Greetings nerdy list afficionads and welcome back to Top 10 Nerd.
I’m Sasha and today we’ve got an interesting one.
We’re going to be talking about super powers who has them and how much sense do they make.
There are some powers that are either a bit more conceptual than others or they just are
implemented in stories in such a way that they may be hard for new readers to grasp.
So today we’re going to take a look at a bunch with the caveat you may know how all
of these work in that case congratulate yourself on your comic prowess in the meantime we’re
going to take a look at the Top 10 Superheroes with powers nobody understands.
10 – Jubilee, poor jubilee so often the butt of some many x-men jokes and placed on
so many lists of most useless x-men or labelled as the one who shoots fireworks from her fingers.
In all fairness some of that came from the 90s animated intro where that was literally
her introduction.
(clip) and in the comics she does also call them this herself but because of the connotation
people have with fireworks they equated it to being harmless which not true fireworks
are far from harmless.
Jubilee first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #244 (May 1989) and her powers are more than
they appear at first glance in reality she generates pyrotechnic energy plasmoids from
her hands and they are far from random she has mental control over them and can send
there where she wants and have them explode on command.
She can also control the intensity they can either be bright flashes of light just designed
to disorient or they can be powerful blasts that can destroy things and cause damage.
She can also target the inside of a human brain and cause a stroke and afterwards she
reabsorbs the energy into herself.
It was revealed by emma frost that jubilee actually has a lot of untapped potential and
could maybe one day detonate her energy at a subatomic level which would create mass
destruction.
So she’s one of those secretly really powerful mutants so watch out.
We’re also just talking about her as regular jubille not vampire jubilee or wondra.
Number 9 - Domino – Now since the release of 2018s Deadpool 2 more people are aware
of Domino and her luck powers but what are they actually cause depending upon the writer
even they don’t seem to know exactly how to implement them.
Domino made her first full appearance in X-Force #11 in June of 1992 and what her power really
is, is a subconscious psyionic ability to telekinetically effect the outcomes of probability
in her favour.
So she calls it luck but really it’s her manipulating her own environment with her
latent powers.
Her abilities are activated when she is in a stressful situation which in her line of
work boils down to essentially all the time.
However in order for these to work Domino has to actually be involved in what’s going
on she can’t just sit and alter things she’s not the scarlet witch.
As her abilities also impact how she must move in the environment so that means her
telekenisis impacts her reflexes and agility as well.
Causing her to appear enhanced, and does operate on a superhuman level because of all this.
There have been periods in time where she can control her abilties it really depends
on who’s writing her.
Number 8 - Matter Eater Lad – Now you may be saying these powers seem pretty simple
he eats matter it’s right there in the name, and yes that is true what people have more
trouble with here is how exactly would these powers be useful at all?
He first appeared in 1962 in Adventure Comics #303.
Because of poisoning on his home world his people had to adapt to be able to consume
anything and yes they were from the planet bismoll as in pepto, hilarious.
The thing is yes he can eat anything but when is this useful is it for escapes, can he consume
maguffins.
It’s the kind of ability you need to work to get into a story and apparently most writers
felt that way as well because the character has largely disappeared Post infinite crisis
he’s been pretty absent in the dc universe and dark I say potentially not that missed.
I’m sure those who do miss him will let me know vehemently in the comments below.
Number 7 Squirrel Girl . Now let’s start this off by saying being on this list is not
a dig people get really defensive about Squirrel Girl.
Don’t even talk about her don’t even look at her who are we to breath her air she beat
doctor doom.
Squirrel girl was first introduced in Marvel Super-Heroes vol. 2 #8 in 1991 and at first
she was a bit of a joke character.
There’s actually a version that appears in a tick episode the animated series from
the 90s the tick vs education.
Which is a great episode ft Sarcastro.
But back to Marvel’s version over the years this character has grown to be an established
part of the marvel mythos and has been utilized in a variety of ways.
So her powers prehensile tail and buck teeth aside which are attributes and not abilities
but I digress as she did use them as a squirrel would when she first appeared.
She has the agility of a squirrel the claws of a squirrel retractable knuckle spikes about
3 inches long watch out wolverine and while she can communicate with squirrels which is
what most people remember she doesn’t do it telepathically instead she just understands
animal speech and they can understand her when she speaks English.
Overtime she had more abilities added heightened reflexes lips that atste like hazelnuts she
was a mutant then she wans’t one.
It’s a lot but now you know most important take away definitely the hazelnut lips.
Number 6 Hindsight Lad.
This is another one of those ones where would you need this, I mean I can think of one applicable
use if you were trapped in a timeloop and he was the person who remembered it.
So Hindsight lad is Carlton LaFroyge and he first appeared in New Warriors Annual vol.
1 #3 here’s the thing he doesn’t really have powers per se he’s just a skilled tactician
and he was a skilled researcher so he could look at situations that had passed and be
like this is what went wrong.
Like many people you too could be hindsight lad.
The reason he’s on here is because people think it’s a power like captain hindsight
from south park he flies in and is all Spider-Man you should have changed your we cartridge
before this battle but really it’s more he sits at a computer and replays things like
a football coach.
Yeah like matter eater lad he doesn’t get a lot of play time these days either.
Number 5 The Tick.
The tick has powers he says so all the time he’s nigh invulnerable but what does that
mean.
The tick was create3d by ben edlund and first appeared in New England Comics Newsletter
#14 (July/August 1986).
