Blessed With Suck / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Comic Books

Comic Books

• This is a major plot point in the Marvel Comics series Strikeforce: Morituri. To fight back against an Alien Invasion, humanity has developed the Morituri Process that give human subjects superpowers. The drawbacks?
  1. The process is biologically incompatible with humans, and causes guaranteed death in a year or less, usually in a messy fashion.
  2. The training procedure to activate the superpowers was fatal, unless the powers actually triggered and you were able to use them quickly.
  3. The power that would manifest was completely random.
  4. The more powerful the superpower, the less time you lived.
• Adam Warlock, whose Soul Gem gives him various spiritual powers, up to and including the ability to rip someone's soul from their body. As the souls taken then go to a miniature paradise dimension contained within the gem, this doesn't seem too bad... until you learn that the gem is sentient and has a nasty tendency to try and break free of his control to steal souls on its own. Also, during the soul stealing process, Warlock has to relive every single one of the victim's memories. Now think about the fact that at one point, the only way to save the universe was to soul steal about 10,000 or so enemy black knights at once.
• The Boulder (better known by others as Butterball), who made one appearance in Avengers: The Initiative (which, again, is a Marvel Comic, demonstrating just how much they are in love with this trope), has the superpower of total Invulnerability. He's impervious to harm, can't be worn out, and is otherwise invincible. Sounds great, until you realize:
  1. he's forever stuck in the body of a slow, weak, overweight teen who's incapable of losing weight or getting any stronger, making him worthless as a superhero.
  2. When one of his teammates offers to have sex with him, he tells her that there's no point - his invulnerability not only prevents him from feeling pain, but from feeling pleasure, too. Pretty damn rough when you consider that he's going to remain a teenager forever... To be fair, he's since landed a job with the Shadow Initiative and has a bright future ahead of him in search and rescue. And, come on. This is the guy who broke the Taskmaster.
  3. While nothing can hurt him, he's still vulnerable to all forms of telepathy, including mind control. But an extra bright side to him, when in fights, he's the perfect shield for his teammates. So get the guy a telepathic girlfriend and set him up with gadgets, like a jetpack or a tazer-suit.
• Another character in Avengers: The Initiative who fits this trope is Trauma, who possesses both telepathic and metamorphic powers, and can therefore transform into whatever a person is most afraid of. Often, he will give this attack a nightmarish twist; if you're afraid of death, he'll morph into a mutilated corpse, if you're afraid of spiders, he'll turn into a spider about the size of a T. rex, and so forth. Unfortunately:
  1. He started off with a horrible case of Power Incontinence, as his powers are triggered by strong emotion. If someone near him was upset or scared, he would spontaneously transform into something horrible. Unlike most people on this list, Trauma did eventually learn to control his powers — but the damage, sadly, had been done. One issue revealed that his family does not want anything to do with him. Even worse, in the very first issue, we're told that his mother is in a mental institution.
  2. During Secret Invasion, the guys with which he was fighting Skrulls with were so afraid that one of them could be Skrull, that their fear made him change into one. While his buddies beat on him, real Skrulls caught them. He's no teamplayer at all.
  3. His powers started to suck much more when he really wanted to scare someone who really pissed him off. Unlucky for him, it was a badass magician.

Trauma was later revealed to be the son of a dream manipulating demon named Nightmare, thus explaining why he has his powers and why they suck so much.

• The Avengers Academy seems to be built on this. We have Veil who can turn into mist...yet her power is slowly killing her. Then we have Hazmat whose body produces deadly radiation, and has to be confined to a suit to protect others. Then there's Finesse, who is a super fighter but her brain can't handle all the information and in the future... it's revealed she's continually forgetting her daughter's name. Then there's Mettle, who was a champion surfer before his powers awakened, granting him Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability... but making him look like a metal version of Red Skull (he even yells once 'I'm not related to Red Skull, I'm Jewish'), and then there's Reptil who could only transform his body parts into dinosaurs before getting a future power-up.
• Avenger Black Knight had this in his magic sword, the Ebony Blade. On one hand, it could cut through nearly anything. On the other hand, it had a curse that took effect if it ever drew blood, which would do things like paralyze him, turn him into a statue, or drive him insane. These curses were generally pretty permanent, to the point even Doctor Strange had trouble removing them. Worse, even if someone else used the blade to draw blood, the curse would still affect Black Knight. It was no surprise when he eventually stopped using the damn thing. Later, it's just resorted to trying to drive him and turn him into a literal Blood Knight. As an expert on the Ebony Blade remarks, every single previous Black Knight has gone mad. Except him. So far...
• Deadpool had terminal cancer so he turned to the Canadian government's Weapon X program for help. The good: He won't die of cancer. The bad: His cancer is now supercharged on Healing Factor and constantly destroys and rebuilds his entire body, including his brain, leaving him with a face that... has the consistency and appearance of a hamburger patty, and made him just plain crazy, and very, very funny. At least his fans love him. Moral of the story? Canadian healthcare ain't all it's made out to be.
