Killing the JLA, or, How Are These People Still Alive?

[Jayngfet]

Right, but again you're assuming that Superman is just going to stand there full frontal and take the shots. Which isn't exactly a consistent thing for him so much as once in a blue moon to do the iconic thing. He's just as likely to blow the guns up with heat vision or knock down the opponents with super breath, again. Or just stomp the ground and have them lose balance from the resulting quake. Or a million other things he does issue to issue, because having him do the same thing every single month is actually kinda boring.

[lord_khaine]

People always say this, but considering that Bats regularly goes up against people as strong or stronger than Supes and comes out alive or even wins...it's just not true. Bats would go into hiding if Superman wanted him dead. Superman would never see Batman again, while Bats works from the shadows against him. Supes could kill him with a sneak attack if Batman wasn't expecting it, but that's like saying Batman could beat Superman if he slipped a kryptonite rufie in his drink. It might technically be true, but it's not really in the spirit of the discussion.

The only reason Batman actually survies that though, is either meterthick plot armor and litteral handing out of idiot balls, or the fight not being a physical one where the difference in power does not matter as much. Because in a fight against someone with Supermans level of power, then there really would not be a safe place on earth for Batman.

In a world where people have superpowers, Batman and the Flash should both be easily killable. All you need is a telekinetic - in both cases, just pinch shut a vessel in the brain, or crush their heart, and they're done. Or if it's a more powerful telekinetic, crush all their bones into powder. Night-instantaneous, with no defence against it.

There is a reason for why Batman usually sticks to enemies of a more ordinary human nature, or else emplyes sneak attacks. Flash meanwhile is literally faster than the speed of though, and can vibrate thouggh or out off most grips.

(This has always struck me as a major flaw in how most media deals with telekinetics. If you can throw someone across a room with your mind, or toss heavy things at them with your mind, you can crush their heart with your mind and be done with them a lot quicker. Telekinesis doesn't just provide a Vader-esque means of oppressing subordinates, it's a nigh-infallible assassination technique.)

Actually, i think the major flaw in this line of reasoning is to expect that someone with telekinesis could firstly affect something that were not in their line of sight, and secondly that they had the control to affect just a specific part of an object, instead of only lifting the whole.
Because without those 2 additional abilities, then its no longer the perfect assasination method you makes it out to be.

As far as 3) goes, some relatively simple R&D cycles would take care of the problem of making sure that the kryptonite payload was discharged from the soft lead casing with sufficient velocity to do damage. Might even be as simple as casting the lead so that it's not much more than lead foil at the tip of the bullet.

really doesnt sound to simple to me, and its not like kryptonite is something you can afford to experiment away on.

With 4)? Superman standing there and playing human shield is something he's done as his standard operating procedure for...pretty much every incarnation I know of (warning, TV Tropes link) in his 75 years of publication. One of the most iconic images of Superman is him advancing slowly towards a hapless gunman as bullets ricochet off his chest. His awareness of ricochets tends to vary by incarnation and writer, but the whole 'standing there to show that shooting me does nothing' schtick is very old and very well-established.

And the problem is that he has just as often melted the guns with his heat vision, or frozen them solid with his breath, or plucked them out of the hands of the gunman, and if he goes for any of these much smarter options then the plan will fail.

Plus, people seem to be assuming single gunman shooting Superman directly, when I explicitly said in the original post that your best chance would be lots of shooters, including snipers who are further away, with multiple angles of fire and a non-bulletproof target that he specifically turned up to protect.

And there are so awfully many things that can go wrong, like Superman starting by snatching the target away with superspeed, something thats rather likely if there are multiple gunmen around.. or him not turning up at all.. or it being another hero who turns up because Superman is busy armwrestling a Morgul.

[Devonix]

People always say this, but considering that Bats regularly goes up against people as strong or stronger than Supes and comes out alive or even wins...it's just not true. Bats would go into hiding if Superman wanted him dead. Superman would never see Batman again, while Bats works from the shadows against him. Supes could kill him with a sneak attack if Batman wasn't expecting it, but that's like saying Batman could beat Superman if he slipped a kryptonite rufie in his drink. It might technically be true, but it's not really in the spirit of the discussion.

