History RequiredSecondaryPowers / Comicbooks

* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'': ''The Visible Man'' shows at least one such problem with invisiblity. The protagonist's skin becomes invisible so that [[BodyHorror all his internal organs are showing]], making him look like a monster and becoming a target for unscrupulous scientists who want to perform all sorts of nasty experiments on him against his will. After he escapes from his confinement he tries to restore his skin's appearance by developing a suntan. He quickly discovers that because the light rays go right through his skin and musculature they simply burn his organs, so he's forced to find a different way.

** Deconstructed in the comic "Super Snooper Strikes Again!" by Creator/DonRosa. Donald briefly becomes a FlyingBrick after chugging down some AppliedPhlebotinum, and makes several attempts to impress his nephews with his new powers. He tries to travel around the world in an instant, but realizes that he still perceives the passage of time normally despite everyone else effectively being frozen in time while he's moving around at SuperSpeed, so the task could take him several months or even ''years'' to complete, and nobody would notice anyway. He also tries to use his SuperStrength to lift both a mountain and a sunken cruise ship, but the mountain starts falling apart at the base and the ship breaks in two due to years of rust decay to the hull. One could argue that Donald's failure to use his superpowers effectively is because he overcomplicates it--appearing to teleport from one side of the living room to the other or simply lifting a car in front of his nephews would have been sufficient to demonstrate his powers without the realistic drawbacks of his attempted super feats.

** Deconstructed in the comic "Super Snooper Strikes Again!" by Creator/DonRosa. Donald briefly becomes a FlyingBrick after chugging down some AppliedPhlebotinum, and makes several attempts to impress his nephews with his new powers. He tries to travel around the world in an instant, but realizes that he still perceives the passage of time normally despite everyone else effectively being frozen in time while he's moving around at SuperSpeed, so the task could take him several months or even ''years'' to complete, and nobody would notice anyway. He also tries to use his SuperStrength to lift both a mountain and a sunken cruise ship, but the mountain starts falling apart at the base and the ship breaks in two due to years of rust decay to the hull. One could argue that Donald's failure to use his superpowers effectively is because he overcomplicates it--appearing to teleport from one side of the room to the other or simply lifting a car in front of his nephews would have been sufficient to demonstrate his powers without the realistic drawbacks of his attempted super feats.

* Deconstructed in the [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Donald Duck comic]] "Super Snooper Strikes Again!" by Creator/DonRosa. Donald briefly becomes a FlyingBrick after chugging down some AppliedPhlebotinum, and makes several attempts to impress his nephews with his new powers. He tries to travel around the world in an instant, but realizes that he still perceives the passage of time normally despite everyone else effectively being frozen in time while he's moving around at SuperSpeed, so the task could take him several months or even ''years'' to complete, and nobody would notice anyway. He also tries to use his SuperStrength to lift both a mountain and a sunken cruise ship, but the mountain starts falling apart at the base and the ship breaks in two due to years of rust decay to the hull. One could argue that Donald's failure to use his superpowers effectively is because he overcomplicates it--appearing to teleport from one side of the room to the other or simply lifting a car in front of his nephews would have been sufficient to demonstrate his powers without the realistic drawbacks of his attempted super feats.

* Deconstructed in the [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Donald Duck comic]] "Super Snooper Strikes Again!" by Creator/DonRosa. Donald briefly becomes a FlyingBrick after chugging down some AppliedPhlebotinum, and makes several attempts to impress his nephews with his new powers. He tries to travel around the world in an instant, but realizes that he still perceives the passage of time normally despite everyone else effectively being frozen in time while he's moving around at SuperSpeed, so the task could take him several months or even ''years'' to complete, and nobody would notice anyway. He also tries to use his SuperStrength to lift both a mountain and a sunken cruise ship, but the mountain starts falling apart at the base and the ship breaks in two due to years of rust decay to the hull.

* RequiredSecondaryPowers/TheDCU
* RequiredSecondaryPowers/MarvelUniverse

** Butterball, from [[ComicBook/AvengersTheInitiative Avengers: The Initiative]] has similar problems -- his powers froze him in the (quite obese) form he was when they activated, which means he cannot realize his lifelong dream of being a superhero because he can never train and get in shape for crimefighting and he doesn't even have muscles necessary to fight in a way the likes of Blob do. Of course the Initiative could use their nanotechnology to block his powers and then train him, but [[spoiler: their chief scientist was really a Skrull and he used his position to kick him out]].
** Also relevant is Citizen Steel of the ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica, who is super strong and invulnerable to harm but has an extremely stunted sense of touch as a side-effect of the treatment that gave him his powers. It's to the point where he gets really happy when he faces a foe strong enough to cause him pain, because it's a feeling. Another problem he suffers is holding back; a metal suit had to be cast around him to bring him down to a level of super strength where he could actually function without destroying everything.
** Image character ComicBook/{{Brit}} also has nigh invulnerability without super strength, so his way of fighting super-strong villains was to let them throw him at nearby buildings and make them fall on their heads, until he got himself pair of strength-enhancing gloves. Later, he also started using a JetPack.

** Image character Brit also has nigh invunerability without super strength, so his way of fighting super-strong villains was to let them throw him at nearby buildings and make them fall on their heads, until he got himself pair of strength-enhancing gloves. Later, he also started using a JetPack.

** Played straight in ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures''. A RidiculouslyHumanRobot body that can pass off as a real person can only be used by an Artificial Intelligence with a Ridiculously Human ''personality''. If a less developed A.I. is uploaded into the body, it won't be able to use it in any way -- it won't be able to move, see, hear, or even transfer itself out of the body.
* One character in ''ComicBook/GlobalFrequency'' has a cybernetic arm with superhuman strength, and goes into detail about all the secondary modifications that had to be made to her body so she could use it without ripping it out of its socket or breaking her own back.
-->'''Member 436''': I have to be careful with it. Bioelectric enhancements are cranky. It's not a case of just sticking an artificial arm on. The surrounding bones and fibers have to be hardened and supported, or else the new arm will rip clean off your shoulder the first time you flex. You'll need tensile support across your back, or your spine will snap the first time you lift something heavy. You need new skin; human skin isn't tough enough to handle the subcutaneous tension of superhuman strength. You'll take a chip in your brain to handle the specific dataload from the artificial nerve system controlling the arm. You're getting the idea, right?
** And all of the above is mentioned just to suggest to the rest of the team (and the reader) how thoroughly the TragicVillain of that issue, a full HollywoodCyborg, has been rebuilt and how little of him can be called "human" anymore.
--->'''Member 436:''' Try to imagine. You're a multiple amputee who's been ''flayed alive''. You can't feel your own ''heartbeat''. You can't feel yourself ''breathe''. You can feel metal rubbing against your muscles and organs. ''And you don't recognize the man in the mirror''.

* In the first issue of [[ComicBook/DialHForHero H-E-R-O]], a man uses the HERO Dial to turn into Afterburner, a FlyingBrick who, as it turns out, is not nearly as NighInvulnerable as he looks; the guy ends up nearly killing himself saving a little kid from a drunk driver in a semi.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

** Played straight in ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures''. A RidiculouslyHumanRobot body that can pass off as a real person can only be used by an Artificial Intelligence with a Ridiculously Human ''personality''. If a less developed A.I. is uploaded into the body, it won't be able to use it in any way - it won't be able to move, see, hear, or even transfer itself out of the body.

