Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark What could hurt superman...

Ok, slightly odd question I think, but one I've just been wondering about.

We know that there is no object that can hurt Superman besides kryptonite, but what about other methods?

Now I am crossing fandoms here, but do you think that telekenesis could hurt Superman. Say, like a Jean Gray/Phoenix X-Men 3 style attack. Or Sylar from "Heroes" (if anyone watches that show--my newest addiction). Would a telekenetic attack hurt Superman?

Would a magical attack hurt Superman? I know in Smallville they address that a bit but I only saw a few of those episodes and I didn't much like that whole plot arc anyway. In L&C we see a bit of magic--Baron Sunday's voodoo anyhow, but that didn't actually hurt Clark physically it was all mental.

But would, say, Avada Kedavra be abe to kill Superman?

Just curious of what you think might be the case if Superman were to encounter a physical assault using other powers.

Offhand, I can recall that Baron Sunday in "Never On A Sunday" was able to mentally torture Clark (with physical results). I think it's up to the author to make a case for it in their story, but I know I personally would believe there's more than one way to hurt him. As long as you can explain why I would imagine you could torture him any way you please.

Seems to me you could poison him. He's invulnerable - ie, his skin can't be penetrated, scraped or burned, but I imagine his insides are just as vulnerable as the next person's. All you have to do is find the chemical(s) that are toxic to Kryptonians. A carefully orchestrated series of tests would do the trick (ie, spike his food <g>).

Also, you can give him a virus. We saw as much in the series.

Yvonne

He swallowed a bomb in The Pilot. Methinks his insides are invulnerable, too.

But Kryptonian poisons... now there's a whole new set of possibilities, yes.

The Quantum Disruptor can hurt Superman - Stop the Presses

Another Kryptonian using a Dre (not sure of the spelling) can hurt Superman - (In Battleground Earth, Clark hurt Nor this way)

Dr. Doodson's device, the youth machine, caused Superman to lose some years so one could assume it could hurt Superman if used for long enough - Brutal Youth

A very large concentrated dose of magnetic charges could hurt Superman - at least Deathstroke was able to do it in Bob and Carol and Lois and Clark.

Those are the ones I can think of at the moment.

I think Avada Kedavra would bounce right off of him. But I'm with Sue, as long as you justify it, we will believe in whatever method you use to bring him angst.

Don't forget about that Kryptonian virus in HIWTHI.

Oh, I just thought of another one. Annette Westman was able to shrink Superman in It's a Small World After All. If you follow that through to it's logical conclusion, she might be able to shrink him right out of existence (or so small that humans wouldn't be able to see or hear him).

Of course, you could always use a red kryptonite lasor to transfer his powers to someone else and then you could use any means you want to hurt Superman.

ML

Superman can be hypnotised - we saw that in a first-season episode whose title completely escapes me - it's the one with the magician/hypnotist. So maybe it's not that much of a stretch to say that magic could work on him.


Wendy

His senses also appear to have some vulnerabilities:

For example, in Wall of Sound, the bad guy creates a sound that causes Superman's ears to hurt him to such a degree that it basically incapacitates him. And in The Eyes Have It, Superman is blinded. This knowledge is later used by The Prankster to freeze Superman.

In Chi of Steel, we see someone exercising martial arts with such skill that they are able to defeat Superman (although they don't actually hurt him, but he can't capture them). Superman has to learn martial arts himself to be able to defeat them.

(I think you've created a monster here - getting me thinking about all the ways Superman can be hurt )

ML

In comicdom and in Smallville, magic is definitely a threat. Psychological warfare would be a potential threat.Psychic powers may or may not be threats depending on the mechanism behind them.

Magic can hurt Superman. In the episode "The Terror Beyond" from Justice League, Superman is attacked by Dr. Fate and his suit is damaged. Then he says something like "just magic could be that".

From Superman Homepage - Episode Review :
Season 2 - Episodes 15-16: "The Terror Beyond"

Well, since Superman is telepathic himself, he might find that he could fend off such an attack. According to the wikipedia, he has at various times been endowed with telekinesis himself. I’d say Jean Gray might be able to affect him. Skylar - no. Maybe at some point in the future he could, but not where he presently is in Heroes. (Save the cheerleader, save the world indeed. What a concept.) I personally tend to think that if Superman were attacked by telekinesis that he would find himself responding in kind.

And yes, Baron Sunday did hurt Clark. He almost killed him as I remember.

Magic on the other hand has been well-known to hurt Superman in many of the genres. I believe perhaps the movies are the only time this hasn’t occurred. Mxyzptlk is a magical creature.

