Discussion Main / ReedRichardsISUseless

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? There were points there mentioned as examples of the trope in the Harry Potter universe, not inter-troper natter.

I feel like we should perhaps split the list of reasons for this trope into Watsonian and Doyalist reasons. Currently it combines the two - eg. yes, the technology will often be Awesome, but Impractical as a Watsonian reason it can't be widely distributed, but the reason writers establish that fact is usually for one of the Doyalist reasons (keeping the setting relatable, etc.)

There may not be a writer for Real Life, but Real Life doesn't display tropes so much as tropes reflect Real Life. Therefore, a Real Life section is applicable since the trope can be observed, even if it can't be invoked.

• Contrast to Lex, who sells such cures in a Reed manner (not that Reed would do that kind of thing, mind you).
• But Reed still hasn't bothered to duplicate Dr. Doom's healing machine.

With regard to the trope's namesake, in recent years Marvel have attempted to justify Reed Richards by making it a matter of cost: Reed invents machines and solutions too costly to recreate. Mr. Fantastic is only smart enough to build a flying car, but not quite smart enough (or too busy) to make it run on anything less complicated than comet gas or the pain of damned souls or whatever. Another frequent justification is that Reed could invent some of this stuff, but his mind works at such an advanced level that no one else would fully understand the equations and formulas he comes up with (or even comprehend them at all), so it would be near-impossible — or even dangerous — for anyone else to duplicate it anyway (which in turn raises questions of why intermediate technology couldn't be developed). Finally, with respect to the example given in the header: Cancer is a generic category of diseases, not one disease with a single cause. There are a stupefying array of different types of cancer, with an even more stupefying number of separate causes. Even if a genius like Reed Richards spent every waking hour of the rest of his life trying to do so, he couldn't possibly cure them all.

• Lampshaded directly in volume 3 of the Incredible Hulk, when Banner was diagnosed with ALS. Reed was one of the people Banner contacted, and Reed flat-out said that while he could travel through time, etc, etc, he could not cure ALS. Fortunately for Banner, it turned out the Leader could. At the end of the issue where he was cured, Banner broke the Fourth Wall to explicitly state the cure was fictional, followed by a plea for donations to help find a cure.
• The Ultimate Reed Richards is even smarter, and consequently more useless. When he fights the Ultimate Sub-Mariner, he's invented a helmet that turns his every thought into concrete reality (yet still manages to lose!). Surely, even a scrap of such a device's technology could be put to immeasurable practical use.
  • The implicit rationale for this specific story is provided when Reed has to draw a massive amount of power from the city grid to power his holograms.
  • The rationale/Hand Wave behind this is that everything he does is financed by the army, and most of his discoveries are consequently classified or reserved solely for their use, and he's mostly only allowed to work on projects that they request (or his own pet projects like holographic baby versions of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America). Tony Stark, on the other hand, apparently invented the mp3, and is presumably funding lots of research on cancer, since he has an inoperable brain tumor.
  • In the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up series (most of which has been rendered discontinuity), it was stated that Reed Richards was responsible for numerous real-life inventions, one of them being the joystick.
• In a recent plotline, Doom travels back in time to stop Reed from changing the world. The future-Four follow him, and Doom is forced to admit that the future is a paradise, and the only reason he wants to stop Reed is so that he can do it. Reed sends him to a alternate universe where all the heroes are dead, leaving future-Doom as the only superpowered being.
• Hand Waved somewhat during the Mark Waid run on Fantastic Four, when one issue revealed that Reed does indeed make money from some of his patents... by taking money from other corporations to delay releasing advanced products that would revolutionize whole industries overnight and likely destroy the world economy by putting millions out of work. For instance, he takes money from Sony not to release a portable super-computer he has developed, which would presumably pose a significant risk to Sony's current market share and operational procedures (and those of other computer manufacturers as well). He presumably does this with other advanced technologies, but it is not specified which ones; a later issue mentions him selling a hypersonic cure for acne to Revlon. The technology's there, but Reed's use of it is about as judicious as a tight-rope walker.
• Reed also sells some of his technology to prisons to help confine superhuman prisoners.
• Also explored in 4 #1 where the Fantastic Four goes bankrupt. The Thing looks for a job as a construction worker. One construction foreman turns Thing down saying that the Thing's super-strength would do the work of too many workers. Thus, the foreman would have to lay off a good deal of the workforce if the Thing was hired.
• Lately, as part of his rationalization of supporting the Registration side during Civil War, we learn that Reed has developed psychohistory, the future-predicting science from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. He may not be releasing his amazing technologies because he is actively guiding the future of humanity, and his inventions might end up killing us all.
  • However, the reliability of Reed's version of Psychohistory is dubious when one notes that he seemingly failed to predict the Skrull invasion or that the Initiative would eventually fall under the control of super-villains resulting in massive collateral damage in both cases.
  • It doesn't have to be an "all or nothing process" as there are numerous "low-tech" (by Reed Richards standards) that Reed could easily patent without harming anyone (i.e. liquid band-aids).
• There was also the time where he helped his ex-girlfriend build an alternate, utopian planet. He ended up giving it to the people of a dystopian future who had come back in time to kill him to prevent him from causing said future in the first place. Trillions of dollars, gone.

• A possible bit of Fridge Brilliance at play. The technology the average person uses in early Fantastic Four comics is clearly from the sixties. The technology from current issues is, obviously, current. But in-universe, all the Fantastic Four’s adventures have taken place in the last ten years. As a result, the Marvel Universe advances at about four times the speed our world does. Maybe Reed isn’t so useless… Course this doesn’t explain the year they think it is or the pop-culture references, Daddy-oh.
  • A good example is when the Fantastic Four debuted in 1961, they were trying to be the first humans to publicly land on the moon. In 1969, when humans landed on the moon in real life, only two years had passed in the Marvel Universe since the Fantastic Four's debut. Readers could say that Reed Richards helped the Marvel Universe NASA land on the moon 6 years earlier than the real world (1963).

  • Doom uses it for his nation only, when he takes over the world he tends to use all his tech to fix the world's problems.

  • .... If Dr. Doom has a ray gun that totally cures burn-victims, why doesn't he just use it to fix his face?
    • Because Dr. Doom considered himself "too beautiful for humanity"
    • More seriously, the ray gun has to be used within a certain period of time of the injury, and Doom didn't invent it until years after his face was fried.
    • Dr. Doom has had plenty of other opportunities to fix his face, such as the time when he possessed the Silver Surfer's power.
    • Ah, but on a more psychological level, Doom needs his disfigurement as a symbol for his hatred (and jealousy) of Richards, which drives his ambition, which in turn drives his genius.
    • He did fix it, when he stole the power of the Beyonder. This tips off the heroes that for all of Doom's newfound "I am beyond my humanity and villainy" talk, it wasn't really true; if he was, he wouldn't have cared about his face. When the Beyonder takes his power back, his face reverts to normal.

  • The supposed rationale suggested as to why Marvel 616 Reed Richards has not imitated his Big Town counterpart is that people would not accept change so sudden. However, that doesn't explain why Reed could be more careful in the rate in which he released his inventions. Be glad that Thomas Edison didn't let this barrier hinder him.
    • Contrary to popular belief, Edison was a total dick who barely did anything besides stealing.
• A Running Gag in the 80s John Byrne run was that various characters would ask Reed why he hasn't cured cancer/created a super cleanser/perfected cold fusion/etc. His usual response was "What makes you think I haven't tried," followed by a short burst of technobabble explaining why he hadn't succeeded.
  • There is technology higher than the real world's available in the Marvel Universe- everything from ray guns to cybernetics to jet packs and more; it's just too expensive for the average person. This is the very reason for the existence of companies such as Tony "Iron Man" Stark's, which provides wealthy organizations like SHIELD with their equipment. Sometimes it even filters down to less rich people, for example if stolen. Of course, why the process for making it all cheaper hasn't been invented is a good question.
    • A process for making all this super-tech was apparently achieved in the Fantastic Four: Bigtown mini-series.
    • One possible reason why a lot of this hasn't been made cheaper and more widely available is possibly the same reason that, in Real Life, not everyone has their own private jet or personal X-ray machine; some things, even after all the technological advancements in these various fields over the years, simply remain pretty damn expensive for most people.
  • Richards' second, less prominent archenemy, the Wizard, has variously claimed he could "reverse global warming if I felt like it" and that he discovered how to achieve perpetual motion long ago, but he still operates as one of the Hood's goons. Hell, before that the best he could manage was "successful businessman" and "Internet celebrity".
    • Granted, in the Fall Of The Hulks he has shown that he isn't as useless as part of the Intelligencia.
      • Could somebody please explain how the Wizard has been useful as a member of the Intelligenicia.
        • He's useful to the villains; he's still useless to the general public. However, the Intelligenicia's overall goal is to not be useless. They want to take over the world and start solving all of its problems, using their combined genius, and the knowledge from people such as Bruce Banner, Dr. Doom, and Reed Richards. That's right, their nefarious plot is to make Reed Richards useful.

