Superhero fever has never been bigger as we now have The Avengers franchise sprouting more and more movies every year and of course with the DC comics joining on the cinematic universe scene, firing the big guns by putting their biggest superheroes together in a movie. Comic fans all around the world are ecstatic, thinking what a great time to be alive in. But I know everyone has thought about what would be like to be a superhero. What if you could be as strong as The Hulk, or have the detective skills and gadgets of Batman, or if you could fly and shoot laser out of your eyeballs like Superman? Sounds great, doesn’t it? But that’s not all you will get you know, these are some of the consequences that you might experience if you were a superhero.
No sex!
So, imagine you get the all the strength of Superman, or The Incredible Hulk. That means that you should probably find you a superhero mate, because otherwise you would probably kill the person you are having sex with. Superman for example is physically beyond the capacity of human beings and can just crush you with his bare hands. Imagine what he can do if he really gets going. But he is not the only one. How about Rogue from the X-Men? Again, she has the physical ability to have sex, but her power is that if she touches anyone with her bare hands, she absorbs all of his powers or physical strength and memories and she could very easy kill you. And then there’s The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Of course he has a lot of things going for him, but unfortunately he doesn’t have a “thing”. Because of the exposure to the radiation he became this massive peace of rock, giving him all the strength and stamina in the world, but on what cost?
Accelerated Metabolism
Ok, so you have the power, the strength and speed of a superhero. Saving the world is not a joke and it will cost a huge amount of energy. Take The Flash, in order for him to maintain using the speed force he needs to eat 13-16 times a day. Or Aquaman who is even considered one of the not so powerful superheroes. He needs 48,000 calories per day just so he can patrol the deep seas. You can get that much calories from about 200 pieces of fried fish.
Watch the head
You may be fast enough to dodge bullets and strong enough to take almost anything the bad guys throw at you, but a serious blow to the head might give you a little more than just a headache. The perfect example for that is X-Men’s Wolverine. The adamantium that filled his bones and made him what seems pretty much invincible has a very nasty side effect. It actually increases the impact to any headshots he gets, which means if get hit in the head really, really hard, he can actually die from brain damage.
Wardrobe malfunctions
Constantly changing your outfit, especially in a time of crisis will cost you so much on clothes. Imagine if you’re The Human Torch and your football team loses, there goes your favorite t-shirt. Or again, you have the speed of The Flash, you are so fast you can actually rip the time and space apart and even travel back in time, faster than light itself, how are you keeping your clothes safe from that? Of course the comic books explain that he has some kind of aura that keeps them on his body, but you better have one too if you don’t like the idea naked jogging around town.
You’ll have to be as rich as Bruce Wayne
Everyone at a certain point of his life wanted to be Batman. That’s a fact. We all admire the caped crusader and his amazing gadgets and skills. But all of that takes an incredible amount of money. The Batcave alone costs at least $2 million. So to put a mask and a cape is clearly not enough. But the hope is never lost – it can be done. His worth is estimated to just a $7 billion. Good luck with that.
We all share the same admiration for superheroes and would find ourselves daydreaming about being one, but we never think about the consequences and the bad sides of their powers. Dreaming about being Batman or Superman is one thing, being them is a whole lot different. So I leave you with Uncle Ben’s famous words: “Great powers come with great responsibilities”, so be careful what you wish for!
