Characters that should be more powerful

[Crimz]

Who do you think should be more powerful than they are currently and why? Also, how powerful would you want them?



I think The Thing and Human Torch (Johnny) need to be more powerful.

Ben used to be able to hang with the big guys like Hulk, but now he gets downed in one hit... That shouldn't happen and he should at least be able to give Hulk a good fight.

I think Johnny should be the primo Marvel fire elemental, when most people think of flame superheroes Johnny is usually one of the first heroes that come to mind. I think his power should also be the best in that category.

Those two being stronger would also stop the Fantastic Four being over-reliant on Reed saving the day all the time, which is a problem with the FF.

My favorite character, Invisible Woman, seems to be naturally growing in power as time goes on so I'm fine with how she's been depicted in power.

[GodThor]

Carol, Thor, She-Hulk.

[SpiderClops]

Characters that should be more powerful

Cyclops. All versions in existence.

Mutant power:

How powerful he supposedly is: Can rip through a small planet in half. But that's just narrative hyperbole.
How powerful he actually is: Can punch through mountains at high end. Usually punches through thick metals and such easily.
How powerful he currently is: A f@#$%^g paintball would do more damage than his optic blast. (I'm not exaggerating. Go read X-Men: Blue if you don't believe me)

How powerful he should be: Can easily break The Hulk's bones. And I mean easily. Gives Sentry and such real trouble at high end. Can damage adamantium and vibranium if he goes at them long enough.

Why he should be that powerful: What's Cyclops' schtick? He shoots incredibly powerful optic beams from his eyes, that he can't control, and has to wear special ruby quartz glasses so that he can see normally without killing anyone he looks at. Simple enough. Now here's the problem, what is the point of fearing about your uncontrollable powers, when they're not actually that powerful? "Oh ****! someone accidently took off Cyclops' glasses! He broke a table and... that's it." NO! A whole 5 mile distance should be completely obliterated when he opens his eyes for 1/3 of a second. That's dangerous. That's something to fear about.

Hand to Hand skills:

How good he is: Above average. But nothing to speak of in a universe full of expert H2H combatants.

How good he should be: At the same level as Black Widow, at the least.

Why he should be that good: Because he can't control his natural mutant powers, it makes sense that he would hone his other skills.

Side note:

His master strategist and tactician status. I don't want an upgrade. I just want the writers to remember that he is a master strategist and tactician.

[Iron Fist]

Black Bolt.

He's been nerfed like mad by Charles Soule.

[oldscottsummers]

cyclops
tyke

[XPac]

Off the top of my head I'don't say She-Hulk. If Bruce gets stronger the madder she gets in theory Jen should do the same. She got her powers from him, so they should work similarly I would think.

And I think Gods in general are weaker than one might think. Thor and most Sky Fathers and Hell Lords lords seem about right but the average god just seems to have mid level super human strength.

[Frontier]

I'd say Johnny is the primo fire elemental (if only because OG Human Torch appearances are so inconsistent and not many people care about Inferno), but he usually holds himself back for safety reasons.

I don't remember the last time Thing actually gave a good challenge in a fight against The Hulk.

[DragonsChi]

Namor. Namor use to be one of the most powerful character in the MU. One for the few characters at Marvel that can solo the Hulk and win. But recently Marvel has been chumpojg him out a bit.

[MaximoffTrash]

Thor, hell, even without the hammer he is an Asgardian/Elder God hybrid.
Chthon, he is nerfed as hell in Carnage and Secret Empire
Doctor Strange, well, he seems to be the only one still affected by the aftermath of "Last Days of Magic".Heck, Voodoo, Magik, any magic user is more powerful than Stephen in his solo!

[mung]

Galactus needs to stop getting slapped around by people. The biggest problem with heroes beating up big G is l that most of the time they are never shown to be the powerful before or after that fight.

Apocalypse. From what I understand he is plastic man wrapped in Celestial armor and yet he barely if ever wins. Beating up young Thor was the best he looked in a long time.

Black Bolt. Writers just need to remember he has powers besides his voice and that is his voice is just a side effect of said powers. His electron powers do some many things it would be a chore to list them all, why limit it to the voice. His voice feats have been weak lately but I think that is a direct result of it being the only thing writers have him use.

