It’s time for another week of comic insanity on Why are we thinking about this?
How does Superman fly?
So in the old days back at the origin of Superman, his powers weren’t as well developed as they are now. Back then, he mainly was invulnerable and super-strong. He couldn’t even fly, he was like the lame duck or penguin of super-heroes. What he could do though, was jump. Like really really high. Like Mario on steroids, hence the term; “leap tall buildings with a single bound”. He just ran and jump along the rooftops and at some point began to have the ability to fly around the world and turn back time somehow. But when he started to fly…no one can explain how he can fly. He doesn’t have propulsion coming from his feet or anything. Some people have stated that Superman has telekinesis which lets him fly like what Superboy has. But if he has enough telekinesis to fly like that, why not use it in combat? Alas, Superman’s flight is just something we always attributed to him without questioning.
How do superheroes swing from building to building in straight lines down the middle of the street?
Do me a favor. Take a rope, attach it to the side of a roof and see if you can swing forward in a straight line? And when you get out of the hospital tell me the answer even though I am fairly sure that you can’t. When people like Spider-Man and Daredevil shoot out their lines to swing to buildings, they always manage to swing in a straight line, often right inbetween buildings down the middle of the street. How is this possible? The only way that it can be done is if the place they attach their lines to a ledge or building directly above them.
How does Captain America’s shield bounce off stuff?
The shield is Captain America’s signature weapon, we’ve seen it do all sorts of things from it severing limbs in The Ultimates to cutting through robots to bouncing off concrete walls to whack multiple people in the head and knock them out. The thing that I wonder about is if this shield is hard and dense enough to smash through concrete walls at times, how does he manage to ricochet the shield off of anything? I mean whenever the shield is thrown, if it is so hard, when he throws it, it should either break through or get lodged into whatever he threw it at. Or even better, what if he misses a throw and the ricochet doesn’t return to him? Can you imagine Captain America calling a timeout because he missed someone and the shield went whipping 100 meters past the guy and he has to run over to retrieve it?