  • Given that Captain Marvel's nega-bands fought held his cancer at bay for years, one wonders if the superheroes tried to adapt such technology for human medical applications.
    • Of course, such application would take years of clinical testing.
  • In a What If based on this story, Mar-Vell got his cure. And it created a contagious form of cancer that nearly wiped out humanity. And the Kree, and the Skrulls, ending their war.

  • Back when a good writer (Christopher Priest) was on the book, Wakanda only became super-advanced after Ulysses Klaw attacked Wakanda, killing hundreds, including King T'Chaka. The actual advancing was done by sending children to study in Europe and the U.S. and taking what they learned back home (kinda like what Japan and China did). It didn't hurt that the new King, young T'Challa (aka The Black Panther), was a genius up there with Reed Richard and Dr. Doom, and had a key role in making the country a technological marvel. This was later retconned to say that Wakanda had always been thousands of years more advanced than every other country, ever since the ice ages, and T'Challa actually hasn't invented anything, he just inherited lots of cool toys. Presumably someone thought it was a good idea to retcon away the title character's greatest accomplishment, modernizing a country into a world power, in order to have him inherit a utopia instead.
    • Averted with the House Of M version of the Black Panther, who turned a united Sub-Saharan Africa into one of the world's leading economic powerhouses.
      • But the other House Of M superheroes had to be worse than useless and undo the House of M reality, thus reverting Sub-Saharan Africa to a starving basketcase once again.
      • But those same superheroes undid Apocalypse conquering and enslaving the inhabitants of North Africa.
        • House of M was just as screwed up as regular Marvel Earth. Things were good under Storm, but the rest of the world had normal human persecuted by mutants, Apocalypse enslaving North Africa, and generally the same problems the regular MU has.

• Contrast to Lex, who sells such cures in a Reed manner (not that Reed would do that kind of thing, mind you).
• But Reed still hasn't bothered to duplicate Dr. Doom's healing machine.

With regard to the trope's namesake, in recent years Marvel have attempted to justify Reed Richards by making it a matter of cost: Reed invents machines and solutions too costly to recreate. Mr. Fantastic is only smart enough to build a flying car, but not quite smart enough (or too busy) to make it run on anything less complicated than comet gas or the pain of damned souls or whatever. Another frequent justification is that Reed could invent some of this stuff, but his mind works at such an advanced level that no one else would fully understand the equations and formulas he comes up with (or even comprehend them at all), so it would be near-impossible — or even dangerous — for anyone else to duplicate it anyway (which in turn raises questions of why intermediate technology couldn't be developed). Finally, with respect to the example given in the header: Cancer is a generic category of diseases, not one disease with a single cause. There are a stupefying array of different types of cancer, with an even more stupefying number of separate causes. Even if a genius like Reed Richards spent every waking hour of the rest of his life trying to do so, he couldn't possibly cure them all.

• Lampshaded directly in volume 3 of the Incredible Hulk, when Banner was diagnosed with ALS. Reed was one of the people Banner contacted, and Reed flat-out said that while he could travel through time, etc, etc, he could not cure ALS. Fortunately for Banner, it turned out the Leader could. At the end of the issue where he was cured, Banner broke the Fourth Wall to explicitly state the cure was fictional, followed by a plea for donations to help find a cure.
• The Ultimate Reed Richards is even smarter, and consequently more useless. When he fights the Ultimate Sub-Mariner, he's invented a helmet that turns his every thought into concrete reality (yet still manages to lose!). Surely, even a scrap of such a device's technology could be put to immeasurable practical use.
  • The implicit rationale for this specific story is provided when Reed has to draw a massive amount of power from the city grid to power his holograms.
  • The rationale/Hand Wave behind this is that everything he does is financed by the army, and most of his discoveries are consequently classified or reserved solely for their use, and he's mostly only allowed to work on projects that they request (or his own pet projects like holographic baby versions of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America). Tony Stark, on the other hand, apparently invented the mp3, and is presumably funding lots of research on cancer, since he has an inoperable brain tumor.
  • In the Ultimate Marvel Team-Up series (most of which has been rendered discontinuity), it was stated that Reed Richards was responsible for numerous real-life inventions, one of them being the joystick.
• In a recent plotline, Doom travels back in time to stop Reed from changing the world. The future-Four follow him, and Doom is forced to admit that the future is a paradise, and the only reason he wants to stop Reed is so that he can do it. Reed sends him to a alternate universe where all the heroes are dead, leaving future-Doom as the only superpowered being.
• Hand Waved somewhat during the Mark Waid run on Fantastic Four, when one issue revealed that Reed does indeed make money from some of his patents... by taking money from other corporations to delay releasing advanced products that would revolutionize whole industries overnight and likely destroy the world economy by putting millions out of work. For instance, he takes money from Sony not to release a portable super-computer he has developed, which would presumably pose a significant risk to Sony's current market share and operational procedures (and those of other computer manufacturers as well). He presumably does this with other advanced technologies, but it is not specified which ones; a later issue mentions him selling a hypersonic cure for acne to Revlon. The technology's there, but Reed's use of it is about as judicious as a tight-rope walker.
• Reed also sells some of his technology to prisons to help confine superhuman prisoners.
• Also explored in 4 #1 where the Fantastic Four goes bankrupt. The Thing looks for a job as a construction worker. One construction foreman turns Thing down saying that the Thing's super-strength would do the work of too many workers. Thus, the foreman would have to lay off a good deal of the workforce if the Thing was hired.
• Lately, as part of his rationalization of supporting the Registration side during Civil War, we learn that Reed has developed psychohistory, the future-predicting science from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. He may not be releasing his amazing technologies because he is actively guiding the future of humanity, and his inventions might end up killing us all.
  • However, the reliability of Reed's version of Psychohistory is dubious when one notes that he seemingly failed to predict the Skrull invasion or that the Initiative would eventually fall under the control of super-villains resulting in massive collateral damage in both cases.
  • It doesn't have to be an "all or nothing process" as there are numerous "low-tech" (by Reed Richards standards) that Reed could easily patent without harming anyone (i.e. liquid band-aids).
• There was also the time where he helped his ex-girlfriend build an alternate, utopian planet. He ended up giving it to the people of a dystopian future who had come back in time to kill him to prevent him from causing said future in the first place. Trillions of dollars, gone.

• A possible bit of Fridge Brilliance at play. The technology the average person uses in early Fantastic Four comics is clearly from the sixties. The technology from current issues is, obviously, current. But in-universe, all the Fantastic Four’s adventures have taken place in the last ten years. As a result, the Marvel Universe advances at about four times the speed our world does. Maybe Reed isn’t so useless… Course this doesn’t explain the year they think it is or the pop-culture references, Daddy-oh.
  • A good example is when the Fantastic Four debuted in 1961, they were trying to be the first humans to publicly land on the moon. In 1969, when humans landed on the moon in real life, only two years had passed in the Marvel Universe since the Fantastic Four's debut. Readers could say that Reed Richards helped the Marvel Universe NASA land on the moon 6 years earlier than the real world (1963).

  • Doom uses it for his nation only, when he takes over the world he tends to use all his tech to fix the world's problems.

  • .... If Dr. Doom has a ray gun that totally cures burn-victims, why doesn't he just use it to fix his face?
    • Because Dr. Doom considered himself "too beautiful for humanity"
    • More seriously, the ray gun has to be used within a certain period of time of the injury, and Doom didn't invent it until years after his face was fried.
    • Dr. Doom has had plenty of other opportunities to fix his face, such as the time when he possessed the Silver Surfer's power.
    • Ah, but on a more psychological level, Doom needs his disfigurement as a symbol for his hatred (and jealousy) of Richards, which drives his ambition, which in turn drives his genius.
    • He did fix it, when he stole the power of the Beyonder. This tips off the heroes that for all of Doom's newfound "I am beyond my humanity and villainy" talk, it wasn't really true; if he was, he wouldn't have cared about his face. When the Beyonder takes his power back, his face reverts to normal.