** Max Damage, from ''ComicBook/{{Irredeemable}}'''s sister title, has super strength and invulnerability which proportionally increase the longer he's been awake. Unfortunately, a side-effect of the latter is that he loses all sense of touch, taste and smell after a couple of hours - he describes it as being numb instead of being tough, like God didn't know when to stop with the Novocaine. He also suffers from the normal effects of sleep deprivation, which is sometimes necessary to get his powers up to a certain level, so the stronger his body becomes the weaker his mind gets.

* A minor character from ''ComicBook/RisingStars'' was NighInvulnerable, but didn't have several secondary powers that usually come with it -- he had no enhanced senses so his powers blocked his sense of touch, pain and temperature and he had no super strength so he was rather useless in a fight, being beaten like anybody else, just without feeling anything. And he needed air just like anybody else, so he was suffocated to death with a plastic bag. In fact, lack of enhanced senses was what killed him - without his powers he didn't feel it when the murderer tied him up and put the bag on his head.
** Butterball, from [[ComicBook/AvengersTheInitiative Avengers: The Initiative]] has similar problems - his powers froze him in the (quite obese) form he was when they activated, which means he cannot realize his lifelong dream of being a superhero because he can never train and get in shape for crimefighting and he doesn't even have muscles necessary to fight in a way the likes of Blob do. Of course the Initiative could use their nanotechnology to block his powers and then train him, but [[spoiler: their chief scientist was really a Skrull and he used his position to kick him out]].

* Gruesomely demonstrated in the superhero-genre DeconstructorFleet title ''ComicBook/{{Uber}}'', in which one of the British supersoldiers-under-construction tries to show off his superstrength to impress a girl before his superdurability has caught up with it - when he exerts himself to his full strength his muscles rip completely away from his skeleton and he dies horribly.