• While most of the Fantastic Four embraces their powers, the Thing genuinely believes that his superpower is a curse, and who can blame him? Even though he possesses super strength and near invulnerability, it doesn't change the fact that he's been turned into a hideous rock monster that scares the shit out of anybody who sees him, and destroys his chances of living a normal life. He was also forced to quit his job as a test pilot because he was too big and heavy to fit in a plane. Oh yeah, and did we mention that he was turned into a hideous rock monster?
  • As Reed said once, "He has his good days and his bad." Ben will never really be at peace with his monstrous form. For every writer who gives him a break from the angst, there's one who brings it back because it's so central to his character. Mark Waid's run is a good example of the latter.
  • This is also offset by the fact that Ben Grimm is one of the most absolutely loved heroes in the Marvel Universe. No hero has as many friends and is as respected and genuinely loved by other heroes. Laying the smack down on Ben Grimm in front of the Avengers is a wonderful way to get some Asgardian hammer driven repeatedly into your face.
  • On the bright side, if the one shot "Isla De Muerte" is to be believed, Puerto Ricans love Ben Grimm. This is not a mere funny element in a comic; Puerto Ricans seriously do love Ben Grimm and call him La Mole.
  • It's also been suggested sometimes that Ben simply doesn't know how to turn his powers off or has some kind of mental block. Of the four, he's the only one that can't; so it's either mental or something physically different about him.
  • As pointed out on Cursed with Awesome, when it comes to living a day-to-day life in the real world, Ben is basically disabled. His overlarge hands and fingers mean he can't use most tools designed for average humans, so even silverware would need to be designed to fit his hands. Furniture and possibly even buildings would need to be reinforced to handle his immense weight. Ben's problems go way beyond just looking like an ugly orange rock monster (which, honestly, most people in the Marvel universe stopped caring about long ago).
• Great Lakes Avengers:
  • Mister Immortal, alias Craig Hollis. His one and only power: he can't ever stay dead. He discovered it by trying to commit suicide when his girlfriend did the same. And while all the loved ones around him died. And continued to die. One panel of him standing alone in a ruined landscape, surrounded by silhouettes of the corpses of his friends, is unusually bleak in a series that tends to play death for black humor. He will, according to reliable sources, outlive things like stars, planets, and Galactus. Considering Galactus is a being which used to be mortal and was born in the universe that existed previous to the current Marvel universe (and gained his powers through surviving the death of his universe and the big bang that created the current one), it stands to reason that Mr. Immortal would be a strong contender for becoming the Galactus of the universe that follows the eventual death of the current Marvel universe. On the upside, the guy who was killing his friends was fired by Death. Now the guy in charge of the whole "prepare you for an eternity alone" bit is one of his closest friends. Yay?
  • Ashley Crawford has the power to swell her body mass to become a Big Beautiful Woman (aptly named "Big Bertha") with superhuman strength and durability. The "suck" part comes in that order to displace all of that mass, Big Bertha is forced to regurgitate by vomiting all of the fat out in a process that she's jokingly dubbed "power puking." She's also stuck literally footing the bill for the rest of the group, since she uses her non-powered body to work as a supermodel and make the money the GLA needs to stay afloat.
• The newish mutants from the Marvel Universe, Generation Hope, all have powers like this, or at least linked to this. You have Velocidad, who's a super-speedster who ages up with each use of his power as it just makes time move slower/faster/whichever would be relevant for him, Sadie (Transonic) who's trapped forever in some blue alien-looking body, some guy who got super-animal strength and senses... and the mind to go with them. Another one of them's walking Body Horror. Idie is the one exception. Too bad her upbringing convinced her that just being a mutant was bad enough. Being one of the new generation of mutants sucks.
• Heroes Reborn (2021) reveals Blur's Super-Speed throws his mind into overdrive and makes it so he needs massive amounts of stimulation in order to stay sane. His downtime consists of watching TV, playing video games and livestreaming on dozens of devices all at once at nightmarish rates.
• Parodied in The Hood comics, when Parker offers his cousin a chance to try his flying shoes.
  John: No fuckin' way! Who knows what makes that shit work, Parker. Those things'll probably steal your soul or or give you nut cancer.
  • Since the artifacts allowed Dormammu to make The Hood his bitch, they did steal his soul. No word yet on the nut cancer.
• The Incredible Hulk: Here it might be more justified as a lot of people do hate and hound the Hulk (especially the army), and having multiple personalities is never fun. All that, and his wives keep on dying.
• Black Bolt, king of The Inhumans. This guy can produce a destructive force with his voice. If he so much as whispers, he'll destroy the landscape around him. Black Bolt has a bad case of Power Incontinence — and the only way he can avoid destroying everything around him is by not vocalizing (talking, laughing, crying, etc.). An old Fantastic Four comic revealed that Black Bolt had spent his childhood in an isolation chamber until he had learned the discipline to stay forever silent. And he killed his parents with an ill-timed utterance. The reason why Bolt's brother Maximus is an insane supervillain (instead of just a supervillain) is that BB used his vocal powers too close to him once, and that shattered his sanity.
