Too many people with the same powers

[killerbee]

This age of xmen sucks to be honest. Everyone is creating psychic weapons. Multiple power copiers like hope, synch,mimic. Multiple telepaths! What happened to attempting originality?

[Phoenixx9]

This age of xmen sucks to be honest. Everyone is creating psychic weapons. Multiple power copiers like hope, synch,mimic. Multiple telepaths! What happened to attempting originality?

Good points. I think it died in the late 1980's?

[salarta]

I think multiple people with the same powers is fine. It's not whether or not you have the power, it's what you do with it and how you express it.

The core issue, I think, is that writers need to do more work to make it clear how characters differ. When they don't do that is when you get people thinking they're just copies of each other.

As I'm writing this, I remember how Supergirl was killed off in the 80s comics purely because an editor thought she "didn't add anything to the Superman mythos." But last decade, she got a TV show that lasted several seasons. Because they made it clear she's not just Superman with boobs, she's her own character who happens to have the same power set.

[Dthirds3]

What are you suggesting have character uses there powers in creative ways to difference between each other?

[salarta]

What are you suggesting have character uses there powers in creative ways to difference between each other?

Let's take psychic powers for example, and let's say two different psychics want to destroy a politician's image. One psychic might take a "brute force" approach, where they directly control and alter that politician's mind. Another psychic might do it indirectly, like chess, by influencing the people around that politician into sabotaging the politician. Both characters are using the same powers, but in different ways.

By using their powers in different ways, you're representing how they have different personalities and different perspectives on the world and how to go about things.

[shooshoomanjoe]

IMO, you can't create something new when it's all be done already.

[sunofdarkchild]

I think multiple people with the same powers is fine. It's not whether or not you have the power, it's what you do with it and how you express it.

The core issue, I think, is that writers need to do more work to make it clear how characters differ. When they don't do that is when you get people thinking they're just copies of each other.

As I'm writing this, I remember how Supergirl was killed off in the 80s comics purely because an editor thought she "didn't add anything to the Superman mythos." But last decade, she got a TV show that lasted several seasons. Because they made it clear she's not just Superman with boobs, she's her own character who happens to have the same power set.

I'd say the show definitively proved she was always just Superman in a skirt. Pretty much everything about her character was stolen from Superman, his day job, his disguise, even his supporting cast. If Kara had been a distinctive character in her own right there would have been no need for all those elements that were carbon copies of Superman or so many of Superman's supporting characters. I do have the show to thank for leading to my discovering the excellent PAD Supergirl series from the 90s and becoming a fan of that version of Supergirl, but that's its only redeeming quality.


O-T. Having multiple people with the same powers doesn't have to be bad. While every team seems to need at least one person with super-strength, having multiple people with that power has never been a problem for any team. And the various Spider-men and women can somehow coexist while having almost identical powers.

Where I think the problem comes is when you get to certain powersets that have specific uses. Teleportation, for instance, is primarily a transportation power. While it can have greater utility in a fight than mere transportation, it doesn't make sense for most teams to have multiple people with just that power, and it's enough to get creative with the abilities of one teleporter.

The bigger problem is when people have similar personalities. The Cerebro podcast recently pointed out that Magma had this problem, in that she was immediately upstaged by two character who joined the New Mutants right after her who did the 'fish out of water not understanding how to live in the modern world' shtick better than her in Magik and Warlock, who had more to their personalities as well. Magma had as distinct a powerset as anyone at the time, but her lack of a distinctive personality is what doomed her as a character. This is why so many characters whose only power is being big and strong can still coexist. Their personalities are distinct enough. This is also the primary reason so many psychics can coexist. They usually have distinct personalities that often clash.

[HeartofTheStoriesWeTell]

I think multiple people with the same powers is fine. It's not whether or not you have the power, it's what you do with it and how you express it.
.

Psylocke having the katana and captain Brittan having a long/arming sword is fine even if kid omega makes psychic guns...

[Nicoclaws]

This age of xmen sucks to be honest. Everyone is creating psychic weapons. Multiple power copiers like hope, synch,mimic. Multiple telepaths! What happened to attempting originality?

This era, you mean from the 90s until now ?

[jwatson]

This era, you mean from the 90s until now ?