  • The supposed rationale suggested as to why Marvel 616 Reed Richards has not imitated his Big Town counterpart is that people would not accept change so sudden. However, that doesn't explain why Reed could be more careful in the rate in which he released his inventions. Be glad that Thomas Edison didn't let this barrier hinder him.
    • Contrary to popular belief, Edison was a total dick who barely did anything besides stealing.
• A Running Gag in the 80s John Byrne run was that various characters would ask Reed why he hasn't cured cancer/created a super cleanser/perfected cold fusion/etc. His usual response was "What makes you think I haven't tried," followed by a short burst of technobabble explaining why he hadn't succeeded.
  • There is technology higher than the real world's available in the Marvel Universe- everything from ray guns to cybernetics to jet packs and more; it's just too expensive for the average person. This is the very reason for the existence of companies such as Tony "Iron Man" Stark's, which provides wealthy organizations like SHIELD with their equipment. Sometimes it even filters down to less rich people, for example if stolen. Of course, why the process for making it all cheaper hasn't been invented is a good question.
    • A process for making all this super-tech was apparently achieved in the Fantastic Four: Bigtown mini-series.
    • One possible reason why a lot of this hasn't been made cheaper and more widely available is possibly the same reason that, in Real Life, not everyone has their own private jet or personal X-ray machine; some things, even after all the technological advancements in these various fields over the years, simply remain pretty damn expensive for most people.
  • Richards' second, less prominent archenemy, the Wizard, has variously claimed he could "reverse global warming if I felt like it" and that he discovered how to achieve perpetual motion long ago, but he still operates as one of the Hood's goons. Hell, before that the best he could manage was "successful businessman" and "Internet celebrity".
    • Granted, in the Fall Of The Hulks he has shown that he isn't as useless as part of the Intelligencia.
      • Could somebody please explain how the Wizard has been useful as a member of the Intelligenicia.
        • He's useful to the villains; he's still useless to the general public. However, the Intelligenicia's overall goal is to not be useless. They want to take over the world and start solving all of its problems, using their combined genius, and the knowledge from people such as Bruce Banner, Dr. Doom, and Reed Richards. That's right, their nefarious plot is to make Reed Richards useful.

  • Given that Captain Marvel's nega-bands fought held his cancer at bay for years, one wonders if the superheroes tried to adapt such technology for human medical applications.
    • Of course, such application would take years of clinical testing.
  • In a What If based on this story, Mar-Vell got his cure. And it created a contagious form of cancer that nearly wiped out humanity. And the Kree, and the Skrulls, ending their war.

  • Back when a good writer (Christopher Priest) was on the book, Wakanda only became super-advanced after Ulysses Klaw attacked Wakanda, killing hundreds, including King T'Chaka. The actual advancing was done by sending children to study in Europe and the U.S. and taking what they learned back home (kinda like what Japan and China did). It didn't hurt that the new King, young T'Challa (aka The Black Panther), was a genius up there with Reed Richard and Dr. Doom, and had a key role in making the country a technological marvel. This was later retconned to say that Wakanda had always been thousands of years more advanced than every other country, ever since the ice ages, and T'Challa actually hasn't invented anything, he just inherited lots of cool toys. Presumably someone thought it was a good idea to retcon away the title character's greatest accomplishment, modernizing a country into a world power, in order to have him inherit a utopia instead.
    • Averted with the House Of M version of the Black Panther, who turned a united Sub-Saharan Africa into one of the world's leading economic powerhouses.
      • But the other House Of M superheroes had to be worse than useless and undo the House of M reality, thus reverting Sub-Saharan Africa to a starving basketcase once again.
      • But those same superheroes undid Apocalypse conquering and enslaving the inhabitants of North Africa.
        • House of M was just as screwed up as regular Marvel Earth. Things were good under Storm, but the rest of the world had normal human persecuted by mutants, Apocalypse enslaving North Africa, and generally the same problems the regular MU has.

• Incorrect. Thor was removed from existence after the Ragnarok cycle destroyed Asgard for the umpteenth time. There was a storyline that showed the downside of Thor trying to solve everyone's problems, but this was subjected to an Author's Saving Throw involving time travel.

• In the early Ditko-era comics Spidey actually did try to sell his webbing formula to an adhesive company. They didn't buy it because his webbing only lasts for an hour before dissolving, making it virtually useless as an adhesive much less as a building material. Also, Spider-Man knew that he could modify the webbing to better suit their purpose, but it would cost him a lot of money he didn't have.
  • Really? They couldn't see any potential profits in a super strong, super tough and super light adhesive that safely disappears on its own after an hour? Or they at least couldn't even consider buying the original formula and having the R&D department try to make a longer lasting version? For that matter, what's stopping Peter from getting a grant?
• Indeed, Peter's efforts to profit from his scientific creations were frequently thwarted by his desire to keep his Secret Identity. Once, he did find a buyer for his web formula but the deal fell through when they asked who to make the check out to and Peter realized he couldn't cash a check made out to Spider-Man. And even ignoring the negative opinion the general public has of Spider-Man thanks to The Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson's editorials, no respectable company would hand Spider-Man a suitcase full of money as payment for his web formula nor would the government allow him to anonymously apply for the patents required to profit off of his creation.
  • If he'd only been a lawyer or banker, he'd know how; Write a cheque out to anyone he knows (say JJJ) and cash it at the bank (That is, ask for cash out.) Even better, have it in Tony Stark's name, and then it's completely understandable why a super rich man would pay one of his friends with a cheque for a business deal which Spidey can convert to cash; after all, that's one of the main points of cheques!
    • Two words (and a definition): Bearer Bonds (A financial device for major financial transactions where anyone who's holding one can cash it out. To jog your memory... Millions of dollars worth were what the bad guys were really after in the first Die Hard movie.)
• One issue of Marvel Team-Up with Spider-Man and Wonder Man involved a businessman who wanted to get a sample of Spider-Man's web formula in order to make better bullet-proof vests. The businessman hires the Mauler to steal some of Spider-Man's web formula but fails.
  • That same issue revealed that Wonder Man uses his super-endurance powers to test out bullet-proof vests for the same company.
  • Of course, that offers no reason why Peter Parker couldn't have done it himself, without even mentioning Spiderman. Even if you argue that it would have been suspicious that he'd developed it on his own, since he had access to university chemical research facilities, it's difficult to believe he couldn't have "discovered" it there.
  • Furthermore, when Peter Parker worked for Tony Stark, there was no reason why it wouldn't be hard to believe that Parker "discovered" it there.
    • Stark's competitors finds out, they try to find the man who "discovered" it. And Parker gets into the wonderful world that is corporate warfare.
    • What Peter should do is say that he scraped up some of Spider-Man's webbing left behind after a fight, and got it to the university lab and reverse-engineered it before it dissolved. Since Spider-Man has never patented it (and is obviously never going to show up with a lawyer to dispute the patent), he could then patent it himself, even though he obviously didn't invent it. Hell, J. Jonah Jameson would lend Peter the money to pay the patent attorney if he thought he was helping Peter rip off Spider-Man.
      • US patent law is quite clear that only the inventor can patent something. That said, Peter could write up his web-brewing formula, say that he'd figured it out from reverse-engineering a sample of Spidey's webbing, and patent the chemical process in his own name (as you say, Spidey isn't going to protest that he came up with the same method first).
      • Aren't we overcomplicating things here? Can't Peter claim that he invented the webbing formula and then gave it to Spider-Man to use in crime fighting? It will even be truth From a Certain Point of View. After all he's a science prodigy, it wouldn't be too implausible.
• Ultimate Spider-Man has been a bit more liberal with his scientific knowledge than his Earth-616 counterpart. He shared his DNA with Dr. Curt Connors who wanted to understand the self-replicating behavior of the strands. However, this led to the creation of Carnage, which killed Gwen Stacey, making Parker a lot more hesitant to share his powers with scientists.
  • The movie also kind of invokes this - Spiderman's web slinging skills is linked to his DNA.

• However, in one issue of the original Silver Surfer series (1968) NASA did try to get Surfer to help them with their space technology. Whether or not Surfer helped them was not explained.

• When the Hulk's friend Jim Wilson was in his last bout with AIDS, Jim asked the Hulk for a blood transfusion. The Hulk refused, saying that he didn't want to risk turning Jim into a rampaging monster.

• However, despite what the original version of this entry claimed, that did show Magneto providing some assistance, as well as showing various super-heroes engaged in rescue work. It's a controversial story on a number of levels ...
  • Still, the heroes and villains were only using a tiny fraction of their powers to clean up the wreckage.
• Screw the cleanup, a dozen or so heroes, several of which live and/or operate in New York and easily have the power to stop the plane, fail to do anything. Even assuming they somehow all missed the first WTC crash, there was almost a full half-hour between that and the second. Did they all just sit around with their thumbs up their bums?
  • A half an hour where, at the time, nobody was really sure what, exactly, was going on. Almost a decade later, with the aftermath in our minds, it's hard to remember how utterly preposterous the idea that someone would try and do something like that seemed before it had actually happened. Not too long ago on the anniversary a cable news station was showing the original minute-to-minute news footage from the day of, and up until the 2nd plane hit, the entire coverage was basically "A tragic accident, a plane has hit the north tower of the World Trade Center".
  • The problem is, at least some of those superheroes (consider how many superhero teams live in NYC) should have shown up at the WTC after the first plane, to help do disaster relief, move wreckage, put out the fire, etc. And so they'd have been right there when the second plane made its approach. And heroes in the MU deal with much worse events frequently, such as any given appearance of Galactacus.

