Add Homonym Attacks! #20
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
But First
So I did a bit on Cyclops a couple of issues ago that was based somewhat on a passage in The Physics of Super-Heroes. I enjoy spoiling the fun of others and destroying suspension of disbelief.
So I’m gonna write more on this topic.
Now a couple of these things are mentioned in the book. I’d make careful note of which and where, but I checked that book out from the library. So, I’ll try to avoid some of that which he covers (namely problems caused by super-speed like the Flash or scaling problems with the Atom) and make a somewhat less-than-careful note where there is overlap.
I will, in theory, not limit myself to physics. But then again, when you get down to it, everything is physics.
A simple problem with the ol’ Canucklehead
You know there are a bunch of problems with the Wolverine. For one thing, from one artist to the next his size inconsistent. He was shaved in “Weapon X.” All of his hair grew back to its old length in 20 minutes. But again, from one artist to the next that seemingly set length will change, and Wolvie will occasionally be able to grow facial hair.
But screw all of that fanboy shit. You wanna know the biggest problem I have with Wolverine? His claws. His claws are each 1 foot long (usually cheated even longer). When retracted he stores them in his forearms. So? Well, the thing is I am an honest six feet tall. I say an honest 6 foot tall as most men my height say they are six-two. My forearms, from elbow to wrist, are 11 inches. Wolverine, depending on whom is asked, is somewhere between 5’2″ and 5’5″ tall. Since he doesn’t have gorilla arms, I’d say that he doesn’t have room for the claws.
Unless he has extremely pointy elbows.
Some Other X Variables
The X-men offer a wide array of logistical problems, even assuming one can gain the ability to shoot eye-beams with a single generation’s worth of mutation. Let’s look at the plausibility of some of these powers.
The Beast: The original incarnation of Beast was just a beefy guy with extreme dexterity in his feet. With a planet of 6 billion people, such a mutation seems not only plausible but inevitable. As for the blue furry version or the blue furry cat version… no comment.
Iceman: This one was mentioned in The Physics of Super-heroes, but it is simple and frustrating enough to merit a mention here. It’s the ice bridge thing. You see, Iceman creates these ramps and bridges made out of ice. Assuming it is possible to freeze the air, and that there is enough moisture in the air to create solid blocks of ice capable of supporting a nominal superhero, we are still left with one problem:
THERE IS NOTHING HOLDING UP ONE SIDE OF THE ICE RAMP!
It’s like trying to clean your gutters and resting your ladder on the side of the nothing.
Gambit, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Havoc, etc.: Conservation of energy. It’s a simple enough thing. If we assume that Jean Grey can life a backhoe with her mind, she still requires a power source to do so. The same goes for Gambit. If we assume that he can cause a suicide king to ‘splode, we must figure out whence that energy came.
Are they eating a lot of pasta? Or does it come from some hitherto unknown phantom dimension, in which the energy behind mutant power and missing left socks dwell.
Sauron and Angel: One of the problems for vampires last issues applies to dinosaur vampires this issue. That is to say, it is hard for big things to fly. Unless Angel and Sauron have 60 foot wingspans, I doubt they are going too far off the dang ground.
But their chances would be better than say Namor with his teeny tiny ankle wings.
Mystique: A certain level of shape-shifting might not be impossible. We do have chameleons and squids which are able to change colors. Some octopuses are known to change not only their color but also their texture in order to better blend with their environments. But certainly Mystique would have difficulty changing her height. Bones are hard, and stubborn to change size or shape. If she didn’t have bones, she would have some difficulty standing erect (not like that you bunch of pre-verts). Making one’s hair shorter is also a trick which I have only ever seen done by scissors and the occasional flow-bee.
The “Fastball Special” problem: So one of Wolverine’s specialties is as follows – he get’s one of his larger teammates to throw him at an enemy. Finding a larger teammate isn’t too hard since he is a runt, but this thing does present a bit of a problem. Action/reaction. Conservation of Momentum. Let’s assume that an armored up Colossus has twice the mass of Logan. If he throws Logan forward and up, he should be going backwards and down with the same momentum. Since he has twice the mass, he should be going half of Wolvie’s speed in the opposite direction. It is a tough thing to pull off.
A leaked scene from X3 seems to have solved this thing by having Colossus throw Logan with a discus spinning maneuver. That way might work…
A catholic Problem with Mass
So we mentioned a possible phantom dimension as the source of all this inexplicable super-hero energy. Well if it exists it probably affords a lot of super-heroes some mass. Colossus gains mass by armoring up. Conservation of Mass says that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Where is this mass coming from?
We have similar problems with many other super-beings. A 140 lb Bruce Banner changes into a 1,040 lb Hulk. Where do we get the other 900 lbs of matter? Apocalypse can change his mass at will. The Vision can alter his density, and since he doesn’t change size, he too, must have power over his mass. Where does it come from and where does it go?
The Multiple Man can make entire duplicates of himself. I believe he can do this 2 dozen times. Are we to believe that he is creating them from a quantity of air whose mass equals his own?
I can’t do this all on my own…
At first, Superman wasn’t as implausible a character as his later incarnations. The original Golden-age Superman couldn’t fly. He didn’t have heat vision, x-ray vision, microscopic vision, Galavision, etc. He was probably only as strong as Spider-man.
These things aren’t entirely out of the realm of possibilities. Superman came from Krypton, a planet whose experienced gravity was much greater than Earth’s. The Physics of Super-heroes estimates that Krypton’s gravity was 16 times greater than our own, and that the planet may have accomplished this thing by having part of a neutron star at its core.
Now, if Kryptonians had evolved on a planet with 16 times the gravitational pull of Earth, it would make sense for them to be built significantly tougher. It would be reasonable if Superman were about 16 times stronger than a comparable Earthman. His skeletal and muscular structure would be adapted for Krypton’s gravity, and thus he would probably end up more durable.
We would probably still have a bit of a conservation of energy problem as Superman would require a lot of sustenance to fuel his feats of derring-do. Ironically this energy problem was solved for the way implausible incarnation of Supes by saying that he is a giant solar battery. But by that point we are dealing with a creature who can move independent of gravity, shoot heat rays out of his eyeballs, freeze lakes with his breath, see through steel and ladies’ underpants, and carry around buildings.
I’m Blind! I’m Blind!
A well documented problem with turning invisible is blindness. You see, if light isn’t absorbed by your eyes, you aren’t able to see anything. The Fantastic Four tried to solve this problem by saying that Sue sees in “cosmic rays.” The problem with this solution is… there aren’t that many cosmic rays banging around on Earth. At least not enough by which to navigate.
Warren Ellis has an fantastically evil Four in his comic Planetary. Their invisible girl wears special goggles in order to avoid being blind. The specifics are a little shaky, but this might be feasible, provided these goggles afford her the ability to see infra-red or ultraviolet radiation. If they merely translated non-visible light into the visible spectrum, we are back to the original problem. So, in order for the goggles to work they would need to alter goings-on in the brain. I guess they wouldn’t need to be goggles at that point…
ZE GOGGLES! ZEY DO NOTHING!!
Outro
Well that be enough for now. (I speak pirate, fluently.) We didn’t get to the aerodynamics of boxing glove arrows, English speaking aliens, weather control, telepathy, “proportional” strength, or how Rhino pees.
So it goes. Feel free to bother me with your favorite bit of comic book science and logic. Me, I’m still wondering why the Sandman is bothering to rob a bank to begin with… Why does he need money anyway? He’s made out of sand?
Zah.
