Superman Gets A New Power…Again

Those are just the powers that stayed. Everyone remembers the rainbow finger beams that shot out a mini-Superman.

Here we go again, another superpower that weakens Superman, making it ultimately worthless or dangerous to him to use.

Superman’s powerset is a dime a dozen at this point. Most of the superpowered beings in the DC universe alone has at least one or more of Superman’s powers. They’re practically the standard even if you aren’t making a Superman analog. I know it’s one of the reasons why I assumed The Samaritan of Astro City was their Superman, though Kurt Busiek claims otherwise. We know them, we love them, we usually go to that list to choose the superpower we want to have if we could have superpowers. Not me. I want an energy field that grants me other superpowers, only three of which are up there–see if you can guess which ones. I guess now we’re close to that thanks to Dan Slott.

Another writer more interested in putting their mark on a character rather than making their mark as a creator and continuing the character they don’t own, Slott has given Superman yet another power, a defensive version of the “super flare” that protects him from Kryptonite. I’m calling it a kryptonite barrier until they give me something official because that’s what it does. Using Superman’s stored solar power, like the super flare, he can create a short-lived protective barrier from kryptonite for three minutes, but if it runs out so does Superman’s powers (and so does Superman if the kryptonite is still there). You know, like the LAST superpower they gave him.

Do we really need Superman to have a new power? I don’t think so, or some of the one-off powers Superman had, like remolding his face that one time, or the rainbow finger beams that shot out a tiny Superman. Heat vision started out as heat from his x-ray vision. I haven’t seen super ventriloquism in years and only the comics used it. Is the kryptonite barrier really necessary? Is the overload of Kryptonite a good idea?

So in the pages of Superman Unlimited, as shown in the Free Comic Book Day comic I gave a positive review for not knowing what was coming, a “planet killer” sized asteroid was heading for Earth, but after the coating came off while Superman was trying to stop it the thing was revealed to be a huge chunk of kryptonite. Superman managed to save the world, though now the kryptonite is being used by a country I swear is being run by a bad guy if I’m following the hints. Somehow they had time to turn it all into a major city, currency, battle armor…it’s basically vibranium if vibranium could kill Captain America. Or Thor, or whatever Superman stand-in isn’t evil. Is there one at Marvel? Is the Blue Marvel really at his level? I guess I’d have to care first. Also they’re white Europeans and this is 2025. They’ll be evil any story arc now.

Somehow his body developed the ability to form a barrier from kryptonite with his own stored energy and I just realized something. If Superman had that “super flare” thing back when All-Star Superman came out the problem would have been solvable almost instantly. Use it on Apokalypse and ruin Darkseid’s day for a change, then go get a Big Belly Burger. Back on topic, apparently the barrier will come up automatically if he takes too much green k damage, though we haven’t seen if red k or the rest of the emotional kryptonite spectrum will be blocked. It only lasts for three minutes and the more he needs it the more it drains his powers. They even faked up an explanation for why Supergirl, Jon, and the various other clones can’t do this. Superman’s been here longer and his body has had solar infusion for so long it might have mutated his body. So when Supergirl is in her fifties she might be able to do this? I didn’t sync the math. When will Connor or Jon be able to do it since they’re only part Kryptonian? Do the alien siblings get this someday? We’re just replacing one weakness with another and both unnecessarily increasing the amount of Superman’s dead planet smacking into our planet for no other reason than to mess with Superman.

Superboy’s not wrong. I mean, he’s probably jealous and Slott upped the snark to “annoying” in this scene, but he’s not wrong.

Now I think I know why one of the reprints was the “Kryptonite No More” story from the Bronze Age, which wasn’t even the first time they played with ending kryptonite as a problem. That gave us an experimental kryptonite reactor exploding and somehow making kryptonite inert while creating a duplicate from the sand he crashed into that would weaken his powers instead. I’m pretty sure there’s a Silver Age story that played with the idea first because that’s how the Silver Age ran. It’s another story that took away Kryptonite but brought something else to take its place, and of course Superman still has magic to deal with. It’s funny. There was a point with writers kept trying to make Superman stronger because they believed Kal-El had to be the strongest being in the universe while DC was creating new heroes equal or superior to him because they were building out the universe and who’s to say he would be the strongest forever? He’s not Goku. Being the world’s strongest was never Clark’s goal.

Like the super flare it’s basically a “get out of the corner we wrote ourselves card” with a side effect to keep him from using it. Or we can just make kryptonite useless but stick a time limit on it to pretend we’re still making drama of “how will Superman use his super intelligence that doesn’t come from his powers to deal with kryptonite or will someone come to save him and get to be a big hero?” when we’re actually making kryptonite worthless long enough to make the drama irrelevant. Superman’s beaten plenty of powerful foes in less than three minutes. Japan’s Ultraman, not to be confused with DC’s, can only be a giant for three minutes and throughout the franchise I’ve only seen an Ultraman miss the deadline twice.

Meanwhile we have an entire city of Kryptonite. They don’t even need to steal anything to get their hands on it. Just go to the currency exchange and all it costs you is the rate of exchange between El Candero currency and whatever country’s money you’re using. Unless I’m misreading this and they just painted the coins green, the entire “Emerald City” green, and made the “krypto-knights” armor green, which would all work better as a Green Lantern tribute. By the way, the coins are called “kryptos” and features the Superdog on there, so I’m sure there’s a “cryptocurrency” knock in there somewhere. At any rate, honoring Superman by making a Kryptonite statue of the Daily Planet globe seems strange. Also apparently everyone knows about Gorilla City now and the Planet even has a branch office there. I’ve missed a lot and I’m not sure if I’m benefitting or not. “We love you so much for saving us that we made our entire city in tribute of the thing that kills you!” Oh, you’re totally going to be the villains down the road or you’re really that stupid.

So you’ll pardon me if I really am not interested in this newest new power. I can’t even tell how he fires heat rays and x-rays from his eyes or how he can fly without any discernible thrust but I’m used to not questioning the science fiction. I don’t know how these new solar powers work, but it makes me wish they went back to the “Krypton had heavier gravity” power origin, with the sun just giving him the heat vision, x-ray vision, and maybe enhancing his regular powers. These are gimmick powers and I’m just not here for it. You can make the case that the solar shield is tied to the solar flare but it’s still giving Superman powers he can’t use without killing himself. How often, even after the big rock fall, has Superman ran into kryptonite? The rarity is what makes it special, and the comic even remembers long term exposure can kill humans like most other forms of radiation.

So once more new stories with Superman do not interest me. I’ll go back to the good ones, who knew there was more to Superman than his powers, who didn’t need gimmicks to get rid of them, and knew why Superman’s powers were so classic everybody and their literal dog was getting them. It’s why they’re classic and as iconic to Superman as a cape and trunks.