View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: Would you want to have a random superpower if it was thrust upon you.
Pass
Would you want to have a superpower? Of course, who wouldn’t? We don’t make things that easy for ourselves in the cheap seats, though. This is not a superpower you can choose, but a random one.
In the superhero universe there are basically four types of origin stories.
1. You derive your power from an alien source, i.e., Superman, Green Lantern.
2. A traumatic experience in your life leads you to develop skills and technology that make you a superhero, i.e., Batman, Ironman.
3. You were born that way, i.e., X-Men.
4. You are randomly exposed to some kind external such as a spider bite, gamma radiation, cosmic rays etc., i.e., Spiderman, The Hulk, The Flash.
Whatever way they come, they usually come with great sacrifice.
Superman lost his entire planet.
Batman lost his parents in a violent death. Iron Man also lost his parents and suffered severe injuries so that he needed to be kept alive with a magnetic chest plate.
The X-Men were societal pariahs. Bruce Banner loses himself completely when he morphs. Spiderman becomes even more of an outcast than the mild-mannered Peter Parker was before.
None of them, for various reasons, can really ever have normal relationships with other people. The people they love become targets of the arch-enemy supervillains.
“With great power, comes great responsibility.”
I might feel differently if I could pick the superpower. In some ways it would be cool to be ‘super’, but ultimately I think the trade-off is too great.
I would likely pass.
-Thom Barker
Profit motive
If you grew up reading comic books as I did, then you likely dreamed of having superpowers.
I am sure I daydreamed of being Batman hundreds of times. Most recently likely about three days ago.
And really who wouldn’t want to have the speed of Flash, the responsibility of Green Lantern’s ring, or the skill with a bow of Green Arrow, not to mention the cool claws of Wolverine, of Angel’s wings and the ability to fly.
Granted not all super powers are created equal.
Take the Chlorophyll Kid. He was born Ral Benem on the planet Mardru. As a young man, he accidentally fell into a tank of hydroponic serum which gave him the power to stimulate plant growth. He can grow seeds into full grown plants in a second.
That might sound rather, well lame, can you imagine what area farmers would pay for you to give their canola crops a boost. I could live with getting rich off a less than ‘super’ superpower.
Of course if reading comic books has taught me nothing else, they have constantly shown that the power of hero is of less importance than how he uses such powers.
So when someone offers a chance to pop into a chamber and emerge with a superpower, without pre-knowledge of what that power might be, I’ll take the chance.
With a little luck I’d become Captain Canuck, or the shrinking Atom.
With a little less luck I’d get some power that would appear hoohum, but then would simply work on finding a way to use it for good, or at least for good pay.
-Calvin Daniels
Crap shoot
You know, initially I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do if I was ever given the opportunity to either be given a random superpower or simply be normal.
On the one hand you could end up with an amazing superpower. One day you could be a normal, everyday citizen of the world and the next you could be teleporting to anywhere in the world, flying through the sky like a plane or picking up cars with one hand.
But you could also end up with what Irish comedian David O’Doherty calls ‘very mild superpowers’. Instead of super strength you could just as easily get the ‘superpower’ of whistling very well without practice.
Instead of being able to teleport to different locations you could instead simply have the ability to find very cheap airplane tickets. A good skill of course, but a superpower? Not likely.
I think the risk is not worth the reward. There are several great superpowers you could end up with: Super strength, teleportation, super intelligence, super speed, very quick healing. But there are far more terrible ones that a person could end up with.
It’s like winning the lottery. Some would get extremely lucky while the very large majority would end up being the Aquamen of the super hero world. Useless unless you need to land a trophy fish in a fishing derby.
So to end, no, I would not opt in for a random superpower… Unless I was guaranteed a half decent one.
-Randy Brenzen