As for all of these plans to kill the Justice League...people have tried almost these exact plans dozens of times before. It never works.

Umm No he doesn't. Batman regularly goes up against back alley thugs and madmen. When he's going up against people Superman level or stronger, his standard MO is to call Superman or someone else to deal with the problem while he plans from the sidelines.

Also if Superman wants to find you there is almost nowhere in the galaxy that you can hide. This is why you don't usually see stories with Superman trying to find someone it ends in almost a panel.

[turkishproverb]

In a world where people have superpowers, Batman and the Flash should both be easily killable. All you need is a telekinetic - in both cases, just pinch shut a vessel in the brain, or crush their heart, and they're done. Or if it's a more powerful telekinetic, crush all their bones into powder. Night-instantaneous, with no defence against it.

Fails miserably. Fails in B5 too, whatever JMS thinks. Unless you've got X-ray vision, and even then, you can't TK inside a person's body on a whim due to variation and just general not knowing where crap is, even with the person not in motion.

Further, powerful and fine control are two different things. Crushing the body would require fine control, contrary to what it seems at first mention. You see, "Implosion" is a different powerset as a generality, so you'd be telekenetically moving thousands of individual molecules inward instead. Not easy to keep track of, and to do it in that way would require not thinking of it as one object for the purposes of traditional TK.

Actually, telekenetically throwing things is generally a better plan, as it's easier to keep track of and more on-the-fly doable

[BWR]

Fails miserably. Fails in B5 too, whatever JMS thinks. Unless you've got X-ray vision, and even then, you can't TK inside a person's body on a whim due to variation and just general not knowing where crap is, even with the person not in motion.

Further, powerful and fine control are two different things. Crushing the body would require fine control, contrary to what it seems at first mention. You see, "Implosion" is a different powerset as a generality, so you'd be telekenetically moving thousands of individual molecules inward instead. Not easy to keep track of, and to do it in that way would require not thinking of it as one object for the purposes of traditional TK.

Actually, telekenetically throwing things is generally a better plan, as it's easier to keep track of and more on-the-fly doable

The main problem is that people can't seem to target their TK inside other objects - it's the whole object or nothing. If you can just project force anywhere within range, even if it's withing another object and hidden from you, you can kill just about anyone by sticking your mental fist inside someone's head and giving it a good shake. No need to target individual body parts at all.

[Avilan the Grey]

Not going into the specifics of the more superpowered individuals of DC or Marvel, but a well trained sniper would take out a LOT of people very easily.

Batman has zero defense against a long range attack he doesn't know is coming. A supersonic bullet will kill before the bang reaches anyone. And there are no laser pointers or anything else (only in movies). Same goes for Zatanna, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Robin, Raven, Beast Boy etc etc etc.

[Anteros]

Umm No he doesn't. Batman regularly goes up against back alley thugs and madmen. When he's going up against people Superman level or stronger, his standard MO is to call Superman or someone else to deal with the problem while he plans from the sidelines.

Also if Superman wants to find you there is almost nowhere in the galaxy that you can hide. This is why you don't usually see stories with Superman trying to find someone it ends in almost a panel.

Read Superman Unchained, or even the Injustice comics some time. He's perfectly capable of disappearing off of Superman's radar and evading him indefinitely, even despite active efforts to locate him.

He also rolls with the Justice League and regularly fights against people like Darkseid, Mongol, etc. He may not be beating them up in a fist fight, but he typically survives and completes whatever his objective is. I'm not one of those "Batman can beat anyone with prep time" people...but the character has been going up against people on Superman's power level for almost his entire existence. You can't just pretend those stories don't exist.

[turkishproverb]

The main problem is that people can't seem to target their TK inside other objects - it's the whole object or nothing. If you can just project force anywhere within range, even if it's withing another object and hidden from you, you can kill just about anyone by sticking your mental fist inside someone's head and giving it a good shake. No need to target individual body parts at all.