• Iron Man built his first armor to keep himself alive — the powers were just a bonus to help him escape his captors. Ever since, his dependence on the suit has been a recurring plot element. For a long time, it kept his heart running (he could never take off the chestplate, and running out of power was a deadly problem); then that was fixed, but Tony was shot and paralyzed below the waist, unable to walk without his armor; still later, the chip that cured Tony's paralysis went on to sabotage his nervous system, and he couldn't control his body at all without a special Iron Man suit. Tony was nearly killed gaining the power of Extremis, which lets him control machines — this too is a power with serious downsides, as it makes him feel detached from humanity and allows smart enough enemies to attack his vital systems electronically. And now Extremis has been removed (or at least shut down) thanks to Skrulls, meaning his current armor can't be used anymore because it's far too complex for a normal human brain to use. Ultimate Marvel's version is arguably worse off. On the one hand, he doesn't need the armor to support his heart like the mainstream Tony Stark does, and he has genuine Super-Intelligence plus a Healing Factor because of having "undifferentiated neural tissue" scattered throughout his body. The downside of this? Pain. He's in perpetual agony; even when hovering on a blood alcohol level that would leave an ordinary man insensible and wearing a special bio-suit that was created to block out the pain, he's still constantly suffering.
• One of the few examples of this trope who is also a Badass Normal comes in the form of Michael Van Patrick, aka MVP. Long story short, he went through a diet and exercise regimen (starting from infancy it seems) devised by his grandfather who had worked on the Super-Soldier program that created Captain America. On the plus side, it made MVP a human being whose physical abilities were on par with Captain America himself, without Super Serum. The downside? Hoo boy. When it was discovered that his grandfather worked on the project, school officials suspected that MVP's abilities weren't natural, so he got booted off his high school sports team. Then he got drafted by the Initiative because they also believed he had Super Serum in his veins. While he adjusted well enough, he and his fellow recruits took part in an ill-advised live fire exercise on their first day. End result? To quote the Sniper from Team Fortress 2, "Boom, Headshot!." It didn't end there.
• Verity Willis, from the supporting cast of Loki: Agent of Asgard, can see through lies. All lies, every lie, up to invisibility powers and high level illusions. Unfortunately she can't turn it off so not even the small white lies that make daily life easier work on her. She can't even enjoy a book or a film because she lacks suspension of disbelief.
• Luke Cage has Nigh-Invulnerability to the point that bullets can't pierce his skin. Which is pretty awesome until something manages to injure him badly enough that he needs intensive medical care. Then it becomes a problem that needles can't pierce his skin.
• An interpretation similar to the Flash example in the DC section is given for Quicksilver, who once told a psychiatrist they would be short-tempered too if everyone else was like that one slow person in the checkout line.
• The Marvel Westerns portrayal of Hurricane establishes that he was given the power to be the fastest gun in a fight, provided he is in mortal peril at the time. Problem is, he didn't know that at first, so his attempts to profit off of this power failed and got him in trouble with a lot of people. Plus, as he points out, being the best means everyone wants to best you, too. But at least now he gets plenty of opportunities to use his power.
  Medicine Man: Gift. Curse. In some tongues it is the same word. You are sure you want this great power?
• Rick Sheridan, from the 1990s Marvel Comics series Sleepwalker ends up having to share his head with the titular alien hero, who can only come out when Rick sleeps. Sleepy's presence causes no end of trouble for Rick in his social life, up to and including putting Rick in a coma when Sleepwalker tries to force his way out while Rick is still awake. At least Peter Parker got some cool powers to balance things out...
  • Sleepwalker himself gets a rough deal, too. While his natural abilities make him a capable hero, he's trapped in Rick's mind unless Rick is asleep, at which point he gets to explore a world that's as alien to him as the Mindscape is to normal humans. His creepy appearance and lack of human-applicable social skills repeatedly alienate him even further.
• Spellbound (1988) revolves around this. The Spellbinder can reshape matter on an atomic level, levitate objects, fire energy blasts, and essentially do whatever they want, but the power will drive them mad and alienate them from anyone they may care about.
• Spider-Man: Despite the perks of his powers, Spider-Man has always viewed them as a burden and responsibility, rather than a blessing, because of the bad guys who've been pulled toward his family and friends because of them, and the problems that have cropped up when he chooses not to use them. This only got worse when Spidey briefly had cosmic powers. The responsibility that comes with his normal powers is bad enough; the responsibility he felt when he had cosmic-level powers was crushing.
• Jessica Drew AKA Spider-Woman was one to get over this problem but initially, her powers caused accelerated aging, unwanted attraction due to pheromones and unjustified hatred because of those same pheromones.
• Taskmaster can perfectly memorize and copy the movements of other people. Fighting styles, sports, the works. Permanently. This comes with a heavy trade-off: All of the information that is involved with perfectly imitating so many people is too much for Taskmaster's brain. As a result, he constantly forgets things that aren't combat-related: people, places, even a conversation from last Monday. He reveals all of this to Avengers Academy member Finesse, who has similar abilities because she might be his daughter and might have the same problem down the road. He wants to fight her because memorizing her movements is the only way he won't forget her. From Bad to Worse in a mini that reveals just how much of his life he's forgotten. He used to be known as Tony Masters, a married S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and he forgot about his former vocation and his wife, who was also a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. He forgets all of this again at the end of the mini when he copies the skills of his attacker in order to save his wife. His wife is determined to keep reminding him though.
