Not all super powered individuals can have awesome abilities.
From time to time, we’ve seen comic creators introduce new characters whose skill sets
are questionable and baffling.
Whether it’s a product of the silver age or a character brewed up for comedic effects,
there has been a slew of characters to appear in Marvel’s panels over the years that,
for lack of a better term, are flat out silly.
So today, we’re going to be taking a closer look at some of those abilities with our list
of the top 10 dumbest marvel super powers.
And be sure to stick around to the end of the video to let us know who you think should’ve
made our list.
Now let’s get to it!
10 Wither Let’s start off our list with a power that’s
dark as hell.
Wither is a mutant who first appeared in New Mutants volume 2 issue 3 back in 2003, and
has dabbled in both heroics and super villainy.
His power is a unique one that has devastating consequences; it’s the power of disintegration.
This means everything he touches decays and disintegrates.
It’s also involuntary, kind of like Rogue’s abilities.
Extended contact could reduce anything or anyone to dust.
Luckily, it only affects organic matter.
Wither, whose real name is Kevin, believes that his power has a ‘hunger’, a desire
for him to use it, yet this has never been confirmed, and could merely be psychological.
9 Mageto’s Magnetic Attraction While Magneto’s powers are no laughing matter,
over the years, he’s been imbued with a few extra skill sets pertaining to his magnetism
that have left a few readers rolling their eyes in bafflement.
Magneto is one of the best baddies ever written, a villain with a point, who can not only conduct
extreme amounts of chaos like rising a whole stadium up into the air, but can also mess
with the iron in your blood to knock you out, or even, if you’re wolverine, rip your skeleton
out of your body.
Brutal stuff.
So why on earth someone would think, hey, we should give Magneto a new trick is beyond
us.
That seems to be the case in volume 1 of X-Men, issue 18, where he literally says this: “Gaze
into my eyes!
Now you cannot turn away!
You are held by magnetic attraction!”
And no my friends, that isn’t a cute play on words as far as our pal Erik is concerned.
He once tried it on Blob and discovered the mutant had a mental block.
As you can imagine, that ability faded into obscurity pretty darn quick.
8 Hindsight Lad Carlton LaFroyge is a somewhat sad individual.
He would learn that his neighbor Robbie Balwin was the superhero speedball during an accident
where their building was engulfed in Darkling’s Darkforce.
Being a misfit, Carlton threatened to reveal Robbie’s identity unless he let him join
the New Warriors.
Speedball begrudgingly agreed, and Carlton became known as Hindsight Lad; a dude whose
costume consisted of a helmet that had two car review mirrors attached to its sides.
Despite not having any real powers, he turned out to be an asset, being helpful on a management
front and with his computer whiz abilities, and designed strategies for the team.
He would eventually leave the team, giving up the life of a hero, becoming a self-proclaimed
Marvelologist, a reclusive paranoid period of his life during Civil War.
So really, no powers, just a knack for research and strategizing, and had a persona that made
zero sense.
Hindsight?
Not very helpful in matters of life or death, y’know?
7 Dinah Soar Oh boy, this one’s a real gem.
This is Dinah Soar, whose name is a pun, in case you needed confirmation on that front.
She first appeared in West Coast Avengers issue 46 in 1989, as a member of the team,
and was born in the Savage Land, hence why she’s a terrifying humanoid dinosaur.
She doesn’t speak English, so we never found out whether or not her origins were extraterrestrial
or not, or if she was merely a mutant.
Why does she find herself on this list?
Well, despite her horrific appearance, she has the ability of empathic calming; a power
she would often use on the team’s leader Mr Immortal.
Aside from that, she doesn’t appear to age, and she can project waves of sonic force and
fly around cause she’s basically a humanoid pterodactyl.
6 Tar Baby Keeping on with the weird superheroes here,
let’s take a look at a mutant whose powers are equally strange as they are gross.
In at number 6, we have tar baby.
Tar Baby is a morlock, a community of mutants who lived beneath New York thanks to the extreme
nature of their mutations.
He lived a pretty tragic life, having survived the mutant massacre and returning to live
in the underground tunnels after a stinit with X-Factor.
He was eventually killed by the Weapon X Program at their Neverland facility in Weapon X volume
2 issue 5.
So what can Tar Baby do, aside from potentially having a name that could be correlated with
an offensive racial depiction of black people in the past?
Well, he has the ability to cover his body with a black adhesive substance that looks
a whole lot like tar.
It seeps through the pores of his skin, and objects will permanently stick to him on contact.
As you can imagine, that doesn’t help much when attempting to live life day to day.