[beetee]

The Thing most definitely. He should stop being the Worf of the Marvel Universe. She Hulk should stay big and strong. At minimum, she should be able to reach Hulk's baseline strength. Her powers shouldn't be rage driven however (something they should move away from now).

[Tmacaoni]

Havok should be more powerful than he lets on. Hes completely limited by his own mind and he can fly and breathe in space. (He should be able to fly on earth)....I dunno I feel he isn't as strong as he should be.

I agree with the Thing as well. I'm just not so sure where he lies on the power scale. It seems from newer comics, not much more that Luke Cage, but he has hung in there with Hulk before.....so confused. Hopefully he is at least stronger than Black Dwarf.

[XPac]

Galactus needs to stop getting slapped around by people. The biggest problem with heroes beating up big G is l that most of the time they are never shown to be the powerful before or after that fight.

Apocalypse. From what I understand he is plastic man wrapped in Celestial armor and yet he barely if ever wins. Beating up young Thor was the best he looked in a long time.

Black Bolt. Writers just need to remember he has powers besides his voice and that is his voice is just a side effect of said powers. His electron powers do some many things it would be a chore to list them all, why limit it to the voice. His voice feats have been weak lately but I think that is a direct result of it being the only thing writers have him use.

Yeah, Galactus perhaps more so than any character in the MU. Poor guy seems to just be used as a means to put over other threats in events now.

[Sutekh]

Definitely agree with Dr. Strange and Black Bolt. The former has been hugely nerfed in power, from a guy who used to teleport entire teams of Defenders around the world, through dimensions, and even rarely through time or across intersteller distances, a guy who got bored with Nighthawk constantly needing a ride somewhere and just crafted, right on the spot, a teleportation ring that he could use to teleport across the entire planet, to the Bendis Avengers-level Dr. Strange who couldn't teleport anywhere, because Bendis wanted to write scenes of Dr. Strange and his Ninja Sidekick Avengers talking about stuff in the Quinjet on the way to or from whatever never-heard-of-it-before, nobody-will-ever-mention-it-again 'world ending threat' they were going to face. As long as he's the Sorcerer Supreme, and *expected* to be defending the world from threats like Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath and Chthon and Set and D'Spayre and Nightmare, then he absolutely needs to be a step above every other magician on the planet. And Black Bolt has been brought down from electron-manipulating guy who can single-handedly punk the Fantastic Four to 'screams at stuff guy' whose world-shattering scream has had to be nerfed down and down again, now that he seems to scream *in every darn appearance* to where he's really not terribly much more impressive than the Banshee.

But for characters like Namor and the Thing, I don't feel like they've been nerfed, so much as the Hulk has stopped being a big strong guy, and has turned into a hyperbole, like an Image character from the Authority. He's 'the strongest one there is' and that means somehow he automatically wins every single fight he's in, even if it's with *the entire Marvel Universe.* Boring. I love super-powers, and even cosmic Silver Surfer level power, but hyperbole catchphrase power just feels like cartoonish dick-measuring to me. Dr. Strange's Crimson Bands of Cytorrak used to restrain Hulk effortlessly. The Silver Surfer could boost his physical abilities with comic power and throw down with the Hulk in a physical fight, until he quite literally got bored of that, and drained the gamma radiation out of him and turned him back into Bruce Banner, permanently cured, again, pretty much effortlessly. That these characters can't do that sort of thing anymore isn't a sign of them being 'too weak,' or needing a power up, it's a sign of something being wrong with the Hulk. Buffing everyone else's power levels to compete with that would just be, IMO, making the problem worse, and turning the MCU into a cartoonish arm-race as to whose planet-busting kameha-kameha blast is throbbinger and veiny-er than the other idiots. The same logic would apply to making Johnny or Ben more powerful *in reaction to Reed's intelligence.* If Reed being 'too smart' is the problem, then a better solution, IMO, would be to provide the Four with some threats that smarty mcsmartypants can't solve in the lab (or, as is often the case for this family of explorers, keep Reed away from a handy lab entirely!), not to make the Thing rockier or the Torch hotter. Better writing can produce situations where the other Three can make powerful contributions without making Reed's Brain be the deus ex machina to every problem. "Ooh, it's Galactus! Quick, throw Reed's Brain at it!"

