The Justice League is the cream of the crop when it comes to DC superheroes.
The team is made up of some of the most iconic and powerful superheroes to ever grace the
panels of mainstream comic books, and combined, their abilities are nothing short of impressive.
But not all of the powers these heroes possess are easy to comprehend or wrap your head around.
Some of their abilities are slightly baffling, and a bit difficult to follow.
So today, we’re taking a closer look at that with our list of the top 10 justice league
super powers no one understands.
We’ll be focusing on abilities that are innately perplexing, but also on abilities
that these heroes have that, in the past, have been the victim of retconning, or just
a lack of detail, thus creating confusion amongst readers.
So with that in mind, let’s get to it!
10 Inter Dimensional Travel – The Flash Complex powers!
Yay!
The Flash’s second iteration in the form of Silver Age baby Barry Allen tends to take
laws of science and twist em, making them arguably inconceivable in our real world,
but really neat to see on the panels of DC’s comics.
But of course, that lends itself to be a tad confounding.
Such is the flash’s inter dimensional travel powers.
According to the comics, The flash can vibrate his body at a molecular level, which allows
him to transfer himself between dimensions.
Initially, this was something that could only be achieved by his cosmic treadmill, but in
later years he gained the ability to do this himself by increasing the intensity and speed
of his vibrations.
To make things a little more complicated, adjusting those two factors acts as a means
for a lot of the things Barry can do, but more on that in a bit.
9 Talking to Fish – Aquaman While Aquaman’s ability to communicate with
aquatic life has long been the butt of many jokes aimed at DC’s king of Atlantis, there’s
actually been some major retconning over the years when it comes to how the scope of this
ability and how it is defined.
For example, in the new 52, in the first issue of Aquaman, Arthur Curry is chilling at a
restaurant when he’s mildly harassed by other customers there, who make a point of
saying that everyone knows Aquaman talks to fish.
Arthur does not hesitate to clear this up, noting that “fish don’t talk.
Their brains are too primitive to carry on a conversation.
I reach into their midbrains and telepathically push them to help me out.
Squids, sharks, eels, it’s all the same.
Though dolphins are another story.”
Many of the jokes surrounding Aquaman (primarily spawned from the Super Friends cartoon of
the past) were dealt with head on by Geoff Johns, and it was actually a pretty solid
start to the aquatic hero’s new 52 comic.
Now let’s flash forward to Justice League Aquaman Drowned Earth special 1, and Justice
League issue 11, more recent rebirth comics.
DC starting exploring ‘grander concepts’, and similar to Barry Allen’s speed force
connection, Arthur Curry has a connection to something called the Life Force, which
apparently, according to Scott Synder, could suggest that Aquaman might have the ability
to communicate with all life.
And yes, that’s still pretty confusing, especially when DC has noted that they haven’t
changed his powers, but rather, want to expand the meaning of them.
8 Plot Armour – Batman Alright, hear us out on this one my friends.
Batman has this uncanny ability to always manage to defeat foes who, objectively speaking,
could straight up murder him five times over.
This is because the caped crusader is ALWAYS prepared.
This is plot armour; it’s a term that refers to a character’s unusual ability to survive
infinite damage due to their importance to the story.
And who isn’t more important than Batman?
(Sure you could argue Superman, but hey, the duo are pretty darn special and arguably the
most iconic superheroes of all time).
Anywho, just take a look at Batman’s history and it’s easy to see.
Hell, look at the tower of Babel story; Batman, being the paranoid and hyper intelligent individual
he is, literally came up with a plan to stop every single super powered peer of his on
the justice league JUST IN CASE one of them lost their sh*t and turned bad.
He’s obsessive, but he also rarely is outdone because of it.
And he’s arguably one of the only heroes who are a match for the man of steel, despite,
you know, not having any super powers whatsoever.
Money and brains don’t count.
7 Electromagnetic Spectrum – Martian Manhunter Similar to our previous Flash number, here
we have a sophisticated ability that occasionally goes over some readers heads.
And hey, not criticizing; scientific logic in comic books is VERY different than the
laws reality follows.
Martian Manhunter, who will be making another appearance on this list a little later on,
is a complex character.
Yes, he’s a green martian from Mars, but he’s also a being who has a plethora of
powers, some of which are a little difficult to wrap your head around.
J’onn J’onzz is capable of seeing across the electromagnetic spectrum.
What on earth does that entail?
So, you know how Superman has that nifty x-ray vision of his?
Think of this as a ridiculously amped up version of that.
Nick named Martian Vision, it allows J’onn to not only use x-ray vision, but to see infrared,
ultraviolet, and microwave wavelengths.
While we don’t entirely know how this is visually represented to the Martian (there’s
yet to be a proper POV panel featuring this in DC’s comics, or at least that we know
of), but we can imagine it would share some similarities to how the Predators in Predator
see other kinds of heat signatures or wave lengths.
Speaking of characters with vast skill sets, that brings us to our next number-
6 Shazam – All of his Powers Shazam is one of those characters whose befuddling
history often leads to those less familiar with the hero getting confused with the full
range of his powers, and also, not getting him confused with Captain Marvel.
So, for starters, if you were unaware, Shazam used to be called Captain Marvel back when
the character was owned by Fawcett Comics; the original publisher who created Billy Batson
back in the Golden Age.
Back then, if he said the word Shazam, he would be transformed from a boy to a grown
man with super powers.
DC would eventually buy the rights to Fawcett properties after DC basically sued them for
the character being too similar to Superman.
By that time, Marvel had already published their Captain Marvel, so DC changed the character’s
name to Shazam moving forward.
If that wasn’t confusing enough, let’s take a look at his abilities now – Shazam,
the magic word, is also the name of the wizard who gave Billy his powers.
