Superman was way too mortal.
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wetbrain — 13 years ago(November 21, 2012 07:42 PM)
Yes I a gree, he's way to weak in this series.
Anytime a writer takes on a legendary character.. and by now Superman is indeed, a modern legend, you are agree to taking on certain constraints.
For example, you don't write a modern Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes is a bumbling fool or a Robin Hood story where Robin robs from the poor and gives to the rich. Unless you are intending to write a satire, which Superman is clearly not.
He's not a flying version of Spiderman. He's basically a super hero's Superhero.
It's a shame that in a cartoon which basically allows special effects to cost really little to no more than regular scenes, Superman is less powerful than his live action counterparts.
There are plenty of things that can challenge a Silver age Superman
a) Kryptonite (multiple colors)
b) Villains with similar powers - Bizarro, Zod etc.
c) "the Red Sun" environment
D) Magic
E) Some scientific discoveries (Virus X) as shown in the comics - but used sparingly.
F) The classic "I need to be in 2 places at the same time" problem.
De-powering Superman creates as many problems as it solves. For example, why should villains even bother with Kryptonite? Just a throw a big enough bomb at him and he's dead anyways.
Superman deserves better. -
preachcaleb — 13 years ago(November 23, 2012 07:33 AM)
Because a big enough bomb is as hard to get a hold of as a chunk of kryptonite. He withstood the equivalent of a nuclear blast. How much bigger of a bomb would the bad guy's have?
Straightedge means I'm better than you. -
HellboundHero — 12 years ago(July 19, 2013 10:51 AM)
Superman's invulnerability is a common criticism.
I'm glad that the writers took it down a notch.
His powers had already been taken down a notch in John Byrne's run in the comics, then STAS came along and took it down much further, further than necessary IMO. -
DarthBill — 11 years ago(May 02, 2014 04:43 AM)
You know this turned into an on again/off again argument between me and a friend for years. At this point she's genuinely convinced that Bruce Timm "ruined Superman for a generation" with both this & Justice League because of the inconsistent power levels issue. The thing is Superman's power levels have always been inconsistent across multiple incarnations, and when I pointed out that the old Max Fleischer cartoons (which are awesome) and the old Super-Friends cartoons (which are horribly lame) had the exact same problems she was all like "Nu-uh, I'm not gonna criticize those because they were made in a different time" which I personally think is an extremely flimsy reason not to criticize those earlier versions, but in the case of Super-Friends she probably has nostalgia issues (personally I hate Super-Friends and everything it represents but that's another story); I mean c'mon, it's one thing to like Super-Friends despite how bad it is but saying its flaws don't count isn't fair. Hell, by her logic pretty much every incarnation of Superman "ruined the character for a generation" since no one's ever done a particularly good job of keeping his power levels consistent.
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Duragizer — 11 years ago(June 10, 2014 04:10 AM)
Perhaps his power levels were scaled back a little too much, but it's preferable to pre-Crisis "move planets and fly to other galaxies in seconds" power levels.
I'm Heather Langenkamp's husband in another universe. -