power to fight crime
Oct. 30th, 2021 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliIf you were looking for superheroes to fight crime, would you pick Superman?
Hmm. . . analyzing the power set. . . .
Invulnerability is probably the best in that crimefighting is otherwise very high risk; it even lets you do useful things that would be dangerous otherwise. Flight is good for surveillance. So are super-senses and superspeed. Superspeed gets you to the crime scene on time, lets you act while the crooks are still frozen in place to extract evidence and victims, and whisks away injured in time to turn murder into attempted murder.
But his weak point would be actual fighting. Superstrength is exceedingly dangerous in a fight. Even in the comics, a common trope is for him to use materials in the environment, however implausibly -- wrapping up crooks in steel beams -- rather than striking. Heat vision and superbreath share the same flaws. (Would be more useful in a military context, probably. The classic superhero-fights-alien-invasion trope.)
Energy projectors and super-strong superheroes would make poor fighters except when needed for especially invulnerable and superpowered criminals. Even there, of course, what you want first of all is to get the villain away from civilization. But dealing with the unpowered and the lesser powered, what you want is disabling powers. If you can get them, of course. But sleep, conjuration of chains, or vines, or massive amounts of marshmallow, teleportation, charm -- the number of powers that would be vastly more useful to take down criminals is large.
If they had no choice, if your basic flying brick (or energy projector) was what superheroes were -- you might actually prefer guns. Less chance of collateral damage. At the very least you would want to separate them out into a specialized "fight invulnerable foes" squad and not just send them after the random muggers, or have them carefully trained to prevent criminals from causing harm and capturing with extreme care.
Hmm. . . analyzing the power set. . . .
Invulnerability is probably the best in that crimefighting is otherwise very high risk; it even lets you do useful things that would be dangerous otherwise. Flight is good for surveillance. So are super-senses and superspeed. Superspeed gets you to the crime scene on time, lets you act while the crooks are still frozen in place to extract evidence and victims, and whisks away injured in time to turn murder into attempted murder.
But his weak point would be actual fighting. Superstrength is exceedingly dangerous in a fight. Even in the comics, a common trope is for him to use materials in the environment, however implausibly -- wrapping up crooks in steel beams -- rather than striking. Heat vision and superbreath share the same flaws. (Would be more useful in a military context, probably. The classic superhero-fights-alien-invasion trope.)
Energy projectors and super-strong superheroes would make poor fighters except when needed for especially invulnerable and superpowered criminals. Even there, of course, what you want first of all is to get the villain away from civilization. But dealing with the unpowered and the lesser powered, what you want is disabling powers. If you can get them, of course. But sleep, conjuration of chains, or vines, or massive amounts of marshmallow, teleportation, charm -- the number of powers that would be vastly more useful to take down criminals is large.
If they had no choice, if your basic flying brick (or energy projector) was what superheroes were -- you might actually prefer guns. Less chance of collateral damage. At the very least you would want to separate them out into a specialized "fight invulnerable foes" squad and not just send them after the random muggers, or have them carefully trained to prevent criminals from causing harm and capturing with extreme care.