• Examples of Reed Richards being useful or trying to be useful.
  • On the other hand, that story was So Bad Its Horrible. An electrical transformer vaporizing Wolverine, really?
  • This very idea was fulfilled in another alternate universe "Last Avengers Story". The government used superheroes to capture supervillains and then executed them. After that most heroes retired and their replacement had stagnated without strong enemies until Kang killed them.

  • Similar to the inconsistency of the first Marvel 2099 line where a common crime was organ theft. However, at least one issue mentioned that cloned organ transplantations were available to the public, thus rendering organ theft redundant.

  • Similar to how the Marvel and DC Universe have handled the history of European-Native American conflicts. For example there was this one runaway band of Incas who gained access to Deviant technology (centuries ahead of the Conquistadors) and there was a Native American Specter who went around killing malicious white settlers during the American Civil War. Yet this seemed to have no impact on Native Americans resisting white conquest.

• Incorrect. Thor was removed from existence after the Ragnarok cycle destroyed Asgard for the umpteenth time. There was a storyline that showed the downside of Thor trying to solve everyone's problems, but this was subjected to an Author's Saving Throw involving time travel.

• In the early Ditko-era comics Spidey actually did try to sell his webbing formula to an adhesive company. They didn't buy it because his webbing only lasts for an hour before dissolving, making it virtually useless as an adhesive much less as a building material. Also, Spider-Man knew that he could modify the webbing to better suit their purpose, but it would cost him a lot of money he didn't have.
  • Really? They couldn't see any potential profits in a super strong, super tough and super light adhesive that safely disappears on its own after an hour? Or they at least couldn't even consider buying the original formula and having the R&D department try to make a longer lasting version? For that matter, what's stopping Peter from getting a grant?
• Indeed, Peter's efforts to profit from his scientific creations were frequently thwarted by his desire to keep his Secret Identity. Once, he did find a buyer for his web formula but the deal fell through when they asked who to make the check out to and Peter realized he couldn't cash a check made out to Spider-Man. And even ignoring the negative opinion the general public has of Spider-Man thanks to The Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson's editorials, no respectable company would hand Spider-Man a suitcase full of money as payment for his web formula nor would the government allow him to anonymously apply for the patents required to profit off of his creation.
  • If he'd only been a lawyer or banker, he'd know how; Write a cheque out to anyone he knows (say JJJ) and cash it at the bank (That is, ask for cash out.) Even better, have it in Tony Stark's name, and then it's completely understandable why a super rich man would pay one of his friends with a cheque for a business deal which Spidey can convert to cash; after all, that's one of the main points of cheques!
    • Two words (and a definition): Bearer Bonds (A financial device for major financial transactions where anyone who's holding one can cash it out. To jog your memory... Millions of dollars worth were what the bad guys were really after in the first Die Hard movie.)
• One issue of Marvel Team-Up with Spider-Man and Wonder Man involved a businessman who wanted to get a sample of Spider-Man's web formula in order to make better bullet-proof vests. The businessman hires the Mauler to steal some of Spider-Man's web formula but fails.
  • That same issue revealed that Wonder Man uses his super-endurance powers to test out bullet-proof vests for the same company.
  • Of course, that offers no reason why Peter Parker couldn't have done it himself, without even mentioning Spiderman. Even if you argue that it would have been suspicious that he'd developed it on his own, since he had access to university chemical research facilities, it's difficult to believe he couldn't have "discovered" it there.
  • Furthermore, when Peter Parker worked for Tony Stark, there was no reason why it wouldn't be hard to believe that Parker "discovered" it there.
    • Stark's competitors finds out, they try to find the man who "discovered" it. And Parker gets into the wonderful world that is corporate warfare.
    • What Peter should do is say that he scraped up some of Spider-Man's webbing left behind after a fight, and got it to the university lab and reverse-engineered it before it dissolved. Since Spider-Man has never patented it (and is obviously never going to show up with a lawyer to dispute the patent), he could then patent it himself, even though he obviously didn't invent it. Hell, J. Jonah Jameson would lend Peter the money to pay the patent attorney if he thought he was helping Peter rip off Spider-Man.
      • US patent law is quite clear that only the inventor can patent something. That said, Peter could write up his web-brewing formula, say that he'd figured it out from reverse-engineering a sample of Spidey's webbing, and patent the chemical process in his own name (as you say, Spidey isn't going to protest that he came up with the same method first).
      • Aren't we overcomplicating things here? Can't Peter claim that he invented the webbing formula and then gave it to Spider-Man to use in crime fighting? It will even be truth From a Certain Point of View. After all he's a science prodigy, it wouldn't be too implausible.
• Ultimate Spider-Man has been a bit more liberal with his scientific knowledge than his Earth-616 counterpart. He shared his DNA with Dr. Curt Connors who wanted to understand the self-replicating behavior of the strands. However, this led to the creation of Carnage, which killed Gwen Stacey, making Parker a lot more hesitant to share his powers with scientists.
  • The movie also kind of invokes this - Spiderman's web slinging skills is linked to his DNA.

• However, in one issue of the original Silver Surfer series (1968) NASA did try to get Surfer to help them with their space technology. Whether or not Surfer helped them was not explained.

• When the Hulk's friend Jim Wilson was in his last bout with AIDS, Jim asked the Hulk for a blood transfusion. The Hulk refused, saying that he didn't want to risk turning Jim into a rampaging monster.

• However, despite what the original version of this entry claimed, that did show Magneto providing some assistance, as well as showing various super-heroes engaged in rescue work. It's a controversial story on a number of levels ...
  • Still, the heroes and villains were only using a tiny fraction of their powers to clean up the wreckage.
• Screw the cleanup, a dozen or so heroes, several of which live and/or operate in New York and easily have the power to stop the plane, fail to do anything. Even assuming they somehow all missed the first WTC crash, there was almost a full half-hour between that and the second. Did they all just sit around with their thumbs up their bums?
  • A half an hour where, at the time, nobody was really sure what, exactly, was going on. Almost a decade later, with the aftermath in our minds, it's hard to remember how utterly preposterous the idea that someone would try and do something like that seemed before it had actually happened. Not too long ago on the anniversary a cable news station was showing the original minute-to-minute news footage from the day of, and up until the 2nd plane hit, the entire coverage was basically "A tragic accident, a plane has hit the north tower of the World Trade Center".
  • The problem is, at least some of those superheroes (consider how many superhero teams live in NYC) should have shown up at the WTC after the first plane, to help do disaster relief, move wreckage, put out the fire, etc. And so they'd have been right there when the second plane made its approach. And heroes in the MU deal with much worse events frequently, such as any given appearance of Galactacus.

• Examples of Reed Richards being useful or trying to be useful.
  • On the other hand, that story was So Bad Its Horrible. An electrical transformer vaporizing Wolverine, really?
  • This very idea was fulfilled in another alternate universe "Last Avengers Story". The government used superheroes to capture supervillains and then executed them. After that most heroes retired and their replacement had stagnated without strong enemies until Kang killed them.

  • Similar to the inconsistency of the first Marvel 2099 line where a common crime was organ theft. However, at least one issue mentioned that cloned organ transplantations were available to the public, thus rendering organ theft redundant.

  • Similar to how the Marvel and DC Universe have handled the history of European-Native American conflicts. For example there was this one runaway band of Incas who gained access to Deviant technology (centuries ahead of the Conquistadors) and there was a Native American Specter who went around killing malicious white settlers during the American Civil War. Yet this seemed to have no impact on Native Americans resisting white conquest.

Non-examples

• Averted in Shin Mazinger. Kouji's grandpa, a scientist, has a huge number of patents and uses the money to fund even more research. He's also made major breakthroughs in robotics and renewable energy.
  • Similarly, Professor Saotome in Getter Robo was planning on using the Getter machines for space exploration before the defense of the planet took a forefront.
• Averted in Baccano!, where some of the remaining alchemists use their pseudoscientific knowledge for mundane, semi-commercial (although rarely legal) purposes. For example, the Runorata mafia has an one on their payroll for the purposes of synthesizing new drugs for release on the black market.
• Another aversion in GunslingerGirl, where one of the government's justifications for all the experiments, brainwashing, cybernetics, and other unpleasantness to which the main characters are subjected is advancing medical science. But it should be noted that "We're saving lives by advancing medicine" is a rationalization after the fact; this is a government agency that believes "Terrorists are evil, so it's okay to turn little girls into short-lived cyborgs to kill them in very nasty ways".