TK is not depicted as "Invisible fist" in the franchises I mentioned or, for that matter, in the franchises that tend to bring up TK-Killing, though. It has to target something, even if it's air.

[lord_khaine]

Batman has zero defense against a long range attack he doesn't know is coming. A supersonic bullet will kill before the bang reaches anyone. And there are no laser pointers or anything else (only in movies). Same goes for Zatanna, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Robin, Raven, Beast Boy etc etc etc.

Zatanna should have some enchantments in place to protect her against bullets, or else you would not even need a sniper for bringing her down, and GL seems to have some sort of passive defence in place when he is flying around and being active.

As for why someone like Wonder Woman, who can trade blows with Superman or Darkseid, can be taken down by an ordinary bullet i will newer understand.

[Dienekes]

Zatanna should have some enchantments in place to protect her against bullets, or else you would not even need a sniper for bringing her down, and GL seems to have some sort of passive defence in place when he is flying around and being active.

As for why someone like Wonder Woman, who can trade blows with Superman or Darkseid, can be taken down by an ordinary bullet i will newer understand.

Wonder Woman varies in durability depending on carnation. Sometimes she's near Superman levels of toughness. Other times she is not so tough and needs those bracers to defend against dangerous threats. Still other times she is Superman level tough, except instead of kryptonite her weakness is sharp/piercing/cutting type of attacks. So if Superman punches her, she's fine. But if some mook with a shotgun hits her she's dead.

[Fragenstein]

Fails miserably. Fails in B5 too, whatever JMS thinks. Unless you've got X-ray vision, and even then, you can't TK inside a person's body on a whim due to variation and just general not knowing where crap is, even with the person not in motion.

You can't really put limits on imaginary powers like that. Battalion (Jackson King), of Stormwatch, once stopped the flow of electrons in the wiring of a bomb with his TK diminished. Later in the same issue, he opened his assault on the bad-guys by telekinetically squeezing someone's heart. That person then lived long enough to die in prison of a heart attack.

If we can pretend that TK is real, then we can also pretend that there's enough sensory feedback that the person using it knows what his mind is touching.

[GloatingSwine]

No, telekinetic constriction has never been used as a purely internal attack, especially not in literally the single most famous and widely known application of telekinesis as an attack at all!

[SowZ]

It's been done, one plan that actually worked if not for assistance from other Leaguers. Though honestly, if Supes is at ridiculous full power he'll notice the bullet is kryptonite as soon as it leaves the barrel of the gun and just fly to mars while you're wasting bullets thinking he's still in front of you. Supes is OP like that.



Been done. There's this guy called Deadshot who did just this thing. Batman found out and beat him. Replaced his guns bullets with blanks and then proceed to kick his ass. Batman is OP like that.



You are highly underestimating WWs speed, durability, and fighting prowess. She can take a hit like Superman unless it's a bullet or blade. Yes I know that doesn't make sense. The guy from behind with the rocket launcher? Yeah, she noticed. She dodged it. And if she didn't, she tanked the shot and got mad at you. Or she flew away when she saw she was trapped. She can fly... sometimes. Wonder Woman is OP like that.



Ehh, pretty sure he can sense the drone coming and go insubstantial before the damage is done. Martian Manhunter is OP like that.



Flash is faster than the lasers, much, much faster. The tripwire may cause him trouble as he can be a bit unobservant, but I've never seen a similar trick take him out for more than a couple seconds in comics. This is the guy that ran to the end of the universe and outpaced Death himself. The amount of force on his body a light jog is more than a razor wire could ever hope to deal him. Flash is OP like that. Though honestly, poison his food. The guy eats without even tasting what he's wolfing down.



Aquaman's strength is possibly even more variable than Superman's or Wonder Woman's. This might work, it might just piss him off. He might say "Good show, chum!" as he beats you to a pulp with a friendly smile, or he may try to skewer you with his hook with a look of grim determination.