!!DC

* In one early issue of Creator/GrantMorrison's ''ComicBook/AnimalMan'', Buddy's getting his ass handed to him by a much stronger enemy, and tries to use stealth to escape him instead of fighting back. To do it, he uses his powers to absorb a nearby chameleon's color-changing abilities, hoping that he can use them to blend with a rock face and camouflage himself. He forgets that he's wearing a brightly colored full-body spandex suit that doesn't change color along with his skin. Naturally, the ruse doesn't go so well.
* Comicbook/{{Aquaman}} owes his recent transformation from [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman oft-mocked third stringer]] to something of a MemeticBadass to people giving this trope some thought...
** Aquaman's lifetime in the sea leads to increased strength, agility, and resilience on land that would help him to survive and move easily in the ocean depths. How much of an increase ranges from "tough enough to give most B-listers a real work-out" to "evenly matched with a Kryptonian or Themiscyran on dry land, probably got an edge on them with his HomeFieldAdvantage", DependingOnTheWriter and continuity.
** Technically, Aquaman always ''had'' superstrength and durability, at least in his first [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] appearances, that were forgotten during the [[DorkAge Superfriends era]]. On the splash page of his very first appearance, ''More Fun Comics'' #73, he's shown deflecting an artillery shell with his hand.
** Creator/GrantMorrison also gave him the ability to essentially induce seizures by telepathically touching the part of the brain that humans share with fish. It's a shame that he doesn't do that more often.
** During the "Justice League Detroit" days, he was shown being able to influence people's actions through the same "fish portion of the brain" excuse. How little sense this makes is the least part of why many people [[FanonDisContinuity deny the JLD ever happened]].
** Creator/GeoffJohns explained that the second Aqualad possesses superhuman vision as a result of his eyes being designed to see even while at the bottom of the ocean, where there is obviously little to no sunlight.
** In ''Aquaman: Rebirth'', ComicBook/{{Mera}} complains about fielding endless questions how she keeps her hair so [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished full and lustrous]] despite spending so much time in salt water. Although some artists will draw Atlanteans with their hair looking realistically wet and flattened down when they surface, or with long hair floating around their head when submerged, they are more often drawn with their hair looking perfect on land or underwater. This must mean that Atlanteans have natural oils which protect their hair from undersea conditions.
** And people have thought of all kinds of creative ways for him to use his power to "Command the creatures of the deep!", such as the page picture for HeartIsAnAwesomePower. Canon hasn't quite gone to ''that'' extreme as yet, but he once decisively ended a fight with Namor the Sub-Mariner with the help of a passing orca.
* The young teleporter Misfit introduced in ''ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey'' astounds Oracle because she effortlessly avoids nearly ''every'' complication associated with {{teleportation}}. She can "bounce" (her term for it) ''anywhere'', no matter how far away, without even having to visit the place beforehand. She instinctively avoids [[TeleFrag teleporting into objects]]. And she can "bounce" any number of times without exhausting herself. She actually ''[[HealingFactor heals]]'' herself each time she does this, and recovered from a gunshot wound this way in her debut. The only limitation of her ability is that she can't take other living things along for the ride - they die when they reappear. Misfit discovered this when [[spoiler:she tried to bounce herself, her mother, and her little brother out of their burning home and accidentally killed them this way]]. A later storyline revealed that her powers are magical in nature, [[AWizardDidIt explaining this somewhat]].
** Another character originating in ''ComicBook/BirdsOfPrey'' is Black Alice, [[spoiler: Misfit's cousin]], who can steal anyone's magic powers and use them as her own. Unfortunately, she doesn't get their control, as she discovered when she tried to use magic to fix her father's near-sightedness -- and ended up giving him cancer instead.
* Silver Banshee has MakeMeWannaShout abilities. She is immune to her own scream, as well as sonic attacks from others, like ComicBook/BlackCanary's Canary Cry.
* ''ComicBook/TheButton'': ComicBook/EobardThawne / Professor Zoom breaks into the Batcave and beats Franchise/{{Batman}} up. When Batman tries to fight back, Thawne turns himself intangible and gloats that Batman can't hurt him. He is proven wrong when Batman stabs him in the foot. Batman points out his feet would have to be solid or else he would sink into the ground.
* Durlans, a shape-shifting species in the DCU, were eventually revealed to have an extra sense that allows them to scan all the cellular and anatomic details of a new being they encounter, as well as perfect memory for same. For which their antennae are the sensory organs.
* Franchise/TheFlash's powers are an all inclusive package called [[AWizardDidIt the Speed Force]] but parts of it come and go for the purposes of a given story. For example, his seeming ability to slow down his required super-perception has been pointed out a few times. In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode "Only a Dream", for instance, the villain Doctor Destiny tormented superheroes with various nightmares; the Flash dreamt that he was unable to slow down, and perceived everything around him as motionless. The idea of a Flash unable to slow down his perception was also eloquently expanded upon by Jim's Big Ego in [[http://www.bigego.com/index.php?page=video&category=02--Video_Remixes&display=863 this song]].
** AlternateCompanyEquivalent ComicBook/{{Quicksilver}} explicitly ''doesn't'' have this: while he can slow down his perception as he speeds up, his default is still faster than human normal. It's described as the reason that he's so aggressive: everyone else to him "is like standing behind someone who doesn't know how to use an ATM" every single moment of the day.
** Flash doesn't always have this ability. In one comic he spent a subjective week watching a movie with his wife. This would be really painful, given that persistence of vision wouldn't work, and so you wouldn't even be able to perceive the motion in the movie properly. It would be like watching a slideshow of someone's vacation pictures. Or rather like watching a procession of phosphorous dots or pixels cover the screen one at a time, ''possibly'' building up to a coherent picture at the end. For every single frame of the movie. At least one comic has explained this as being subconscious. When he is bored he tends to zone out and activate his speed without meaning to. This means that a conversation with his father in law, or a trip to the opera, can take forever.
** Right after ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', Wally West had to eat huge amounts of food to fuel his powers. Later, it was revealed that the semi-mystical Speed Force provided both the energy and the friction shield.
** Early in volume 2 of ''The Flash,'' Wally discovered a new trick with the aura that protects him from air friction. He can ''consciously remove it'' from objects he's carrying, thus exposing them to extreme heat. (This was of limited use against the robotic Kilg%re, but still.) He hasn't used this much since, but it's a fine, rare example of a ''weaponized'' RequiredSecondaryPower.
** Super speedster Bart Allen (first Impulse, then Kid Flash, then regular Flash until his untimely death) was once shot in the kneecap by Deathstroke. At the hospital the doctors discovered, to their horror, that his hyper-accelerated metabolism had already begun to knit the broken bones back together and they would have to ''break them again'' so they could be set properly. They also couldn't use any anesthetic because his superfast metabolism would purge it out of his bloodstream too quickly.
** Bart also discovers that he can't have a tattoo because of this. After [[IncrediblyLamePun impulsively]] getting a Franchise/GreenLantern logo tattoo (because who would suspect a guy with Franchise/GreenLantern's logo tattooed on him being Kid Flash?) he finds that it quickly fades away, as if decades of epidermal rejuvenation were taking place in a few seconds. One wonders why he doesn't [[{{squick}} leave piles of skin cells everywhere he goes]].
** In an "{{Elseworlds}}" story set in the future, Flash's son inherited his speed, but not his friction resistance, with the tragic potential being explored.
** Another ''Elseworlds'' had a villain who'd worked out how to ''switch off'' Barry's friction aura. He does this when the Flash is moving at full speed. (Further FridgeLogic, however, suggests this ''should'' result in Barry's flaming corpse slamming into the guy at hundreds of miles per hour.)
** Explicitly acknowledged in ''Comicbook/JusticeLeague3000'', where the [[LegacyCharacter new]] Flash lacks the original's connection to the Speed Force, and thus becomes violently ill whenever he tries to utilize his speed abilities. Cadmus ends up equipping him with artificial force fields to keep him from hurling whenever he tries to move quickly.
** In one of the Impulse comics where he's fighting against his evil twin/arch rival, the narration [[LampshadeHanging goes into a loving description of all the Required Secondary Powers that speedsters must apply to keep from destroying the landscape everywhere they go.]] Of course, the evil twin in question is taking no such precautions, so their super-sonic battle is marked by a trail of broke pavement, shattered buildings, and general total devastation.
** During the build up to Armegeddon2000, Waverider sees a potential future for Wally West whose son has his speed, but not his protective aura. He seriously injures himself saving a young girl from a speeding truck. It's hinted that heroine Fire had an even worse tragedy when her offspring didn't inherit her protection from her own flames. This future is actually averted because Flash sensed Waverider just enough to distract him from speaking to a whistleblower who set the whole thing in motion.
* In a post crisis story, ComicBook/JimmyOlsen [[SuperpowersForADay gains stretching superpowers much like Elongated or Plastic Man.]] The problem is he lacks any ability to control said stretching nor the required secondary power to deaden the pain that such stretching would naturally cause like the aforementioned superheroes do. He's nearly driven insane from the ever increasing pain as a result during the ordeal.