• The DCU stories set during World War Two explained why the superheroes didn't just Blitzkrieg into Berlin and end the war: Adolf Hitler had acquired the Spear of Destiny, which he could use to control any superpowered being that entered the boundaries of the Reich. (The same was true of Imperial Japan and the Holy Grail). Later, Hitler's belief in the Spear's power was discussed in an episode of Justice League Unlimited.
• The Justice Society was unable to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor because they had be transported to another dimension by an Axis sorcerer during the attack.
  • However, no convincing reason has been given as to why the Justice Society was unable and/or unwilling to stop the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe.
  • In the comics that were published during the early days of World War II, it was not uncommon to see superheroes intervening in, if not outright stopping, conflicts that involved thinly veiled Nazi proxies. The story where Superman brings Hitler and Mussolini to justice is the most famous example of this trend. This changed when United States actually entered the conflict - many non-powered and low-powered heroes continued to fight the Nazis on the front lines, while the more powerful superheroes focused their efforts on fighting Nazi schemes at home. As stated above, the real reason for this was the writers didn't want to trivialize the war by having their imaginary heroes solve it in days, while thousands of real troops were dying. When the tide of war turned in the Allies' favor, the writers became more open to having more powerful heroes participate in battles, but even then, the heroes weren't allowed to completely defeat the Axis forces - The Real Heroes would see to that.

• Examples of where the DC Universe has avoided this trope and then, usually reversed it:
  • From 2000 to 2004, Metropolis was upgraded to Brainiac technology.
  • Lex Luthor was President of the United States from 2001 to 2005.
  • San Diego was submerged underwater, only to return to the surface in 52: World War III.
  • Montevideo, Uruguay was obliterated in a nuclear attack during the DC: One Million mini-series. The ruins were then turned into a world heritage site.
  • The current Dr. Mid-Nite is able one of the three people in the world who can perform the world's most complicated surgical procedure (forgot the name), with 100% accuracy. He also lends his skills into providing free medical care for the poor.
    • According to this it's called a "pancreaticoduodenectomy" or the Whipple procedure.

• Subverted with Anthro the Cave Boy whose exploits led humanity out of the caves and to establish civilization.

• The Elite, a team of super-powered anti-heroes, were tying of Superman going easy on the bad guys. The Elite sought to eliminate both supervillain and regular human crime (sans Superman's morality) until they were defeated in combat by Superman.

• Superman did achieve a utopiaSuperman: Red Son... A communist utopia at that.
  • Warning: Communist Superman Utopia may contain lobotomies. Do not take if you are sensitive to thought police.
  • And the Utopia is achieved with the help of Brainiac...
  • In the end it's Luthor, having vanquished Superman, who makes the earth into a utopia. He eliminated diseases, hunger & poverty, extends human lifespan by centuries and creates a golden age that lasts for thousands of years. Until earth is destroyed by it's sun. Lex's descendants send their single child back in time where he will become... Superman.

  • In the series premiere, NASA finally lands a man on Mars.
  • Second season's "A Better World", in which an Alternate Universe equivalent of the Justice League decides that Utopia Justifies the Means and goes on to create one. Except for Lord Batman, who may or may not have grown tired of the whole thing and intentionally engineered its destruction by bringing the League into contact with them.

• And on the non-canon side, the premise of Steve Engelhart's Fantastic Four: Big Town is basically "What If Reed Richards wasn't useless?"

• Averted in the comic Invincible Iron Man v4 05, where Tony Stark buys a company that sells soft drinks solely because they have vending machines everywhere in Africa and he wants to use them to sell Retrovirals and later the AIDS vaccine.
  • In both the comic books and movie, Tony Stark has tried to convert Stark International from a defense manufacturer to a biomedical company. However, he usually gets thwarted by SHIELD or his board of directors.
  • In Iron Man 237, it was revealed that Tony Stark originally developed prototype outer space colonies. However, AIM infected the colonies with biological weaponry. Cleanup of the colonies was deemed cost-prohibitive.
  • And now, in Invincible Iron man #25, Tony is planning to sell his repulsor tech to people as a means of clean, green energy. How long do people really think THIS will last?

• Averted by The Leader, of all people. He even invented a machine that can revive the dead.
  • The Hulkless Bruce Banner has also shown he's far from useless. Among other things, he's produced an Old Power taser, personal and extendable forcefields, and a teleporter reverse-engineered from the Leader's tech (with a pocket variant allowing Bruce to take things from his lab by reaching into his bag).
  • The Hulk's future malevolent version, the Maestro, was far from useless. Living in a nuclear wasteland, the Maestro constructed a wall that shielded his city from nuclear radiation and he also helped boost soil fertility in farmland outside his city. Although, these tasks were mainly done to breed women for his harem.

• May possibly be averted in Iron Man. In the one issue, Tony Stark is attempting to build a new business from the ground up, by making the power cells for his armor available to the public. No doubt the ramifications of this plan will be explored in future issues.
  • With Tony's luck, odds are 99 to 1 that its gonna go hideously pear-shaped. Still, you have to give the man credit, he does try.

• Subverted in Marvel's Dark Reign: The List #1: Hawkeye asks the other Avengers "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, wouldn't you?", to which Bucky Barnes/Captain America answers: "I did."
• Averted in "What If The Fantastic Four Had No Superpowers?" where the cosmic ray storm does not sabotage Reed Richards space exploration. As a result, Earth became an interstellar civilization.

• Marvel Comics's New Universe, published in the late 1980s, was possibly one of the first aversions, including such things as military use of supers and the complete and utter (accidental) destruction of Pittsburgh by a "hero" who was trying to get rid of his own powers. Interestingly, though, it started out as "The World Outside Your Window", trying to be more like the real world than the established universes.
• This trope was completely averted in the graphic novel Watchmen, where superheroes have been changing history for 24 years before the story starts. The plot revolves around the big changes (like America winning the Vietnam War, and Nixon halfway through his fifth term as President in 1986, electric cars), but there are literally hundreds of smaller and more subtle ones (prevalence of pirate comics), some of them only found hidden in the background of a single panel.
  • The small changes already start from the moment the Minutemen are formed in 1939; one of the more obvious early examples is how the Comics Code never existed in the Watchmen universe thanks to the government siding with the comics industry during the moral panic of the mid-fifties, which was a result of the government promoting superheroes at the time. In all, Watchmen has taken averting this trope so far that it had already become true Alternate History even before Doctor Manhattan started changing the world.

Non-examples

• Averted in Shin Mazinger. Kouji's grandpa, a scientist, has a huge number of patents and uses the money to fund even more research. He's also made major breakthroughs in robotics and renewable energy.
  • Similarly, Professor Saotome in Getter Robo was planning on using the Getter machines for space exploration before the defense of the planet took a forefront.
• Averted in Baccano!, where some of the remaining alchemists use their pseudoscientific knowledge for mundane, semi-commercial (although rarely legal) purposes. For example, the Runorata mafia has an one on their payroll for the purposes of synthesizing new drugs for release on the black market.
• Another aversion in GunslingerGirl, where one of the government's justifications for all the experiments, brainwashing, cybernetics, and other unpleasantness to which the main characters are subjected is advancing medical science. But it should be noted that "We're saving lives by advancing medicine" is a rationalization after the fact; this is a government agency that believes "Terrorists are evil, so it's okay to turn little girls into short-lived cyborgs to kill them in very nasty ways".

• The DCU stories set during World War Two explained why the superheroes didn't just Blitzkrieg into Berlin and end the war: Adolf Hitler had acquired the Spear of Destiny, which he could use to control any superpowered being that entered the boundaries of the Reich. (The same was true of Imperial Japan and the Holy Grail). Later, Hitler's belief in the Spear's power was discussed in an episode of Justice League Unlimited.
• The Justice Society was unable to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor because they had be transported to another dimension by an Axis sorcerer during the attack.
  • However, no convincing reason has been given as to why the Justice Society was unable and/or unwilling to stop the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe.
  • In the comics that were published during the early days of World War II, it was not uncommon to see superheroes intervening in, if not outright stopping, conflicts that involved thinly veiled Nazi proxies. The story where Superman brings Hitler and Mussolini to justice is the most famous example of this trend. This changed when United States actually entered the conflict - many non-powered and low-powered heroes continued to fight the Nazis on the front lines, while the more powerful superheroes focused their efforts on fighting Nazi schemes at home. As stated above, the real reason for this was the writers didn't want to trivialize the war by having their imaginary heroes solve it in days, while thousands of real troops were dying. When the tide of war turned in the Allies' favor, the writers became more open to having more powerful heroes participate in battles, but even then, the heroes weren't allowed to completely defeat the Axis forces - The Real Heroes would see to that.

