Could Superman *thrive* in the Marvel Universe?

[VampiricLongbow]

Yea, I realized that as soon as I posted it, but my edit took too long apparently. The better question is, does that power defeat Superman either way it works. Just exploiting his weakness isn't enough as he has fought people that have done that before.

Even if his blasts hurt or depowered Superman or whatever, he still aims at normal human speed doesn't he? What is stopping Superman from just super speeding behind Cyclops and knocking him out with a flick of his finger?

Cyclops's surprise Kryptonite!

But realistically, nothing. Superman has the best suite of powers that gives him the ability to defeat almost anyone, except magic users (or people with surprise Krytonite (or surprise red sun ray guns)). And even those are debatable, especially if Superman gets the drop on his opponents.

[Rater202]

To be fair, Marvel currently seems to be trying to move away from the hero vs hero stuff.

During the Context of Chaos, a short event where different heroes were paired up and forced to compete... They were forced to compete and everyone involved was commenting on how tired of this kind of thing they were and how contrived it was

In terms of major events, the last one was Judgment Day which looked like it would be hero vs hero, the X-Men fighting the Eternals with the Avengers caught in the middle... But it turned out that Druig had managed to take over as the leader of the Eternals and waged war on the mutants to try and cement his win with a quick military victory only for the mutants to be harder to defeat then he thought, the Avengers and actually Heroic Eternals to show up to help them... And also literally every Deviant in the world.

Then the actual threat came about and the war seemed minor in comparison.

The only other issue of hero vs hero conflict was this Month's immortal Thor: Thor needed Storm's help with something and basically kidnapped her for it, she was justifiably angry since she was in the middle of something important but he didn't exactly fight back when it escalated to violence, it didn't last very long, and once things calmed down and she saw what it was he needed help with she's like "oh, ****, yeah, this is more important. My bad."

[VampiricLongbow]

Hero vs Hero was popular because the audience often cares more about the heroes in general, as compared to villains, and the outcome of a hero vs hero fight is not known in issue 1. So I totally get the appeal, Marvel just leaned into it too much, too often.

[Wintermoot]

Yea, I realized that as soon as I posted it, but my edit took too long apparently. The better question is, does that power defeat Superman either way it works. Just exploiting his weakness isn't enough as he has fought people that have done that before.

Even if his blasts hurt or depowered Superman or whatever, he still aims at normal human speed doesn't he? What is stopping Superman from just super speeding behind Cyclops and knocking him out with a flick of his finger?

I tried to address that in my first post.

Looking at a long history of how the two of them approach fighting unknown enemies. Big Blue has a track record of confidence in his own invulnerability (well-earned) and tends to float there and let the enemy take the first shot, so he can get an idea of the level of power he is dealing with.

Cyclops has a long history of tactical supremacy and will take that first shot if offered. And he'll likely take his best, most powerful shot, because he's better at judging unknown threats than Big Blue and would take one look and think "oh, he's like Sentry. I better hit him hard"

If that first shot doesn't take him out, Cyclops is in a world of hurt. My argument is, that first shot is the last shot.

If they both get a dossier on the other before the fight starts, the equation changes.

[Peelee]

.

Apropos of absolutely nothing but I'm enjoying Season 2 of Invincible and absolutely getting a kick out of your username.

[Lizard Lord]

I tried to address that in my first post.

Looking at a long history of how the two of them approach fighting unknown enemies. Big Blue has a track record of confidence in his own invulnerability (well-earned) and tends to float there and let the enemy take the first shot, so he can get an idea of the level of power he is dealing with.

Cyclops has a long history of tactical supremacy and will take that first shot if offered. And he'll likely take his best, most powerful shot, because he's better at judging unknown threats than Big Blue and would take one look and think "oh, he's like Sentry. I better hit him hard"

If that first shot doesn't take him out, Cyclops is in a world of hurt. My argument is, that first shot is the last shot.

If they both get a dossier on the other before the fight starts, the equation changes.

This honestly sounds a lot like "it comes down to who the writer wants to win".

[TeChameleon]

This honestly sounds a lot like "it comes down to who the writer wants to win".

So, just like any other comic book fight?