* In a BadFuture issue of Creator/GrantMorrison's ''[[Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica JLA]]'', [[Comicbook/GreenArrow Connor Hawke]] and ComicBook/TheAtom were able to penetrate Darkseid's supposedly impenetrable [[DeflectorShields force field]] by exploiting the fact that light waves could pass through it. The Atom reasoned that if the field actually shut out light, Darkseid would be blind.
* In Issue 75 of ''[[ComicBook/JusticeSocietyOfAmerica JSA]]'', Atom Smasher explicitly mentions breaking and regrowing his bones and muscles as he grows. While it has never been done, this would theoretically allow him to heal bone and muscle damage by simply shifting height again. He also has a specific height (around 50 feet) wherein his powers start to malfunction and the SquareCubeLaw starts paying attention to him again.
** Subverted in a ''JLA'' story where Superman encounters a new superhero while rescuing some firemen from a collapsing building. The newbie has super strength and is able to hold up the falling ceiling long enough for Superman to evacuate the firemen. Unfortunately he discovers that he does not possess invulnerability and is killed when a gas main blows up in his face.
* ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'':
** Brainiac Five has a force field belt that (before ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths, at least) was explicitly noted to have the ability to automatically generate breathable air whenever creating a closed shield. Even before he invented the [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace transuits]], it was stated that he didn't need a conventional space suit for this reason.
** Night Girl (super strength and durability, but only in the dark) and Shadow Lass (generate and control darkness) who both had the secondary ability to see in the dark.
** Fellow Legion member Ultra Boy was a twist on the standard FlyingBrick powerset- he had Kryptonian level abilities (including equivalents of heat and x-ray vision), but he could only use them one at a time. This meant he would often be seen using Superman-level strength, whilst still being as fragile as a normal human (well, Rimborian, but [[HumanAliens same diff]]), meaning that the slightest movement should have ripped him apart, not to mention that every time he tried to lift something heavy he should have been completely crushed, and punching anyone or anything particularly durable should have shattered every bone in his arm.
*** This was explicitly acknowledged several times: for instance, in UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|of Comic Books}} he was technically fast enough to travel through time under his own power (like Superman could), but he would have been totally atomised by friction if he ever tried to move at that kind of speed.
* Strangely both averted and used in ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes V2''. Comicbook/{{Supergirl}} is trying to move a planet. She has the strength, but attempting to do so just ends up digging a hole through the planet because she can't move it as a single object by touching a small part of it. However, the "solution" used is to have her bounce into the planet, which really should fail for the same reason.
* It's arguable that most flying heroes possess an innate sense of direction that seems to keep them on course no matter how far they are flying. ComicBook/{{Superman}} is explainable via his vision powers, but most don't have that. However, the Will Payton version of Starman would actually follow highways and later carried a map when he got a suit with pockets.
* Franchise/{{Superman}}:
** In one of the ''Superman'' annuals (as part of the "Legends of the Dead Earth" motif), there was a team of heroes, each of which having one of Superman's powers, but the powers were either [[PowerIncontinence stuck "on"]] or coupled with potentially-hazardous side effects, even when those were powers granted by a "supersuit" rather than bio-modification. The speedster's suit had to keep her blood sugar levels up and the super-breath guy's collar worked both ways, so he could have ruptured his lungs if he breathed in too suddenly. Of the bio-modified heroes the super-strong one couldn't even feed himself because he would crush the spoon and the food, the X-ray eyes hero saw everything in X-ray eyes and had to wear special lead glasses, the flier had to be tethered to something because if he wasn't deliberately moving towards something he could drift away, the heat-vision guy had to discharge the energy from his eyes every so often to prevent a fatal buildup, and the invulnerable one had no sense of touch.
* After the 1986 revamp, Superman was assumed to have some version of touch-based telekinesis, as there's no other explanation for why he can lift up giant objects without the part that he's holding simply overbalancing and ripping free, or how he can catch falling objects (and people!) without doing them harm [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou from the sudden stop]]. On at least one occasion Superman did comment that things felt different when he was carrying them while flying than they did if he lifted something similar when not flying.
** This was tacitly acknowledged to be true when he was cloned, resulting in Comicbook/{{Superboy}}. Superboy's ''only'' power was tactile telekinesis, which he used to "fake" stuff like flight, invulnerability, and super strength, until [[RetCon eventually]] his Kryptonian genetics kicked in and he got them for real.
** Superman and Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}'s heat vision started out as a seeming Required Secondary Power of their X-ray vision. It was originally assumed that power worked by projecting X-rays and that they could focus this to generate heat. Now it seems that they are separate powers.
** The 2003 miniseries "Trinity" explicitly acknowledged the physical difficulties Superman should have when moving objects with a large momentum, e.g. when a runaway train hurtles owards a turn he first tries to force it into the turn by pulling it, and only succeeds in ripping the wall off; he needs to deflect a nuclear missile fired at a satellite, he can't hope to deflect the whole thing in time, so he cuts off the warhead and deflects it by itself, and needs to grab onto an asteroid to stop inertia carrying him past the asteroid belt; he can't simply pull two drone planes hurtling towards a skyscraper out of the air, but he can take advantage of the fact their wing structures make them steerable and force them on a collision course with each other and send them crashing into the sea.
** In ''Comicbook/KryptoniteNevermore'', a villain removes Superman's powers one at a time. At one point, he is about to land, but loses his strength at that very moment, and as a result plows into the ground (he was still invulnerable). He points out that even though he still has the ability to fly, he needs the super-strength to coordinate his flying and landing.
** According to some accounts, Kryptonians have a forcefield that extends a few milimeters past their skins. Which explains why Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Comicbook/PowerGirl... costumes stay intact while their capes get ripped. But not why the cape is fine at superspeed. Depending on the version, the cape is the blanket Superman was sent to Earth with, meaning it's more or less indestructible. In some versions, the entire costume is made from it.
*** Also would explain why they crack the ground in a circular fashion when they're holding something heavy up or landing hard ,under their own will, instead of sinking directly into the ground or cracking in a more logical fashion.
** One comic from "''Smallville: Season 11''" explains that when Superman makes himself immovable, it's not only his invulnerability: he's also using the same control over his personal gravity that he uses to fly.
** Even Kryptonite has a Required Secondary Power: it causes Kryptonians to be severely weakened in its vicinity. This prevents them from simply hurling the rock away before they take too much damage. Notably averted through HeroicWillpower in ''Film/SupermanReturns.''
** In ''ComicBook/TwoForTheDeathOfOne'': ''Action Comics'' 535 - 541 Lord Satanus and his sister Blaze are playing magical tug of war with Superman - and accidentally split him into two people, each with only some of Superman's powers. One has flight and super strength. The other has invulnerability. Their magic spell would flood him with enough magical energy to kill him, so they need the invulnerability to process it. They didn't need the other one so they leave him in the present and go back into the past. Now vulnerable, this superman can't fly supersonic or lift anything as heavy as a car without extreme pain.
** Superman's hearing must have some component of this during its more powerful examples. The 1986 revamp explicitly omitted the more extreme examples and he reminded Jimmy that the signal watch wouldn't work if he were too far away. It was later reverted to Silver Age levels where he could "hear" across the vacuum of space (including one issue when he was in another solar system 25 light years from Earth) and could "hear" Lois' heartbeat halfway around the world. Some form of telepathy might explain it.
* [[TouchOfDeath Wanderer]], the leader of the Council of Spiders group that tried to kill Comicbook/RedRobin, is immune to her own poison.
* Franchise/WonderWoman, ComicBook/WonderGirl, and Donna Troy (and ComicBook/{{Artemis}} back when [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 she was Wonder Woman]]), share the powers of SuperStrength and flight, but a finicky take on NighInvulnerability. Sometimes but not always ImmuneToBullets, and not all that hard to cut, they are usually depicted as being [[MadeOfIron quite a bit tougher]] than the average human being. Tough enough to withstand direct punches from Superman without having every bone in their body shattered, for example. Any other issues with their powers can be [[HandWave Handwaved]] by their divine origin - [[AWizardDidIt Greek gods or their artifacts did it]].

