Super powers can be fallible.
It’s often a quality found in some characters in order to add complexities to them, so that
they’re not super over powered and invincible.
Perhaps it makes them more relatable to readers, or it adds a certain essence of drama to a
narrative.
Regardless of the reason, it’s a fascinating aspect to see play out on the panels of our
favourite superheroes tales.
So today, we’re taking a closer look at those stipulations with our list of the top
10 dc superheroes with weird power restrictions.
Let’s get to it.
10 Batman – Doesn’t Kill Batman is one of the only mortal super heroes
without any actual super powers that can seriously kick butt with the best of them.
You could argue that his true power is his plot armour (the fact that he always has a
solution, is always prepared, even against those who are ten times stronger than he could
ever be), but really, his genius level intellect and his obsession with preparing for the worst
case scenario always manage to allow Bruce Wayne to keep his head above water and take
on the likes of powerful characters such as Superman on numerous occasions.
But because he adheres to a strict code of honour, one in which he refuses to kill, he
often finds himself chasing after villains again and again and again, with him locking
them up in Arkham only for them to inevitably break out and cause more havoc on Gotham City
or beyond.
And sure, maybe that’s more of an issue with Arkham’s capabilities at detaining
inmates, but ultimately, if Batman were to just kill the Joker, for instance, a huge
chunk of his problems would be solved.
Obviously, that’s putting it lightly, and murder has many implications, both in the
physical world and psychologically, but this self-imposed restriction could still be argued
as one of the dark knight’s greatest weaknesses.
9 Captain Atom – Strong Nuclear Force The New 52 tweaked a lot of things in DC’s
continuity, including details about character’s abilities.
Captain Atom was one of those characters; he’s a hero whose abilities derive from
his atoms constantly splitting and reforming, which can give him an infinite amount of power,
theoretically.
And he’s proven to raise his power levels almost effortlessly in the past.
But his powers do have one major restriction; if his atoms can lose coherence if too much
power is used within a short time span.
His abilities are linked to something called the Strong Nuclear Force, which is an energy
that binds the protons to a nucleus.
In contrast to this, it is believed that one day Captain Atom will overcome this limitation,
but there’s a good chance he won’t try to, for the fear that he’ll lose his humanity
if he becomes THAT powerful.
8 Zatanna – Confidence Lack of confidence is something that a whole
lot of superheroes, and even villains, have struggled with in the past.
Arguably, it’s one of the more common power restrictors out there.
Zatanna, the magical DC hero, falls into that category, with her powers being limited by
her self-confidence, preventing her from reaching her full potential.
There was even a time where, after a series of mistakes on her part, she was rendered
powerless, unable to cast spells or manipulate magic whatsoever.
Self-confidence goes a long way friends!
7 Green Lantern – Yellow Green Lantern rings have no effect on anything
that’s the colour yellow.
This is thanks to an inherent impurity in the rings.
This was later retconned out so that the impurity was later defined as Parallax, the fear entity
who was trapped in the Lantern Corps central power battery.
Despite it being retconned, there’s been a whole lot of heroes who have made fun of
Hal Jordan because of this.
Barry Allen once taunted him with a big yellow umbrella, which he used as a shield to protect
himself from the Green Lantern.
Funny enough, this was something we saw Frank Miller’s Batman in Allstar Batman and Robin
took advantage of in a particularly cruel and hilarious way, by painting an entire room,
himself and Robin all yellow just to mess with the hero.
He also does this while drinking a glass of lemonade.
6 Aquaman – Dehydration Arthur Curry’s whole schtick is that he’s
an aquatic superhero.
The King of Atlantis might get ripped on a whole lot, but unfortunately for him, sometimes
those jokes are within good reason.
We’re specifically talking about a little trait of his that existed for years before
it was retconned out of existence in 1959’s Adventure Comics issue 256.
While the hero could instantly dehydrate anyone to death, if he himself dehydrated, he would
be depowered until he got himself near some water again.
5 Wonder Woman – Tied up by a man Hey, you know what’s a great idea for a
power restriction?
Something that completely contradicts what that hero stands for!
Enter Wonder woman’s absolutely absurd power restriction from the golden age; being depowered
if tied up by a man.
Yes, we aren’t even joking with this one.
Wonder Woman was created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, a dude who was really into
bondage.
That past time of his translated into Diana’s stories, to the extent that she was rendered
powerless if her hands were bound by a man.
According to an early depiction of Wonder Woman, I quote, “My strength is gone – it
is Aphrodite’s law!
What an Amazon girl permits a man to chain her bracelets of submission together she becomes
weak as other women in a man ruled world!”
Needless to say, that’s a restriction that eventually faded into obscurity, although
that didn’t occur until the 1980s.
4 Power Girl – Raw Materials Power Girl was introduced in 1978 as Superman’s
cousin, but with a twist.
She came from an alternate universe, Earth-Two, and became stranded in the main universe.
Because she was from a different universe, she lacked the weakness Superman had; kryptonite.
But writers still had to give her some sort of weakness.
So what did they do?
This insane crap; a weakness to raw, unprocessed, natural materials.
If you find that baffling ,fret not, so do a whole lot of other people.
She becomes vulnerable to things like wood, dirt, water, you name it.
Sure she’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and can leap
tall building in a single bound, but toss a rock at her and girl goes DOWN, HARD.
3 The Flash – Excessive Speed In Crisis on Infinite Earths issue 8 from
1985, Barry Allen died, sacrificing himself during the fight against anti-Monitor to save
the multiverse, becoming one of the most impactful deaths in DC history.
He would disappear for 23 years before fully returning in Geoff John’s The Flash Rebirth
in 2009.
His death was caused by him running so fast that he created a speed vortex to draw in
the power of the Anti-Monitor’s anti-matter cannon, essentially atomizing his body in
the process.
It was later revealed that he was stranded in the speed force.
So in other words, if Barry runs too fast, he can find himself trapped in a realm which
is incredibly difficult to escape from.
2 Shazam - His Name Shazam’s history is filled with restrictions,
ones that have been largely retconned since his initially days as Captain Marvel back
when the character was owned by Fawcett Comics in the golden age.
Shazam is a character who, for a very long time, was plagued by the restriction of the
word Shazam.
Saying the magic word Shazam would transform him into his superhero self, going from a
boy to a grown powerful man, endowed with a crap ton of magical abilities.
These days, since the new 52, Billyno longer suffers from a forced transformation whenever
he says the word Shazam, with the name even being used to cast spells.
Also, fun fact – back in the 90s, Shazam shared his powers with his Shazam family teammates
(also known as the Marvel family back in earlier times), and his powers were depicted as a
finite source, which, depending on how many family members had transformed into their
superhero selves, would be divided, meaning their powers could be split in half or in
thirds, weakening all of them to an extent.
1 Captain Marvel Jr – His Name, but worse If you thought Shazam was bad, his young pal
Captain Marvel Jr got it ten times worse than he did.
He can’t say the name Captain Marvel Jr, which, as you can imagine, makes it hella
awkward when needing to introduce ones’ self to other superheroes, let alone the public.
So whenever he’s Freddy Freeman, he has to actively avoid saying Captain Marvel jr,
or else he transforms.
And some writers even tried to work around this by having Freddy call himself CM3, but
as you can imagine, that didn’t really catch on.
And if that weren’t enough, he works in a newsroom, which generally tends to throw
around a whole lot of superhero names on a frequent basis, or so we’d imagine, so that
definitely can’t be fun for poor Freddy.
There we have it friends!
What other DC heroes can you think of that have strange power restrictions?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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