Do some heroes rely on their powers too much?

Wolverine's martial arts skills are very much dependent on the writer, depending on whether they favour his 'samurai' aspect or his 'berserker' aspect. Wolvie's good, no question about it, but I would seriously question whether or not he's anywhere near Shang Chi or Iron Fist's level. A lot of what he's able to do is because of his healing factor- take a licking and keep on ticking, basically.

As to 'do some heroes rely on their powers too much'... eh. The whole 'Superman doesn't know how to fight' thing tends to be played up by writers who prefer Batman. The big blue boyscout has fought (on a semi-regular basis) people who can rip out his spine with one hand and then floss with it. In those kinds of situations, you either learn to fight or you get dead. That recurring motif is something of an oddity, really; writers seem to have gotten it so firmly in their heads that even entire storylines dedicated to fixing it tend to get forgotten (like the one where he fought demons in an alternate dimension for a millenia-plus, for example).

In all honesty, I find the question a bit disingenous; unless the heroes in question are surviving by pure dumb luck all the time, or are consistently going up against foes that don't have a prayer of hurting them, they're going to learn to fight in some fashion. Please note that that doesn't necessarily mean 'learn formalized martial arts', which is what the OP seems to be implying as a necessity. There's only so many effective ways to punch someone, after all; they can be learned from experience as well as by donning white pyjamas with coloured belts and tossing one another around. And the whole point of martial arts is to take down your foe quickly and with minimal collateral damage. If you can do that with a lightning bolt from half a mile up, there's not a lot of point in giving the guy a karate chop to the throat.

... random aside: why would Bishop dodge? He's getting powered up by the blasts, I'd half-expect him to be jumping in front of the bloody things.

There was actually a issue or 2 of Kyle's GL that dealt with this. He got stuck on an alien world with his battery taken by some monster and had to fight his way to it. Donna Troy was always harping on him to not rely on just his ring during the Teen Titans time.

Yeah, it's the Vibranium. Absorbs all kinetic impact, and also inexplicably lets the shield bounce off multiple surfaces without losing momentum.




-k

Y'know, with vibranium's properties and all, has anyone ever tried taking on Sebastian Shaw or someone with similar powers with it?

If your power is to shoot anything, Bats, Cap, or any other "badass normal" without a gun or bow will only get a shot in if you majorly screw up, at which point you deserve to lose.

But yeah, I'm mostly talking about the multi-powered, "won the lottery" type supers. Bats and Cap have beaten guys there's no way they could reasonably inflict damage on, or survive long enough to even try in some cases. Cap even lampshaded it at one point: "I wear the flag, that means I win". Yeah, if that's not outright admitting to being a Mary Sue, nothing is.

Eh. Cap's shield... I was watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes with my wife, and I commented "Forget Mjolnir, Captain America's shield is the most magical weapon on the show." I remember at one point it went from blunt-force-trauma-smashing to slicing cleanly through something to bouncing off a wall without damage and finally getting caught in Captain America's hand in one throw. I don't even want to know how the physics behind that one work...

For that matter, I'm pretty sure it was that same episode had him smash a castle turret to flying rubble with one throw.

Captain America's shield: making physicists cry since 1941. Also, Captain Photon... just be thankful that I don't know that song well enough for your comment to get it stuck in my head, or I might have had to hunt you down.

Indeed.

Granted, the thing that's always kinda bugged me about this question, at least in regards to characters with more physical powers (Spiderman, the Thing, Superman, etc.), is that it basically demands that they store two entirely different sets of trained reflexes in their heads; one for 'with powers', and one for 'without powers'.

Honestly, if you took someone with always-on superstrength and suddenly took it away... uhm... duh they're going to have problems? It'd be like expecting Bruce Lee to fight at peak capacity under four gravities without any chance to adjust. Or take the Human Torch, for example. Yeah, he'd be smart to do at least some basic self-defense training, but it's not something he's going to be able to use often; if he's up against foes it would do any good against, he'd run the risk of seriously injuring, or even killing, them, because he'd frankly have to be stupid to turn his flames off deliberately just to punch some guy (and I don't think even the Torch is that dumb, unless he's trying to impress a girl, anyways...).

My take? Characters of the 'zappy' power variety (like Black Lightning, Cyclops, the Human Torch, or the Green Lanterns) are well-served by learning some basic, baseline-human-type self-defense. Powers or not, their bodies work the same way as everyone else' for giving or taking a punch.

Characters like your standard flying bricks (Superman, Captain Marvel, Thor, even Iron Man to a certain degree) would actually be hindered in some respects; undergoing extensive training to learn to dodge attacks instinctively isn't going to help you much when you need to be able to decide in a split-second to get between your not-bulletproof teammate and that incoming sniper round, or the concrete-atomizing energy blast, and learning to punch properly (again, instinctively) for optimum damage, when you need to be able to constantly excercise fine control to keep from turning regular guys' heads into a fine red mist, isn't going to help much.