It didn't get too bad imo until the whole x-men lineup was basically telepaths and cyclops. so i'd say about early 2000s. quentin, 5 in 1, emma, xavier, i mean the list of telepaths was ridiculous. at least before then they were spaced out a bit.

I don't see the problem with 3 mimics all spaced out who all use their powers different. Hope can only copy mutants and proximity matters, Synch can copy both from close or distance and since rogue green aura is gone she can only absorb by touch.

I think people just got things against this era because everything it's been called now started under some of the runs people tout as AMAZING. lol

[Nicoclaws]

It didn't get too bad imo until the whole x-men lineup was basically telepaths and cyclops. so i'd say about early 2000s. quentin, 5 in 1, emma, xavier, i mean the list of telepaths was ridiculous. at least before then they were spaced out a bit.

I don't see the problem with 3 mimics all spaced out who all use their powers different. Hope can only copy mutants and proximity matters, Synch can copy both from close or distance and since rogue green aura is gone she can only absorb by touch.

I think people just got things against this era because everything it's been called now started under some of the runs people tout as AMAZING. lol

Yeah you're right, they just had Grey, Xavier and Psylocke, who has the specific psychic weapon thing that Quentin stole plus Karma and Mirage in New Mutants before that, but even they're use of their power was vastly different. Honestly the biggest redudancy is the white queen and the 5in1, at least visually, and if they had to keep one concept, the Cuckoos have a basically more interesting power.

I'd say the most redudant are the feral characters and the strong guys, but this has been a really old problem.

[Jackraow21]

I think it’s okay to have lots of characters with similar powers. After all, there are millions of mutants again. Expecting every mutant to have a unique power is a bit unrealistic… if not impossible. Rather there are buckets of power sets that fall under things like “psychic abilities”, “energy manipulation”, “matter manipulation”, “physical enhancement,” etc. And even within those buckets there will be subsets (e.g., feral mutants under the physical enhancements bucket or healing powers, durability/strength, etc.).

The key to me is to figure out how to make a particular character’s spin on their powers unique. Either visually or in how they use them.

[Odd Rödney]

I think it’s okay to have lots of characters with similar powers. After all, there are millions of mutants again. Expecting every mutant to have a unique power is a bit unrealistic… if not impossible.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was trying to say. It'd be more unrealistic if there were no similarities.

[Confuzzled]

What's the problem? There's popular fiction like Avatar: The Last Airbender and the Grishaverse (Shadow & Bone) where many people have the same powersets. I do feel like any real world community and culture, like-powered mutants can form sub-communities of their own.

Also, multiple telepaths is not only cool (as it allows for battles on astral planes) but also a necessity when it comes to comms and handling Cerebro.

A poster with an Emma avi complaining about multiple telepaths when she appeared decades after Jean and Charles?

[Grunty]

I think multiple people with the same powers is fine. It's not whether or not you have the power, it's what you do with it and how you express it.

The core issue, I think, is that writers need to do more work to make it clear how characters differ. When they don't do that is when you get people thinking they're just copies of each other.

As I'm writing this, I remember how Supergirl was killed off in the 80s comics purely because an editor thought she "didn't add anything to the Superman mythos." But last decade, she got a TV show that lasted several seasons. Because they made it clear she's not just Superman with boobs, she's her own character who happens to have the same power set.

I have to agree on this and i feel the problem is not characters with similar powers existing, but that the current status quo makes them both too readily aviable and easily discardable for the current writers.

It made a lot more sense to have multiple characters with similar or the same powers around when they weren't readily aviable at all times, were dead, or on opposing sides.

"I need a teleporter! Hmm. This one is allready on another team, can't interrupt their story, this ones taken aswell, taken, dead, dead, dead, in space, villain, in prison... ah screw it i make a new one. Can't create a new one? Okay time to dust off this obscure character from that one-shot. Time to come up with an explanation where they had been and why they are joining in."

But now instead of actualy having to provide a reason for why a certain character gets recruited on a team or appears in a story, which also means having to provide introduction and continuity for them, the writers can just pull these characters out of a hat, use their powers for quick resolutions or victories and then throw them back into the hat often without even allowing them to utter a sentence.

Because practically everyone who doesn't belong to the same handfull of popular characters, who had been getting attention and character reinforcement for 20+ years allready, is now more than ever reduced to a "function" via their powers.