• Examples of where the DC Universe has avoided this trope and then, usually reversed it:
  • From 2000 to 2004, Metropolis was upgraded to Brainiac technology.
  • Lex Luthor was President of the United States from 2001 to 2005.
  • San Diego was submerged underwater, only to return to the surface in 52: World War III.
  • Montevideo, Uruguay was obliterated in a nuclear attack during the DC: One Million mini-series. The ruins were then turned into a world heritage site.
  • The current Dr. Mid-Nite is able one of the three people in the world who can perform the world's most complicated surgical procedure (forgot the name), with 100% accuracy. He also lends his skills into providing free medical care for the poor.
    • According to this it's called a "pancreaticoduodenectomy" or the Whipple procedure.

• Subverted with Anthro the Cave Boy whose exploits led humanity out of the caves and to establish civilization.

• The Elite, a team of super-powered anti-heroes, were tying of Superman going easy on the bad guys. The Elite sought to eliminate both supervillain and regular human crime (sans Superman's morality) until they were defeated in combat by Superman.

• Superman did achieve a utopiaSuperman: Red Son... A communist utopia at that.
  • Warning: Communist Superman Utopia may contain lobotomies. Do not take if you are sensitive to thought police.
  • And the Utopia is achieved with the help of Brainiac...
  • In the end it's Luthor, having vanquished Superman, who makes the earth into a utopia. He eliminated diseases, hunger & poverty, extends human lifespan by centuries and creates a golden age that lasts for thousands of years. Until earth is destroyed by it's sun. Lex's descendants send their single child back in time where he will become... Superman.

  • In the series premiere, NASA finally lands a man on Mars.
  • Second season's "A Better World", in which an Alternate Universe equivalent of the Justice League decides that Utopia Justifies the Means and goes on to create one. Except for Lord Batman, who may or may not have grown tired of the whole thing and intentionally engineered its destruction by bringing the League into contact with them.

• And on the non-canon side, the premise of Steve Engelhart's Fantastic Four: Big Town is basically "What If Reed Richards wasn't useless?"

• Averted in the comic Invincible Iron Man v4 05, where Tony Stark buys a company that sells soft drinks solely because they have vending machines everywhere in Africa and he wants to use them to sell Retrovirals and later the AIDS vaccine.
  • In both the comic books and movie, Tony Stark has tried to convert Stark International from a defense manufacturer to a biomedical company. However, he usually gets thwarted by SHIELD or his board of directors.
  • In Iron Man 237, it was revealed that Tony Stark originally developed prototype outer space colonies. However, AIM infected the colonies with biological weaponry. Cleanup of the colonies was deemed cost-prohibitive.
  • And now, in Invincible Iron man #25, Tony is planning to sell his repulsor tech to people as a means of clean, green energy. How long do people really think THIS will last?

• Averted by The Leader, of all people. He even invented a machine that can revive the dead.
  • The Hulkless Bruce Banner has also shown he's far from useless. Among other things, he's produced an Old Power taser, personal and extendable forcefields, and a teleporter reverse-engineered from the Leader's tech (with a pocket variant allowing Bruce to take things from his lab by reaching into his bag).
  • The Hulk's future malevolent version, the Maestro, was far from useless. Living in a nuclear wasteland, the Maestro constructed a wall that shielded his city from nuclear radiation and he also helped boost soil fertility in farmland outside his city. Although, these tasks were mainly done to breed women for his harem.

• May possibly be averted in Iron Man. In the one issue, Tony Stark is attempting to build a new business from the ground up, by making the power cells for his armor available to the public. No doubt the ramifications of this plan will be explored in future issues.
  • With Tony's luck, odds are 99 to 1 that its gonna go hideously pear-shaped. Still, you have to give the man credit, he does try.

• Subverted in Marvel's Dark Reign: The List #1: Hawkeye asks the other Avengers "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, wouldn't you?", to which Bucky Barnes/Captain America answers: "I did."
• Averted in "What If The Fantastic Four Had No Superpowers?" where the cosmic ray storm does not sabotage Reed Richards space exploration. As a result, Earth became an interstellar civilization.

• Marvel Comics's New Universe, published in the late 1980s, was possibly one of the first aversions, including such things as military use of supers and the complete and utter (accidental) destruction of Pittsburgh by a "hero" who was trying to get rid of his own powers. Interestingly, though, it started out as "The World Outside Your Window", trying to be more like the real world than the established universes.
• This trope was completely averted in the graphic novel Watchmen, where superheroes have been changing history for 24 years before the story starts. The plot revolves around the big changes (like America winning the Vietnam War, and Nixon halfway through his fifth term as President in 1986, electric cars), but there are literally hundreds of smaller and more subtle ones (prevalence of pirate comics), some of them only found hidden in the background of a single panel.
  • The small changes already start from the moment the Minutemen are formed in 1939; one of the more obvious early examples is how the Comics Code never existed in the Watchmen universe thanks to the government siding with the comics industry during the moral panic of the mid-fifties, which was a result of the government promoting superheroes at the time. In all, Watchmen has taken averting this trope so far that it had already become true Alternate History even before Doctor Manhattan started changing the world.

• Another subversion in yet another out-of-mainstream examination of the comic book hero: in the Squadron Supreme miniseries, resident genius Tom Thumb devises and sells effective personal force shields, "rehabilitation" (read "brainwashing") devices, limited-lethality stunning weapons and various other amazing devices as part of the "Utopia Project" wherein he and his fellow Supremes try to rescue a post-apocalyptic Earth and create an ideal society. He was unable to find a cure for the cancer that was killing him, however, so instead he developed a form of suspended animation through which the terminally ill could be kept indefinitely until a cure is found. In the end, the Squadron realizes that all of these devices could prove horrifying in the wrong hands - the infrastructure created with them can only do good as long as good people are in charge, and they have no way of knowing that the coming generations will use them wisely.
  • Not only could the technology fall into the wrong hands, some of the Squadron members actually did abuse the technology, as when Golden Archer used the behavior modification machine to make his girlfriend fall madly in love with him.
  • However, the Squadron Supreme's efforts did lead to some very beneficial results, such as rebooting the US economy, after they wrecked while serving as mind-controlled minions for the Overmind, and creating job-placement programs for criminals reformed with the behavior-modification machine (which the Squadron could probably create a decent job-placement agency in absence of the behavior modification machine).
• Yet another aversion, the comic Invincible has a character, Atom Eve, who was initially a part of a teenager superhero team, but later realize that it would be better to use her matter transmutation power in a more practical way, such as helping the people suffering from famine in Africa by turning their drought-ridden land into fertile fields.
• Also averted in the Wild Cards Shared Universe novels, where the existence of Xenovirus Takis-A victims (especially the grotesquely deformed "jokers" - superpowered "aces" actually have less of an impact) radically alters the course of history in a variety of ways (but not quite to the point of being unrecognizable). On the other hand, the work of "Mechanic" type supers generally can't be duplicated by others, and are sometimes "dummy devices" powered by their creators.
• Homage Comics' "Ultra" had the Cowgirl using her powers to build canals in Africa. On the other hand, the "fighting bad guys" aspect was less effective, as the heroes had to follow agency protocols.
• Averted in the comic The Boys, where the government employs a group specifically to keep the "capes" in line. Of course, Garth Ennis is a bloody-minded bastard and the supers get up to all kinds of mischief anyway.
  • The Boys is a weird one, as it turns out that superheroes really are useless. When The Seven try to avert the comics' version of 9/11, they fuck it up catastrophically. The message, of course, being that the military and other trained rescue organizations are the real heroes.
• Completely Averted in Miracleman by Alan Moore and then Neil Gaiman: After defeating the big bad, the super heroes do take over the world and make it a Utopia.

• Subverted in Rising Stars. After a considerable amount of fighting, the people with superpowers (Specials) ask themselves what their powers are for, and use them to change the world for the better: end drug trade, defeat organized crime, destroy nuclear weapons and so on. One Special, whose power is super-intelligence, indeed creates the cure for cancer, among many other things.
• Subverted in, of all places, in the Hellraiser comic Pinhead vs. Marshal Law: Law in Hell, where a bunch of Captain Ersatz superheroes wind up inside Pinhead's memories of World War One. Their attempts to help fail spectacularly, with things like the guy in power armor sinking in the mud and the guy with eye beams choking on poison gas, while the hero made of rock who can shrug off bullets gets blown apart by much heavier artillery.
  Pinhead: Those idiots! What do they think they can achieve in a real war.

