On superpowers in stories

I'm one of those weird people who are kind of obsessed with how superpowers are presented in stories. It's always fascinating to me how society reacts to people who can do shit like fire lasers out of their eyes. I have a couple stories that I want to talk about, and it's not going to be in any particular order, nor will there be any sort of theme intended. I'm just saying shit.

The first story I want to talk about is Superman Smashes the Klan. The story is interesting as a whole and you should check it out to get the full picture, but I want to focus on what Superman does. In the beginning of the story, it is made clear that Superman can't actually fly. He can "leap tall buildings in a single bound", but many of his powers simply are not available to him at the time. The beginning of the story also shows him being weakened by a Nazi supersoldier powered by Kryptonite. Over the course of the story, as he battles the Klan, he is plagued by visions of aliens that look nothing like him. We eventually find ourselves learning something massive: Superman has had his standard set of powers all along, but he simply did not use some of them because they would make him look less human. He wanted to appear to humanity not as an alien, but simply as a "super man". It is after he beats the Klan that he reveals these powers more properly. Superman's powers make him capable of doing things no one else can, but they also make him an other. It's been widely said that the most important part of Superman is Clark Kent, and I feel like the alien sun powers make him more scary alien Superman than corn-fed Kansas boy Clark Kent.

Another story that haunts me with its take on superpowers is My Hero Academia. Where comics tend to have superhumans as uncommon, MHA flips the script and has 80% of the world population have superpowers, or Quirks as the story calls them. Of course, not all of these are truly useful. Being the guy with eyes who you can pull out of your head or the lady with minor telekinesis is not especially useful. In turn, being the person who is several feet taller than the average, ESPECIALLY in Japan of all places, is a bit of a hindrance. And yet, the story seems to be initially enamored with how inferior Izuku feels about being without a quirk. I think he's probably doing a lot better than the person who probably can't even fit through doors. A lot of the abilities in MHA also seem to kind of pigeonhole people into certain paths. The guy who gets stronger and dumber when he eats sweets would probably be considered legitimately disabled if he wasn't using those powers for hero stuff. Of course, Kohei Horikoshi explores NONE of these implications satisfyingly.

The next story I'd like to explore is One Piece, which has a fascinating take on superpowers and their role in piracy, one which I'm kind of mixed on. The story starts by exploring the notion of Devil Fruits, which, when eaten, grant unique flexible (ha) powers to whoever ate them, at the cost of not being able to swim (or touch seastone). Eichiro Oda has a fantastic grasp of how power "leveling" should actually work, in that it's not linear. You can't just be "more powerful" than someone else, because you have to be creative with what you can do. Even bounties don't really capture how dangerous a person actually is in a fight. Nico Robin had a bounty similar to hardened criminals when she was a little kid, and all because she simply knew too much. In the same sense, Luffy can't just be a pirate on his own. He needs people to help him navigate, fix his ship, cook, give medical help, and other things. The "weakling trio" of the Straw Hat Pirates exists because none of them have powers especially suitable for one on one combat, nor do they need them! Haki, in my opinion, kind of ruins this dynamic, and not even in a fun way. It's something you learn instead of discovering and eating, and explicitly counters Devil Fruit invulnerabilities. However, Busoshoku Haki bungles this all up. It's supposed to be super rare, and everyone important has it! Not to mention its relatively recent use as a combat tool instead of just a thing that scary people can do. One Piece is a marvelous epic with a lot of amazing details, but it feels somewhat conflicted on how power should work.