How should Superman's powers develop?

[superduperman]

Inspired by an idea from Kon93, I decided to do a poll.

1) Develop all his powers instantly as soon as he's under a yellow sun. (pre-Crisis, Ruby Spears)

2) Some powers instantly and others later. (Smallville, MOS, Donner movies)

3) No powers until puberty. (post-Crisis, Lois & Clark, TAS, SO)

4) Natural super strength enhanced by a yellow sun. (New 52, Golden Age)

5) Keeps getting more powerful as he gets older. (Kingdom Come, Generations)

6) Gets weaker as he gets older. (Superman Beyond?)

7) Other.

And, yes, you can pick more than one. Or add your own if you think there's something I forgot.

[Vordan]

I think having his powers activate during puberty is best, although maybe having his strength start gradually increasing beforehand would be ok too.

[Kuwagaton]

Seems like puberty is a simple and effective storytelling idea, but I like some measure of power before then, either low dosage or select abilities. Man of Steel, both the comic and the movie, played these pretty nicely imo. Of course the thing about potency is that technically it will always be less, and a superbaby wouldn't be anywhere in the realm of a superkid, and kid to grown man respectively. Of course, we are talking about a percent of infinity.

[Jon Clark]

One thing that has gotten on my nerves reading and watching superhero stuff the past few weeks is the idea of power neutralizers. Those little miracle devices in super-hero universes that automatically turn any character into a normal person. I mention that here because it affects how I feel about Superman's powers. To me he is a Kryptonian and as such his powers should be like gills on a fish or wings on a bird for the most part. They shouldn't have the ability to simply be turned on or off any more than you could expect to develop a quick device to remove only a fish's ability to breathe water or a bird's ability to glide.

As such.

My ideal take is that Clark has some powers that are just how he is designed- stronger bones and tissue, greater ability to regulate his internal temperature, More efficient neural ability. And all of that is there from day one- red sun or yellow. Other abilities have to do with how his body gets it's fuel. Under a yellow sun he's going from running on AA batteries to having a whole power plant to draw on. So those muscles that normally can lift tons using those batteries on Krypton are now charged up so that they can lift thousands of times more.

I can see his powers as proportional based on age. A year old toddler isn't able to help you move your sofa but his father can. In the same way a 6 year old Clark's whole body is less "super"- both in regard to it's full ability and how it processes energy.

Clark arrives on Earth already stronger than any human child. The Kents pretty much can't hurt him- they can drop him, have the bath water a bit too warm, etc and lil' Clark is unfazed by any of the little accidents. And while a toddler he might not be lifting furniture, but he might be able to help Martha with carrying full laundry baskets for short periods.

By the time he starts kindergarten Clark would be able to match feats of strength by Olympic athletes but again these would be short bursts for energy with his normal strength probably being in the range of an athletic adult. He'd be able to keep pace with the fastest animals on Earth, but like them only for short sprints. If it could keep his attention (and it wasn't already forbidden by the Kents) he could probably break the four minute mile. And pretty much anything short of an elephant or a firearm isn't going to do more than bruise him.

His senses are a bit weird in that my take is they are always on (microscopic, telescopic, X-ray, etc) from when he arrives what changes with age is his ability to filter them. It might even make Clark seem mentally challenged early on as his perception of a yellow rubber ball is different from his perception of yellow car (one is denser, warmer) so it might be difficult for him to understand what "yellow" means.

With puberty his abilities would grow the same way your average teen does. But whereas you or I go from lifting like 50 to maybe 200 pounds Clark would be increasing of a higher scale. His ability to store the solar radiation to fuel those powers would also kick into overdrive so that his upper limits would be stuff he could maintain for hours rather than seconds.

And flight to me is something that comes with speed. Once Clark's running speed exceeds a certain threshold- say 250 mph, his flight powers would start to kick in. And as he works on it he'd learn to fly both faster and slower (able to levitate/hover and take off without that running 250 mph start).

[Sacred Knight]

Super strength/invulnerability right off the bat (the depth of his invulnerability isn't really discovered till Clark is older, as obviously Jonathan and Martha wouldn't dream of testing anything like that on a baby, its discovered when little Clark gets in a dust up and comes out unharmed). But, in some crazy event that say infant Clark was trampled by a bull, he'd have been fine even then. Vision powers develop around adolescence. Able to "leap tall buildings" by his teenage years. Flies during year one as Superman. Undergoes a major boost in all powers to catapult out of GA levels and into modern levels near year two.

[Jon Clark]

Super strength/invulnerability right off the bat (the depth of his invulnerability isn't really discovered till Clark is older, as obviously Jonathan and Martha wouldn't dream of testing anything like that on a baby, its discovered when little Clark gets in a dust up and comes out unharmed). But, in some crazy event that say infant Clark was trampled by a bull, he'd have been fine even then.

Putting aside why a rocket made of Kryptonian material isn't indestructible, I've always viewed the Kents finding this baby in a field exactly where that rocket "crashed" as a sort of prof the kid is hard to hurt.

[raidensix]

Gets more powerful the older he gets as his body absorbs more yellow sun radiation and his body adapts to processing it more efficiently.

[JAK]

I voted 5, as that was the Post-Crisis model. He got some early on, a number of the larger ones during puberty, and they'll keep growing as he gets older (or more accurately, as he spends more years under a yellow sun).

[13th Superman]

In my opinion kryptonians should innately have golden age level abilities with the sun providing the power boost. They may look human but I don't want them to be human level when depleted of solar energy. Honestly if it were up to me I'd remove the sun based powers altogether and go with what Robert Kirkman had with the Viltrumites and smart atoms/unstable molecules.

