So, I watched the Superman vs Batman trailer 3 the other night and I wanted to look up some of the justice league members because I wasn't really clear on a lot of them and what they could do and after reading up on many of them I noticed something: most of them have a ton of super powers.

I grew up on Marvel. I watched TV shows with Marvel characters and read a handful of Marvel comics.... so to see this vast difference in the 2 series was a bit of a shock. I'm used to characters like Wolverine who has basically 1 power (regeneration) along with his adamantium skeleton/claws. Cyclops is another example. He has the optic blast thing and that is basically it.

Yet in DC the characters seem to have multiple powers and nearly every character has at least 5+ powers listed. I read the Wiki so I'm not sure if these are all the powers these characters have ever had or what but it made no sense. Any single member of the Justice League seems to have the same abilities as the entire X-men group combined into 1 person. That just seems ridiculous to me.

Anyone else notice this? Thoughts? Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with DC for this to make any sense but it has bothered me since I started reading about DC heroes.

Its probably just a way for writers to attempt to capitalize on other series/characters by combining characters to create a new character instead of thinking up new characters. Perhaps even splitting up a character's powers to make multiple characters.

Its not necessarily a DC thing tho, cuz Batman has no super powers at all...unless you consider vast amounts of wealth a super power. xD

Vanelan : yeah, Batman is the obvious exception in that group but the rest of them seem to all have a ridiculous number of powers (in DC that is).

It just makes sense to me that the X-men all have DIFFERENT powers and not a bunch of people with a bunch of overlapping powers but different weaknesses.

I dunno, just seems like a strange thing to me.

Yeah, I found it ridiculous. I'm not a huge fan of Super hero comic strips just because of how powerful some of them were made out to be. Spiderman however, I always enjoyed. I liked how Peter Parker had only a certain number of powers, like webbing, senses, and super strength- other than that? Heh, one bullet, and he could be killed! He's not made of steel like Super man, but he could take a beating. Spiderman also had a lot of relatable personal problems, which a lot of people looked up to him for. Simply because of how he dealed with them.

I think that Spiderman is a good balance of how a hero should be made, and even the X men.

I never liked it when Super heroes were made to be God powerful or something. Takes away the stress and ruins the realism. Well. . . if there was any realism involved. XP

Sword legion : Spiderman is another good example. He had a combination of powers that made sense but they weren't excessive. He also was just a normal guy.

Like I said, the heroes and villains of Marvel just seem more real to me than in DC and Spiderman and the villains from his comics are another good example of this.

It is true that most of the top-tier DC heroes are a little ridiculous in terms of powers and abilities, but lets not forget about some of the Marvel characters here. You have Thor, who pretty much has the capacity to oneshot the rest of the team if need be, and may even be a match for most of the Justice League members. Hulk is nearly unkillable, and is implied to have no limit to his physical strength. Deadpool is cursed to be completely immortal and unkillable. Squirrel Girl, who's more of a joke character, has taken on Marvel behemoths such as the Juggernaut and Doctor Doom and won... Then there are the godlike-tier of the Marvel universe, such as Galactus, Phoenix and the Living Tribunal, who are literally gods. No comic universe is without its ridiculously overpowered characters, ans some go even further than Superman.

Sewaddle : Thor is still limited to only a handle of powers though just like Hulk. Deadpool may be unkillable but that doesn't make him powerful.

I've never heard of squirrel girl honestly.

As for the godlike characters - all are pretty much side characters and not the MAIN characters of the entire comic universe.

I agree that there are characters with more power than Superman. That's not my issue. My issue is with the main characters of each series being so unequal in power in general.

Yeah, for the most part DC heroes were very super powered.
I mean look at their lead! Superman's powers can basically be summed up by "the power of Deus ex Machina

They tried to balance it out by making morality, rather than ability, the main challenge these heroes faced.
Still though, I agree they aren't really relateable. Even Batman is difficult to relate to.

Still, having a lot of powers doesn't make it impossible to relate to a character.
For example, I could relate to Spawn even though he had more powers than even he realized.
His was a story of revenge and anger threatening to corrupt him.
Heck his powers were given to him by Malebolgia, who is essentially Satan.