  • Note that everything above is an incredibly unpopular Retcon, that causes more problems than it solves. Before this, however, he did have to deal with the issue that his photographic reflexes did not include Required Secondary Powers - for example, as a young boy, he copied an Olympic diver... only to realize after he hit the water that he didn't know how to swim.
• In Thor (2014), Jane Foster proves worthy of Mjolnir and gains the power of Thor. Unfortunately, every time she transforms, all poisons are purged from her body, including the chemotherapy drugs she needs for her cancer. If she keeps transforming, she's eventually going to die, but she doesn't let that stop her.
• Thunderbolt's super-fast metabolism caused him to die of old age about a week after getting his powers.
• Young Avengers:
  • Prodigy possessed the ability to absorb the knowledge of those around him. After he lost his powers to Scarlet Witch after the House of M, the Stepford Cuckoos were able to help him compensate by unlocking the accumulated knowledge of everyone he'd ever been in contact with. While this makes him one of the smartest teens in the Marvel Universe, it also means he ended up with a ton of awkward, intimate stuff like Wolverine's bathroom habits or Cyclops and Emma Frost's sex life.
  • Billy "Wiccan" Kaplan essentially won the Superpower Lottery and has power potentially on par with the gods. Great! Unfortunately, he doesn't have all that much control over his immense power. This means that when he screws up, the consequences are usually disastrous and potentially world-ending. That is not hyperbole. He also might be accidentally warping reality just by existing and wanting things, although considering the source of that information, it's likely a lie. Billy's still worried about it, though. There's also the part where his power scares the crap out of some people — including his heroes, the Avengers, and himself — and he's viewed as Too Powerful to Live by Wolverine, leading to two attempts on his life. And there was an Eldritch Abomination that wanted to eat him to gain his power. And Loki tried to drive Billy to suicide to steal his power, which would have worked if Loki hadn't changed his mind and stopped Billy from pulling the trigger at the last possible second. After that, Loki still tried to manipulate Billy so that Loki could control said power by proxy. In short, Billy was a lot happier back when he thought his powers consisted of nothing but flight, electricity, and basic magic.
  • It's not difficult to imagine that Tommy "Speed" Shepherd has the same problem of his uncle Quicksilver because he shares the same powers. It's incredibly easy to imagine, therefore, why he did the things that landed him in juvie in the first place, and why he's so distraught when the Young Avengers split up at the end of Avengers: The Children's Crusade - he's literally incapable of fitting into normal society because of his time perception. The Marvel NOW! Young Avengers volume makes it even worse. It's established that when his body moves at super-speed, all of his forms of perception do as well. So while using his speed to assemble some cellphones at his civilian job, he claims that he essentially just wasted a week of his life in the span of a few seconds.
  • Melter II of the Dark Young Avengers has the ability to dissolve objects. However, he's had it since a very young age, and his control is weak, leading to him accidentally killing his parents, and later an old woman.
• X-Men:
  • Likewise, mutants are Blessed with Suck, thanks to the outcast status that their power brings, even if they look and act completely normal. Besides the social issues, many mutants have little or no control over their powers, especially right after they first manifest. Force-fields that don't turn off, energy powers that lash out randomly, involuntary telepathy, etc.
  • Rogue is blessed with suck. Yes, technically the ability to copy other mutants' powers by touching them makes her very adaptable, but draining people's life energy whenever she touches them is about as sucky as it gets. And absorbing 'everything else about that person, including memories and personality traits. And she can't not do so, rendering her incapable of having any sort of intimate relationship. At the extreme end, she can essentially steal people's souls and hold on to them forever (happened with Ms. Marvel, but not quite intentionally and Ms. Marvel survived it). She later got over this problem, though, so now she can copy other mutant powers without causing them harm and freely touch others with no drawback. It only took about 30 years. Let's see if it sticks.
  • In X-Men Forever, it gets better and worse for her at the same time... Thanks to The Plan by Mystique, she arranged for Rogue and Nightcrawler to swap powers. Rogue now is free to touch anyone she wants without fear, and Kurt has to cover up. However, now, Rogue looks like a fuzzy blue demon, giving her replacement Wangst.
  • Magik (sister of Colossus) has a true double set. She was dreamed up as a mutant and a sorceress, specifically a demon sorceress. As a direct result of her plotlines, she was raised under and by a corruptive heartless bastard from age six to sixteen, at least one alternate team of X-Men has DIED trying to help her, she's blessed with dimension-spanning powers that threaten to erase her soul and let the Elder Gods loose, and she's already died twice.
  • Unus the Untouchable, a villain in the X-Men books, who could repel objects is so Blessed with Suck, his powers manage to kill him twice.
    • Beast built a gun to amplify his powers in order to defeat him, in an example similar to Midas. His powers eventually grew so strong they repelled air and he suffocated to death. Yet somehow he managed to father a child with similar powers beforehand...
    • In the Son of M mini-series, starring Quicksilver, Unus showed up alive without explanation, but depowered. He & several other depowered mutants are exposed to the terrigen mists by the titular character, despite The Inhumans' warnings that exposing any non-Inhuman will end in tragedy. Everyone exposed has their powers returned, but to extreme levels, leading to madness, misery and (in Unus' case) death. Again.