That being said, you could handwave Cyclops' eyebeams as being red sunlight, but that would be fairly heavily inconsistent with the previous handwaves- it's been pretty clearly shown to be concussive force that just happens to be red for whatever insane reason, and shown to be that many, many, many times over the years. I think it may even have been outright said that there's no heat involved, which would kinda preclude it being sunlight.

... honestly not sure why there's a raging argument over Cyclops in the Superman thread I started, but whatever.

Hmm... maybe I should refine the original question; could Superman thrive in the Marvel Universe if it was a temporary hero exchange program? I.e. he wasn't trapped, he voluntarily swapped places with someone and could go home to vent to Ma and Pa as needed, or whatever. He'd be endorsed by the Avengers or whoever, the public at large would know he was there as an exchange hero or some such, but then he'd have to deal with the usual psychotic nonsense from the Marvel civilians and governments and whatnot (as an aside, has Marvel ever explained why the Canadian government seems to be the incarnation of evil on Earth?)

[Kish]

Superman very rarely uses his superspeed in fights. Probably mainly because if he did, all his fights would be about being the Flash with incidental and unimportant superstrength, heat vision, freezing breath, and whatever else his current writer can write down before getting carpal tunnel syndrome.

[Lord Raziere]

Hmm... maybe I should refine the original question; could Superman thrive in the Marvel Universe if it was a temporary hero exchange program? I.e. he wasn't trapped, he voluntarily swapped places with someone and could go home to vent to Ma and Pa as needed, or whatever. He'd be endorsed by the Avengers or whoever, the public at large would know he was there as an exchange hero or some such, but then he'd have to deal with the usual psychotic nonsense from the Marvel civilians and governments and whatnot (as an aside, has Marvel ever explained why the Canadian government seems to be the incarnation of evil on Earth?)

it'd probably basically go like this:
Superman: hey, Captain America, how do you deal with this? the civilians and governments hating us for no reason thing?
Cap: ehh.....you get used to it. kinda just becomes background noise after a while.

[Rater202]

Superman: "So the government periodically tries to murder a significant portion of the citizenry because of genetic factors they can't control and justifies it with their powers making them dangerous... While completely ignoring every other metahuman, and the fact that most of these so called mutants don't really have significant powers at all... Why?"

Captain America: "So the mutants have uh... For lack of a better term, they're 'better' than baseline humans. Little stronger, a little tougher, they're immune to certain infections, etcetera. Because of this, an anthropologist who believed some claptrap about an open war between all homo sapiens and all Neanderthals and that's why the Neanderthals died out went on television and very prominently argued that mutants were an existential threat to humans, that because they were better than us they would inherently be driven to kill us all if we didn't come down hard on them first and that's been a long shadow over the discourse ever since. Throw in people who believed what he said being radicalized and committing violence against mutants, or violence while claiming to be mutants, and mutant groups becoming violent in real or perceived self-defense... It's a mess, Clark. Meanwhile, most of the actual mutants just want to live their lives like anyone else."

Clark: "...Okay. Now what was this about a Civil War?"

Steve: "Tony, you wanna take this one?"

Thinking it over, the sheer atrocities that t eMArvel Government sanctions and/or perpetrates might be what gets Clark. It's been a while but shady government stuff is typically restricted to semi-independent organizations like CADMUS and corruption in law enforcement is depicted as a minority.

In the Marvel Universe, New York Cops decided that an alien invasion was the perfect time to sick the dogs on random people in order to abuse the fact that canine officers are legally police officers to arrest anyone who defends themselves for "assaulting an officer."

[Lord Raziere]

Captain America: I think my question is how did you guys in your universe AVOID social problems like these? what we deal with seems kinda inevitable if very exaggerated from a historical/sociological perspective

Superman: oh that. uh. Last time I had a chat with Batman he was speaking with a few other geniuses and they're pretty sure our multiverse has been reset every decade or so multiple times for some reason. don't think this has had time to develop since we keep being stuck in the early emergence stage of supers. we're working on figuring out a way to get unstuck from whatever timeloop we're in but its kinda hard since we're not sure of the cause yet.

[Ramza00]

Hero vs Hero was popular because the audience often cares more about the heroes in general, as compared to villains, and the outcome of a hero vs hero fight is not known in issue 1. So I totally get the appeal, Marvel just leaned into it too much, too often.

