Spoilers Superman Spoiler Thread

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hmm. I don't know about "dark energy" or "dark matter" in Marvel (though I know it was a Big Deal in the Alternity RPG back in the 90s). What they do have is Darkforce, which is energy/force from another dimension and which is primarily used by Cloak (whose body is normally intangible and a portal to said dimension) and Darkstar (who can channel Darkforce into making physical constructs, sort of like a Green Lantern, as well as fly and a limited form of teleportation).

They had several characters of the same era, including their Soviet superheroes, who used dark energy and dark matter initially, but who then later were said to use darkforce instead, either because they got letters from angry astrophysicists or just from a housekeeping standpoint and wanting to link a bunch of darkness characters together.

 

[overgeeked]

Real world science and superhero science have nothing in common.

And we should all fight to keep it that way. I want Superman holding up planes by the nose with at worst only a few hand-print dents to show for it.

 

[Staffan]

And we should all fight to keep it that way. I want Superman holding up planes by the nose with at worst only a few hand-print dents to show for it.

That's just Quantum Strength

 

[jian]

That's just Quantum Strength

I think you mean tactile telekinesis.

“It’s the 90s and I haven’t mentioned how my tactile TK works for a whole issue!”

 

[Arilyn]

And we should all fight to keep it that way. I want Superman holding up planes by the nose with at worst only a few hand-print dents to show for it.

Yep. Can you imagine what would happen in superhero comics, if actual physics suddenly kicked in?

 

[Gradine]

Yep. Can you imagine what would happen in superhero comics, if actual physics suddenly kicked in?

 

[Staffan]

I think you mean tactile telekinesis.

“It’s the 90s and I haven’t mentioned how my tactile TK works for a whole issue!”

Nah, I was referring to the Aberrant RPG where the Novas have "superpowers" that are all basically unconscious manipulation of "Quantum" which is basically reality-warping magic. That's basically a fix for all the "If you think about it..." aspects of various super powers. If you have enough Super Strength, you can lift a jet with your hands, ignoring the fact that putting all that weight on such a small area would break the thing. If you have Flight, you don't have to worry about colliding with insects and such. If you can teleport, you don't have to worry about how teleporting significant distances north or south would have you slam into the nearest wall because of the Earth's rotation (which was an issue in at least one Traveller version). And so on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

They're actually supposed to be anti-protons, part of the building block of matter. Since he's Superman, that doesn't do to him what antimatter does to normal matter, which is to blow it up, suicide bomber style. It was a very silly comic book science sequence, like all the Marvel Comics characters who use "dark matter" and "dark energy," which is depicted as shadow stuff.

Ironically, traditionally antimatter was one of the few things that reliably would still hurt Superman.

 

[jian]

Nah, I was referring to the Aberrant RPG where the Novas have "superpowers" that are all basically unconscious manipulation of "Quantum" which is basically reality-warping magic. That's basically a fix for all the "If you think about it..." aspects of various super powers. If you have enough Super Strength, you can lift a jet with your hands, ignoring the fact that putting all that weight on such a small area would break the thing. If you have Flight, you don't have to worry about colliding with insects and such. If you can teleport, you don't have to worry about how teleporting significant distances north or south would have you slam into the nearest wall because of the Earth's rotation (which was an issue in at least one Traveller version). And so on.

Oh, I know about Aberrant, I was just making a 90s Superboy joke. It was his thing, much like Psylocke’s tendency to soliloquise about her psychic knife being the focused totality of her mental powers before stabbing someone with it. It’s the only good reason to play a soulknife I can think of.

 

[Morrus]

They're actually supposed to be anti-protons, part of the building block of matter.

Are they? They call it a proton river not an anti-proton river.