As for other characters, I'm more interested in seeing the powers they do have being used intelligently and creatively. In any artistic endeavor, it's about as much the colors that you don't use, the words you excise, the tones you choose not to put in your art, as those you do. The best art doesn't necessarily have the biggest number of colors in it, all competing for attention. The best music doesn't necessarily have every tone, all at once, and really, really loud. And, IMO, the best comic-book characters don't necessarily have tons of super-powers (like Michael Pointer or the Composite Superman) or really, really overwhelming levels of power (like the Sentry or Triumph). If bigger powers made the characters 'better,' the X-Men would consist entirely of Omegas like Mikhail Rasputin, Gabriel Summers and Cassandra Nova and whomever, and less overpowered characters like Cyclops and Nightcrawler wouldn't even have a shot, while the Avengers would be all Sentry, Star Brand, Nightmask, Captain Universe, Hyperion, Abyss, Void, etc. and some of us remember how long that team lasted, compared to one's with 'weak' characters like Captain America, the Black Knight and the Wasp.

IMO, some characters could perhaps use toning *down,* to make them more narratively useful (and less likely to get sidelined when a writer doesn't want to use someone who can solve their entire plot by snapping their fingers, or who overshadows the rest of the characters they actually want to challenge), and, in the case of female characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff, saddled with the seemingly inevitable 'girls can't handle power' storyline in which they flip out and become cosmic threats.

[Crimz]

I'd say Johnny is the primo fire elemental (if only because OG Human Torch appearances are so inconsistent and not many people care about Inferno), but he usually holds himself back for safety reasons.

I don't remember the last time Thing actually gave a good challenge in a fight against The Hulk.

He kind of is, but only barely. I want Johnny to have bit of boost, as he is below other elemental heroes. Just look at what Storm, Iceman and Crystal can do.

But for characters like Namor and the Thing, I don't feel like they've been nerfed, so much as the Hulk has stopped being a big strong guy, and has turned into a hyperbole, like an Image character from the Authority. He's 'the strongest one there is' and that means somehow he automatically wins every single fight he's in, even if it's with *the entire Marvel Universe.* Boring. I love super-powers, and even cosmic Silver Surfer level power, but hyperbole catchphrase power just feels like cartoonish dick-measuring to me. Dr. Strange's Crimson Bands of Cytorrak used to restrain Hulk effortlessly. The Silver Surfer could boost his physical abilities with comic power and throw down with the Hulk in a physical fight, until he quite literally got bored of that, and drained the gamma radiation out of him and turned him back into Bruce Banner, permanently cured, again, pretty much effortlessly. That these characters can't do that sort of thing anymore isn't a sign of them being 'too weak,' or needing a power up, it's a sign of something being wrong with the Hulk. Buffing everyone else's power levels to compete with that would just be, IMO, making the problem worse, and turning the MCU into a cartoonish arm-race as to whose planet-busting kameha-kameha blast is throbbinger and veiny-er than the other idiots. The same logic would apply to making Johnny or Ben more powerful *in reaction to Reed's intelligence.* If Reed being 'too smart' is the problem, then a better solution, IMO, would be to provide the Four with some threats that smarty mcsmartypants can't solve in the lab (or, as is often the case for this family of explorers, keep Reed away from a handy lab entirely!), not to make the Thing rockier or the Torch hotter. Better writing can produce situations where the other Three can make powerful contributions without making Reed's Brain be the deus ex machina to every problem. "Ooh, it's Galactus! Quick, throw Reed's Brain at it!"

I agree with some of what you said, but the usual enemies the Fantastic Four face would require the team to be stronger if they're not relying on Reed's intelligence. It's not only Hulk that Ben has lost pace with, but many other super-strength heroes and even on his own team he seems to be less effective than he was. Reed inventing some device to save the day definitely needs to be used less, but there has to be another feasible way to defeat the level of villains the FF constantly face. Making them stronger is a natural way to lessen Reed's constant hogging of the spotlight. This isn't motivated by this kind of superhero arms race that fans have, I genuinely believe that them being stronger would only benefit the team and future FF books. They are a team that should give any enemy pause especially when they are together, not just Reed's brain alone.