And it’s also an acronym for what his powers do, made up of the names and abilities of
six immortal elders.
First there’s Solomon, who gives him his wisdom.
Then there’s Hercules, who gives him his strength.
Atlas, who is stamina and invulnerability, Zeus which gives him immortality, electricity
generation and manipulation, power over lightning, basically all things electric.
Next up is Achillies, who gives him his will power and superhuman durability.
And lastly, Mercury, who gives him his speed and flying abilities.
All in all, there’s a lot going on there.
And it would be easy to see how some of those abilities would be confusing to some, especially
when there’s that common belief that Shazam is basically Superman but goofier (he kind
of is, to be fair).
5 Green Lantern – Create Kryptonite Green Lantern’s ring can do a whole lot
of stuff aside from creating light constructs.
It can store a whole lot of crap, including a whole planet.
But that’s not the ring’s ability we’re focusing on today, despite how silly that
may seem to some.
In 1999’s Superman Man of Tomorrow issue 13, Green Lantern busts out a brand new trick
that seems like a deus ex machina of sorts; Superman was on a rampage, and Martian Manhunter
used his telepathy to read the formula for kryptonite from Superman’s mind (yep, keep
following me here), and THEN sent that formular to Green Lantern Kyle Rayner to duplicate
it as a means of fighting the man of steel.
Supes managed to evade the attack, but it still felt a little extra, almost devaluing
the rarity of kryptonite as an organic material.
4 Boom Tube Creation – Cyborg For starters, Boom Tubes are already mildly
confusing.
Let’s begin with that.
Boom Tubes are an extra-dimensional point to point Einstein Rosen bridge that are typically
opened by a Mother Box and used as a means of transportation primarily by residents of
Apokolips and New Genesis.
While often opened by a mother box, there’s a handful of heroes out there capable of opening
them.
One of which is Cyborg.
The New 52 version of Cyborg altered the hero’s origin slightly, by having parademons invade
STAR labs after Victor was converted into his cybernetic self.
After arguing with his father about what he had been transformed into, he chased down
a parademon as saved a woman on the street from it.
But in the process, he absorbed something from a parademon; boom tube technology, which
allows him to transport himself or other individuals.
All in all, it’s an ability that felt tacked on.
3 Kryptonian Coma – Superman Oh the Death of Superman.
My absolute FAVOURITE STORY ARC EVER.
That was sarcasm, people, in case you didn’t pick up on the obvious.
Fans of this channel know I have major beef with this arc; every time it comes up in a
video, I go on and on about how terrible it was, how it pretty much ruined the concept
of death in mainstream comics, and how it was all a big sham for DC to pull in a bunch
of extra dollars.
Long story short, and skipping over some hilariously bad and nonsensical plot points here – Doomsday
comes to Earth, he and Superman engage in what can only be called a punching match to
see who can punch harder, they punch each other to death at basically the same time,
and both are believed to be dead but turns out, SURPRISE, neither is.
The problem is, a whole long and painfully tedious story event was drawn out of Superman’s
death, which a bunch of dollar store superman replacements, and a side story where Green
Lantern turned homicidal.
It’s then revealed that Superman wasn’t dead after all, causing thousands of DC fans
to distrust the publisher for being dragged along for no reason!
He was merely in a Kryptonian coma, which apparently makes it look like he’s dead,
with no pulse, no breathing, you name it.
So everyone in the story was like whoa superman, thank god you’re not actually dead!
You pulled a fast one on us with that power of yours that makes zero sense but okay!
Perhaps this number is more baffling than confusing, being something that felt so far-fetched
rather than a reasonable plot point.
It’s all about that money grab.
2 Quantum Tunneling – The Flash Quantum tunneling is just a fancy name for
phasing.
It’s the Flash’s ability to vibrate at such a high speed and at such a high intensity
that he can pass through solid objects.
And here’s where it gets real fun and bewildering; in the New 52, in the flash issue 3, Flash
depicts the ability to transfer his quantum tunneling to objects that he touches.
He phases a whole airplane through a bridge.
Scientifically, we’re not even going to try to explain how this is possible.
We just know that he becomes practically invisible, and in order for this to work, he needs to
calculate the frequency of his vibrations or else it could get really messy.
Like phasing through an object half way.
It’s also a power that has varied amongst different iterations of the flash, with Barry
Allen seemingly having a better grasp over it than Wally West.
1 9 Senses - Martian Manhunter Human beings have 5 senses.
Martian Manhunter?
He’s got nine of em.
Aside from being a concept that’s strenuous to comprehend, we can’t help but be slightly
perplexed by what on earth (or Mars, rather) all of those senses possibly do.
It almost seems like a completely made up ability that DC threw into the character’s
skill set just for the fun of it.
So out of the 9, 5 are the ones we humans have, but the extra four have never been fully
defined in the comics.
There’s a fan theory that one of his 9 senses is a precognitive one; in his early days,
the character exhibited precognitive abilities.
Regardless, J’onn’s nine senses tops our list simply because there is no possible way
for us to understand them, simply because they’ve never been explained to us.
All we can do is speculate.
We know that Martian Vision isn’t considered to be one of them.
And thanks to JLA Year One issue 6, we know that if his eyes were removed, he would still
have the other 8 senses, meaning the additional four have nothing to do with vision.
But, luckily, thanks to Jack Kirby, there is reason to believe that those 4 senses are
chopped up to abilities he was shown as having in Detective Comics issue 226, in his second
appearance.
Those include telepathy, telekinesis, empathic precognition, and molecular hypnosis, although
these tend to be listed as separate powers of his these days compared to being one of
the nine senses.
Oh boy.
Alright there we have it friends!
What other justice league heroes have powers that have baffled you in the past?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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