A parodyesque superhero the tick fights crime in the city.
And his strength is never fully defined in the comics he is full on an escaped mental
patient.
In the 2016 series he claims his strength is "ten, perhaps twenty men - a crowded bus
stop of men".
So when it comes to the nigh invulnerability it means it’s pretty much impossible to
hurt him seriously, he feels pain particularly in his antennae but the threshold is not consistent.
He can survive being hit by a train but depending on the issue villains can just knock him out.
He also has something called Drama power meaning he gets more powerful the more dramatic a
situation gets and with the tick you know it’s going to get mighty dramatic.
So in short his powers being perfectly defined is less important than the stories surrounding
them it is more of a comedic book after all.
Also give me your favourite animated ep mine is the tick vs comfort and shoutout to batmanuel
and die fleeter maus who I love equally.
Number 4 Karma.
Karma is one of the new mutants to have been created she first appeared in Marvel Team-Up
#100 (December 1980) and one can guess based on the name we’re getting into psionic and
empathic but it’s darker than her name would suggest.
Karma can possess animals and people and she doesn’t need to be close to them to do it.
So in short terrifying.
She projects psionic energy so that her consciousness overhwlems the hosts rendering it dormant
and then she can alter their perception, memories force them to fall asleep or give her information,
manipulate their bodies she used to only be able to this for a short time but she’s
gotten better.
She can now possess multiple people at once.
So no nothing to do with anything like oh if they were bad she causes bad luck for them
no just pure terror.
I can’t see these powers being used for good even on villains this just seems super
unethical unless all you do is go to sleep the trauma of her victims must be absolutely
enormous.
I’m scared of karma man terrified.
Number 3 – Cable so cable is pretty well known especially after Deadpool 2 introduced
him to the mainstream but sometimes his abilities get a little lost in his backstory and also
his appearance.
So Cable first appeared as cable in The New Mutants #87 (March 1990) he had appeared as
Nathan summers in The Uncanny X-Men #201 back in 1986.
He is the son of scott summers and Madelyn pryor the clone of jean grey who was sent
to be realised in the future and grew up in an era hunted by apocalypse his metal arm
is the result of a technorganic virus that is only kept from consuming him by his extremely
potent telekinetic powers.
He is also a telepath on top of this and an extremely powerful one.
These last two abilities can sometimes be glossed over or utilized in such a way that
for new readers it could be mistaken for tech.
At first he wasn’t as powerful cause he was fighting off the virus all the time but
as that receeded he is now pretty much on par with nate grey.
Why this is so confusing is that for a time he had lost his mutant abilities and was using
tech but then got his mutant powers back and this losing and gaining plot has been done
multiple times.
So this is less a question of how does it work and more a question of what era is it?
And what is going on.
Precognition but nothing else all his abilities virus no virus it’s a lot.
Number 2 Dazzler –So Dazzler is getting an animated series alongside Tigra so that
will be interesting Marvel is determined they will take Dazzler away from her roller skating
record company tie in origins.
Dazzler first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #130 in 1980 and initially a commission by
cassablanca records and was supposed to lead to a tie in film with bo derek that never
happened.
So dazzler is able to and I quote transduce sonic vibrations which reach her body into
various types of light.
This means she transforms the energy that reaches her into vibrations that can be mechanical
acoustic or thermal.
So Dazzler utilises her ability through music also that quote should really say leave her
body as light.
So She can pull the sound away from a person to recharge herself and she radiates light
at different frequencies as she so chooses but she has to pay attention otherwise she’ll
just be creating white flashes everywhere.
So how does she use her powers hypnosis anyone she can create a trance like state in people
and she has at her concerts to make people have a good time terffiying and it makes me
think maybe she can’t even sing.
Anyway she can also upset people’s balance generate a laser beams and fire them from
her fingers or eyes create a shield to deflect energy beams.
Sher herself cannot be blinded by light she can create holograms.
See there’s a reason galactus considered here for his herald.
I’m actually not done but we’d be here all day Dazzler can actually be utilised in
really interesting ways so there is potential there just they need to focus it cause that’s
a lot of a lot.
I think she needs a hologram of herself that performs while she fights crime like night
man.
I dunno I think Dazzler could be really cool, I can hear the comments now Dazzler is cool,
how dare you!
And Number 1 in the powers people don’t understand department.
Scarlet Witch.
So Wanda Maximoff first appeared in The X-Men #4 (March 1964) and at first her powers were
pretty vague they were hex powers.
She was a witch in name only though as her powers were mutant ones.
Her hexes specifically affected probability causing bizarre events to take place often
not in the favour of those she was fighting.
Over time she would gain control over these hexes but she was also trained in this by
a witch despite being a mutant.
This way she could now control mystic artifacts and she learned to wield magic on top of the
abilities she already had later writer Kurt Busiek would retcon her powers to say her
mutation was that she controlled chaos magic.
And then avengers dissembled happened and her powers were retconned again to realty
warping powers and this is what most people remember because this storyline was famous
and led to no more mutants and house of m the whole nine yards.
However, her powers have been retweaked to chaos magic or mutant magic.
The most recent edition is that she was born a witch and then the high evolutionary genetically
altered her to maker her more receptive to magic.
So I think why she’s on here is clear it won’t stop changing.
IT’s like wonder girls’ backstory.
So those were 10 super heroes with powers people don’t understand Who is a character
with powers you don’t understand or find just odd.
Let me know down below.
Thanks so much for watching…