Sure, he can scale walls, but he’s constantly getting junk stuck to him, hence his raggedy
appearance.
5 Goldballs Goldballs is so weird you guys.
He is a hero whose body spews gold balls – not made of actual gold, but an unknown substance,
which is kind of gross.
And his body can reabsorb said balls.
Okay, let’s backtrack here for a sec.
Goldballs debuted in Uncanny X-Men volume 3 issue 1, in 2013.
He first attempted a robbery in San Diego, and the police tried to arrest him for it,
until Cyclops and the X-Men intervened.
Goldballs is a mutant, whose real name is Fabio Medina, and he can project gold coloured
balls of varying sizes at high speeds from any part of his body.
He can summon an infinite number of them, and if he concentrates enough, he can project
them in a specific area rather than spew em out randomly.
And he generally reabsorbs them, but if he’s calm and focused enough, he can cause them
to disappear altogether.
So where do they go?
And what are they made of?
Are they part of his body?
So many questions.
At least compared to some of the other heroes on this list, Goldballs’ balls (oh god)
are at least useful.
Sometimes.
4 Daredevil Feels Colours Daredevil is yet another character on our
list that has a great set of powers, but has received a few add-ons over the years that
are questionable at best.
Daredevil has sometimes been depicted as being able to sense colours by feeling an object.
It was something that was featured in his very first issue, where he straight up says
this while sewing, “I can even blend the colours, for each coloured fabric has a different
feel to me!”
As you can imagine, that little trick faded into obscurity for a while, but somehow found
its way back into his Murdoch’s panels in Daredevil issue 60, where he disguises himself
as some next dude by duplicating his hair colour; something he manages to pull off with
some chemicals he’s been randomly carrying around in his pocket.
Here he says, “maybe I can only feel colour, not see it, but a few hip-picket chemicals
will darken my hair colour to match his!”
Hip pocket chemicals?
Yikes.
3 Gin Genie Gin Genie, aka Beckah Parker, was one of the
members of the X-Force’s reality TV iteration.
The super powered mutant group was made up of a bunch of misfits, including her, with
the majority of them having really absurd powers.
Gin Genie is no different; as her name suggests, her abilities are tied to alcohol consumption.
She can generate powerful seismic vibrations.
But here’s the kicker.
Those seismic vibrations are proportionate to the amount of alcohol she consumes.
If she mixes her alcohol, she can produce dangerous tremors.
It doesn’t help that Beckah was also an abusive alcoholic, who would often aim her
seismic waves at her own teammates.
2 Longneck Longneck is definitely one of the more obscure
characters on our list.
He’s a mutant who had a slightly longer neck than normal.
Seriously, that’s it.
While he was helpful to Cyclops back when the befuddling character Xorn went on a rampage,
Longneck aka William Hanover didn’t really do much of anything else.
He attended Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
And when M-Day came around, he was depowered.
But here’s where it gets real tragic.
Or hilarious, depending on your brand of humour.
When all of the mutants were depowered, his neck, which extended up to 6 feet in length,
snapped when he was trying to revert back to normal, ultimately killing him.
Yep.
Moving on.
1 Zeitgeist Zeitgeist aka Axel Cluney was the leader of
the X-Statix team when it was initially called X-Force.
This version of the team was a ‘celebrity superhero team’, who generally fought in
glorified publicity stunt battles.
Axel wasn’t the nicest of fellows; along with Coach, the team’s manager of sorts,
he had planned to have the rescue mission of a boy band at an event go sour, with an
accident occurring that would kill more than half the team so they could replace the members.
Zeitgeist was meant to be one of the only characters who survived, but the scheme went
haywire, and it resulted in his death, with his body being split in two and his guts spewing
out.
Speaking of spewing though, let’s talk about his powers.
Everyone on this iteration of the X-Force team had questionable or comical abilities
to an extent, and Axel is no different.
His mutation allowed him to spew acidic vomit from his mouth.
He wore a protective mouthpiece both in and out of his costume in order to prevent himself
from getting vomit on himself, made out of an unknown material that was plastic-like
in nature, but more resistant.
His puke could burn through 10 cm of steel in less than 30 seconds, which yeah, is impressive,
but still incredibly nasty.
There we have it friends!
Now it’s your turn!
Tell us - What other Marvel characters, heroes or villains, have powers you think are ridiculous?
Let us know in those comments below!
If you dug this video, you guys know what to do – spread the love, hit that like button,
and be sure to subscribe to top 10 nerd for more lists on Marvel characters.
We even have a nifty little playlist for you floating around your screen, so go give it
a click!
In the meantime, thanks for watching!
Catch you all in the next video,