Lowballing DC Heroes

Here's a weird question:

What are the worst showings any DC superhero has ever shown? By that I mean, lowball them, give me runs where they've shown their least amount of power, or been written in a way that made them much weaker than we've come to expect.

For example: the original Superman could not fly, and was not a flying, bulletproof chunk of righteous anti matter versed in all of the sciences. The original Wonder Woman could not fly, and did not have a Super Mode as far as I can tell. The original Batman wasn't a super-ninja, and IIRC carried a gun in some adventures. The original Green Lantern and Flash were much weaker than their contemparies, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen.

What' I'm not looking for are times when the character was poorly written, or forgot about their powers. When a writer wrote them as being this strong and let them job to someone much weaker than them.

edited 23rd Oct '15 4:38:19 AM by Soble

Here◊.

Wonder Woman's least powerful period was the time she was stripped of her Amazonian might and gadgets for a little over a year to play martial artist/spy. (Also known as the "white pantsuit period.")

The Thing was originally weaker than Spider-man and Invisible Woman could only turn herself invisible. The Fantastic Four getting stronger over time was actually a plot point in the series, one that got ignored when it became clear the series was never going end in a logical fashion.

In fact, lots of Marvel characters used to have the "I'm only a teenager, wait until I grow!" line of thinking (Spider-man, Colossus) only to get "power ups" that had nothing to do with natural growth. X-men's a good example though. Cyclops used to have the gimmick of a reflecting laser, rather than a beam that could punch holes in mountains, then a beam that could destroy small planets. Magneto started out ridiculously overpowered compared to his enemies but was then scaled back to "only" have control over metal before they decided to bump him back up by giving him control over the entire electromagnetic spectrum plus a bunch of other powers that make no sense just to ensure nothing but the Author would save the puny X-men.

Toad could jump high and nothing else. Iceman wasn't a nigh invulnerable death vortex capable of Hulking out. Flight was all Angel did. Nightcrawler didn't turn invisible in darkness or walk on walls. Psyloche wasn't a martial artists capable of making psionic knives and katanas. Woverline could be killed through crucifixion. Mystique could only change her superficial appearance and voice. She could only mimic people around the same size as her effectively. Sunspot couldn't fly. Jean Grey wasn't host to a cosmic force, and she didn't actually have the power to bring herself back to life. Cable wasn't a Jesus wannabe and didn't have the means to even play pretend. Storm couldn't breathe underwater or make an EMP out of lightning. Beast wasn't blue.

There's the infamous Identity Crisis fight where Deathstroke managed to solo the Justice League.

Storm can breathe underwater???

Immediately post-Crisis, Wally West as the Flash was scaled down to Mach 1 for a good while. Wally was also portrayed that way in the Young Justice cartoon.

Speaking of: Justice League season 1 for one of the weakest Superman portrayals, quite infamously.

Also, Flash being outrun by a car.

As a whole Young Justice nerfed a good portion of the cast. Miss Martian is supposed to have Supergirl and Wonder Girl level strength (I think there's even a Bad Future vision that shows her overpowering and strangling Wonder Girl to death) but the show downplayed her Flying Brick status to focus on her telepathy and invisibility.

To be fair, the same has been done to J'onn as well.

While Justice League did use his strength, it never emphasized it that much. The Batman gave him Telekenesis (which he does not have in the comics), and I think the emphasis on his mind and shape shifting powers is just a way to differentiate him from Superman.

One of the Fleischer Bros. Superman animated shorts (Japoteurs, to be specific) shows Superman having trouble breaking down a door separating the cockpit and passenger sections of a plane. This was, I suppose, considered necessary to build suspense, but he'd been trashing big robots without much difficulty in earlier installments. This particular instance may so ridiculously underpower Superman that it counts as bad writing all by itself, though.

Oh, and I know Justice League Season 1 has been mentioned, but I want to make special mention of Superman chasing Deadshot, who is fleeing in a van, and having trouble catching him. Superman apparently forgot he had superspeed, or heat vision to melt the tires, or that he had a whole host of other options.

Frequently, and unfortunately, I've noticed that a lot of heroes get lowballed when they're put in a team, I suppose to justify the need for the team's existence (the opposite is true of Batman, though. Put him in a team and he tends to become a living god).

Yes, I read that either in one of Marvel's handbooks or on their official site. I was an X-men fan at the time so I really didn't care but it doesn't make much sense when you stop to think.

And I'll take 'defend my city' Superman over 'juggle planets' Superman any day. I think the jack ass jumps around and break things in his various vendettas against the world was far more interesting than the flying god of paragons.

And speaking of Superman and low balling, the New Gods have been hit by it pretty hard, probably because of that 1990s cartoon where Superman beat them up, especially Darkseid, who went from threat who can only be defeated when the whole universe rallies against him to alien with second rate eye beams who can be defeated by an anarchist wearing three layers of Kevlar(TM). I'm told The Super Powers Team cartoon was pretty brutal in its depiction of the new gods too though, so that might be the real origin of their low balling.

The only New Gods who got depicted on the Super Powers cartoon were Darkseid, Desaad, and Kalibak. They made figures for Mr.Miracle and Orion, but they never appeared on the cartoon.

Kirby's Darkseid was definitely meant to be Superman-level powerful, but even so he primarily worked through agents. He was a calm, careful strategist who seldom dirtied his own hands with combat; that frequently gets lost in subsequent adaptations.

Yeah, Superman never used super speed in Justice League, presumably to avoid making Flash redundant.