It is also generational, for 1980s Hero vs Hero is kind of different* than 2000s Hero vs Hero. One may be due to Mind Control via the villain or some other reason for fighting, but the 2000s stuff wanted multi chapter arcs that take place for half of a year and the two sides are in their right minds but different values and no talk could change peoples opinions,

*of course it is way more than these two decades, I am just picking two different eras that feel different.

———

The things go in cycles. You could not do Gwen Stacey dying till the 70s due to the Comic Code Authority requiring their version 2 rules which were different than the 1950s rules. Likewise the 1980s allow actual heroes to die with people like Captain Marvel in the first graphic novel, likewise 80s deconstruction of the genre.

90s had events like the Death of Superman and Marvels Onslaught. The 00s had several fads too many to list, but one of them was hero vs hero and this continued throughout the 2010s and is now kind of exhausted.

Who knows what the 2020s fads will be.

[Forum Explorer]

The fact that Scott 1: does that. 2: generates the energy to do that himself via 3: A process that generates millions of times more energy than he gets from the slight he absorbs to start it is very important because it's a defining moment in his backstory.

To summarize, after jumping out of a burning airplane and hitting the ground head first because the parachute caught fire and he was carrying his little brother, Alex, Scott fell into a coma. While he was comatose, he was taken to an orphanage run by Mister Sinister, who did testing on all the kids to see which ones were mutants and upon studying Scott's powers became obsessed with him specifically because of the fact that his powers were an exception to Thermodynamics.

Scott's entire backstory from that point forward was engineered to break him down into somoene who could be molded into the perfect child soldier so that Essex could swoop in, save him from the traumatic circumstances, and thus have Scott as both his willing enforcer and a willing participant in his experiments.

(Then Xavier found Scott and sniped him. A common complaint is that Xavier turned Sctt into a child soldier but Scott was already on his way to that. Xavier made him functional.)

Cable exists because Scott married Maddie Pryor. Maddie Pryor exists because Essex cloned Jean Grey. Essex cloned Jean Grey because Essex wanted to make a broodmare to bear Scott's children due to his desire to see what would happen if you combined Scott's impossible energy efficiency with Jean's bull**** psychic powers, and in particular his desire to make a mutant who could serve as a weapon against Apocalypse.

In addition to Cable(who at ful power, when th eT-O virus is under control, can casually manhandle the Silver Surfer while holding up an entire city and repairing all the collateral damage from the fight as it's happening) another interaction between Scott and Jean's power, Rachel Grey, their daughter from the Days of Future Past Timeline, is able to see the past and future and psychokinetically manipulate time itself, allowing her to project other people's minds back in time to inhabit their younger selves and physically travel through time herself.

This means that, if Scott's powers didn't work like that, the time travel shenanigans that allowed for that terrible future to be shunted off into a divergent timeline wouldn't have been possible.

So yeah, it's pretty important. Scott would literally be a completely different person today two major characters wouldn't exist and the history of the universe would be rather different.

Additionally, it's relevant to this discussion given that someone here thought that Scott was just absorbing sunlight and then firing it back out of his eyes, but red.

That is actually sounding like a no, it doesn't matter.

Now let me explain.

The only real requirements in that backstory is that Scott be special, and that Scott be powerful. Special in some way so that Essex targets him and becomes obsessed with him, and powerful to justify that his child, Cable, be even more powerful as a result.

None of that actually requires that Scott have infinite punch lasers coming out of his eyes. The dimension of infinite energy, the fact that they are lasers, the fact that he absorbs sunlight, all of that is kinda irrelevant to Essex's motivation which shapes Scott's backstory. If Scott had the power to destroy energy and matter, not convert to a different form or send to a different dimension, that would work just as well for Essex's motivation as you stated it. Scott just needs to be powerful and unique in some way.

And that's fine. Making some reason for Scott's eyebeams to be more impressive than what they seem to justify that whole confluence of events is perfectly okay. But they could've just as easily justified it in a different way using a different method. Nothing wrong with the one they chose (well maybe not nothing wrong), but there were plenty of equally valid options they could have chosen instead. The actual nitty gritty details of how Scott's power worked does not seem to matter from what you told me.

[Rater202]

It is important, Forum, because it's not just that he has to be special and be more impressive then he looks, in order to maintain consistency with the plot his powers have to be special in a specific way.