Still, Spawn managed to find his humanity, and use his powers to fight back against the forces that try to corrupt him and the world.
His story was of a man trying to hold onto to the goodness inside in the face of the horrors around him.
He embraced the dark power yes, but he used it to effect positive change. To break, and change the destiny laid out for him as the General of Hells army.

While of course most people can't relate in full, the story of not allowing the darker parts of herself take control, and rather controlling them is one I think a lot of people can get behind. Often as well, I think many people (including me) feel events and occurrences in their history have set them down a dark path. A story about a man escaping that dark destiny can be inspiring.

While Spawn had more powers than he could count, he made mistakes, he slipped, and he learned from the past.
I think the problem with DC heroes is that they are either the pinnacle of virtue, or they slip and become baby eating levels of evil. I don't think it has anything to do with the Super Powers.

This is the problem I have with the DC Universe in general. All of the characters in it are ridiculously overpowered with the exception of the caped crusader. Superman alone can prove my point.

He is without a doubt the single most powerful being written into comic book existence. If not the most powerful superhero for sure. His power is literally limitless so long as he has the sun. Take the whole concept of Batman fighting Superman even in the comic books. It's completely absurd. In reality Superman can knock Batman out half a mile away before Batman can even pull anything out of his utility belt or even move to the side. It's calculated that his average top speed is over 80,000,000 mph. He also carried the earth around while fighting Wonder Woman. Let that sink in for a bit. If he was written as god like as he is brought out to be there wouldn't even be a story for him half the time because his fights would be over in a second. He's conveniently weak when he needs to be and absurdly strong the next time around. A prime example would be when he fought Doomsday and "died" and then the next time around he used his heat vision to vaporize and army of Doomsdays and was only tired afterwards -.-. If anyone has read the comic where he spent 10 minutes in the sun and emerged as a god would know what I'm talking about. At least it's not like pre-crisis when they would make up random powers on the spot like wall rebuilding vision....

Another example would be the Flash. He is probably the second most overpowered character in the DC Universe. He runs much faster than time so no one should even be able to hit him. Villains like Captain Cold shouldn't even be a thing. This picture can probably sum it up better than me.

So in short the DC Universe is filled with characters that are too powerful which in turn makes them extremely boring. It's basically the reason why I only read Batman comics from DC. Don't get me wrong though there are great stories out there like Injustice. However this would be another example where the series probably should have bee over past year 1 or year 2. Superman with a yellow ring? Who thought that would be a good idea?

I could also go on about how Batman vs Superman is going to be such a horrible film and not for the reasons stated above but I think I'd be going off topic.

I'm really passionate about this stuff, sorry =p.

Blubcreator : thank you for this! I'm not familiar enough with some of the actual stuff from comics to be able to describe some of these things accurately like you did. This was just something I observed from reading the wiki.

It's good that other people realize how ridiculous DC characters are.

I heard about it but didn't bother to see the trailer of it. I also grew up with marvel. And I don't think its the best to do a vs film with someone from dc because as most have said its ridiculous. What are they trying to do? Gain more publicity by doing this? I seriously don't understand when people do this. To be honest I didn't like much of marvel vs dc games. Because I didn't really enjoy it. I am sure some people will like it which will baffle me to how they won't see this as a problem. The film will be horrendous indeed that's all I can say. Filmmakers nowadays don't think about how the film should be now and only do things based on popularity and what they think will give them more fame instead of doing the old way. Things are not really fair now. As I know with dc there are powerful people. And it seems things are not equal as it should be. :/

I like to watch both DC and Marvel because of the story lines but more often than not I find DC just destroying what could material they have. (Wonder Woman being a feminist turn man's lady back to feminist; Superman's Home Planet being not destroyed, which was the whole foundation of SM being on Earth and Kryptonite also being found on Earth). Although I always like Moon Knight.

Marvel on the other hand, even though they back write too, always seem to make their stories interconnect and are careful not to destroy the central point, no matter how bad it gets later on.

I agree with you on the power parts. Marvel focuses more on the humanity than DC. All their superheroes (except Thor)  were once just normal humans which either (A) had a freak accident and gained a power (B) were a test subject of cruel human improvement tests or (C) normal everyday joes who utilized there normal human skills to the greatest (Tony Stark, Hawkeye, Black Widow).

DC just explains things as: Alien, god/dess, exhaustible wealth.