So I was thinking back to when I was a little kid and I, like every 7 year old boy in America, got up in the morning and watched superhero cartoons before and after school. Back then, being a superhero was pretty much awesome-- you thought up something great the superhero could do, and then made them go out and go to town on bad guys. Problem is, an invincible superhero is boring. If the superhero isn't challenged by anything, that superhero sucks to watch, and fighting crime becomes easier than mowing the lawn. So the superhero needs a weakness. But that's where you have to strike a delicate balance. If the superhero's weakness is something farfetched, the superhero looks absurd. If it's something that's easy to get, the superhero becomes a joker who anyone can beat up on. And if the superhero can only be harmed by something that's next to impossible to get, then the superhero is, again, pretty much invincible. So here are some superheroes that, in retrospect, sucked.
1. Captain Planet-- Captain Planet had a few important things wrong with him. First, he was blue and had green hair. That sucks. He looked like a sick frog with a green flat top. That immediately makes him a disaster. Second, he wore a red bra with sleeves and a speedo. With a belt. Now, I could care less if a superhero is gay or not, but your superhero should look like he's about to go to work on polluters, not like a member of the blue man group out at a gay club. Third, his weakness was pollution. Pollution? Really? Superman was harmed by kryptonite. Batman occasionally struggled against super-strong and super-smart bad guys. Captain Planet... keeled over when you threw an empty can of potato chips at him. My little sister could take him if you gave her a can of gasoline. And I don't even have a little sister.
2. Cyclops from the X-Men-- Cyclops should be pretty sick. He can shoot energy out of his eyes, which should be a great power. Except that in every single episode of X-Men, Cyclops got beat down. It was like watching Riddick Bowe box at the end of his career-- first round KO every fight. And he wasn't much better in the movies. First, the frog dude ripped off his stunner shades and made him blow a hole in Grand Central Station, and then his girlfriend killed him by... kissing him. Which was all well and good, since, like any woman with any taste, she preferred Wolverine anyway. But the "leader" of the younger X-Men should still, you know, win the occasional fight. Which brings me to...
3. Professor X from the X-Men-- Alright, I know this one is a little controversial. The Professor is the leader of the X-Men. He's supposed to be the world's most powerful mutant (or one of them). He can kill people by thinking about them. He can manipulate people's minds. But you know what he can't do? Walk. Seriously, I'm all for superheroes having some weakness and all, but a superhero who can make Sabertooth do the safety dance on command should also probably, you know, figure out how to use his super-powered brain to make his legs work. Or at least to make himself levitate. Instead, he rolls around in a wheelchair. And not even one of those regular wheelchairs where people use their arms to move themselves, but one of the Stephen Hawking wheelchairs that you use when you have no functional limbs. So, I'm sorry, Professor X is pretty soft. Thought control and all, any superhero who can be thrown off his game by 1) tipping over his wheelchair, or 2) Jean Grey deciding to turn him into a human hand grenade just isn't gonna cut it.
4. He-Man-- So if I'm going to call out Captain Planet for dressing like a drag queen, He-Man's gotta make the list, too. He-Man has the advantage of not wearing a bra. And his Speedo doesn't come with an attached belt. But he DOES dress like a male stripper. And while Captain Planet's flat-top would be legit if he were black instead of blue, He-Man has the same haircut as Peppermint Patty from "Peanuts". Which is super soft. Then you've got the biggest problem-- He-Man is hard. Don't believe me? Check out this pic. http://images.wikia.com/entertainment1/images/e/ea/Heman.jpg. There's very clearly a shadow on the top half of his Speedo, but not the bottom. Which, all things told, makse him look more like a rapist than a superhero.
5. Zordon from Power Rangers-- Now, maybe he's not technically a superhero. He's more like the guy who sits around in his workstation and tells the Power Rangers what to do. But they do mention that he used to be a wizard who beat up on the bad guys before there were Power Rangers. But he's got two strikes going against him: 1) Beating up on the bad guys in that show had to have been like bowling if you were the bowling ball. It was cool to see them chase around bad guys on giant robots and all but, let's be real honest, the villains all walked around like they were on their 13th drink and strugglign not to keel over. A little push, and they'd go tumbling over. And Rita was an angry witch who, constant anger fits aside, really didn't bring much of anything to the table. Yeah, she had a disco stick that made her drunk monsters grow into bigger drunk monsters, but, as far as I could tell, that was all she could do. So how she managed to get Zordon stuck in a goldfish tank for thousands of years with only an OCD robot with a UFO-shaped head for company, I have no clue. But somehow, she did. And in the Power Rangers movie, when the bad guy breaks into Zordon's house and fries Alpha, instead of fighting back, Zordon... gets taken out of his dunk tank and gets stuck shivering under a blanket like a crack addict. Or Benjamin Button, age 3. And this guy's supposed to protect Earth from... anything?
I guess that's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll think of more.
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