As to the flash, Slade did basically just that to the Flash and it worked. He even stabbed the Flash with a sword in Identity Crisis. It was stupid and didn't make any sense at all, but it happened. So there's that.

[turkishproverb]

No, telekinetic constriction has never been used as a purely internal attack, especially not in literally the single most famous and widely known application of telekinesis as an attack at all!

How was that internal? the guy's adams apple was bobbing. The neck was an easy target.

[Jayngfet]

There is a reason for why Batman usually sticks to enemies of a more ordinary human nature, or else emplyes sneak attacks. Flash meanwhile is literally faster than the speed of though, and can vibrate thouggh or out off most grips.

Which is totally fair, in Batman's case. Gotham actually has an entirely separate dude with actual superpowers and explicit kill-or-worse tactics for when Batman isn't up to scratch, belonging to a team that handles problems the regular justice league physically can not(and knows to back away from, Superman has no illusions of invincibility).

Despite a versatile set of abilities and a damn good roster, nobody pretends the JLA can handle every problem or be everywhere at once. If that was the case, there'd be no non-Justice League teams. The fact that they exist is because there are usually places the A-Squad physically can't go or foes they aren't usually equipped to handle, or at least don't have time for because something else has come up.

Superman can trade punches with Darksied, or at least a convincing go-between. He's basically useless against Trigon though. Which is why he so rarely fights Trigon and he's on the list of dudes who takes on Darksied regularly, despite them being roughly the same aside from a couple of minor sticking points.

[Deadline]

How do you kill the JLA? Well, you let Batman come up with the plan, and then put it into action. And you get Bane to finish Batman off.

And then, because you aren't a comic book villain, you trigger the c-4 in the coffin that Bane just buried Batman in to finish the job right.

[Anteros]

How do you kill the JLA? Well, you let Batman come up with the plan, and then put it into action. And you get Bane to finish Batman off.

And then, because you aren't a comic book villain, you trigger the c-4 in the coffin that Bane just buried Batman in to finish the job right.

You want to specifically kill a super hero off screen where you can't see the body or tell if he's escaped or not? That...that isn't guaranteed to work.

[Deadline]

You want to specifically kill a super hero off screen where you can't see the body or tell if he's escaped or not? That...that isn't guaranteed to work.

Ha! Fair enough.

[Fan]

I'm actually pretty well aware of the scale that the JLA operates on, although I wasn't aware of Wonder Woman's recent upgrades. I took one look at the new 52 stuff and went "... meh." and ignored it.

In any case, this was more of a thought excercise than anything else, and I readily admitted that I wasn't sure on Green Lantern.

Superman would have no reason whatsoever to melt the bullets- his consistent MO (to the best of my admittedly dated knowledge) for decades has been the whole bullets-bounce-off-the-shield thing. Which is kind of what the whole plan hinged on.

Batman? If the sniper has a believable cover story that makes it seem like they're simply in Gotham to hide out, odds are that Batman isn't going to go personally throw them out of town/avoid the Bat Signal until they go away. The most that seems likely is a threatening visit warning them not to start trouble in his town. Batman is brilliant and paranoid, but he's not omniscient. The 'disposable flunky' routine? Eh. Could work, could not work. It's more a 'plan B' than anything else.

Wonder Woman didn't used to be bulletproof, which is why she'd do the 'bullets and bracelets' schtick. If she is now, then, well, that plan goes out the window.

I never said 'abandoned building' for Martian Manhunter. I just said that one that you personally did not care about. And I already acknowledged and tried to deal with the mind-reading thing with the drones- robot planes don't have brains.

Why, exactly, would the Flash phase at random through an apparently empty room, especially if he was hurrying towards an obvious threat?

Green Lantern is admittedly problematic, although sonics have given him at least mild difficulty in the past, so it's not totally infeasible for flashbangs to disorient him enough to bring his shields down.

