we digress. Summoning squirrels to aid in a fight is definitely a lame superpower, really; they couldn’t even spring for ferrets or another creature just a tad more useful than squirrels. It’d be worth it if you could summon, say, elephants, bears or tigers. Something fierce. Don’t squirrels run away from everything? Maybe Squirrel Girl’s squirrels don’t, but it’s nothing a little rodent poison wouldn’t take care of.
Besides the terrible name, Tar Baby’s superpower is incredibly lame. He had sticky skin, and could secrete some kind of adhesive. Basically everything stuck to him, which would probably be nothing more than a huge pain in the ass, don’t you think? It might come in handy at some point, maybe while shoplifting, but the clean-up and hassle of the whole thing would not be worth it.