If his eye beams are just more powerful than they should be because he's like, really good at energy blasts, then Rachel and Cable are likely born with radically different powers.

their powers are what they are, because the "millions of times more energy that we take in" aspect of his owers was combined with Jean Grey's already bull**** tier psionic powers to... Basically, they have the same powers as their mother, but because of Scott's genes in the mix the process by which they gain their mutant energy is giving them significantly more juice to work with and so they can do exponentially more.

Change how Scott's power works, you change how their powers work, and and that has radical consequences for the timeline.

Like, seriously. If Scott's power isn't special in this highly specific way, then he's usually for Snister's experiments since he's interested in Scott primarily for what his genes would do when combined with other mutants so Scott probably gets killed by someone when he wakes up from his coma and can't tunr off his optic blasts.

Beast once went back in time to just after the X-Men first fought Magneto and brought the then-teenage orignal X-Men back to the present under false circumstances in order to win a fight with Scott. Of course, he ****ed up and the 05 X-Men got stuck in the present for a while...

While attempting to travel back in time(and, interestingly enough, stating flat out that he was taken from the 1960s,) the Teenage Hank McCoy accidentally sent himself and Evan Sabahnur back in time to ancient Egypt.

Evan is a very sweet young man... But he's also a perfect genetic clone of Apocalypse, created basically to see if Apoclaypse's evil was a result of nature vs nurture and he's got quite a lot of angst about this so when he encounters his "father" as a teenager and finds him to be a kind, sensitive, and generous young man he basically decides to do everything in his power to help the teenage En Sabah Nur and a greek girl that he's friends with an escape from Egypt...

His interference leads directly to Nur' attempt to run away failing and Baal of the Bloody Sands, Nur's adopted father and the man directly responsible for Nur having social Darwinist values, having the rest of his bandit clan take turns literally beating the compassion out of Nur.

So no Cyclopse and, even if everything else the X-Men did up till then turns out the same somehow, no Hank going back in time, no Teen Hank taking Evan back in time, no Evan ****ing up and allowing Apocalypse to become what he is.

Which, you might think, isn't so bad. Apocalypse is one of history's greatest monsters... Except he wasn't always evil. Back in his Egyptian Days as a young man, he was a pretty standard bronze age hero, an anti-ero a t worst by out standards, and alongside Imhotep and the Avatar of Khonshu of the day, founding the Ancient Brotherhood of the Shield which 1: Protected the Earth from an invasion by the Brood several thousand years ago and 2: h... SHIELD is ultimately just a modern front agency for it.

So, if Scott's powers aren't "special" in a highly specific way, then the best case scenario is SHIELD never exists, worse case scenario humanity is a host species for a race of xenomorph knockoffs.

[Batcathat]

Change how Scott's power works, you change how their powers work, and and that has radical consequences for the timeline.

I mean, mutant genetics already take a truckload of suspension of disbelief to accept, so I think their powers would make about the same amount of sense in either case (especially since Scott's power would still include basically creating energy out of nothing).

[Rater202]

I mean, mutant genetics already take a truckload of suspension of disbelief to accept

Not if you're willing to pay attention to the in-unverse science when it comes up. The stuff that's surprisingly consistent across writers and decades and that I keep trying to explain to people who keep insisting that it doesn't matter.

(especially since Scott's power would still include basically creating energy out of nothing).

If you're changing how Scott's power works then it almost certainly isn't because the aspects that let him do that are the ones we're talking about replacing with something else.

Like, seriously. Nobody else is generating more power than they take in. Most of them are not 'generating' power at all. They are drawing in exactly as much energy as they need from an extradimensional source. Nor can they do it continuously, indefinitely, or with an infinite/arbitrarily high maximum output the way Scott can.

He is, in fact, the only explicit source of perpetual energy in the Marvel Universe. Why is that so hard to understand?

[Batcathat]

If you're changing how Scott's power works then it almost certainly isn't because the aspects that let him do that are the ones we're talking about replacing with something else.

As long as he's still powered by sunlight, he's clearly outputting way more energy than he's absorbing, whether he's using it to open interdimensional portals or converting it to concussive force blasts so assuming the "energy seemingly out of nowhere" part is what's important for Sinister's interest and fathering various Nathans, that shouldn't change much.