Aquaman... eh. I did note that you would specifically need heavy weaponry to make any real dents in his hide. Bouncing revolver bullets off your chest is one thing; bouncing .50 calibre sniper rounds is an entirely different thing.

As the Resident Superman Expert.

That's not even how kryptonite works anymore, and it hasn't worked that way for years.

At this point Superman can wear tractor trailer trains made out of kryptonite and not die, JLA doom was well over 20 years ago, and his powerset has changed.

However, even with that, Superman is faster than light, and has super hearing so good that he can hear people shouting his name from across the planet in a crowded noisy news room, he will be able to tell the difference between heavier lead bullets (which are obviously being used to block his x-ray vision, Clark's a super genius not a retard.) and your standard brass / fmjs.

There's also the whole tagline of "Faster than a speeding bullet", and Superman has in fact used his heat vision to melt guns before. Look up Superman: Peace on Earth where he tries to tackle the issue of world hunger without deposing governments, and he just zaps a dictoators line of assault rifles into boiling plastic and metal goop.

Also if you're kidnapping someone import enough to force Superman's attention away from every other issue on the planet immediately then you're not even going to see him rescue the person, that's how fast he'll be going. Your ear drums will burst from being beside a sonic boom and you'll all be tied up outside the place with no recollection of how you got disarmed as Superman smiles and waves.

If you want to kill Superman directly, you'll either need high tier magic firepower that fires at FTL speeds, a continent's worth of kryptonite, and barring either of his demonstrated weaknesses you'll need to start by blowing up the sun / turning it red via the help of Solaris the Tyrant Sun or just nuking the entire solar system into ash, and that's assuming you're capable of doing that before he tosses your planet / even bigger sized space station through a boom tube to the beginning of the universe.

Wonder Woman? There's literally no feasible way to depower her enough to kill her without nuking the solar system. That's all you've got and your attack needs to be faster than light by multiples to catch her in it, and if she happens to have The God Wave at the time even that wont be enough.

Batman? It'd have to be a gunman who woke up one morning with no criminal history and decided just to pack some armor piercing bullets into his high powered hunting rifle and kill batman. That's all it'd really take.

Flash? Hah, easily the hardest to kill. Durability is lesser to a small extent but it doesn't matter what you shoot at him, what you blow up, what you toss his way. He's faster.

Flash is 15 TRILLION TIMES faster than light, he has attosecond reactions, and can steal the speed from projectiles to make them worthless, and he can run into the timestream even if you annihilate the universe at anything less than those speeds.

Good luck.

[Lord Raziere]

See? Fan backs me up on the "blow up the sun" plan. it might be a little overkill where Batman is concerned, but its not where all the other heroes are concerned.

except for the Flash who will run in back in time to save everyone, but I don't really want to kill one of my favorite superheroes anyways, because he is the Flash and he is awesome like that.

wait. if Flash can enter the timestream, can't he just go back in time and kill Batman or whoever when they're still children and thus beat them?

[Metahuman1]

See? Fan backs me up on the "blow up the sun" plan. it might be a little overkill where Batman is concerned, but its not where all the other heroes are concerned.

except for the Flash who will run in back in time to save everyone, but I don't really want to kill one of my favorite superheroes anyways, because he is the Flash and he is awesome like that.

wait. if Flash can enter the timestream, can't he just go back in time and kill Batman or whoever when they're still children and thus beat them?

Yes. It's a good think he's 1, ethical and in his current incarnation, 2: as a rule, a moron with no semblance of common sense. Otherwise there would be no stories to tell.

[Jayngfet]

Blowing up the sun might not be enough, honestly. Keep in mind that to beat up Superboy Prime, Superman had to slam all the way through an active star and directly into what was left of Krypton(or: A planets worth of Kryptonite). He was down for a bit but he ultimately lived.

[Lord Raziere]

Blowing up the sun might not be enough, honestly. Keep in mind that to beat up Superboy Prime, Superman had to slam all the way through an active star and directly into what was left of Krypton(or: A planets worth of Kryptonite). He was down for a bit but he ultimately lived.