• Completely averted in the America's Best Comics line, where the superheroes share their advances with the public. One of the numerous applications is widespread application of hover cars.

• In the Supreme Power universe, back when Hyperion worked for the US government, he used his powers to diffuse the North Korean nuclear arms crisis of the 1990's.

ULTIMATE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

• Subverted in the Ultimate Marvel Universe:
  • In the first Ultimates maxi-series, it was revealed that NASA was developed from Skrull technology left over from World War II.
  • Captain Marvel used his scientific knowledge to help develop NASA's Asis engine, which theoretically makes possible for humans to engage in interstellar transportation within a human lifespan).
  • Hand-waved in Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men, it was stated that Beast was researching cheaper cures for developing world diseases. This statement was all too conveniently ignored in all future issues.
• Before Professor X and Magneto founded the X-Men, they offered their mutants to help government/industry solve numerous problems (i.e. the energy crisis, ending world hunger etc.). Government/industry declines the offer, not wanting to upset the status quo.
• In Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Thing traveled back in time to prevent Ultimate Reed Richards' teleportation experiment (which created the Ultimate Fantastic Four) from being sabotaged. As a result, Reed succeeds in making Earth an interstellar civilization. However, Earth eventually gets decimated by the Skrulls, leading Ben Grimm to go back in time again to make sure that the teleportation experiment was sabotaged.
• Averted with the Ultimate Vision, who has transformed numerous hunting-gathering/subsistence farming alien civilizations into technological powerhouses powerful enough to snuff out suns. She did this to help them defeat Gah-Lak-Tus, only to see the civilizations perish.
  • Her efforts to turn Earth into a major technological experiment failed (although Earth did defeat Gah-lak-tus). Her efforts to help humanity led to the creation of the Ultimate Universe Modok along with SHIELD conducting dangerous experiments with the Gah-lak-tus technology.

WILDSTORM UNIVERSE:

• The whole Wildstorm Universe is basically an exception to this trope.
• In Wildcats 3.0, the leader of the eponymous superhero team sought to use the advanced extra-terrestrial technology that belonged to his creators to change the world. The limitless batteries alone caused quite a stir.
• Deconstructed in Planetary. The world is run by a secret cabal headed by a thinly veiled version of the Fantastic Four, and the Reed analog purposely keeps their discoveries and inventions from the world (and purposefully seek and confiscate/cover up the technology, magic and similar of others) for personal gain and to keep humanity weak in preparation for a highly advanced alien race to take it over. Planetary itself was founded because this really pissed certain other beings, like the Fourth Man, off, and is dedicated to excavating as much weirdness, lost technology and similar as possible with the aim of sharing it with humanity.
• Examined by Warren Ellis in the "Change or Die" storyline of Stormwatch, in which The Changers(a team of Captain Ersatz superhumans) attempt to radically change the world with their trademark abilities; Superman The High shares his ideas on society developed over several decades with his super-brain, Doctor Strange The Doctor Breaks the Masquerade by teaching everyone magic, Iron Man The Engineer creates an oasis of Nanomachines in Nevada capable of producing food, energy, medicine, and nearly anything else people would need without limit, Deadman The Eidolon proves to the world that death is Cessation of Existence(meaning they should put more effort into living better lives  ^*
  ^{In case you were wondering, Ellis is a staunch atheist.}
  ), Zatanna(?) Wish forcibly declassifies government secrets such as cancer cures, Jet Packs, Alien Abductions, etc. Of course, The Government Stormwatch's Big Bad Boss, Henry Bendix, sends assassins to kill them all, and hits the place with a chemical weapon to destroy the nanotech - because he wants to change the world his way, and that hippie crap's going to get in the way. And members of both sides try to make sure Jenny Sparks never hears a word about this, because she might either join the Changers or talk her old friend The High down. The Aesop: Reed Richards is Useless because he doesn't want to be executed, and because not even his friends agree on exactly what changing the world means.
• Warren Ellis and his successors examined the trope further with Stormwatch's successor, The Authority, which was Jenny Sparks' attempt to fill the shoes of both a disbanded Stormwatch and The High's group. At the end of the first story arc, after defeating a teleporting clone army of Flying Bricks from the island of Gamora, team leader Jenny Sparks states that the Authority is going to present Gamora's captured tissue replication and teleportation devices to UN inspectors. She hopes this will pressure the inspectors to make the technology available to the public after 5-10 years of testing. Later, Mark Millar's "The Nativity" arc explicitly asks the question "Why do super-people never go after the real bastards?" The Authority, like the Stormwatch superhumans, did devote their time to solving the problems of humanity; The Engineer in particular. She developed a cure for a certain strain of leukemia and spent her spare time developing renewable energy. Jack Hawksmoor led his endorsements to companies who promised to pay their workers a decent wage. The Authority are also pretty thorough about addressing the crimes perpetrated by humans rather than superhumans... such as totalitarian regimes. However, this backfires: they are accused of presenting "unfair competition" for medical and industrial companies, and blamed for mass redundancies. Moreover, after the "Coup D'Etat" storyline The Authority become the unelected government of the USA. In the process, the Authority unintentionally causes mass civilian casualties in fighting the armed resistance. Furthermore, the Authority unsuccessfully tries to legalize hemp production and require all auto engines to run on bio-diesel by the end of the year. Amidst these failures, the Authority steps down as unelected rulers of the United States.
  • The Authority also once told Earth that not only would they not fix a space-time continuum rupture caused by the G7 governments (created in an attempt by the G7 governments to usurp the Authority) but they would also stop any other superheroes from intervening. In the end, regular humanity ended up saving the day.
  • In the Authority: Revolution maxi-series, the Palestinian successor to the Doctor used his powers to inspire an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He also causes the Democrats and Republicans to agree on "something obvious"
  • Subverted with Jenny Sparks, whose presence was a huge influence on the development of the 20th century (as were her predecessors on previous centuries). The Doctor (of the Authority), says that Einstein, Picassco, and other notable figures all combined together do not come close to the influence that Jenny Sparks had.
• Century child Gaia Rothstein of the 21st century was said to have the power to reverse global warming or make famine history, had such attempts subverted by the apocalyptic destruction of World's End. As a result, Gaia sought refuge by bonding herself with the planet Earth.
• In their downtime, The Authority likes to go to alternate universes and kill their Hitlers.
• Amidst the apocalyptic destruction of World's End, Mr. Majestic has used his superpowers and alien science to convert Hawaii into a place with functional infrastructure and no crime. Furthermore, the plant-manipulative post-human known as Tumbleweed uses his power to provide free fruit to the starving residents of Nevada.
• Prior to World's End, teleportation to any part of the world was available to the public.

• Another subversion in yet another out-of-mainstream examination of the comic book hero: in the Squadron Supreme miniseries, resident genius Tom Thumb devises and sells effective personal force shields, "rehabilitation" (read "brainwashing") devices, limited-lethality stunning weapons and various other amazing devices as part of the "Utopia Project" wherein he and his fellow Supremes try to rescue a post-apocalyptic Earth and create an ideal society. He was unable to find a cure for the cancer that was killing him, however, so instead he developed a form of suspended animation through which the terminally ill could be kept indefinitely until a cure is found. In the end, the Squadron realizes that all of these devices could prove horrifying in the wrong hands - the infrastructure created with them can only do good as long as good people are in charge, and they have no way of knowing that the coming generations will use them wisely.
  • Not only could the technology fall into the wrong hands, some of the Squadron members actually did abuse the technology, as when Golden Archer used the behavior modification machine to make his girlfriend fall madly in love with him.
  • However, the Squadron Supreme's efforts did lead to some very beneficial results, such as rebooting the US economy, after they wrecked while serving as mind-controlled minions for the Overmind, and creating job-placement programs for criminals reformed with the behavior-modification machine (which the Squadron could probably create a decent job-placement agency in absence of the behavior modification machine).
• Yet another aversion, the comic Invincible has a character, Atom Eve, who was initially a part of a teenager superhero team, but later realize that it would be better to use her matter transmutation power in a more practical way, such as helping the people suffering from famine in Africa by turning their drought-ridden land into fertile fields.
• Also averted in the Wild Cards Shared Universe novels, where the existence of Xenovirus Takis-A victims (especially the grotesquely deformed "jokers" - superpowered "aces" actually have less of an impact) radically alters the course of history in a variety of ways (but not quite to the point of being unrecognizable). On the other hand, the work of "Mechanic" type supers generally can't be duplicated by others, and are sometimes "dummy devices" powered by their creators.
• Homage Comics' "Ultra" had the Cowgirl using her powers to build canals in Africa. On the other hand, the "fighting bad guys" aspect was less effective, as the heroes had to follow agency protocols.
• Averted in the comic The Boys, where the government employs a group specifically to keep the "capes" in line. Of course, Garth Ennis is a bloody-minded bastard and the supers get up to all kinds of mischief anyway.
  • The Boys is a weird one, as it turns out that superheroes really are useless. When The Seven try to avert the comics' version of 9/11, they fuck it up catastrophically. The message, of course, being that the military and other trained rescue organizations are the real heroes.
• Completely Averted in Miracleman by Alan Moore and then Neil Gaiman: After defeating the big bad, the super heroes do take over the world and make it a Utopia.

