Comics If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you have?

[aboleth_lich]

I pose to everyone on this forum that oh-so personal query that pop-culture obsessed geeks have pondered since the birth of superhero comics seventy-five years ago: If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you have?

My answer? I would want The Flash's super-speed, as the abilities it affords are far broader and more versatile than merely being able to span vast distances (including over water) at a lightning fast pace!

The Flash's super-speed also affords: quickly building and disabling things, creating powerful gusts and funnels, reading entire books in seconds, running so quickly that he can traverse the space-time continuum's barriers and travel to another time, and presumably even thinking far more quickly than those without super-speed powers so that he has more time to carefully weigh his words and actions during social interactions!

In addition to all of that, The Flash can moreover control the speed at which his very molecules vibrate, permitting him to also: become invisible, phase out and pass through solid objects and have solid objects pass through him, vibrate objects at their resonant frequencies to destroy them, and adjust his own resonant molecular frequency so that he can travel to such places as Gorilla City and the numerous alternative universes within DC's multiverse!

The broad array of abilities afforded by The Flash's make it far more appealing than more traditional answer like flight or invisibility, in my own personal opinion!

 

[Faemonic]

I'd like to be able to manipulate time. Freeze it, rewind it and try something new, or go to the future. Unfortunately, that has a whole lot of paradoxes attached to it that could drive me insane, but until that point I'll be sure to have a lot of fun!

Maybe telekinesis would be safer and more practical, though. Or something that only controls my own mind and my own body, like ghosting without the harsh prerequisites (what's it called? Astral projection?) or shapeshifting.

 

[bigbrain50]

Oh man, how about the power to make whatever I imagine become reality, even abstract things, like innate goodness, I could imagine Hitler being a great and benevolent leader and the holocaust would have never happened, or something like that. Imagine myself immortal and presto, I am immortal.

 

[EileenCruz]

I'm with you on the flash's super speed. I could get so much done. -_-

Second place is Wolverine's healing factor.

 

[JoshPosh]

I normally would pick superman based on the total package of power speed and invincability. However the flash is appealing to me more now that I think about it. He does has the ability to tap into the speed force that allows him to travel through time. Although, it's not safe to tamper with time. If you watched The Flash Point Paradox, you will understand why traveling through time has dire consequences.

But being able to move that fast to the point where you are invisible to everyone around would be cool.

 

[Nick]

I would like the power Professor X has in X-Men. Not only can he read minds, he can also at times manipulate time. I also wouldn't mind having Wolverine's powers. Not only is it awesome to have claws, but he can also regenerate!

And before you ask, yes, I am an X-Men fan!

 

[JessiFox]

Your answer is a compelling one...there are a lot of benefits to it. I've pondered this question an absolutely ridiculous number of times, and I'm sure younger me would have answered differently, but the only superpower I would truly love to have is the ability to heal others. Completely heal them, even of potentially fatal or terminal problems.

 

[ozadin]

Teleportation! It would be so convenient to go wherever, whenever. I could wake up 1 minute before work and still get there on time. I wouldn't have to spend any money on gas, or on public transportation money. I can do some evil deeds with my newly acquired superpower as well! Makes me a bit sad that it's impossible; at least for now.

 

[aboleth_lich]

I would still opt for The Flash's superspeed as my top choice, for the reasons outlined in the original post, but I have a somewhat interesting second choice that I swear I've only seen once:

I can't remember its title for the life of me, but I once saw a sci-fi show in which a man displayed a truly unique ability that I haven't seen elsewhere: he was able to simultaneously experience the lives lived by all of the alternative versions of himself from across the multiverse!

So, when pressed to solve a difficult puzzle, he simply had several alternative versions of himself go to work on the task and then the prime version of himself proceeded to implement the solution with ease.

I'm not quite sure what to call this power: Hyper-Multitasking? Feynmanian-Many-Path-Multitasking?

Certainly, one could also use The Flash's superspeed to also solve difficult tasks quickly and appear to be multitasking, or have the ability of Multiplex, Multiple Man, or Dr. Manhattan to create multiple copies of yourself to multi-task in the same universe (which would be my third choice), but I just thought that was neater and more sly than that.

 

[aboleth_lich]

Another superpower that always interested me was the ability to freeze time for everyone but one's self, so that one could have a time-out to strategize, manipulate objects to one's advantage before unfreezing time, make a quick getaway whilst everyone else is frozen, etc, etc, etc.

However, there's a major downside to that power that precludes me from putting it my Top Three: the person who uses that power will continue to age whilst time is frozen! For the perspective of everyone else, a person who abuses this power too frequently will appear to be rapidly ageing and will live a relatively short-life! One of The Simpson's Halloween specials had a particularly extreme example of this: Bart and Milhouse broke a watch that could freeze time and then spent the rest of their adolescence repairing it! From the perspective of everyone else, they suddenly aged many years in a single instance.

Granted, by virtue of Einstein's relativistic laws: time should occur at a different rate for super-speedsters like The Flash when they're running a speeds approaching the speed of light, and thus they should also appear to be ageing at a significantly different rate than people who can only run at entirely un-superhuman speeds! Relatively seems to be completely ignored by DC though, except in a few very rare, extreme, and specific instances when it suits the plot: namely The Flash's fate in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Johnny Quick's fate in the JLA: Crisis on Two Earths animated movie. (Moreover, according to Einstein: The Flash also shouldn't be able to actually reach, let alone exceed, light speed. Nor could he travel through time. Being fantasy though, I'm more than willing to let DC bend the rules of nature move than a tad from time-to-time!)