usually it's just the visual that's different (hairstyle, skin color, uniform, etc). unless they are the favored character, their motivation doesn't matter. their "character" really amounts to one-liners. and i don't think that there are as many duplicate power sets as you envision. who's the other Glob Herman? even with the wolverine types, they made sure to tweak the placement of their claws.
My point remains that Synch's powers could have been interpreted differently and depicted imaginatively to avoid redundancy. His aura was constantly sampling super powers.
Imagine if you took an audio recorder and walked around in public all day with it, forgetting that you even had it on. Just think of the conversations, sounds, etc., that you'd pick up when you played the recording back to yourself. Now imagine that's Synch's aura instead of an audio recorder and you're strolling downtown NY... by Avengers mansion... by the Fantastic Four's headquarters... on a crowded subway platform with perhaps other super powered beings, including mutants, who decided to live more or less normal lives. My guess is that by the end of the day Synch's aura would have logged a number of different powers, some of which could have been used synergistically.
If you really think about it, Ev could have evolved to the point where those aura synergies created a new and unique form of energy that only he could tap, with properties that he assigned. In that way he'd even be different from Hope Summers.
But alas, the hero's limitations invariably correlate directly to the writer's lack of imagination. I guess we should learn to expect less.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of what you don’t see.”
~James Baldwin
As opposed to the rest of the X-folks, many of whom aren't just potentially OP, but are in fact very much Omega level? Riiiiiiiight. Yeah, no, if there was going to be one African American male that was going to be OP, let it be Synch. He has the character to handle the responsibility that comes with ultimate power, unlike others.
Tweak the placement of their claws. Ok, so they all do have claws then.
Telepaths
Elementals
Ferals
Shoots rays(from whatever orifice available).
Strong/invulnerable.
There are at least 3 different characters who have these powersets and these are just a few.
And their motivation does matter. It's why Scott and Alex are different characters even though all they do is shoot beams. It's why Logan is different from Creed who is different from X-23 even though the placement of their claws is different.
I didn't like what they did either. But more people were talking about and focused on that than anything else Bishop ever did. Famous or infamous, they part that mark on Bishop.
Not many people would be making that argument based on how much hate he got.
IMHO, it absolutely was jejune and banal. In the way that watching Black people get killed first in a 1980s horror or action movie is banal. Marvel lost readers that day, and it wasn't because that was such an awesome bang-up good job that they did with that story. Quite the opposite. It's probably why so many here are still calling for Synch or someone like him to be returned to prominence. Disappointment and dissatisfaction tend to do that.