For comic book enthusiasts: The worst super heroes

[Blazer]

I guess we all know our super hero classics, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Robin,Captain America, the Hulk, the lot. All of them heroic and poised, ready to help out where needed, saving the world from evil. But let's talk about the ones that fail to make the grade at being a super hero, either by lacking superpowers and gadgets or lacking the composition to be a real super hero.

First up, here's one of my favorites. I even use his name on a couple of Forums I'm a member of. Dragonball Z's The Great Saiyaman

Son Gohan, for the ones not familiar with the series, was in his mid teens when he started attending high school after having been home tutored for most of his childhood. While being in a different city, he discovered that that city was enormously crime infested and on three occasions used his Super-Saiyan powers to thwart criminal activities. But every time he did so he found out that people started talking about the "Golden Warrior" (when becoming Super Saiyan, Gohan's hair, normally black, turns in a bright golden color) so seeing that that city would need a hero and to keep people from recognising him as the "Golden Warrior" he had a costume made and as The Great Saiyaman went to fight evil. Saiyaman has super powers: he can fly, shoot beams of energy and has superhuman strength (He once saved an airliner that was going down by simply plucking it from the sky.) So what would make him a failed Super hero? The fact that Gohan is a nerd and performs a highly elaborate (and absurd) dance routine to announce himself when arriving at a scene of a crime, making it impossible to take him seriously. Add to the fact that when he's facing a female opponent, the fact that beneath his helmet hides a shy teenage boy comes into play, which is seen clearly in this clip.

Gohan is also a terrible liar, not being able to keep his secret identity a secret. as this clip shows.


Then there's the one that puts all of what Superheroes stand for to shame, from the little known series "Dr. Slump" Suppaman

Kent Clarke is a part time TV news reporter in a town called Penguin Village and is as you can tell A middle aged man with a sizeble gut. But when eating Umeboshi (Sour plums) he becomes Suppaman (litteraly: "Sourman")

Kent Clarke
Suppaman, doesn't wait for opportunities to fight for justice, rather he creates them. Like the one he's based on, he prefers phoneboxes to change in and if that phone box happens to be occupied he clears it by throwing in a hand grenade. Hand grenades are also used to generate emergencies in which he can play the hero. As for superpowers, Suppaman has none. He rides along lying on his belly on a skateboard pretending to be flying. Suppaman's greatest achievement was when he cleared all the fish from a river in an efford to save them from drowning.

Suppaman in the German version of "Dr. Slump"

[gearHed289]

Star Child!

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I always thought Superman was corny - being invincible and then whimping out on green crytonite. What a do-gooder he is.  Robin was silly too - he looked gay (and not cool gay) before I even knew what that was. Captain America - without wishing to hurt patriotic feelings ... that shield was hilarious. Never dug the Fantastic 4 either, grumpy old Ben, the rubber man amd the flame guy was pretty much useless too, always felt it unfair that Dr Doom should regularly lose against that bunch of amateurs.

[Blazer]

Robin was silly too - he looked gay (and not cool gay)

Robin gay, I certainly wouldn't say so...

Batman and Robin are not gay, Batman has had the ladies around him a lot (Vicky Vale and Selina Kyle/Catwoman anyone?) and he has been all too happy to get out of his Batsuit for them. As for Robin/Dick Grayson/Nightwing, as all fans of "teen Titans" will tell you he and Starfire have a very warm (if not blisteringly hot) relationship and Robin/Tim Drake is seen in "Batman beyond" as happily married father of two. Old Batman comic simply shows how different morals from another era look today, getting your butt slapped was common practice in schools also (In Japan for example it still is) and look at Stan and Ollie sharing a bed in many movies of theirs but did anybody think twice about that?

EVERY superhero wears spandex, so what's the big deal? Okay the sixties TV series of Batman had some very Campy looks but certainly not as much as Freddie Mercury did display on stage. Adam West' portrayal of Batman was as a womaniser and that's true with how Bob Kane wanted him to be: a womanising rich guy who fosters a boy and raises him to be his successor. If Bruce Wayne was depicted slapping Dick Grayson's butt it's because it's a thing a father would do to his son when that son has been up to no good, slap some sense into him.

As for Robin, like I said before, Robin and Starfire are an item and it's mostly BECAUSE of Robin's outfit. Part of Starfire's attraction to Robin was the fact that he showed his legs. A man who's not afraid to flaunt what he's got and she liked that.

[uwe]

"EVERY superhero wears spandex, so what's the big deal?"

True, but then Robin (an adrogynous name if there ever was one) never did!

And he never had any hair on his legs, so he must have shaved them, which back then was definitely unmale (unless - as with Fräulein Rommel - you have audience expectations to live up to), just imagine Burt Reynolds being asked to play Robin! 

Pah, pics with women kissing him prove nothing, women have a habit of getting hooked on gay guys. (First they are attracted by overt personal hyghiene and then they can't handle the cause for it!)

Children prove nothing, who says fertility and attraction to the own sex don't go together.

And women always wear masks that still let them look pretty - just like Robin's!!! 

Plus he came from a circus and you know how circus artists are. Whether its animals or the own sex, who knows what goes on in those trailers?

I always felt that the Joker only wanted to kill him because he was one man that saw right through Little Yellow Riding Hood's hetero facade. Yes, in a way the Joker was a man of the Religious Right and ahead of his time.

But the issue with Robin wasn't that he is gay - it was that he wasn't upfront about it. Pics of him fisting the Batcave in Gayham City and putting the ole Batcuffs to more adventurous use, man that would have been something! 

Anyway, let's not speak ill of the dead. I understand that he deceased some time ago after Bat-o-philes voted on his permanent dismissal. May his pre-puberty hairless legs rest in peace.

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