[Jim Kelly]

I voted for gets powers instantly under a yellow sun, because that's how it worked in the 1960s. And that light-switch effect allowed every Kryptonian to get powers as soon as they arrived under a yellow sun and lose them as soon as they were under a red sun. It was a story creating machine. Maybe gaining powers slowly makes more sense (to the extent the powers make any sense), but then it's a lot harder to do those self-contained stories where someone gets powers or loses them right away. If the light-switch wasn't in effect, you'd have to wait around for days or even years in order for other Kryptonians to gain their powers and it would take a long time for Clark to lose his powers under a red sun. Something like SUPERMAN 164 would not be possible.

However, one of the things I came up with years ago when I tried to imagine how you could do a Byrne Superman/Original Superman/Weisinger Superman all in the same continuiity is that Kryptonians are on a seven year cycle. Clark gains more and more power under a yellow sun on a seven year cycle, but as soon as he hits his peak he goes through a crisis that leaves him weak and incapacitated and after that his powers are diminished and he has to go through another seven year cycle to gain more power. However, each cycle upgrades his power levels and abilities--so at 14 he's more powerful than he was at 7, and at 21 he's more powerful then he was at 14. But at 16 or 25 he wouldn't be at one of his peaks or lows so his power would be in the middle range.

Call it the Sisyphus effect. He's rolls that boulder of power up the hill for seven years but as soon as he nears the top, it rolls back down again and he starts all over. However, given the magnitude of power increases each time, that means it's possible for Superman to become near god-like in his senior years (yet also lose all that power at regular intervals).

[Phoenixx9]

I voted 5, as that was the Post-Crisis model. He got some early on, a number of the larger ones during puberty, and they'll keep growing as he gets older (or more accurately, as he spends more years under a yellow sun).

Exactly my thoughts, my friend!

[Jon Clark]

I voted for gets powers instantly under a yellow sun, because that's how it worked in the 1960s. And that light-switch effect allowed every Kryptonian to get powers as soon as they arrived under a yellow sun and lose them as soon as they were under a red sun. It was a story creating machine. Maybe gaining powers slowly makes more sense (to the extent the powers make any sense), but then it's a lot harder to do those self-contained stories where someone gets powers or loses them right away. If the light-switch wasn't in effect, you'd have to wait around for days or even years in order for other Kryptonians to gain their powers and it would take a long time for Clark to lose his powers under a red sun. Something like SUPERMAN 164 would not be possible.

You are right about Superman losing his powers at the drop of a hat, but I actually prefer that being a rare thing. Things like Mxyzptlk changing Superman into a regular Joe can still happen and I have a couple other ideas on how Clark could be rendered closer to human even under a yellow sun. All I'd be removing is the idea that any schmuck with a red flashlight could neuter Superman.

And my take is that any Kyptonian who leaves Krypton is by default more powerful than a normal human, so they do gain powers instantly. Clark's power manifest slowly because he is going from infancy to adulthood, but infant Zod and infant Kal on Earth would both be proportionally weaker than they are as adults. Zod has a slight advantage in growing up under conditions that force his body to adapt better, while Clark gets an advantage in both how efficiently his body processes solar charging and his ability to moderate how much power he uses (handle an egg without cracking it versus crush a full beer can)

However, one of the things I came up with years ago when I tried to imagine how you could do a Byrne Superman/Original Superman/Weisinger Superman all in the same continuiity is that Kryptonians are on a seven year cycle. Clark gains more and more power under a yellow sun on a seven year cycle, but as soon as he hits his peak he goes through a crisis that leaves him weak and incapacitated and after that his powers are diminished and he has to go through another seven year cycle to gain more power. However, each cycle upgrades his power levels and abilities--so at 14 he's more powerful than he was at 7, and at 21 he's more powerful then he was at 14. But at 16 or 25 he wouldn't be at one of his peaks or lows so his power would be in the middle range.

Call it the Sisyphus effect. He's rolls that boulder of power up the hill for seven years but as soon as he nears the top, it rolls back down again and he starts all over. However, given the magnitude of power increases each time, that means it's possible for Superman to become near god-like in his senior years (yet also lose all that power at regular intervals).

That is an interesting take. Not sure I'd be as specific as you about the seven year cycles and would make it more unstable so that you could have Superman moving planets with ease one month and having trouble moving a mountain a few issues later. Maybe some confluence of solar cycles and biological ones so that at points the yellow sun offered him less power and at others his body is able to do less with the available energy. If the weak sun and inefficient body coincide we are closer to leaping tall buildings and if the greatest solar energy aligns with his most efficient days then he is closer to outracing photons.

[superduperman]

The general consensus seems to be that he should have some kind of powers from day one, even if it's at a low ebb, but the sun boosts his natural abilities. Wonder if DC is paying attention!

[DrNewGod]

I like the idea that Kryptonians evolved for a higher gravity, and they genetically engineered themselves to mental, physical, psionic, and sensory perfection. I also like Byrne's idea that most of his abilities are psionic, hyper-charged under a yellow sun. Without training, he had no idea how to access them, until he needed to, and the more tried, the more he could do, and the more he could do, the more he was willing to try ...

[Kon93]

Normal on krypton(like we are on earth) is equal to golden age powerful on earth right away.

As he gets older he absorbs more energy and his body matures into being able to process it

Gets more powerful as he gets older

Can lose his godlike powers when red sun energy blocks his cells from using the energy he has absorbed

Green kryptonite doesn't take away powers,it hurts him,in either level of power

Never goes below golden age,BUT for magic like mxy

His yellow sun hod.level powers are not consciously controlled,and mostly involuntary,that way you get a explanation for his powers and how they work when he picks up stuff,but he doesn't become a marvel type TK/TP user.

Btw I love thinking of SBs and Jon's powers also,and can use the above ideas to explain BOTH of their very different powers