I don’t know who Avada Kedavra is. But the name sounds like a play on words for cadaver. Interesting.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree, Yvonne. (But you already know that from my fic.) I can even add some reasoning to that. Yes, his skin is invulnerable and is his biggest protection - just like ours is to us (wouldn’t it be nice if ours was also invulnerable). Break the skin and you can introduce all sorts of nasty agents. His lungs are meant to interact with the outside world, so it’s understandable that he could inhale various gases and not be harmed (but not necessarily all of them). So one might wonder why he can eat bombs. Well, the lining of one’s stomach is actually a type of skin. (I know - yuck.) So that’s how he’s able to eat bombs. But what about the parts of ones body that *aren’t* supposed to interact with the outside world? Kidneys? (That could be interesting.) His brain. His internal organs. Expose him to kryptonite, hold him down, and introduce some nasty agent into his bladder via a catheter. (Ooohhh… I’m feeling wicked, aren’t I?)

And if a Drei can hurt Superman, then why not some other type of photon weapon? (That’s the part of the Drei that hurt Superman.)

Traditionally Superman’s weakness is Kryptonite and Magic. And he is susceptible to mind control and psionics.

In the Byrne revamp Superman’s power were toned down. He cannot fly through stars any longer, or time travel, or move planets.
Post crisis he can be hurt and killed by physical force but it’s still virtually impossible. We are taking close range nuclear explosions with the capacity to level cities. Gods and extraterrestrial entities have has also been known to give him a beating, but this is the hard way to take him out.

The source of his powers is as we all know the sun. His cells act like batteries that project an electromagnetic force field that shields him from harm, the so-called “aura” that also protects skintight clothes.

He can only indirectly control the absorpbation. He can supercharge himself by getting closer too the sun, but it can also be used against him.

In an early Post-‘’Crisis’’ storyline, Lex Luthor arranged for satellites to bombard Metropolis with varying frequencies of solar radiation, causing Superman's powers to work uncontrollably.

One way to expose Superman is to remove him from accessing the sun, as in the episode MTP. He must expand stored energy that way and his powers desert him eventually at a rate depending on use. In the comics recharging isn’t instanteous as it was in that episode.

The post crisis Superman also needs oxygen to live, but can function without it for a substantial time. Half and hour originally, several hours today.

Sensory overload is another of his weaknesses but I don’t think it can kill him.

Kryptonite his one of the few radiant substances that doesn’t power his aura when he metabolise it like other radiant energy, but instead radioactively poisons him. (His powers of regeneration is the reason for it not being debilitating)

The comic book physics explanation for the vulnerability to magic is that magic energy is transdimensional and if it’s not concussive bypass his energy field.


If you want to know more you could always check out Wiki

Hmm.. I think I done my geekly part today.

Every cell in his body is a solar powerplant that generate the protective bioelectronical forcefield, he is just as resilient through and through. And even when he gets hurt is body regenerate at an incredible speed.
Poision and disease doesn't affect him, with some extraterrestrial exceptions.

... Not a Harry Potter fan, are you...

Though I'm going to have to agree with LNCroxmysox on the poison thing--if a bomb doesn't hurt his innards too much (even after kryptonite exposure as in "Tempus, Anyone?") then I doubt poison would do much. Doesn't his body metabolise things too fast anyway?

Plus, if Clark is vulnerable to Kryptonite radiation and human's aren't, and human's can be hurt by nuclear radiation and Clark can't that indicates something different on a microcellular level. Would human germs and viruses be compatible with his cellular structure? I mean could they affect him at all? Like the percentage of the population that is immune to AIDS simply because the virus can't gain access to the cell--I would think that Clark would be like that--cellular structure only a Kryptonian virus could be compatible with.

But there was no physical attack, the only physical attack was Clark's own physiological reaction to the mental attack. Baron Sunday didn't do physical harm directly, he allowed Clark's own body to hurt itself.

Would Kryptonite be able to hurt Clark if it were not radioactive? I am guessing that the reason Kryptonite is radioactive has something to do with being pieces of an exploding planet, but what if Clark had been sent before Krypton exploded, any Kryptonite that came with him might not be radioactive. Would it still hurt him? Would it be as harmful to him as any normal rock might be harmful to any one of us?

Glad my question has sparked so much discussion--I've just been thinking about these ideas for a while...

I think the virus used in HIWTHI was made with kryptonite. Also, his invulnerability seems to be something he can strengthen or weaken by thought control, so if he wasn't expecting it, a poison might work.

The hypnotism episode was Illusions of Grandeur.

No, the virus was Kryptonian in origin. The virus had crystalized on the hull of his ship in outer space, and Joey just incubated it until it grew enough to infect Clark.

Avada Kedavra, is the killing curse as known in the world of Harry Potter. Supposedly it's the most powerful killing curse, being instantaneously effective with no known defence against it. It's like abracadabra, which in ancient aramic means "I will create as I speak". Therefore, avada kedavra means "I will destroy as I speak".
For those interested, here's more info on that.
The Unforgivable Curses .