  • There is a character in volume 2 of New Mutants called Wither. Guess what his power is? Understandably, he has suffered a lot:
    • When his power manifested, he happened to be touching his father at the time, thus killing Dad and turning Wither permanently into an Emo Teen who tends to Wangst quite a lot.
    • He's also cursed with incompatibility. The one mutant at the school who has a crush on him, whose body is wholly, permanently liquid metal, and Wither doesn't care for her and was later arrested for killing his dad. Oh, and M-Day didn't work on either of them.
    • He was already in love with Wallflower, who wasn't immune to his powers. When he thought he was cured on M-Day, he grabbed her to show it, and crippled her hand in the process. This, among other things, finally drove him to run away from the Institute. OTOH, it seems like he's finally met someone compatible... Selene, a millennia-old mutant sorceress with life draining powers, the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and a recurring foe of the X-Men. Who turned him into a vampire. Kid can't get a break.
  • Surge from New Mutants is able to absorb and disperse electricity. The sucky part? She is always absorbing it because she can't fully control her powers. Because of this, she constantly has to discharge said electricity. If she doesn't, she can't arrange her own thoughts and her speech turns into babbling (at least in-universe; readers can understand her fine). Also, she can't touch water, which leads to the question as to how she drinks or bathes (while initially depicted as dirty, she was homeless then, and afterwards, she's clean, even though she compares her bathing to getting into a tub with a toaster). While she was homeless, she had to buy drugs to keep her powers under control (and they barely did that), to the point where Beast said she was addicted to them. Forge makes her a pair of gauntlets that she discharges into, but apparently didn't design them with style in mind, since she considers them ugly... even if readers don't.
  • Cyclops is another classic case, with his destructive optic beams that, again, don't turn off without special glasses or shutting his eyes. His brother Havok has sometimes also needed special equipment to control his own powers. An often overlooked aspect of Cyclops's condition is that due to having to wear ruby quartz glasses to control his powers, he can only see everything in shades of red (or, if you're Grant Morrison, yellow). In practice, he's completely colorblind.
  • Chamber of Generation X has energy powers allowing him to gank anyone this side of Juggernaut. The catch? His powers first manifested themselves so violently, they blew his upper torso and lower jaw off, leaving a glowing maw of energy and burnt flesh. He gets better for a while, working as an undercover agent in the Weapon X program - they can at least give him back his face, and install a device that lets him control his powers better. But naturally, he gets screwed again on M-Day when his powers get permanently turned off, as the regulator device now has nothing to regulate, and promptly explodes, destroying his face and chest again. He doesn't fare much better in alternate realities: In the Age of Apocalypse universe, he had a hole drilled into his chest to allow his power to vent. He later gets new powers courtesy of a blood transfusion with Apocalypse, who it turns out is his ancestor. Which makes him look sort of like Apocalypse, blue with funny lips. He also had tech installed that gives him sound powers, which he's pleased with. So he finally lost the suck.
  • Fate was particularly cruel to Masque, a member of the Morlocks. Born hideously ugly, his mutant power let him reshape the flesh of others... But not his own. Being unable to use his power on himself to make him better-looking made him a bitter, sadistic creature, who delighted in using his powers to mar and deform the faces of others, making him one of the few truly malicious members of the Morlocks.
  • Skin's mutation is that he has six feet of extra skin. Sure, he can manipulate it and that does have its uses, but he's otherwise stuck looking like a mix between a melted candle and a bulldog.
  • Ultimate X-Men (2001) has a heart-breaking example: a child whose entire mutant power is the dissolution of all living tissue within a ridiculous distance of him. When he wakes up and discovers his power has activated, the first sight are the corpses of his family and friends. He kills 385 people the day he hits puberty. In order to prevent the spread of widescale panic and revelation of mutants in such a way, Wolverine is sent to kill him. His regeneration powers protect him, but the whole ordeal is heartbreaking as Wolverine is pretty much performing a Mercy Kill on him.
  • There was a mutant whose power was to evaporate into air. Which is another way of saying to die instantly. Lucky for him, House of M happened. One is left to wonder how he knew what his power was, if he can only do it once...
  • Sally Floyd's baby had the "power" to age backwards until she died.
  • The short time X-Man Marrow was born with (or at least has them since a very early age) the power to have bone plates and blades painfully growing out of her body. So unlike most mutants she didn't get to have a normal life before becoming a mutant. Only thanks to a Healing Factor is she still alive nowadays. So it's somewhat understandable that she went Ax-Crazy over that. Also, so much for "next step of evolution".
  • During New X-Men, Grant Morrison introduced a number of new mutants whose primary power was to look weird. Beak typifies the whole lot of them: he's a mutant who looks sort of like a humanoid chicken and has no other powers than looking like a chicken.
  • Jean Grey used to have great difficulty controlling her powers. Her telekinesis wasn't so bad, but her telepathy was a huge hassle because she couldn't shut it off. It went From Bad to Worse when she became the host of the Phoenix — she had even more power, but less control since the Phoenix isn't always content to stay in the passenger's seat.