[Ramza00]

Do not get me started on Sinister and Cyclops, there is too much 90s lore, also 1980s and 2020s 🙃

the short of it was Old Man Cable was a 1990 invention that became popular before Terminator 2 of 1991, and then Terminator 2 happened and it gets insane in ways that are totally explainable, but by paragraph 2 it becomes baroque and by paragraph 10 you are truly mad. Paragraph 10 brings you to the year 1996 which links events from 1986 to 1990, to 1992 and 93, which links events to 94 and 95.

• 1996 with a 4 issue miniseries explains why Sinister is obessed with Scott and to a lesser extent Jean. It is a time travel paradox in the further adventures of cyclops and phoenix and Sinister is a creature of obsession, sentiment, and not understanding his own memories and why they matter so much to him.

And that is before Nate Grey is introduced. Old Man Cable is insanity!

[Anymage]

Not if you're willing to pay attention to the in-unverse science when it comes up. The stuff that's surprisingly consistent across writers and decades and that I keep trying to explain to people who keep insisting that it doesn't matter...

You're doing a very good job here explaining why Scott Summers is important in the larger Marvel narrative. It's just that in the context of a fight scene or vs. thread, I don't see how any of this would make him any different than any other eye laser character or how the outcome would be changed if he instead tapped into the same universal battery as everyone else.

[Rater202]

You're doing a very good job here explaining why Scott Summers is important in the larger Marvel narrative. It's just that in the context of a fight scene or vs. thread, I don't see how any of this would make him any different than any other eye laser character or how the outcome would be changed if he instead tapped into the same universal battery as everyone else.

Ask the people who keep poking it.

I was just correcting a misconception. And then another misconception. After a bit it became explaining the same misconception over and over again, and then explaining the narrative significance of it working the way it does when it was questioned why that mattered to a narrative.

People keep asking/questioning so I keep answering. At least that's how it feels where I'm sitting.

But okay, how does all of this apply to this specific scenario, since well, I imagine that Clark would have significantly less of a chance of thriving in a world ruled by the Brood. Or where super-powered robots that adapt to superpowers are hunting down and killing superhumans. Or Age of Apocalypse if Nur came to power a few centuries earlier. Or any of the other bad timelines that happen if Scott doesn't catch Sinister's eye.

Like, let's go with the "Apocalypse took over the world and wiped out most of the human race in the Victorian era" one. Apocalypse at full strength can manhandle the Hulk and shrug off full-powered blasts from Cyclopse and Black Bolt at the same time with the rest of X-Factor and the Inhumans providing supporting fire with high-powered energy weapons. He has a variety of potent energy manipulation abilities, eh's fused a the genetic level with at least three different kinds of highly advanced technology, two of which are outright Clarketech, thanks to the Techno-Organic Virus, he adapts to things that harm him, he has vast psychic powers, his ability to control every aspect of his body at the atomic level lets him basically turn into whatever he wants, he's dabbled in sorcery, he can temporarily give himself new superpowers by rewriting his DNA on the fly, and he permanently absorbs the knowledge, powers, an usseful biological traits of anyone he takes as a host.

He also didn't permanently die because even ignored his dozens of contingency plans to resurrect himself(one of which is literally as simple as just tossing some spare organs into a vat of his blood, which he made a habit of keeping around in various stash houses all over the world several years before this point in time) he's an External, a subcategory of mutants who are all innately eternally youthful and will eventually be resurrected by their powers if killed unless either their life force is extracted and stored in something or else they're killed at the hand of another Eternal(which causes their life force to be equally distributed across all currently extant externals, sort of like Highlanders)

So if he's in a body that is strong enough and capable enough to use his full power without burning out or undergoing rapid aging that overwhelms his eternal youth... And if Essex never turned against him he can easily have some of those made, then he by himself is more than a threat to Clark.

[Forum Explorer]

It is important, Forum, because it's not just that he has to be special and be more impressive then he looks, in order to maintain consistency with the plot his powers have to be special in a specific way.

If his eye beams are just more powerful than they should be because he's like, really good at energy blasts, then Rachel and Cable are likely born with radically different powers.

their powers are what they are, because the "millions of times more energy that we take in" aspect of his owers was combined with Jean Grey's already bull**** tier psionic powers to... Basically, they have the same powers as their mother, but because of Scott's genes in the mix the process by which they gain their mutant energy is giving them significantly more juice to work with and so they can do exponentially more.

