Superpowers are useless
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Very few people have as large of a gap between how smart they are and how smart they think they are. Alan Moore thinks he's really, really, really smart and insightful.
Not even sure why I'm giving this argument the time of day, but to break it down a bit...he's weirdly assuming everyone has super powers in his scenario it seems. If you're the only speedster in the region, you can find a job a whole lot more interesting than pizza deliver. Supply and demand. Personal currier for the richest of the rich comes to mind, if we're just going standard delivery jobs. You'd be able to set your price, too.
And, even if everyone had super powers...well at that point they would be useful too, because the way cities were built and such would adapt to the new super powers. In his speed example, having a car would be impractical. If everyone had superspeed, things would adapt to where, even if it's now comparatively 'normal,' it's still useful.
Hilariously, you could make Moore's same stupid argument for anything. Cars? How are cars useful? What are you going to do...commute to the office?! Deliver goods?! How is that useful? No. Boring can still be useful.
TL;DR: Alan Moore is retarded.
Everyone behind the show Sherlock, and their fans, are a great teaching tool for what "dumb people writing what they think smart people are and thinking they are smart too" is.
hey, the 80s one was awesome.
There are plenty of fine Holmes adaptations. The one most commonly called just Sherlock, because that's its name, is not one of them.
Well, I'd argue there is one point to this: will, discipline, and integrity are some of the real super-powers that actually make anything else worth having. A useless shmuck with super-speed would probably go around doing party tricks and running fast for delivery. But then again, if he's lazy, he may just drive a car because it's easier.
A hero is not what powers he has, but who he is as a person.
Unfortunately, since Alan Moore is a degenerate communist, he doesn't believe that people can be heroic at a deep and fundamental level because of how shit of a person he is, which informs how shitty he thinks everyone else is.
An easy way to test this is to point out a hero that seems like a joke, Aquaman being a classic, and then see who treats it as a joke versus who finds it terrifying. Because they are both revealing their own creativity in how they'd use it with their reaction.
There’s room for a story where an evil Aquaman learns how to command bacteria and viruses.
It was a stretch, but he was able to induce a STROKE in someone by doing this.
Whenever Batman gets someone else's powers, he becomes 1000% scarier.
Meanwhile, Batman also notes that Plastic Man may be the most dangerous mutant on Earth, he just doesn't realize it because he's a goof-ball. Also, Booster Gold has literal future tech, but isn't actually that great, and is kind of a bumbling egomaniac.
Frank Miller, of all people, was one of the only people who truly GOT how deadly Plastic Man could really be.
The one good line in All-Star Batman and Robin:
"If he wanted to, he could kill us all."
Not to mention that one Elseworlds story where Batman got a Green Lantern ring...
Well, you won't find me disagreeing. And, as someone else said, we that's why we have super hero stories, not super power stories.
But Moore's statement that powers - i.e. enhanced abilities or potential - are useless is still nonsense. Sure, a loser could waste those powers...but would still be vastly more powerful than a loser without powers. It's still what you do with them at the end of the day but, dang, super powers would never be anything to sneeze at, especially if most people don't have them. A unique, powerful loser is still going to have a huge leg up on even a dedicated, disciplined non-powered person...at least in specific fields. Now, that's not to say they'd win - the Punisher, Iron Man, Batman, and other non-powered characters are popular for a reason - but they'd still have a technical advantage.
Again, agreed. Again, Moore was talking about the powers themselves though. Heroes are great, but this topic seems to be about dissecting the powers themselves, which are unrelated to how heroic someone is.
Yes, but I think the issue here is just general smug, and Subverting Expectations™. I'm not sure he's even thought through the argument logically or ideologically. He's basically just being edgy. Everyone likes the idea of super powers, so Moore wants to shit on them. Pretty funny, really.
It's definitely that.
Say what you will about My Hero Academia, but I have always loved All Might for this reason.
He is a prime example of upholding the ideals of Superman.
It helps that All Might is more proudly American - despite being Japanese both in- and out-of-universe - than characters written in modern American stories.
From what I have seen, it is because All Might is how most Japanese people see Americans: Big, loud, obnoxious, and in your face. But when the chips are down and you need a hero, they will bulldoze over everyone in their path to be the hero and save the day. And quite frankly, they are sadder when they arent like that.
On a strange note, I saw the same thing with the pokemon "Braviary"
What he's said here is one side of a debate (the losing side).
They never debate. This is somebody who is so used to only strawmanning the other side that he forgot that they can ever be right. And what you've done is steelman his other side, which shows immediately how dumb his take is.
It's not about intelligence, but echo chambers. If he thought his dumbass view would be questioned he'd put a little more thought into it. Speed is useless because you'd burn up from air friction. Invisibility is useless because you'd trip over your shoe - still dumb, but at least actually attacking the power instead of the strawman of stupid uses for it.
Basically he's Le Reddit personified.
As I said to another response, I think even the people calling him retarded are giving him too much credit. He's not having a debate, even a one-sided one. He's just being edgy and Subversive. "People like super powers, so I'll say they're dumb." Really not sure it goes too much beyond that. He's just Deconstructing things.
I don't think he's even thought some of this through enough to think about whether he's being questioned or not. And if he did think about being questioned...well, all those people are just Chuds, right?!
Now, admittedly, I myself might be a tad uncharitable here, but I do think he's just doing surface level, 'does it sound vaguely cool and edgy?' stuff. He's not making an argument at all, even a bad one. He's just saying super powers suck.
-Superpowers are useless
-Creates literal god character
-gets beaten by super smart secret king because (dumb) reasons
-SEE!!!!
I hate Writers™. Which, similar to Experts™ versus experts, are completely different than writers, who I have no problem with. But, yeah, fuck Writers™. Smarmy pricks.
The obvious speedster job is assassinations and trafficking. You could traffic all the cocaine in South America in a day.