!!Marvel
* ComicBook/BlueMarvel gets his powers from being a "living anti-matter reactor". Luckily for him and everyone around him, he's also immune to the effects of this transformation. He also has limited control over the anti-matter he generates, so that he doesn't blow up the city every time he wants to blast a bad guy.
* In one story set in ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's early days, it's revealed that when he decided to take up shield slinging as a method of attack, he had the strength to pull it off, but not the math skills to make it fly true. It took him awhile to do it.
* Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} is occasionally shown having to deal with the sensory overload that comes with his powers, especially regarding hearing and sound. Notable examples are loud sounds or concussive blasts (like from an explosion) disrupting his sonar and causing him pain, and having to sleep in a soundproof isolation chamber.
** In TheMovie, he's shown sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank, which closes and opens according to a timer.
** One particular article predicts a few problems with [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/premature-ejaculation-daredevil-why-super-senses-would-suck/ the sense of touch...]]
** A subversion comes when he fights Bruiser, who can shift his center of mass to make himself super-strong or make it difficult for Daredevil to flip him. Using his radar sense, Matt can detect that Bruiser's body can't handle the changes to his body made by the power, so he concentrates on one shattering bone and hits it, escaping from Bruiser.
* ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'s HealingFactor only works because he has such severe cancer that his body is constantly regenerating lost cells. He just makes it regenerate more when he takes damage. He actually weaponizes this when the Skrulls want to make an army of clones with him, and gives them the healing factor, but not the cancer, causing them to mutate and die.
** However, while he has to ability to regenerate tissue, there is no guarantee that it will regenerate ''right''. Once he broke multiple bones and his assistant strapped him to a rack in order to ensure that they would heal straight.
*** Similarly, Carnifex (''Literature/WildCards'' Wolverine expy; his backstory included time on the [[StealthPun University of Michigan's football team]]) made a habit of having his face redone by plastic surgeons every couple years thanks to the scars and similar healing mishaps he inevitably accumulated as a BloodKnight.
* Implicitly [[{{Deconstruction}} acknowledged]] with the Creator/MarvelComics "Decimation" arc, where several mutants keep their primary powers but lose the secondaries. Mutants with fire abilities are no longer immune to their own flames and incinerate themselves, a dragon-like mutant falls out of the sky because his mass can't stay airborne under normal physics even with the wings, a fishlike mutant drowns because his gills can't extract enough oxygen from the water to support a human body, and so forth.
** The miniseries ''Galacta: Daughter Of Galactus'' suggests that the mutant gene does not actually confer superpowers on people but, as a result of extensive engineering by [[AbusivePrecursors The Celestials]], alters reality to make mutant powers possible, thereby making every mutant a low-level, unconscious reality warper, [[{{Handwave}} Handwaving]] every impossible thing that mutants do.
* ComicBook/TheEternals are powered by cosmic energy flowing through every cell in their bodies. This makes them able to do things like fire EyeBeams and use SuperStrength, as well as powering their PsychicPowers, but dispersing all the resulting waste heat is quite a problem-- they tend to stick to cold places like mountaintops and the middle of Siberia for just that reason. Gilgamesh even went into a coma once fighting a lava monster-- and before that, he had to go into a motionless trance just to survive in a hot cavern while guys like ComicBook/CaptainAmerica and Black Panther just stood around and sweated. The laws of thermodynamics are a harsh mistress.
* Though this is largely ignored in the comics, ComicBook/TheFalcon wears protective lenses in ''WesternAnimation/AvengersAssemble'' and ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier''. The reason of course being that given how high and fast he usually flies, his eyes would either become damaged or blinded due to the wind speeds at those altitudes.
* ''Comicbook/FantasticFour''[='=]s Human Torch has the fireproof skin/lungs/etc. secondary power.
* Chamber from ''ComicBook/GenerationX'' is a [[ZigZaggingTrope triple subversion]]: he doesn't need to eat, breathe or drink thanks to the pure-energy furnace within his chest, which is a fortunate thing since the same furnace blew off his jaw and a good portion of his chest when his powers first surfaced. With no lungs or mouth, he can't talk normally but then he develops a secondary mutation of {{telepathy}} to communicate with others. As it turns out, he doesn't need telepathy; he has the potential to reconstitute his missing parts [[HowDoIShotWeb but isn't skilled enough in his powers to do so for long]]. He nearly died in ''Decimation'' when he lost his powers and suddenly needed things like food, water, and oxygen again.
* Played straight with the character Misty Knight in ''Comicbook/IronFist''. She received a bionic arm after losing one in an explosion. While she can use it to deliver a hard punch and has a crushing grip, whenever she tries to use it to do something her un-augmented body cannot handle, it causes her considerable pain and she has to quickly dial it down to prevent injury.
* ''ComicBook/IronMan'' villain Ezekial Stane, the so-called "Iron Man 2.0", has bioengineered himself in such a way that he can fire repulsor blasts using his own bioelectricity, increases his healing, and so forth. However, he has to consume a ''very'' high calorie paste in order to keep his blood sugar up, and his armor chiefly acts as a way to vent heat from his body, as he hasn't figured out how to keep his flesh from burning off.
* The Marvel-616 version of Quicksilver once remarked that his body efficiently processes all his food, giving him the energy to run, and that his feet are designed to withstand the impacts of repeatedly hitting the ground. Pietro's enhanced physiology also gives him MadeOfIron qualities and makes him ''far'' more durable than he looks, as a body capable of withstanding the stress of traveling unprotected at the speeds he hits would need to be immensely tough. This frequently comes up when he's attacked by someone who assumes he's another FragileSpeedster only to be surprised when he shrugs off what should be a devastating blow.
* During one ''Comicbook/MoonKnight'' mini-series the titular character has bracers with retractable claws made for him so he can mimic Wolverine's fighting style. When he asks whether these claws are made from unbreakable adamantium like Wolverine's, he is told that would be pointless, as even with plain high-tensile steel his arm would break long before the claws do.
* ComicBook/{{Mystique}}, an ''X-Men'' villain shapeshifter, can copy the appearance of other people down to fingerprints, voice and retina patterns closely enough to pass biometric scanners. In addition to the PhotographicMemory required to remember all this perfectly, she must have some kind of ESP to detect such things in the first place just from a brief encounter. She's certainly never shown scanning and studying the retinas of people she is going to copy.
** It was shown in her side series that she requires a minimum of eight words to adequately mimic someone's voice. How this allows her to pick up speech idiosyncrasies is anyone's guess.
* ComicBook/TheNewUniverse paid a lot of attention to this trope, as part of its pitch of being more realistic:
** Minor villain Skybreaker could fly, but had no other powers, so he required a special suit to protect him from wind, friction, high-altitude cold, and to provide oxygen. It also has navigational gear, since there are precious few road signs at 40,000 feet.
** D.P.7's Jeff Walters (aka Blur) was a super-speedster who did [[BigEater require large amounts of food]] every day. He was also obese before his power manifested via the "[[MetaOrigin White Event]]."
*** Food was the lesser problem. Apparently, his body is potentially much faster than his mind, so he can't get a restful sleep if not under tranquilizer (or a teammate's energy draining power). And the constant vibration caused by lesser muscular movements cause him to be mildly destructive when touching things. Or opening Coke cans.
* John Byrne's ''ComicBook/NextMen'' explores this in detail with its main characters:
** Danny is a teenage super-speedster who runs barefoot-- his body can stand the speed, but ''shoes'' wear out in seconds. Even at that, he still had to spend months toughening up his soles on rocks, gravel, etc. to avoid crippling blisters or burning his feet from the friction. His leg muscles are also massive and hyper-developed, giving him devastating kicks in close combat. The costume he wears has a helmet and visor to protect his face from winds and debris at high speeds, and also possesses a built in GPS for directions. Lastly, he does mention getting hungrier after running for extended periods.
** Jack, his teammate, has superstrength, but needs a special exoskeletal harness to ''[[PowerLimiter dampen]]'' his powers or his body can tear itself apart, not to mention destroy [[AceLightningSyndrome everything he touches]]. His hyperdense bones and muscles ''do'' save his life when they limit the penetration of bullets, saving his vital organs.
** Nathan (Scanner), gets super-vision, but his eyes become huge and all-black to absorb all those frequencies and he needs to wear a special filter visor to avoid painful sensory overload.
** Bethany, who's invulnerable can't cut her invulnerable fingernails or hair, gradually is losing her sense of touch, and her skin was slowly turning chalk-white as ultraviolet light stopped causing tanning (a minor research miss, as tanning is made up of two processes, only one of which is a result of UV damage). Not only that, but her invulnerability does not give her any sort of super strength. At one point, she's buried alive and is unable to dig herself out due to the weight of the rubble.
* Comicbook/ThePunisher2099 once tracked down a techno-shaman who had encased himself in an impenetrable force field to protect himself. Punisher figured out that it still had to be able to exchange heat through the field, and fried the guy inside the force field by showering it with hot plasma.
* Comicbook/RedHulk becomes hotter the madder he gets, allowing him to burn and melt things just by touching them. He suffers his first defeat when he becomes so mad that his own heat hurts him.
* It's possible that ComicBook/SpiderMan's super-strength is a RequiredSecondaryPower. Everything else --agility, wall-crawling, advanced nervous system-- falls under "proportionate powers of a spider" but spiders aren't really known for their brawn. It does, however, probably keep him from dislocating his arms when he leaps from a great height onto the side of a building.
** Spiders, like ants and many other insects, have a muscular system that is actually built on the same principles as hydraulics. How Spidey pulls off hydraulic-based strength without massive physical mutation, however, is anyone's guess.
** Lampshaded on at least one occasion when Spidey loses his powers but still has his web shooters; he tries to swing away but lacks the strength to hold onto his own web!
*** Another embarrassing moment had Spidey lose his Spider-Sense and having it revealed that he uses it to make sure his webline doesn't hit anything that could break it, like a loose piece of a wall. He hits one and embarrassingly slams onto the hood of a police car.
*** Most comics allow normal-strength people to hold their own weight on one arm for some reason, it's interesting that writer remembered. Another didn't, and had him able to web-swing fine with his powers gone, except without his spider-sense he had to actually ''concentrate'' on things like aiming.
** Spider-man's super-strength is not a RequiredSecondaryPower at all; he's always been presented as having the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider. It all stems from the same simple concept: a misunderstanding of the SquareCubeLaw.
*** Technically, since Spider-Man's origin was retconned from "radioactive spider" to "spider with an experimental retrovirus" his powers aren't anything to do with the spider at all, they're side effects of enhancements that the lab was trying to make to a spider. Spiders don't have a 'spider sense', for instance, which is the required secondary power for all of the things he uses his strength and agility to do.
** Non-organic webshooters require him to have the chemical and mechanical engineering skills to build them. In ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan'', the fluid is organic, just compressed, and he builds a way to deploy it. In some versions, the formula came to him as part of his powers.
** Spider-Man's SpiderSense gives him a mental understanding of his immediate surroundings, not only for predicting danger but for placing his webs while swinging through New York's skyline. On occasions where the spider-sense is disabled by outside sources, he notes that he never put much thought into it since the calculation of where to stick his weblines to had always been taken care of for him, [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking and that he'd never looked both ways when crossing the street]] since the day the spider bit him. As a result he had to slow down dramatically to make sure the points his webs connected to were stable, because a loose/weak structure could give way or break under his weight and send him falling earthward from several stories up.
*** His fighting style was also completely dependant on his spider-sense until it was nullified, making him far less effective in a fight without it; since his prior style was to basically use it to be where his enemy's fists ''weren't'' and then hit back when their guard was open. It took lessons from Shang-Chi for him to develop his own martial art, "the Way of the Spider" and restore much of his effectiveness. Then he got his spider-sense back, [[StrongAndSkilled now backed up by genuine fighting prowess...]]
** Spiderman's sticking powers are sometime shown to be limited by the material he sticks to. Sure, his power to stick to objects is powerful enough that it takes the strength of the Hulk to directly overcome it, but much weaker villains have managed to pull Spiderman off of walls by pulling the parts of the wall Spiderman is sticking to with him.
** One that's rarely, if ever, commented on is how much time Spider-Man spends upside-down without suffering from any of the effects of blood rushing to his head as a regular person would.
* In a ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' comic where Comicbook/DoctorStrange's mansion was destroyed, there were these floating masks (if memory serves, they had something to do with Cyttorak), who could "wear" human faces and fire laser beams while doing so. Too bad they couldn't sustain the bodies...
* Marvel's ComicBook/{{Taskmaster}} can achieve limited SuperSpeed if he [[AwesomenessByAnalysis copies the moves]] from fast-forwarded video, but he can only use it in small amounts, since he does not have secondary powers to compensate for the fact that it strains his body.
** He also lacks certain required secondary ''skills'' -- for instance, when he was young, he copied a professional diver's dive. But neglected to learn how to swim first.
*** Taskmaster is a bit of an odd case; he supposedly has no superhuman powers beyond his signature "photographic reflexes", yet is not only able to pull off the aforementioned feats, but also ComicBook/SpiderMan's [[BulletTime speed]] and [[BuildingSwing agility]], and further, can [[SuperReflexes catch bullets]], leap dozens of feet vertically, casually send a man flying with a [[MegatonPunch punch]] and shake off [[MadeOfIron getting smashed through a reinforced wall]] by the force of an enraged Spidey (thinking Taskie had kidnapped Mary Jane) ''kicking him in the head''.
*** Eventually, it was shown that every time Taskmaster memorizes a new set of moves, he loses a bit of memory, including things like his real name. While this isn't how memory works, it may explain why he's able to do Spidey's moves. If his brain is constantly compartmentalizing, it may be able to shut off the parts of the nervous system that would cry out in pain when attempting a crazy maneuver, while increasing adrenaline output (á la mothers lifting cars off of their children, also an UrbanLegend).
*** Considering not all super powers are innate in the Marvel universe, its possible the reason Taskmaster can do more then should be humanly possible is that at some point he copied a Mystic Martial Artist and is using some sort of chi or other mystical force that normally requires years of training to achieve.
* In ComicBook/TheUltimates, mutant [[SuperSpeed Quicksilver]] had a RequiredSecondaryPowers battle against Hurricane, an enemy speedster who'd got her powers from advanced surgery, and who wore a reinforced suit designed to resist friction. He grabbed her and started accelerating. Her skin burst into flames around Mach 4 or so, and she completely disintegrated moments later. So much for the suit. Quicksilver, whose mutant power includes all required secondary abilities needed to move at an acceptable fraction of the speed of light, reminded her smoking body that he'd been easily hitting Mach 10 since he was a teenager. The moral of the story: if you fight someone with the same primary power set as you, make sure your RequiredSecondaryPowers are up to their standard.
* In ''ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour'', Sue Storm {{lampshade|Hanging}}d the impossibility of her powers, pointing out that there's no conceivable reason why she should be able to see things while invisible. Luckily, she's a bio-geneticist and thinks the mystery is fascinating. And during his time on the book, Creator/WarrenEllis spent pages and pages justifying the Team's powers.