  • Professor Xavier's son Legion has the ultimate example of Combo Platter Powers, seemingly being capable of accessing every single super-power it's possible to have. The suck side is that he can't control them consciously; as his codename suggests, his mind has fragmented into a thousand or more separate personalities, each of which has command over one (or a small group of) his powers. Of course, the "core" Legion personality is pretty nasty in its own right, what with being an extremely powerful Reality Warper... luckily, he rarely gets to come out to "play".
  • Gamesmaster reads minds. All minds. Everywhere. And he can't turn it off, so is constantly bombarded by the thoughts of billions of people throughout the world.
  • Guy Smith, AKA Orphan, AKA Mr. Sensitive of X-Statix is a mutant with superhuman senses... unfortunately, his sense of touch is so acute that even the slightest injury can be debilitating.
  • Forget-Me-Not is a minor member of the X-Men, and none of the other members know that. His power is that whenever he leaves someone or something's field of view, they forget he ever existed. While this can be very useful (he's effectively a stealth master as he doesn't even show up on camera, and often helped in major conflicts without people even knowing he was there), it also made his life incredibly lonely, incapable of forming any kind of relationship. The only person who ever truly befriended him was Charles Xavier, who used his telepathic powers to set a periodic reminder of his existence; needless to say, Forget did not take his later death well.
• This was the motivation behind one-time X-Factor foe Josef Huber's attempt to orchestrate the extinction of mutants. Unlike others with this goal, he wasn't a deranged fanatic; he just had the ability to automatically copy the powers of every mutant on the planet, which resulted in him having telepathy so powerful that even the isolated arctic cave he lives in offers little refuge from the constant noise of thoughts from all over the world.
• Wolverine:
  • The adamantium that makes Wolverine's skeleton unbreakable and makes his claws even deadlier is also toxic. Wolverine would never have survived the adamantium infusion if it weren't for his Healing Factor. Another drawback is that his Healing Factor is weakened due to needing to work overtime to compensate for the adamantium poisoning. Having a metal skeleton also makes him a pretty poor opponent against on and off Big Bad Magneto. This was graphically demonstrated in the Fatal Attractions (Marvel Comics) arc (specifically X-Men vol. 2 #25) when Magneto ripped off the adamantium from Wolverine's bones, nearly killing him. In Ultimate Marvel, Magneto did kill Wolverine this way in Ultimatum. It also makes him much slower (as far as combat speed, reaction time and running speed) than he would otherwise be, due to its not-so-light weight. He tends to have difficulties going through airports and any other facility with metal detectors. And (theoretically speaking), it makes him easy to track for any being with sensitivities to metal (obvious candidates being Magneto & Polaris) and he is much more susceptible to attack via electricity. The additional weight would make swimming a bit more of a chore than it would be otherwise.
  • A less severe case of Blessed with Suck is the combination of a Healing Factor and retractable claws. Whenever Wolverine pops out the claws, he cuts open his hands. The Healing Factor keeps him from bleeding out, but also guarantees that he'll cut himself open again the next time. He's done it so often by now that he's probably used to it (and it's far from the worst pain he's ever suffered), but when they first came out, chances are it hurt. Originally, his claws had sheaths - back when they were artificial. Now that they're retconned as natural, they don't.Shortly after Wolverine had his adamantium stolen, Jubilee asked if he still bleeds when he uses his claws. His reply is that he pops them in and out a few times every day, forming holes like pierced ears. But they still hurt.
  • Wolverine's Super-Senses have the drawback of always being active. It's a wonder he doesn't pass out from sheer agony given the horrific injuries he suffers so often. This is arguably the case for anyone with Super-Senses. He has on occasion complained about being in public places such as airports due to the olfactory overload he receives from all the different kinds of b.o., deodorant, cologne, bad breath, etc.
  • Wolverine's Healing Factor is pretty awesome, but prior to M-Day (which gave Wolverine all of his memories back), it apparently helped him get over mental trauma — by giving him amnesia. Whether or not this is still the case — or indeed, if it ever really was — has not been confirmed. And yes, this means that all of Wolverine's powers are cases of Blessed with Suck. The amnesia was eventually revealed to be due to Weapon X "memory implants", which amount to nothing more than Weapon X doctors taking a cattle prod to his brain and allowing it to grow back, and then telling him some bullshit story about why he can't remember anything and who he "really" is.
• Logan's daughter/Opposite-Sex Clone X-23 (Laura Kinney) shares much of this, but unlike Logan is also burdened with remembering everything that's ever happened to her. And everything that's ever happened to her has really, really sucked. And she has even more drawbacks to her powers:

  • Avengers Arena makes it clear that the second Laura steps into a room she has already analyzed everyone in it for threat assessment and calculated the best plan of attack for killing them all. Sure, that sounds pretty useful if you're walking into a Bad Guy Bar or another situation with Everything Trying to Kill You, but she can't turn it off. Laura formulates a plan to kill her friends and loved ones every time she meets up with them.
