Power Creep

Superman already set the bar too high by having a truckload of powers. Power creep is worsened if the posterboy for superheroes everywhere is already pretty OP.

Superheroes are more interesting when they have some sort of gimmick. What's the Flash's power, he's fast. But then you have Speed Force power creep with the attosecond bullshit. It's dumb.

>>95055233
>Superman already set the bar too high by having a truckload of powers. Power creep is worsened if the posterboy for superheroes everywhere is already pretty OP.
Golden Age Superman wasn't that OP.

>>95055194
A Superman running around in today's world but who is limited to his original 1938 powerset would make for an interesting character, and in the right hands, interesting stories.

>>95055674
Wasn't that basically Morrison's Action Comics?

>>95055743
But it didn't last long enough.

>>95055233
>Superman already set the bar too high by having a truckload of powers
the problem isn't him having a truckload of powers, it's his powers being taken to ridiculous extremes.

>>95055797
Golden Age Superman using his modest superpowers to destroy crime and social injustice is the only good SJW, we can all agree on that

>>95055674
Not even Golden Age didn't keep his powers consistent either, near the ending of the Golden Age he was already outpacing lightning and tanking nukes.

>>95055674
I kinda feel like Superman TAS was good for this.

>>95055194
Stop talking out your ass, Superman's power creep literally took decades in real time.

If you can only show a character being interesting by making them weaker and limited then you're a shit writer

>>95055242
This is true but I came here to mention that the Silver Age was the creep time. We've only slowly been returning to those levels of spoopy power displays.

Ultimately, supervillains were the main cause of power creep in superheroes. Once you create a villain who's as strong as if not stronger than the hero, how do you solve their eventual fight?

You could
1) have a crossover with other heroes to emphasize teamwork (although it would solidify that the main hero is no longer the best at gimmick X)
2) have the hero outsmart his opponent (although most supervillains have "totally smarter than the hero" as an added ability)
3) have the hero just "git gud" in some arbitrary way (e.g. power of love, adrenaline), which if used often enough will effectively be power creep

It's a shame that writers don't go with #2 and that, to the degree that we do get outsmarting situations, it's effectively a form of intelligence power creep.

At the end of the day, it's an issue with creative teams treating superheroics as no more than a cat-and-mouse game rather than giving a shit about real characterization (that extends beyond "the hero has a personal life....which the villain puts in danger!!!!!!!!!") and interesting concepts in the world and in being a hero.

Golden age Superman was boring. Then they started copying Captain Marvel, right down to hiring Otto Binder. Silver age Superman was overpowered, but the stories were never about Superman getting into brawls and out punching the supervillains. It was in the hands of untalented hacks that power levels become a problem.

I think nerd insecurity is the primary reason.

If thy power down superman so he was at the level he was in Fleischer cartoons, ie he needs to use all of his power to stop a moving train, he gets knocked down but not killed if a cannon ball hits him...or did any other similiar thing than people would just scream how Goku or the Hulk could beat him up.

Some nerd makes his comic book hero stronger so it looks bigger than the other nerd's comic and the cycle continues.