** Reed isn't even strictly ''human'' anymore (to the point where he doesn't even need to eat), as his organs have been replaced with a hyper-efficient bacterial stack that bends and twists with his body.
** Johnny is a living nuclear reactor that achieves perfect fission using his body's fat cells (which gets him into trouble, as he initially doesn't eat enough to support his powers and ends up in a brief coma because of it).
** Ben is literally the UltimateLifeForm, with limitless strength and the ability to survive any environment... but the adaptation to do so means that his body obeys the SquareCubeLaw and is super-dense as well as incredibly large (nine feet tall and in the neighborhood of ''eight tons''), which is why his craggy "Classic Thing" appearence looks the way it does.
** Warren Ellis pointed this out in ''ComicBook/{{Planetary}}'' with Kim Suskind, the [[CaptainErsatz evil version of Sue Storm]]. She has to wear [[GogglesDoSomethingUnusual special goggles]] directly wired into her nervous system whenever she turns invisible. Without them, she's blind.
*** Presumably the goggles interact with invisible radiation -- UV and infrared -- while still magically being totally transparent to visible wavelengths.
** Even in Marvel Classic, Sue's ForceField isn't permeable to air, and the limited air supply is used both offensively and as a limitation when she's using it for protection. Like nearly everything, this is DependingOnTheWriter.
*** In ''ComicBook/MarvelAdventures Fantastic Four'' #26, the Silver Surfer reasons that she can make her force fields porous enough to allow air for her to breathe. He takes full advantage of this when he defeats the Four by overloading their powers, causing her to nearly suffocate.
** Sue's invisibility is explained in the Main MarvelUniverse. She extends a light-bending field around herself and her immediate area, which is what renders her body and clothing invisible, and she can extend this to other people or objects if she wishes. As for her vision, remember that she can see other things that are invisible--whether it's under her power or not. Her eyes can perceive wavelengths of light that normal humans can't, and it's through these wavelengths that she can see while invisible. (Though this still doesn't explain how other people can still see when she makes ''them'' invisible) Again, DependingOnTheWriter.
** When [[Creator/StanLee Stan the Man]] created her, he might have remembered that Marvel had already done [[http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/konakkarlostta.htm this]] story in ''Tales To Astonish'' earlier the same year, [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] this problem with invisibility. Maybe if he had we wouldn't have all these {{Flame War}}s today regarding Sue's eyesight.
*** In fact, the original letter that detailed the Fantastic Four and their powers was reprinted some years back in a special issue. Sue's eyesight is not mentioned, but she was permanently invisible and unable to make anything else invisible, [[InvisibleStreaker even clothes]]. This was nixed because [[FanService Sue taking off her clothes on-panel]] was deemed too sexy.
* ComicBook/TheUnbeatableSquirrelGirl has spikes hidden in her wrists similar to Wolverine, but rarely uses them. For one, she's not really interested in stabbing people, but also because she lacks Wolverine's healing factor. Getting the blood of whatever mutant, monster or even regular human she's figthing into her system without it would be unhealthy.
* When Creator/JohnByrne took over writing and drawing ''ComicBook/WestCoastAvengers'', he came up with the theory that the probability-altering powers of the ComicBook/ScarletWitch must actually require the power to rewrite all the history that goes into creating probabilities, thereby turning her into a RealityWarper.
* Creator/ChrisClaremont usually averted this, giving the ''Comicbook/XMen'' their RequiredSecondaryPowers explicitly and having some of them learn to use them on their own. However, he wrote one of the [[ComicBook/NewMutants junior team]], Sunspot, as super-strong but not invulnerable, which led to a letters-page discussion about why the character didn't break bones while lifting things.
** Also, though it may not have had anything to do with Claremont's work, some of {{Wolverine}}'s secondary "powers" have been indicated: When Rogue got a full taste of his SuperSenses she was overwhelmed by the sensory input (and in intense pain, as the tactile sense was in overload as well; his use of meditation apparently helps him deal with it, along with constant exposure to mild-to-excessive pain giving him a very high threshold for pain, and it may also explain why he always seems to be in a bad mood and how, though he can survive it, he doesn't collapse whenever he takes a few hundred rounds to the chest and face). The problem of why the backs of his hands, where the claws come out, don't each have three holes is explained by his claws actually punching a hole through his flesh every time he extends them, at which point his HealingFactor closes the wounds before he bleeds all over the place. Just where all the [[ShapeshifterBaggage mass of his body comes from]] when he heals from [[GoodThingYouCanHeal massive injury]] (for instance, ''[[FromASingleCell all of his organs and flesh tissue, aside from his brain and skeleton]]'', more than once), however, is completely ignored. As is why his bones don't fall apart when everything that's not bonded with [[{{Unobtainium}} adamantium]] is completely destroyed. He does tend to wind up [[SceneryCensor naked]] when that happens, though, at least.
*** It isn't COMPLETELY ignored actually...it probably wasn't Claremont's, but there was a short arc in which Logan, while traveling through a desert, catches and eats raw a crow (he feigned fainting to let the birds approach) after a hallucination he was having (long story) reminded him that his healing factor needed proteins in order to regenerate tissues. For regeneration of far more severe injuries, another explanation has been given in another comic: Logan had...ahem...defeated the Angel of Death in a duel (he didn't know who the guy was though) and had since then been granted a sort of "immortality" (his healing factor was able to heal him from ANY injury). At the end of the arc, Logan had his "pact" with the Angel canceled and was informed that, from that moment on, his healing factor was going to be far less effective.
*** He's got to have superhuman strength (or close to it) to be able to be agile at all while carrying around a skeleton that weighs around a hundred pounds, DependingOnTheWriter, more than a normal human's. Possibly the result of his healing abilities building more efficient muscles, since he was pretty quick relatively shortly after receiving his adamantium, or a combination of that and training while lugging around so much weight.
*** In a ''What If?'' story where all superheroes and villains lost their powers after M-Day (rather than just the least marketable mutant characters), Wolverine lacks the strength to move with his adamantium skeleton and is effectively paralysed until Tony Stark builds him an Iron Man armor to allow him to walk. No explanation for why the massive metal poisoning didn’t kill him though.
*** One description of his healing factor indicates that he has unlimited stamina - due to constant regeneration, his muscles never tire from overuse. Thus Wolverine is granted a degree of superhuman strength from constantly training and fighting with 100 extra pounds of adamantium to haul around. Also, human muscle is much stronger than one might think, but using it to its full potential would result in muscle damage and liquefaction. Wolverine's healing factor means he can use his maximum theoretical strength all the time. Combined with unbreakable bones, this means Wolverine can also lift objects much heavier which a normal human otherwise could with their own muscle strength at peak athletic levels, but cannot in reality due to their bones snapping from the pressure.
*** Wolverine's healing factor even extends to his ''mind''. As stated in the trope description, super healing doesn't account for a mind being overloaded with pain. Wolverine's healing factor, however, compensates for this by cutting out the most traumatizing memories (both emotionally and physically). This can be interpreted as meaning that the reason Wolverine is able to withstand such devastating injuries because his brain cuts out all trace of the trauma, much the way the brain in RealLife averts {{Dizzycam}} by inducing temporarily blindness whenever the eyes move.
*** This has been given as one possible reason why he will never fully recover the memories that he had before his adamantium implantation: his healing factor is preventing him from recovering those memories because they would be too ''emotionally'' painful.
*** Despite the "protein" point above, he once survived, when trapped under a glacier for six months, by eating parts of himself.
*** Also, his cells must have no [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit Hayflick limit]], or his healing factor would also be CastFromLifespan.
*** Alternately, the lack of hayflick limitations could be part of his primary power (the telomeres simply heal like everything else instead of degrading with divisions), which would make the required secondary power some sort of alternate storage mechanism for the information in his DNA, used to repair that DNA when damaged.
*** ''Death of Wolverine'' points out that, without his {{Healing Factor}}, the simple act of using and then retracting his claws would likely give Logan a lethal blood infection.
*** The simple ''existence'' of Logan's HealingFactor is this: Once someone stopped and realized what would ''actually'' happen to someone whose entire skeleton was covered in metal, his healing abilities were invented to explain why he was even still alive. As a result, whenever Logan's healing factor isn't working, he faces a slow death from adamantium poisoning without medical intervention.
** Banshee's hearing is extremely powerful. According to him, with powers like his ([[MakeMeWannaShout sonic powers]]), the alternative would be being deaf.
* Archangel of the ''X-Men'' has the increased strength and stamina necessary to fly with a gigantic honking wingspan. His wings themselves are also strong enough to slap a grown man across a room, or break many bones at once.