  • The trigger scent falls into this as well. Laura is already an incredibly skilled and capable fighter by benefit of her instincts, heightened senses, and Training from Hell, but the trigger scent turns her into a whirling ball of unstoppable adamantium-bladed death. Unfortunately, it also induces an Unstoppable Rage over which she has no control and will pursue and attack anything, even those she cares about, that's been marked, and she will not stop until the target is either dead or the scent wears off.
  • Laura manages to avoid most of adamantium's Blessed with Suck traits Logan has to deal with, since only her claws are laced with it (though she still notes in her solo series that swimming is troublesome. She would also have the same problems getting through metal detectors or fighting someone like Magneto). However she also adds a unique one of her own that Wolverine doesn't have to worry about: Because her skeleton isn't reinforced with adamantium as well, it's entirely possible for her to strike something with her claws with so much force, that the combination of shock of impact, the target's resistance to being cut, and resulting vibrations could shatter or pulverize the bones in her hands and wrists, or feet and ankles.

• For a time, Rhino's suit was grafted to his skin. While this provided the permanent secondary powers for him to break through walls without pain, he had a lack of feeling and required a special flap for natural functions. Also, a side story mini-series from the perspective of Kitty Pryde as a new X-Man revolved around Wolverine running off with her in the middle of the night and telling her about some bank robbers he had fought while in Canada that wore adamantium suits. Unfortunately, the suits could not be removed; and one of them ended up with some disease. The man was left on life support for decades because the doctors weren't able to give him the single injection he needed, and the suit was of similar strength to Wolverine's claws. Wolverine took Kitty because he suddenly realized her powers would allow them to phase the needle past the suit, but he had died shortly before they arrived.
• The miniseries Worst X-Man Ever is about a boy who learns that he has the powers to explode, without any of the Required Secondary Powers that allow him to survive said explosion, meaning he just has the power to die and kill people around him on command.
• Every time Magneto rejuvenates, his memories of Auschwitz become as fresh as the first time he was that biological age.
• One sort of sideways example: the mini-series Beauty and the Beast introduced a mutant whose power was to change the color of flowers. Absolutely useless for anything except making interesting centerpieces yet she was still subjected to the same fear and hatred as every other mutant.
• Mortimer "Toad" Toynbee is generally regarded as ugly and deformed, in exchange for mutant powers. In one comic series, when Toad is stripped of his powers, he is revealed as extremely handsome, and would have looked that way if he hadn't been born as a mutant. Toad is more than happy to make the trade-off.
• Ultimate Iron Man: Superhuman intelligence and a Healing Factor at the cost of living in perpetual agony — the same biological mutation that makes him super-smart also gives him an awful form of Super-Senses, making his skin so sensitive that the mere touch of air through protective coating is painful.
• C-lister superhero Kenneth Hale, aka "Gorilla-Man" (not to be confused with C-lister supervillain Arthur "Gorilla-Man" Nagan, a Mad Scientist who transplanted his head onto the body of a 600 pound bull gorilla) has magical immortality; he doesn't age or get sick and will never die of natural causes. The sucky part is two-fold. Firstly, he can still be killed, and his immortality will pass on to whoever kills him, meaning he is often pursued by people who want to be immortal. Secondly, a side-effect of the magic is that he is permanently trapped in the body of a talking gorilla, which naturally does quite a number on his social life. In Jason Aaron's run of The Avengers, he actually has the worst of both worlds; he's sick of being an immortal gorilla and wants to finally die... but nobody wants to kill him and take his place as the new Gorilla-Man. He even betrays the Avengers to a Russian super team because they promised to have someone finally kill him. Only to then betray him by not keeping their word.

Films

Films

• X-Men Film Series: As expected of this franchise, examples abound:
  • X-Men:
    • Rogue's superpower doesn't allow her to touch the ones she loves.
    • Cyclops must always cover his eyes with a ruby quartz lens, otherwise he might accidentally kill someone.
    • The mutations produced by Magneto's machine are fatal.
  • X2: X-Men United: Jones can change television channels by blinking, but he never sleeps.
  • X-Men: First Class: Havok is very uncomfortable using his mutant ability because of its high potential for destruction, and most likely he has been incarcerated for manslaughter.
  • The Wolverine: Yukio's mutant power allows her to foresee a person's death (including that of her own parents), but she can't do anything to prevent it from happening.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past:
    • After slipping into a deep depression, the younger Charles views his telepathy as a curse because he can no longer control it. He is unable to shut out the clamour of thoughts that he doesn't want to hear, and this causes a tremendous amount of agony, to the point where he becomes addicted to a serum which numbs his ability, allowing him to sleep at night.
    • At the age of nine, Xavier believed that he was mentally ill (schizophrenia, most likely) due to the voices in his head, and it took him three whole years to recognize that he was actually telepathic—as dysfunctional as he is in 1973, his childhood experience must have been downright nightmarish in comparison.
    • This is Beast's attitude towards his physical mutation. He goes through great lengths in order to mask what he perceives to be his body's grotesque deformities.
  • X-Men: Apocalypse:
    • Professor X invokes this in his opening narration ("A gift can often be a curse"). When a blindfolded Scott Summers tells him that a mutation "doesn't exactly feel like a gift," Charles agrees and responds with, "It never does at first."
