Awesomeness By Analysis / Comic Books

Awesomeness by Analysis in Comic Books.

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• The DCU:
  • The Authority:
    • The Midnighter starts every battle by first running the whole thing through the supercomputer in his head a few million times, analyzing every possible outcome, so he'll know precisely how the battle will go, and what he'll have to do. He's particularly fond of telling people that he's already beaten them a few million times, so doing it once more will be simple. He even put this on a business card once in an effort to save time. This failed, as the card ended up in his forehead.
    • This was rather effectively inverted in Captain Atom: Armageddon. The Midnighter saw Captain Atom as just another target for a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Instead, Captain Atom treated the Midnighter (and his boyfriend/husband Apollo) to a total Curb-Stomp Battle, showing that sometimes Awesomeness by Analysis is no match for raw, unadulterated, world-shaking power, especially when the wielder of that power also out-thinks you.
    • And it fails when a supervillain summons the Joker, who despite being human is so psychotic and unpredictable that the only thing Midnighter can do is stand there staring at him.
    • Another failure comes about in the miniseries Human on the Inside, in which Midnighter's opponent thwarts him by declining to make the first move, reasoning that Midnighter can only derive the possibilities for the fight once his opponent makes an opening move. Fans seem divided over whether that's really how the power was supposed to work. On the other hand, the guy was actually an android sent specifically to destroy the Authority from within, so he might have been to confuse Midnighter's analysis somehow.
  • Batman:
    • The titular Batman is said to have a second major in this, as he is very very much a detective and criminologist when his preplanning everything didn't succeed immediately. An example of this trope in action comes in Batman: Year One when Bruce Wayne first encounters street hooker Selina Kyle and quickly realizes "She knows Karate... only Karate."
    • The same goes for Batman's Evil Counterpart Prometheus, who has created technology that analyzes an opponent's fighting style, allowing him to simulate it perfectly.
    • The Batman villain Bane became a master of several martial arts and sciences simply by reading every book he could get his hands on. After Bane holds his own against world-class swordsman Ra's al Ghul, Ra's criticizes his lack of flair and implies that Bane learned sword fighting entirely from reading books on the subject.
    • Cassandra Cain and her mother both possess an ability to "read" body language, allowing them to perfectly predict every move made by their opponents. Cassandra has gained this ability by undergoing Training from Hell that left her with severe disabilities as a consequence, while Shiva has it from simply being that good at martial arts.
    • The Clock King is known for his Ludicrous Precision, to the point that he fought Batman to a standstill because he'd analyzed all of his moves.
    • Bruce Wayne (out of costume and with no gadgets) was able to hold off several Talon assassins by simply figuring out that their techniques, while accumulated through years of experience through technical immortality, were outdated. Once he figures out that were pretty much undead, meaning he wouldn't really be killing them, they stand no chance. However, one of them, the great-grandfather of Dick Grayson, was a bit more of a challenge the first time around.
    • In Batman: Curse of the White Knight, the moment the Joker sees that Harley was pregnant, he correctly guesses that she is having twins.
  • Early on in Blackest Night, Mera deduces on her own that the Black Lanterns are drawn towards strongly emanating emotions (in the same manner that sharks are drawn towards blood), before any actual Lanterns from the Corps drop in to save the day and go into actual detail about the undead Lanterns.
  • In Legion of Super-Heroes, Karate Kid prides himself on learning every martial art in existence. Since he is male, he's not allowed to learn Amazonian martial arts. He was nonetheless able to figure it out by watching other people using it.
  • Superman:
    • In War World, Superman and Supergirl deduce the way to beat super-villain Mongul by observing a mass graveyard located at the titular weapon-satellite.
      Superman: Do you remember that mountain of graves we noticed on Warworld? That's what gave me the answer! The Warzoons weren't buried in a mass grave as there'd be if the race was destroyed by some great illness!
      Supergirl: You're right! The Warzoons must've died one by one! They buried each other — except for the last one buried by the peace-loving Largas!
      Superman: Precisely! And there's only one thing on that entire satellite capable of killing the Warzoon one at a time — the control helmet in the command console!
      Supergirl: The massive energy-drain must've proven too much for their minds to endure!
    • Superboy (New 52): Kon taught himself to talk and communicate by watching others do it.
• American Pi in Troy Hickman's series Common Grounds has this as her superpower.
• Destiny Ajaye in the upcoming Top Cow series Genius has this ability which she uses to coordinate gang warfare on a national scale.
• This is supposedly how Helix sees the world in G.I. Joe (IDW). It is the explanation for her kickass combat abilities that make her a match for Snake-Eyes.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Finesse from Avengers Academy has a similar ability to the Taskmaster's: the ability to master any physical skill she sees performed. So much so that she actually wonders if she might be Taskmaster's daughter. She also has his memory problems.
  • The Beast defeated Hawkeye at billiards in The Avengers through calculation of angles.
  • Like Karnak, Mantis from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy can instinctively sense weak points in her opponents. In one of her first appearances, she took down flippin' Thor by locating (and then punching) sensitive nerve clusters in his neck.
  • Fantastic Four:
    • Mr. Fantastic lives on this trope. Being a Rubber Man who's Immune to Bullets is a pretty impressive superpower by itself, but Reed benefits heavily from his massive intellect, which allows him to apply his powers with tremendous creativity and swiftly identify the weaknesses of any opponent that he faces.
    • When he's not busy building robots, this is the Mad Thinker's shtick (combining it with Xanatos Gambit). He's an evil super-mathematician. During Civil War, when Reed Richards admits to having basically invented psycho-history and wants someone to check his figures, he realizes that the Mad Thinker is the only qualified person around. The Thinker is bowled over by the scope of Reed's calculations.
  • The Incredible Hulk:
    • Bruce Banner has this when he isn't the Hulk, to the point that Norman Osborn considers Banner a bigger threat than the Hulk.
    • Amadeus Cho claims that the Hulk actually does this subconsciously, since he still has access to all of Banner's smarts, and that that's why in all the seemingly random destruction he causes, innocent people usually escape unscathed. Immortal Hulk brings this concept up, with several characters noting that this is ridiculous... but then again... when asked about it, the Hulk states that it makes sense. For the nicer Hulk, which he is decidedly not.
  • Amadeus Cho from The Incredible Hercules has this as his superpower. He can stop a charging rhino with a grape seed.
  • Karnak of The Inhumans has the ability to find the one weak spot in any material or object, allowing him to shatter it with a (non-superpowered) karate chop. He's been shown to damage Ultron with a well-placed strike. And pushing the awesomeness even further: this is not a "superpower." He was never exposed to the Terrigen Mists, like other Inhumans, so his abilities are the result of training and discipline. Later stories show him to be able to detect the flaws in more abstract things, such as plans and concepts. And after he was Driven to Suicide in Inhumanity, he came back after finding the weak spot in death.
  • Ms. Marvel (2014): While Kamala Khan has quite the impressive shapeshifter powerset, being a nerdy and intelligent teenage girl, she pretty much specializes in using the laws of physics to her advantage as part of her superheroing style.
  • Spider-Man: In a prelude to Spider-Island, when Shang-Chi teaches Spider-Man martial arts, Spider-Man attempts to take this approach, although Shang-Chi disagrees, believing that Spidey is Measuring the Marigolds:
    Spider-Man: Think I got this. It's mass, acceleration, leverage and a knowledge of human biology. That's science, and I'm great at science.
    Shang-Chi: No, Spider-Man, it is so much more. This is no mere application of brute force. It is an art, and an expression of the self.
    Spider-Man: What if most of myself is science?
  • Taskmaster can do this with any physical skill he has seen at least once and is physically capable of duplicating (and some that he shouldn't be). However, what makes this Awesomeness by Analysis is that he's founded a thriving business teaching other supervillains (his latest job is training the recruits/draftees of the Initiative and latter Osborn's Camp HAMMER) something he couldn't do if he didn't gain a deep insight into the skills he picked up. In fact, he's so good at it that governments have been shown to hire him to train law-enforcement to take down supervillains. This power, however, requires the subject to act sanely and in a recognizable pattern. Daredevil once defeated him by acting at random (eventually tricking Taskmaster into stepping into traffic), and he is powerless against Deadpool's Confusion Fu.
  • X-Men:
    • Cyclops is very good at pool, seeing as he's had to memorize complex trigonometric techniques to make sure his optic blasts go wherever he wants. It's implied/stated to be part of his powers.
    • This is Sage's whole shtick. Well, this and Psychic Powers, but mostly she's the resident Awesomeness by Analysis queen.
    • In the crossover event Necrosha, a resurrected, Brainwashed and Crazy Doug Ramsey easily beats up the New Mutants by using his Omniglot power to "translate" the nonverbal language of their Attack Pattern Alpha, predicting their every move. He loses the upper hand when Karma mind-controls the whole team, causing them to move erratically.
    • X-23 walks through a doorway. By then, Laura has already assessed the threat level of everyone present and calculated the best plan for killing everyone inside the room. She can't turn it off, either.
• Paris of Stormwatch PHD developed his talent for precision violence via innate instinct, Training from Hell and a really bad childhood. Wanda Durst, his teammate, has a similar origin that resulted in her particular skill set.
• Top 10's Detective King Peacock has the ability find a weakness in any object, although his justification is he apparently talks to Satan.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers (Marvel): Shockwave was able to calculate probabilities of situational outcomes to exact percentages. It didn't hurt that he was an actual computer.
  • The Transformers Megaseries: IDW Shockwave is no slouch at this either, and not just for calculating probabilities or discovering weakness, either. During a fight with the Dinobots, he is astonished by the irrationality of their attack and deducts that it's driven by anger, an emotion that he finds irrational and normally pointless. However, once he sees how it seems to drive up their ability to fight, he patches together a "rage" emulator into his mind and goes absolutely berserk, singlehandedly dominating the Dinobots, and then puts this so-called "anger" on the back-burner for later analysis.
  • Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Skids has the ability to learn and master new skills quickly. He has used this to analyze an opponent's fighting styles and overcome numerous, powerful enemies. However, there is a drawback: Because he learns skills so quickly, he gets bored once he learns everything he can about a subject.
• In Watchmen, two such characters exist. One is Ozymandias, the other the God-like Doctor Manhattan. The latter is Blessed with Suck when he can analyze everything, even the future he will take, and finds everything to be meaningless on a grand scale.

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