** His actual wing surface area isn't nearly large enough to lift a human-sized body using real-world physics-- ever wonder why hang gliders are so big? So Creator/StanLee gave him a required-power weight loss by attributing zero body fat and hollow bones like a bird-- except that doesn't work out either, the largest birds have proportionately a lot more bone per body volume than even the smallest human, let alone a six-footer like Angel, and hollowing his bones only shaves off a few pounds of weight. Likewise, a man of his athletic build and muscle mass normally has less than ten percent body fat anyway, not nearly enough savings in weight, especially with such a high proportion of dense muscle.
** He also presumably has a more efficient oxygen absorption system (Birds have vastly superior lungs to mammals) although it is never stated
** One power of Archangel's that seems to come and go DependingOnTheWriter is that his blood has healing properties, meaning he is able to grant people a temporary healing factor through a transfusion. He is not a universal donor and does not have an unlimited amount of blood, so there are limits on who and how many he can heal.
** Along with his super-efficient lung capacity his tolerance to extreme wind conditions and cold at high altitudes (he's been shown casually hitching rides on airplanes for long distance travel and having no problems with the thin air, cold, or high velocity airflow) also ends up forgotten by many writers.
* ComicBook/KittyPryde of the X-Men apparently could not breathe while phased (because the air was out of phase with her) let alone breathe when inside solid objects, and yet for some reason should could still walk (and not drop straight through the center of the Earth whenever she phased), presumably because she could create some sort of phase boundary between the soles of her feet and the ground that allowed the ground to continue to hold her up against gravity. This was entirely implicit until Grant Morrison's run, when for instance, Kitty could often be seen climbing air (using the same boundary effect) and could breathe while phased in open air at least (because she can phase the air around her the same way she phases her clothes or people she is holding.)
** Similar assumption can be made that Nightcrawler can extend his teleportation outside the limits of his body: if he didn't, every time he used his power his clothes would drop off. Since he can take another whole person with him if he is in direct contact when teleporting, this seems to be fairly plausible.
* ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} of the X-Men is probably one of the best billiard players ''in the world.'' Why? Well, eventually somebody realized that the absurdly complex ricochet effects he pulls off with a moment's thought using his eye-beams ''must'' mean he has some kind of sixth sense for angles and geometry. So now he does. Not necessary, but necessary for him to be able to [[RuleOfCool use his powers the way he does]].
** According to ''The Physics of Superheroes'' (by [[ShownTheirWork real-world physicist]] and comic book fan James Kaklios) Cyclops must also have super strong neck muscles, as the beams are described as concussive force - without such musculature, Newton's 3rd law says his neck ought to be snapped every time he uses his powers. Not sure how accurate this logic is, though.
*** The WordOfGod is that he feels no recoil at all, since the "push" for his eyebeams actually comes from another dimension. He's just the doorway for the particles that make up the beams.
*** Of course, the first time he activated his powers was to use the recoil to slow his and Alex' descent to the ground from the plane they jumped out of.
** Alternatively, there is a minor meme going around which proves Cyclops can fly. The eyebeams produce kinetic kickback, but he is immune to this kinetic energy. If he only held his hand in front of his eyes, then WHOOOOSH.
** Something similar happened with Bouncing Boy from ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'', a rare case where the required secondary powers actually became more prominent than the primary one. Because of the impressive ricocheting moves he pulls off, the writers reasoned he must have an innate knowledge of geometry & mathematics, so he became one of the Legion's main science guys & rarely used his [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway primary power]]. [[DorkAge Thankfully]].
*** And he was a great billiards player- he knocked three balls into the nets with one strike!
* Colossus in ''ComicBook/UltimateXMen'' can turn his body to steel. It was later revealed that he has no natural super strength to compensate for the added weight of a metal body and instead dopes with a power-magnifying [[SuperSerum super steroid]].
** The ''ComicBook/UltimateGalactusTrilogy'' also has a bit where [[Comicbook/TheFalcon Sam Wilson]] realizes that if Colossus turned his ''entire'' body to organic steel, then he wouldn't be able to see. One eye poke later...
** Ultimate Pyro is able to generate flames, but he is not immune and is covered with gruesome scar tissue as a result.
*** It was even worse for non-Ultimate Pyro, since he could only ''control'' fire, but needed a special suit to generate flames (which was likely also fireproof).
* Another X-men subversion: Armor is a force field user whose force field is invulnerable to most forms of physical and energy attacks, but is vulnerable to lasers ''specifically because'' it has to let light through. Incidentally someone once tried the same trick on Sue Storm. Once.
* The secondary power of "can tolerate cold temperatures" is memorably played up for three X-Men at once in an issue of ''X-Men Unlimited,'' while a team of Storm, Iceman, Colossus, and Angel are on a mission in Antarctica:
-->'''Storm:''' Hmm. Angel, my weather powers protect me from the chill, Colossus is immune to extreme temperatures while armored, and Iceman is, well, ''Ice''man. How are ''you'' doing?
-->'''Angel:''' I'm '''very cold,''' thank you for asking!
** Which is a bit of research failure regarding Angel, since he's adapted for extreme heights that actually includes an ability to handle frigid temperatures, though it's not specified if there's a difference between the temperature at altitudes he's used to flying through and the temperature on the ground at that time. It's possible his tolerance to cold was just overcome.
* As pointed out by [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-powers-you-never-realized-your-favorite-superheroes-have/ Cracked]], there's quite a few of these not already listed:
** ComicBook/{{Storm}}'s lightning bolts don't come from her body's own internal energy supply, since she'd have to constantly be scarfing down food just to make up for the calories she'd lose every time she used her powers. This means she's either drawing electricity from the air around her, or is simply ''generating it from out of nowhere'', both of which are extremely impressive.
** Once again, DependingOnTheWriter, certain series have specifically stated that Storm actually pulls weather from the surrounding areas in a form of EquivalentExchange. When she made it rain for her village to experience a bountiful harvest, she put other portions of her homeland into a drought. How far this sphere of influence extends is anyone's guess, though.
** Sandman can control his own sand, making it fly and move around, including turning himself into a cloud and controlling his own direction of flight (so he's not using the wind), so Sandman clearly can fly.
* This is actually a plot point in the miniseries ''Worst X-Man Ever''. Bailey Hoskins is a mutant with the ability to [[WhyAmITicking blow himself up]]. That's it. That's his only power. What he does ''not'' have is any of the powers required to actually ''survive'' or reconstitute himself afterwards. If he were to use his power he would be KilledOffForReal.
* Quicksilver's [[TangledFamilyTree sort-of-nephew]], Tommy / Speed of the ''ComicBook/YoungAvengers'', got a job assembling circuit boards at super-speed at one point. He chugs some coffee, turns into a blur, and then tells Prodigy that from his perspective that was about a ''week.''

* Comicbook/{{Aquaman}}:
** Aquaman's lifetime in the sea leads to increased strength, agility, and resilience on land that would help him to survive and move easily in the ocean depths.

** Butterball, from [[ComicBook/AvengersTheInitiative Avengers: The Initiative]] has similar problems - his powers made him frozen in the (quite obese) form he was when they activated, which means he cannot realize his lifelong dream of being a superhero because he can never train and get in shape for crimefighting and he doesn't even have muscles necessary to fight in a way the likes of Blob do. Of course the Initiative could use their nanotechnology to block his powers and then train him, but [[spoiler: their chief scientist was really a Skrull and he used his position to kick him out]].