Sorry, I'm an HP junkie!

I've always thought Superman would be as susceptible to magic as the next man, primarily because magic deals in the spiritual and paranormal. Superman's powers, while a huge stretch of the scientific imagination, are more or less explained through science, and is ostensibly not in the realm of paranormal.

Don’t forget that Darkseid killed him.


I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t just read it in another thread. It’s STP for Stop the Presses. (It’s not Meet the Presses.)


I’ve always thought that instantaneous recharging was a bit over the top…


That doesn’t make sense to me. Is that what the wikipedia says? I didn’t find it.

This is what I found:

This seems to indicate that the energy is stored throughout his body. It doesn’t actually say that he’s resilient through and through, but it could be interpreted either way. It also doesn't say that every cell absorbs the energy. (But then I could have missed that. It was a long article.) Hmm… interesting.


No, I wouldn’t think a poison that he ingested would hurt him. But what if it was induced into his blood stream?


Another thought. A bomb doesn’t hurt his stomach . My thinking is that after it was broken down in his stomach then there would be no reason that it would hurt anything else. But what if other organs had been exposed to a bomb? What if someone had slit his belly open with kryptonite and then set off a bomb? (wicked again) I’m not thinking he would be as invulnerable.


That’s an interesting thought. You might be right. Also, canon (not LnC canon) says that once Superman has been exposed to a particular chunk of red kryptonite that he can never be affected by it again. Why couldn’t that be so (or you could write it that way) with other forms of kryptonite?


Hey, Woody, have you been peaking at my WIP? Hehe… I did just that a chapter or so ago.

I really find this whole magic thing intriguing. I’m going to have to pull out that Charmed cross-over and work on it.

katey,

Well in Byrne’s version Kryptonite radioactivity is harmful to humans over extended periods of time. The human body just don’t absorb it as fast and efficiently as Superman’s.


I just fond another one of Superman’s weaknessess

High Energy Attacks or Radiation: High energy radiations of a particular wavelength can also cause injury by overloading the field at a single point, hence the reason he can be harmed by high energy weapons such as blasters, lasers and plasma weapons. Kinetic kill weapons with sufficient force can also overload the field at that point.


His own heatvision can supposedly harm him for instance.

Classicalla,

Darkseid is an alien and I don’t think he has killed Superman, perhaps you are thinking about Doomsday? Anyway he is an alien too.

Everything is Capes fault really


It says this:

The most common explanations for Superman's invulnerability are him having a super-dense molecular structure and/or a supercharged bioelectric "aura" which acts as an invisible "force field" around his body just a few millimeters above his skin, and, presumably, within his body as well.

Or this was what was there before.

Under a yellow sun, other factors contribute to invulnerability. First, cell membranes and organelles become more resistant to harm; secondly, a bioelectric field surrounds the cells, making them thousands of times tougher. This "aura" surrounds Superman's epidermis and teeth, and possibly his nails as well. His hair is invulnerable, too. Superman has been shown shaving and presumably cutting his hair by reflecting his heat vision off of a piece of curved, reflective metal from the rocket in which he landed. In fact, any type of highly heat-resistant reflective metal will work, as shown in Action Comics #663 (page 11). When his cells become "supercharged" under a yellow sun, a Kryptonian becomes super-powered. He is invulnerable to forces under 1 kiloton, and is harmed only by repeated blows of over 1 megaton. His brain and nervous system keep up with his enhanced speed, as they too are amplified by K-ATP.

I’ve seen some argue that he could cut his hair normally since it consists of dead cells and extends several centimeters from his body.(Traditonally Superman’s hair and nails didn’t grow under a yellow sun.)

The bioelectrical forcefield was Byrnes explanation to Supermans invulnerability since even the most resiliant matter would disintegrate at ground zero.

If you think about it if it’s just the epitelcells that are invulneable why isn’t the rest of his body turned to jelly when the shock wave goes through his body?

And Superman’s resistance to toxins and disease are pretty well established. He routinely clear out rooms by inhaling poison gas for instance. And growing up he was supposedly never sick.

That is pre-crisis stuff. Kryptonite worked like a posion and by exposure he built up tolerance for it. Post-crisis that is not so.

katey,

His own heatvision can supposedly harm him for instance.

Yes, we know that this is true because he can 'shave' with his heatvision and cut his own hair.

Also, Lord Nor vaporised one of his own men with his heatvision.

My, this is getting to be a twisted little thread. I like it

As for the Avada Kedavra I think it would definitely affect Superman, but I think he could take several hits before it killed him, similar to the Cosmic Disruptor.

James

EDIT:
I also really like Heroes and Eureka. Day Break is also really good.