    • Jean Grey's ever-expanding superpowers make her life miserable because her classmates don't want to be near someone who's prone to losing control, and she's anxious that she might inadvertently hurt others.
  • Logan shows that once Xavier is depressed and saddled with dementia, his psychic powers are downright lethal.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The First Avenger reveals that, after undergoing the transformation from a scrawny kid to a Super-Soldier thanks to Erskine's Super Serum, Steve Rogers realizes that his boosted metabolism prevents him from getting drunk and drowning his sorrows. His body neutralizes alcohol faster than he can drink it. His food bill's pretty hefty too.
  • Iron Man 3: The villain's Mooks are imbued with a drug called "Extremis", which makes you virtually unkillable and gives you fire powers, but it also seems to make you a violently unstable drug addict and you might explode if you're not careful.
  • The MCU's take on Spider-Man's enhanced senses have caused him trouble in various movies:
    • Captain America: Civil War: Peter likens his powers to Sensory Overload. While he does have a greater awareness that allows him to have better reflexes, it's also overwhelming to take in everything happening at once. His iconic mask with the large white eyes is specifically designed to adjust based on how much input would actually be helpful.
    • The same is Played for Laughs in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Enhanced perception is helpful on the battlefield, but less so when you're a bored teenager who has to stay put for six hours.
    • Avengers: Infinity War gives the suckiest portrayal of his powers yet: his Spider-Sense warns him about danger a few seconds in advance, but when faced with a problem he can't escape, it just prolongs the discomfort he'd be feeling anyways. Case in point: when he's being killed by the Infinity Gauntlet, his Spider-Sense picks up that he's dying, and that there's nothing he or anyone else can do to save him. The boy goes out terrified and crying before turning to ash in Tony Stark's arms.
  • Played for Laughs by Hawkeye in Civil War. Having Improbable Aiming Skills makes golf really, really boring.
    Hawkeye: Played 18. Shot 18. Just can't seem to miss.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Ava Starr, a.k.a. Ghost, has intangibility powers that allow her to turn invisible and walk through solid objects. However, the Freak Lab Accident that gave her these abilities also killed her family. She was taken in by a government agency who exploited her powers and raised her as a Child Soldier. To make matters worse, her instability at the quantum level causes her extreme daily pain, and if she doesn't find a cure soon, her body will fall apart, cell by cell. She's only at odds with the heroes out of desperation to keep herself alive.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• In Iron Fist (2017), the Hand are able to bestow the gift of Resurrective Immortality to their most loyal followers, so that if they die (without being decapitated or cremated) then they can come back to life. This does, however, have the downside of inflicting upon them a form of self-destructive curse, causing them to destroy that which they love the most in fits of sociopathic rage.
• Jessica Jones: Erik Gelden has the superpower of being able to sense the evil in people, which would make him an excellent crime fighter and agent of justice. The only problem is that the evil gives him a headache, and the greater the evil, the greater the pain. As a result, he spends most of his time drinking and gambling, the only distractions he can get from his near-constant pain.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• The Spectacular Spider-Man's Spider-Man, as usual, has always viewed them as a burden and responsibility, rather than a blessing, because of the bad guys who've been pulled toward his family and friends because of them, and the problems that have cropped up when he chooses not to use them.
• In the 1990s X-Men: The Animated Series cartoon Jean Grey was often unable to use her Psychic Powers. It was common to see her passing out after trying to use them, saying that "she can't do (whatever she is trying to do) because her powers aren't as strong as Professor. X's", probably an action from the writers to not let her be too powerful or the others would be rendered useless. Not including her Phoenix-embodiment form.
  • Hank McCoy's "Beastly" appearance often prevent most people from understanding his incredibly cultured and intellectual mind, as well as his good natured heart.
• In X-Men: Evolution, a lot of the characters have this:
  • Rogue gets this trope as her power is to siphon off the powers, memories, life force, etc. of anyone with whom she makes skin-to-skin contact. Her downside is the same as the classic "Midas" example: can't shut it off.
  • Jean Grey is a remarkably powerful telepath, but in one episode, her powers get out of hand and she's overwhelmed by hearing everyone's thoughts and she can't control her telekinetic bursts.
  • Scott has his Eye Beams that are very useful as a crime fighter, but he's forced to wear his visor or glasses at all times. If he loses them (which tends to happen a lot), he has to keep his eyes closed, depriving himself of sight, or end up destroying everything in his path so he can see.
  • Blob and Toad are outcasts in school, thanks to their physical appearances that are tied into their powers.
  • Wanda's powers are so powerful that she was locked in a mental institution by her father to prevent her from destroying everything, though when she gets out it seems like she can control them just fine.
  • Kurt not only has his "Fuzzy Elf" real form (while it is cute, it freaks people out) - with that he can't touch people without them realizing he's uh fuzzy and two-fingered. It's revealed that his teleportation shunts him through what's best described as Hell to get from Point A to Point B and the one time they worked something to slow him down so they can figure how it actually works, the residents decided he looks tasty.
  • Every mutant is Blessed with Suck, in that once everyone finds out about mutants, just having special powers makes you instantly hated and despised by everyone.
  • The Morlocks are mutants whose powers give them non-human features.

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