Weaksauce Weakness and superheroes

It kind of annoys me and most non comic readers that lets say, Troper Man is vulnerable to tin foil to the extent where all the bad guy has to do is have a spear made out foil to kill the hero. I am annoyed that Superman who could move planets with a chain is vulnerable to kryptonite that can be found anywhere on Earth. why is this? I know it is to give them a weakness to keep them becoming to powerful but still Kryptonite? Yellow? Fire? Why all this Fridge Loigc and Fridge brillance with the weakness of superheroes?

edited 15th Aug '10 10:51:17 AM by G.G.

Green Lantern isn't weak to yellow anymore.

It's mostly because those heroes were created close to 70 years ago; back in the day, a space rock being your weakness was a novel idea.

Now, most heroes just have limits rather than pure weaknesses.

I guess that is understandable, now to keep with the current canon.

Regarding your original post - it strikes me as odd that fire gets counted as a weaksauce weakness. I mean those are normally harmless or banal things the character is weak to? Fire is harmful from the get go.

I wish there was less kryptonite around and they actually exploited Superman's other weaknesses more often. He can hold his breath for a long time, but he does still need to breathe. Use magic a bit more often. Come up with indestructible nanites. Red sunlight weapons. Just don't resort to green space rocks all the time!

This is why I liked All Star Superman. Early on in the series, Superman is poisoned with an overdose of solar radiation and one of it's effects is that he becomes immune to Kryptonite. The rest of the series shows him trying to overcome other obstacles unrelated to Kryptonite (including answering the unanswerable question, saying goodbye to Pa Kent, trying to figure out how to restore Kandor, and seeing what a world without Superman would be like). And it's awesome.

There was also a time back in the Bronze Age where all the Kryptonite on Earth turned to normal metal and Superman was able to move on (he took a "Kryptonite" rock from a thief and chewed it up and spat it out).

edited 15th Aug '10 12:24:49 PM by alliterator

Superman The Animated Series was also really good about not resorting to Kryptonite - Luthor always had a piece lying around, the Joker got his hands on it, and Metallo had some. I'm pretty sure that's the sum total of villains using Kryptonite in the entire series.

And the yellow thing...oy. Lots of things I dislike about the "Emotional Spectrum" Plot Tumor, but man do I prefer a weakness to fear to a weakness to yellow.

Marvel has always been better at avoiding that particular trope than DC. The only MU heroes I can think of with these kinds of weaknesses are either spoof characters or superman homages.

Yes, but generally Marvel's superheroes are a lot less powerful than DC's. The only superhero that was on the same level as Superman was the Sentry and his Weaksauce Weakness was being completely bonkers.

There's a ton actually, Silver Surfer being the most obvious.

Tellingly his limitation has more to do with his personality and frame of mind (and the class of opponents he encounters) than any particular weakness.

At the start of the Golden Age superheroes weren't really supposed to be challenged that much; in their original conceptions, they usually trounced whatever was thrown at them with ease. Basically, they were Showy Invincible Heroes.

But when people started to grow tired of seeing constant Curb Stomp Battles and the superheroes slipped into Boring Invincible Hero territory, the writers had to come up with something that would give their unstoppable ubermensch some sort of challenge. And thus Kryptonite Factors were born.

^Case in point Golden Age Superman, who would regularly beat his enemies with almost smug satisfaction.

Superman's Kryptonite weakness was actually created for the radio show in the early 1940s, to give an excuse for Superman to be hors de combat for a couple of weeks so his actor could take a break.

It wasn't introduced to the comic books until a few years later, in a story that finally had Superman discover where he'd come from in the first place. But after that it became too convenient a way to keep Superman from resolving the plot before the alloted number of pages, and the writers just kept going back to the same well...plus the discovery of Superboy's Kryptonian roots and Kryptonite weakness was retconned as having happened while he was still a teen, and we wound up with the Silver Age Kryptonite Is Everywhere problem.

Actually, Kryptonite was originally invented by the comics writers - it was going to debut in a story that also involved Lois finding out Clark's dual identity. The latter twist led to the story getting scrapped, only for the Kryptonite idea to get picked up by the radio writers.

Also, Green Lantern had his Weaksauce Weakness to wood from the very beginning - probably because while Superman is overpowered, Green Lantern is ridiculously overpowered.

I can think of a story which used magic against Superman. You can see my opinion of it over here (Ctrl+F "Light")

You've talked about this before, G.G.

Anyway, Martian Manhunter's vulnerability to fire is rather tragic if you read the comic.

Also, Superman The Animated Series was good with not using Kryptonite all the time because they not only depowered him, they also used foes of equal-or-greater strength, and exploited the sun as the source of his power.

One of my favorite enemies from All Star Superman is actually Solaris the Tyrant Sun, so that works out good, too.

Regarding the Martian's weakness to fire it often goes into the point of confusing. At first it was a simple illogical fear until it then became a racial fear and then weakness that was due to a genetic failsafe which saw J'onn pair up with Fire in order to overcome it and then resort into Fernus, a giant burning alien. Justice League: New Frontier is probably the only thing to actually make this weakness believable.

Superman: Red Son also handled the weaknesses well too. Throughout the entire series, the US is actively trying to find a way to weaken him even resorting to teaming up with Batmankoff and Piotr in order to bury Superman in a concentration camp lit with red sun radiation. It didn't work all too well. The only thing that really had an effect was a kryptonite laser fired by a seemingly reprogrammed Brainiac

The idea of superheroes that weren't practically gods didn't really kick in til the Bronze Age or so, it seems, which is the main reason there's so many ridiculous weaknesses left over.

I think Superman in the DCAU was actually portrayed as less powerful than usual, though still the most powerful superhero. Writers know how to use restraint now.

Personally, I agree with what's being said above: weak-sauce weaknesses are fine, but should be balanced out6 with other, equally interesting complications, or be somewhat logical.

like being able to delay an invulnerable but not super strong man by crushing him with a bigass rock