Change how Scott's power works, you change how their powers work, and and that has radical consequences for the timeline.

Like, seriously. If Scott's power isn't special in this highly specific way, then he's usually for Snister's experiments since he's interested in Scott primarily for what his genes would do when combined with other mutants so Scott probably gets killed by someone when he wakes up from his coma and can't tunr off his optic blasts.

Really? Because from what I can tell and remember, Cable's powers are basically extremely powerful telepathy, telekinesis, and just having advanced technology. He doesn't have a portal to an infinite plane of energy, he doesn't absorb sunlight, and the only lasers he shoots comes from his guns. (Though I did read about a telekinetic blast, which could just be fancy talk for punch laser)

He's very powerful, yes, but there doesn't seem to be a particular reason that Scott needs to have his powers work the way they do in order to justify Cable being powerful.

And as a reminder, the writers control the story. There is no 'likely' or 'probably', there is only what happened and how the writers justify that.

So I ask you this: If Scott's source of his powers were different in some way, and everyone else behaved exactly the same way, so Sinister would still go after Scott, Cable is still born, Cable's powers are exactly the same, ect; would the story not make sense anymore?

Because from the point of view of someone who is a much less dedicated fan of X-men (but still a fan), it looks like it would all still make sense.


For example: Let's say that Scott is a relatively ordinary mutant. His mutation is that he shoots lasers out of his eyes. But that's relatively tame compared to Storm controlling weather, or Magneto controlling electromagnatism. His lasers are powerful but that's about it.

Sinister encounters Scott when he is a young child and takes a DNA sample. Something about this DNA sample gets Sinister excited, and he becomes obsessed with Scott. Sinister keeps interfering with Scott's life, and trying to kidnap/capture the women in his life, particularly the mutants. Eventually it is revealed that Sinister encountered a time traveling Cabel, and got a DNA sample from him. And since then has been dedicated to ensuring Cable's birth in both an attempt to control Cable and to ensure that there is someone capable of beating Apocalypse.

When he got Scott's DNA he realized that Scott was Cable's father when he compared the DNA samples. And since then he's been trying to figure out who the mother is. He learns its Jean Grey but then she 'dies'. Thinking fast, he uses the DNA he has to clone Jean, and programs the clone to fall in love with/seduce Scott. She does so, and becomes pregnant with Nathan Summers AKA Cable.

And done. It's a closed timeloop where Cable going back in time ensures his own birth, and you don't need to justify why Cable's strong, because Jean Grey is already strong and Cyclops is certainly no slouch.

[Rater202]

Really? Because from what I can tell and remember, Cable's powers are basically extremely powerful telepathy, telekinesis, and just having advanced technology. He doesn't have a portal to an infinite plane of energy, he doesn't absorb sunlight, and the only lasers he shoots comes from his guns. (Though I did read about a telekinetic blast, which could just be fancy talk for punch laser)

Cable normally has to devote the vast majority of his psychic powers to keeping the Techno-Organic Virus from eating him alive and then using his robo-zombie corpse to infect other people. He's basically constantly holding back each individual particle of the virus and keeping it from spreading at all times, even when he's asleep, and any major use of his powers runs the risk of losing a little more of himself to the infection.

During points in time, however, when the Virus is kept in check by something else...

As I already cited once, Cable has completely dominated in a fight against th eSilver Surfer, while holding up a flying city using his telekinesis, and repairing the collateral damage the fight was causing at the same time.

And tha'ts nothing compared to Nate Grey, who is Cable's counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse timeline and is noted to be genetically identical to him. Nate's powers are essentially what Cable's would be if he had never been infected with the T-O Virus, and had also been taught to see his powers from a more spiritual perspective.

Nate is... If he claimed to be a God and demonstrated his powers, you would believe him. Nate started, as a teenager, being roughly equal in power and ability to Jean as Dark Phoenix and noted that he was rather worried about accidentally warping reality in his sleep and has gotten exponentially more powerful since then.

He once sacrificed himself by converting his body into energy and then dispersing it into every human being in order to, effectively, turn them into position for a species that seeded the earth with the precursors for mitochondria billions of years ago and then came back to harvest their "crop." Then, a few years later, he came back to life because he was bored with being dead. The Multiverse is his step ladder, and the last time we saw him he had literally become a reality in his own right.

