How to be a superhero

[ciphergoth]

Assume you have the wealth of Bruce Wayne, and in addition are supremely fit, deadly in the use of a variety of weapons and martial arts, and cunning in the extreme. What do you need in addition to be a superhero?

How about some combination of a personal jetpack, armour suit and powered exoskeleton?

(ISTR asking this before, but personal jetpacks have improved since then :-)

Comments

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

The luck of the Gods, because you have to be lucky all the time, though one of your opponents has to be lucky just once. Personally, I suspect that even with all those devices and the Bruce Wayne fortune 18 months would be considered a very long career for a vigilante thug in a spandex catsuit.

I've always thought it difficult to see what non-magic superheroes could actually do to fight crime (rather than causing it). Who tells them that Baron von Evil and Bill Sykes are going to hold up Barclay's? Hanging round dodgy areas picking on people they didn't like the look of sounds more likely.

BTW, a rocket jetpack would be very you - can just imagine you using it to zap on to the terrace with something that had been left downstairs.


Soph

[skx.livejournal.com]

I've always thought it difficult to see what non-magic superheroes could actually do to fight crime

I've thought the same. So many crimes are non-obvious to people nearby (or they wouldn't be happening) or are over very quickly unless you're nearby. (ie. Banking fraud, and armed robbery/handbag snatching).

Batman only keeps going because he has very visible foes to fight like the joker.

Spiderman does fairly well, but he again has a visible foe to fight each time. Sure he might swing by randomly and stop an armed robbery, but for a millionaire in the real world by the time he heard there was a robbery in progress (via a police scanner?) it would be over.

The only settings where I can see an obvious superhero-type doing well is in randomly violent settings like Mad Max, or Sin City.

[meico.livejournal.com]

I always thought SpiderMan was one of the few plausible superheroes because he had a power that could explain why he could always find crime: his spidy sense.

The only thing you really need is a crime detector... Otherwise all your other devices are for naught.