As this video shows it’s easy to poke fun with just how overpowered Superman is. Have you ever really looked at Superman’s power set and kind of rolled your eyes? He’s strong enough to take on just about anyone in the DC or Marvel universes, he’s super-smart, super-attractive, super-durable, and basically he’s just all-around unstoppable. Unless of course you manage to find some of those radioactive rocks from his home planet, that was destroyed, that just happen to be floating around the cosmos. In all other cases Superman is, or at least was, the end-all of superheroes. The guy could do anything and in truth hes about as overpowered and overrated as a superhero has ever been. This is a guy that even cheated death for crying out loud because, well, people didn’t want to see him go.
But his level of power is just ridiculous. He’s not easy to relate to no matter that he was given human emotions and feelings, not even when he was put into a regular business suit and made a regular reporter in the comics. He can freeze things with his breath, he can shoot lasers out of his eyes. It takes something unique and unreachable to harm him, and yet he’s been made into an honest and upstanding guy that knows his power and knows he could eliminate just about anyone if he so chose. But he’s such a goody-two shoes that he won’t bother. So after this it was just a matter of time before DC came up with someone that could overpower even Superman and thus made someone with an even more insane set of powers. There is a big reason why some people prefer Marvel over DC, and it has a lot to do with limits and the ability of the people to relate to the heroes and the villains. Marvel has just as many ridiculously overpowered individuals on its roster, and yet they all have very well-defined limits that keep them from being the next Superman since their weaknesses are undeniably human or in some way just as silly as Superman’s if not worse.
Those characters that have limits are easier to relate to for one simple reason: they show that people can overcome and work around their own limitations. A good example would be one of the most famous heroes in Marvel comics, Wolverine. He’s tough, he’s mean, and he’s just flat out awesome. He can heal at an accelerated rate, he has an attitude that most people love, an unbreakable skeleton, and is just extremely easy to like. But he has limits. His healing factor can only go so far, and his skeleton makes him a prime target for any villain that has the ability to control metal, like Magneto. Yet somehow he’s managed to work around these obstacles for his entire run. Superman gets waylaid by a green rock. He has vulnerabilities to mental attacks and magic. So basically someone like Professor X or Dr. Strange could give him a run for his money, at least until the writers reminded people that he’s so fast that he could subdue them both before they had a chance.
Dr. Strange maybe, but Professor X? It’s hard to believe the man of steel is faster than the speed of thought.
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