So to answer your question.. It wold not make sense because it's specifically the specific way that Scott's powers are unique that allows for that kind of stuff to happen with his kids.

[Forum Explorer]

Cable normally has to devote the vast majority of his psychic powers to keeping the Techno-Organic Virus from eating him alive and then using his robo-zombie corpse to infect other people. He's basically constantly holding back each individual particle of the virus and keeping it from spreading at all times, even when he's asleep, and any major use of his powers runs the risk of losing a little more of himself to the infection.

During points in time, however, when the Virus is kept in check by something else...

As I already cited once, Cable has completely dominated in a fight against th eSilver Surfer, while holding up a flying city using his telekinesis, and repairing the collateral damage the fight was causing at the same time.

And tha'ts nothing compared to Nate Grey, who is Cable's counterpart from the Age of Apocalypse timeline and is noted to be genetically identical to him. Nate's powers are essentially what Cable's would be if he had never been infected with the T-O Virus, and had also been taught to see his powers from a more spiritual perspective.

Nate is... If he claimed to be a God and demonstrated his powers, you would believe him. Nate started, as a teenager, being roughly equal in power and ability to Jean as Dark Phoenix and noted that he was rather worried about accidentally warping reality in his sleep and has gotten exponentially more powerful since then.

He once sacrificed himself by converting his body into energy and then dispersing it into every human being in order to, effectively, turn them into position for a species that seeded the earth with the precursors for mitochondria billions of years ago and then came back to harvest their "crop." Then, a few years later, he came back to life because he was bored with being dead. The Multiverse is his step ladder, and the last time we saw him he had literally become a reality in his own right.

So to answer your question.. It wold not make sense because it's specifically the specific way that Scott's powers are unique that allows for that kind of stuff to happen with his kids.

And the bolded part is where you lose me. Nate and Cable being really powerful is one thing, but the specifics of their powers seem pretty much unrelated to Scott's powers. Nate and Cable are both really powerful. And they are the kids of a very powerful psychic and someone who can carve a mountain into a valley by staring at it really hard. Them being even more powerful already makes sense. I don't see how Cyclop's lasers actually comes from a infinite energy dimension through eye-portals makes it make any more sense.

[Rater202]

I don't see how Cyclop's lasers actually comes from a infinite energy dimension through eye-portals makes it make any more sense.

That's not the part that's important.

The part that is important is that Scott powers the portals entirely via energy that he himself generates via a metabolic process fueled by ambient sunlight.

The fact that Scott breaks thermodynamics over his knee every second of every day is the important part.

Combine that with a regular mutant, whose powers are fueled by cosmic energy leaching into their body, and suddenly the cosmic power that they're leaching in is multiplied many times over in the process.\

So if you change Scott's powers so that he's directly converting sunlight to kinetic energy, as I said already, it takes much less energy to punch someone than ti does to open a portal to another universe.

So even if Scott's powers still produce more energy than they take in, it's not gonna be on the sheer scale that they did in canon.

Which means that Sinister is unlikely to take the special notice in him that led to the research that led to the obsession because lots of superhumans have powers that seem to generate more energy than they take in and we know that Sinister isn't interested in that on its own because he let Alex Summers be adopted out.

(Alex's powers also produce more energy than he takes in, but nowhere near the Scale Scot's do and not to the point of being a potential source of perpetual energy. I genuinely don't know if Sinister knew that at the time, however.)

Even if we just handwave it and say he still experimented with Scott for reasons, Nate, Nate, and Rachel would be much weaker because, even if there was still an energy multiplication effect going on, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big.

[LibraryOgre]

You know, despite being into comics for more than 30 years, I have managed to completely miss Cable? Like, I know who he is, but I don't think I've read more than a handful of issues where he appeared.

[Batcathat]

Even if we just handwave it and say he still experimented with Scott for reasons, Nate, Nate, and Rachel would be much weaker because, even if there was still an energy multiplication effect going on, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big.

Why? Most mutants, including some insanely powerful ones, are born to baseline powerless humans, so even if there is a connection between the power-level of the parent and the power-level of the child, it seems wildly inconsistent at best.

Also, the power disparity between ambient sunlight and power enough to demolish buildings is already crazy enough (I don't know nearly enough physics or math to even attempt to calculate it, but I'm pretty confident there are maaaany zeroes) to justify the above, if we need to.

