Should Superman be outright best at anything?

[Powerboy]

My point is that Superman doesn't have to use detective skills. He just needs to look, listen, and move to counter most human threats. He's working on a different level than Batman. In these scenarios, Batman is always going to be "peak" Batman, Superman at "peak" Superman is just going to do things better. What if in the space of a second, before Batman even says his first word to Cold, Superman runs through a 1,000 scenarios in his mind as to where Cold hid the device, or he detects a trace chemical on Cold's glove that he immediately recognizes based on his vision powers. He can smell where Cold has been and knows that was the last place he'd been. I know I am working with a Superman at his most dialed up but the question asks should Superman be the best at anything and I say at best showings, Superman should be the best at lots of stuff.

That's true. Superman could well appear to be the better detective because of how fast he thinks and his senses. On the practical level, that will just result in the same stories we already complain about where Batman is at peak or better and Superman is way watered down. But we get the emotional satisfaction of saying, "If Superman were also operating at peak, if the writer wasn't cheating, Superman would smoke Batman." That's the situation we already have because there are, at last I checked, still rare situations where Superman thinks that fast. Of course, it's never going to be in a story Batman is in.

[Jon Clark]

Exactly. The more you make Superman number one in everything, the more you're going to just have to ignore everything for a story. Even Alan Moore had to do that. Of course, that's common in comic books. It happens to every character. It doesn't mean Superman at his best can't do these things. But it's still going to be just as frustrating to the reader when those abilities are ignored 99% of the time. I would even argue that the true abilities of a character, for story purposes, are not their best or worst showings but what they are most of the time.

I occasionally run roleplaying games and, if anyone asks why characters in rpg's cannot be as powerful as characters in comics at their best, it's because, in rpg's, I'm not going to be able to make those players ignore those abilities most of the time. Likewise, even the best comic writers must get frustrated with criticisms that amount to nothing more than, "But you ignore this ability that Superman or the Flash can do ten thousand million billion things in a nano-second." They must want to scream, "No. You ignore the 99.999999999% of the time that they cant."

I still remember the bit in the 1980's Marvel Handbook where it was stated that on his best day with everything going 100% his way Spider-man could beat a certain character who was having his worst day ever with absolutely everything going wrong. The stats they gave in the Handbook therefore had to take this into account. Spidey might have the ability to lift 10 tons under perfect conditions but in most stories the conditions wouldn't be perfect and therefore Spidey might strain with lifting minivan or something.

Most of us fans never want to state that Superman (or Batman or Flash or....) might just have a bad day at points. Much as I was not in favor of the Byrne-era power level, I did like an early hint that Superman's powers might decrease if used in rapid succession. That maybe after catching a plummeting jetliner, surviving a volcanic explosion, and using heat vision to evaporate a tidal wave in the past several hours Superman might have more difficulty than usual facing Solomon Grundy.

[Jon Clark]

My point is that Superman doesn't have to use detective skills. He just needs to look, listen, and move to counter most human threats. He's working on a different level than Batman. In these scenarios, Batman is always going to be "peak" Batman, Superman at "peak" Superman is just going to do things better. What if in the space of a second, before Batman even says his first word to Cold, Superman runs through a 1,000 scenarios in his mind as to where Cold hid the device, or he detects a trace chemical on Cold's glove that he immediately recognizes based on his vision powers. He can smell where Cold has been and knows that was the last place he'd been. I know I am working with a Superman at his most dialed up but the question asks should Superman be the best at anything and I say at best showings, Superman should be the best at lots of stuff.

But he's not the best at something if what is being measured is not the same thing Superman is actually accomplishing. If Superman is facing Green Arrow in an archery contest then the better archer is the guy who draws the bow, aims, and hits the target. You can argue that Superman's visual powers and muscle control make him a better archer, and I'll at least think it's a valid argument. But if you state Superman is a better archer because he uses his super-breath to adjust trajectory of the arrow in flight or because he at invisible super-speed runs an arrow up to the target and plants it as a bulls-eye or that he can fire off a hundred arrows and some of those hundred hit dead center- so Ollie gets 6 bullseyes out of six arrows but Superman gets 10 bullseyes out of 1000- then he isn't a better archer despite being able to create the illusion he is.

[Kuwagaton]

I like the way Powerboy said it, because comic fans will complain about nothing if poor showings. That was a huge part of why there have been so many attempts to nerf him, I think. If someone benches 400 pounds max, that's not really something they can up and do every time. Superman's invulnerability and stamina make him a guy who can hit his max with far less recovery time before hitting it again and he doesn't exactly lose it through a lack of working to maintain it, but if you remove the possibility of it being an issue in a certain context then you end up writing yourself into a corner.