• Subverted in Rising Stars. After a considerable amount of fighting, the people with superpowers (Specials) ask themselves what their powers are for, and use them to change the world for the better: end drug trade, defeat organized crime, destroy nuclear weapons and so on. One Special, whose power is super-intelligence, indeed creates the cure for cancer, among many other things.
• Subverted in, of all places, in the Hellraiser comic Pinhead vs. Marshal Law: Law in Hell, where a bunch of Captain Ersatz superheroes wind up inside Pinhead's memories of World War One. Their attempts to help fail spectacularly, with things like the guy in power armor sinking in the mud and the guy with eye beams choking on poison gas, while the hero made of rock who can shrug off bullets gets blown apart by much heavier artillery.
  Pinhead: Those idiots! What do they think they can achieve in a real war.

• Completely averted in the America's Best Comics line, where the superheroes share their advances with the public. One of the numerous applications is widespread application of hover cars.

• In the Supreme Power universe, back when Hyperion worked for the US government, he used his powers to diffuse the North Korean nuclear arms crisis of the 1990's.

ULTIMATE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

• Subverted in the Ultimate Marvel Universe:
  • In the first Ultimates maxi-series, it was revealed that NASA was developed from Skrull technology left over from World War II.
  • Captain Marvel used his scientific knowledge to help develop NASA's Asis engine, which theoretically makes possible for humans to engage in interstellar transportation within a human lifespan).
  • Hand-waved in Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men, it was stated that Beast was researching cheaper cures for developing world diseases. This statement was all too conveniently ignored in all future issues.
• Before Professor X and Magneto founded the X-Men, they offered their mutants to help government/industry solve numerous problems (i.e. the energy crisis, ending world hunger etc.). Government/industry declines the offer, not wanting to upset the status quo.
• In Ultimate Fantastic Four, the Thing traveled back in time to prevent Ultimate Reed Richards' teleportation experiment (which created the Ultimate Fantastic Four) from being sabotaged. As a result, Reed succeeds in making Earth an interstellar civilization. However, Earth eventually gets decimated by the Skrulls, leading Ben Grimm to go back in time again to make sure that the teleportation experiment was sabotaged.
• Averted with the Ultimate Vision, who has transformed numerous hunting-gathering/subsistence farming alien civilizations into technological powerhouses powerful enough to snuff out suns. She did this to help them defeat Gah-Lak-Tus, only to see the civilizations perish.
  • Her efforts to turn Earth into a major technological experiment failed (although Earth did defeat Gah-lak-tus). Her efforts to help humanity led to the creation of the Ultimate Universe Modok along with SHIELD conducting dangerous experiments with the Gah-lak-tus technology.

WILDSTORM UNIVERSE:

• The whole Wildstorm Universe is basically an exception to this trope.
• In Wildcats 3.0, the leader of the eponymous superhero team sought to use the advanced extra-terrestrial technology that belonged to his creators to change the world. The limitless batteries alone caused quite a stir.
• Deconstructed in Planetary. The world is run by a secret cabal headed by a thinly veiled version of the Fantastic Four, and the Reed analog purposely keeps their discoveries and inventions from the world (and purposefully seek and confiscate/cover up the technology, magic and similar of others) for personal gain and to keep humanity weak in preparation for a highly advanced alien race to take it over. Planetary itself was founded because this really pissed certain other beings, like the Fourth Man, off, and is dedicated to excavating as much weirdness, lost technology and similar as possible with the aim of sharing it with humanity.
• Examined by Warren Ellis in the "Change or Die" storyline of Stormwatch, in which The Changers(a team of Captain Ersatz superhumans) attempt to radically change the world with their trademark abilities; Superman The High shares his ideas on society developed over several decades with his super-brain, Doctor Strange The Doctor Breaks the Masquerade by teaching everyone magic, Iron Man The Engineer creates an oasis of Nanomachines in Nevada capable of producing food, energy, medicine, and nearly anything else people would need without limit, Deadman The Eidolon proves to the world that death is Cessation of Existence(meaning they should put more effort into living better lives  ^*
  ^{In case you were wondering, Ellis is a staunch atheist.}
  ), Zatanna(?) Wish forcibly declassifies government secrets such as cancer cures, Jet Packs, Alien Abductions, etc. Of course, The Government Stormwatch's Big Bad Boss, Henry Bendix, sends assassins to kill them all, and hits the place with a chemical weapon to destroy the nanotech - because he wants to change the world his way, and that hippie crap's going to get in the way. And members of both sides try to make sure Jenny Sparks never hears a word about this, because she might either join the Changers or talk her old friend The High down. The Aesop: Reed Richards is Useless because he doesn't want to be executed, and because not even his friends agree on exactly what changing the world means.
• Warren Ellis and his successors examined the trope further with Stormwatch's successor, The Authority, which was Jenny Sparks' attempt to fill the shoes of both a disbanded Stormwatch and The High's group. At the end of the first story arc, after defeating a teleporting clone army of Flying Bricks from the island of Gamora, team leader Jenny Sparks states that the Authority is going to present Gamora's captured tissue replication and teleportation devices to UN inspectors. She hopes this will pressure the inspectors to make the technology available to the public after 5-10 years of testing. Later, Mark Millar's "The Nativity" arc explicitly asks the question "Why do super-people never go after the real bastards?" The Authority, like the Stormwatch superhumans, did devote their time to solving the problems of humanity; The Engineer in particular. She developed a cure for a certain strain of leukemia and spent her spare time developing renewable energy. Jack Hawksmoor led his endorsements to companies who promised to pay their workers a decent wage. The Authority are also pretty thorough about addressing the crimes perpetrated by humans rather than superhumans... such as totalitarian regimes. However, this backfires: they are accused of presenting "unfair competition" for medical and industrial companies, and blamed for mass redundancies. Moreover, after the "Coup D'Etat" storyline The Authority become the unelected government of the USA. In the process, the Authority unintentionally causes mass civilian casualties in fighting the armed resistance. Furthermore, the Authority unsuccessfully tries to legalize hemp production and require all auto engines to run on bio-diesel by the end of the year. Amidst these failures, the Authority steps down as unelected rulers of the United States.
  • The Authority also once told Earth that not only would they not fix a space-time continuum rupture caused by the G7 governments (created in an attempt by the G7 governments to usurp the Authority) but they would also stop any other superheroes from intervening. In the end, regular humanity ended up saving the day.
  • In the Authority: Revolution maxi-series, the Palestinian successor to the Doctor used his powers to inspire an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. He also causes the Democrats and Republicans to agree on "something obvious"
  • Subverted with Jenny Sparks, whose presence was a huge influence on the development of the 20th century (as were her predecessors on previous centuries). The Doctor (of the Authority), says that Einstein, Picassco, and other notable figures all combined together do not come close to the influence that Jenny Sparks had.
• Century child Gaia Rothstein of the 21st century was said to have the power to reverse global warming or make famine history, had such attempts subverted by the apocalyptic destruction of World's End. As a result, Gaia sought refuge by bonding herself with the planet Earth.
• In their downtime, The Authority likes to go to alternate universes and kill their Hitlers.
• Amidst the apocalyptic destruction of World's End, Mr. Majestic has used his superpowers and alien science to convert Hawaii into a place with functional infrastructure and no crime. Furthermore, the plant-manipulative post-human known as Tumbleweed uses his power to provide free fruit to the starving residents of Nevada.
• Prior to World's End, teleportation to any part of the world was available to the public.

I quote Vampire Buddha on Marvel's 2099 universe: "Similar to the inconsistency of the first Marvel 2099 line where a common crime was organ theft. However, at least one issue mentioned that cloned organ transplantations were available to the public, thus rendering organ theft redundant."

You did read all the other 2099 issues, right? The 2099 universe was a place where class disparity was enormous. You were either rich and privileged, middle class and barely scraping by however you could or poor and living on the streets. Sure, there are cloned organ transplants. How much do those co$t, though? Could the middle class or the poor afford them? If not, organ stealing it is, then.