[Rater202]

Why? Most mutants, including some insanely powerful ones, are born to baseline powerless humans, so even if there is a connection between the power-level of the parent and the power-level of the child, it seems wildly inconsistent at best.

Also, the power disparity between ambient sunlight and power enough to demolish buildings is already crazy enough (I don't know nearly enough physics or math to even attempt to calculate it, but I'm pretty confident there are maaaany zeroes) to justify the above, if we need to.

Imagine one second's worth of light from one of that really small flashlight keychains compared to a hand grenade going off.

Now imagine the same flashlight compared to a 100 Megaton nuclear bomb.

[Batcathat]

Imagine one second's worth of light from one of that really small flashlight keychains compared to a hand grenade going off.

Now imagine the same flashlight compared to a 100 Megaton nuclear bomb.

Sure, that's a big difference, but even aside from the fact that the amount of energy necessary to open dimensional portals is completely at the mercy of the writers (and I would be extremely surprised if it's portrayed consistently in every instance of a Marvel character opening a portal to another dimension), the flashlight to hand grenade difference seems quite enough to entice Sinister's interest and, if necessary, justify the Nathans being extra powerful (though see my previous comment for why I don't think that needs any justification in the light of Marvel genetics).

[Rater202]

the flashlight to hand grenade difference seems quite enough to entice Sinister's interest and

It canonically wasn't, as he had no interest in experimenting on Alex Summers, as I've already mentioned.

[Forum Explorer]

That's not the part that's important.

The part that is important is that Scott powers the portals entirely via energy that he himself generates via a metabolic process fueled by ambient sunlight.

The fact that Scott breaks thermodynamics over his knee every second of every day is the important part.

Combine that with a regular mutant, whose powers are fueled by cosmic energy leaching into their body, and suddenly the cosmic power that they're leaching in is multiplied many times over in the process.\

So if you change Scott's powers so that he's directly converting sunlight to kinetic energy, as I said already, it takes much less energy to punch someone than ti does to open a portal to another universe.

So even if Scott's powers still produce more energy than they take in, it's not gonna be on the sheer scale that they did in canon.

Which means that Sinister is unlikely to take the special notice in him that led to the research that led to the obsession because lots of superhumans have powers that seem to generate more energy than they take in and we know that Sinister isn't interested in that on its own because he let Alex Summers be adopted out.

(Alex's powers also produce more energy than he takes in, but nowhere near the Scale Scot's do and not to the point of being a potential source of perpetual energy. I genuinely don't know if Sinister knew that at the time, however.)

Even if we just handwave it and say he still experimented with Scott for reasons, Nate, Nate, and Rachel would be much weaker because, even if there was still an energy multiplication effect going on, it wouldn't be anywhere near as big.

Except it isn't important. It's the justification they used, sure, but it doesn't need to be true. Like genetics aren't summative anyways, and most mutants have ordinary parents, so a mutant's child being as extraordinary compared to the mutant, as the mutant is extraordinary as compared to their own human parents, is already a basis of the story.

Like take Iceman for example. He has completely ordinary parents, and he himself is nearly a god compared to them. They haven't (and better not) made some reason for his immense power to be because his parents are actually 10^20th descendents of ice giants or something like that. He is just a mutant with ordinary parents, and he is insanely powerful as a result. For that matter, Ice Man also breaks thermodynamics over his knee every time he uses his power because 'cold' is not actually a thing. It is the absence of heat, not a substance in of itself. And the heat is just disappearing when he freezes stuff. It isn't shoved away from Iceman, as that would mean he would burn the things around him as he personally froze.


Or we can look at a different franchise. Like take MHA. Quirks are typically passed down genetically, and this matters, because it explains Todoroki's backstory where Endeavor marries his mom in an effort to create a child with a Quirk as powerful as Endeavor's with no downsides. And you can't really get around that. If Quirks aren't passed down genetically, than Endeavor would have no reason to marry Todoroki's mother, because the downside to Endeavor's power is that he overheats, and his mother has ice powers, so someone who can create ice and fire wouldn't have that weakness because he can cool himself off with his ice, and go full blast with his fire. Or vice versa as the case was. The point is, I don't think you can change how quirks are normally passed to their kids without changing Todoroki's backstory completely.