Its enough for 99.99% or so of the heroes and villains on Earth. after that, its more of a question of how much are you willing to spend on Kryptonite everything that could possibly defend you and protective-anti kryptonite wear for yourself to keep its radiation from making you fall ill.

[Jayngfet]

Its enough for 99.99% or so of the heroes and villains on Earth. after that, its more of a question of how much are you willing to spend on Kryptonite everything that could possibly defend you and protective-anti kryptonite wear for yourself to keep its radiation from making you fall ill.

There's a difference between spending money on Kryptonite and using more than actually exists for purchase. To be feasable you'd be better off just skipping the sun blasting and simply throwing the remnants of the planet itself towards the earth at near lightspeed.

[Anteros]

There's also the fact that the characters aren't always actually as powerful as Fan says. Supes gets knocked around by street level people regularly, he's also been shot by kryptonite bullets like...47 times before. It's hardly as impossible as claimed. Diana has been hospitalized by Captain Atom exploding, which Atom described to have the force of about 12 nuclear bombs...the Flash ran into a sword for goodness sake. He. Ran. Into. A. Stationary. Object.

Their powers (and intelligence) vary wildly depending on their writer. Taking out the lower tiered versions of the league might actually be possible with enough resources and planning. The higher tiered versions that Fan describes are basically invincible though.

[SowZ]

Flash? Hah, easily the hardest to kill. Durability is lesser to a small extent but it doesn't matter what you shoot at him, what you blow up, what you toss his way. He's faster.

Flash is 15 TRILLION TIMES faster than light, he has attosecond reactions, and can steal the speed from projectiles to make them worthless, and he can run into the timestream even if you annihilate the universe at anything less than those speeds.

Good luck.

And yet Slade was able to stab him with a sword because of 'distracting mines' in Identity Crisis. Just goes to show that all the canon becomes largely irrelevant when the stories are truly being written and the opinions/talent of the writer/needs of the story matter more than consistent abilities.

[Jayngfet]

And yet Slade was able to stab him with a sword because of 'distracting mines' in Identity Crisis. Just goes to show that all the canon becomes largely irrelevant when the stories are truly being written and the opinions/talent of the writer/needs of the story matter more than consistent abilities.

Of course there's the fact that identity crisis is no longer canon, meanwhile the Justice League has gone right back to their usual ridiculous power levels. Or stronger, given one of them has ascended to godhood and all.

[Lord Raziere]

There's a difference between spending money on Kryptonite and using more than actually exists for purchase. To be feasable you'd be better off just skipping the sun blasting and simply throwing the remnants of the planet itself towards the earth at near lightspeed.

I'm not talking about a sun OUTSIDE our solar system when I was saying to blow it up....

[Anteros]

Of course there's the fact that identity crisis is no longer canon, meanwhile the Justice League has gone right back to their usual ridiculous power levels. Or stronger, given one of them has ascended to godhood and all.

I don't think even D.C. knows what's cannon and what isn't any more. There have been a few references to identity crisis in the new 52 though. I've actually gotten a bit more into comics since the recent reboot and the power levels still fluctuate wildly depending on the writer and the demands of the plot. Even if we disregard Identity Crisis, it's still disappointingly common for Flash to trip over stationary objects, as well as other goofiness.

[Fan]

I don't think even D.C. knows what's cannon and what isn't any more. There have been a few references to identity crisis in the new 52 though. I've actually gotten a bit more into comics since the recent reboot and the power levels still fluctuate wildly depending on the writer and the demands of the plot. Even if we disregard Identity Crisis, it's still disappointingly common for Flash to trip over stationary objects, as well as other goofiness.

DC does in fact know what's canon.

That's why they retconned everything pre new 52, and Flash is just as fast as he was pre New 52 and even has a few better durability feats.

Also show me some scans of Superman getting knocked around by street level people post his training with Mongul the 2nd.

Pro tip: You can't. I've actually read all of his comics, all of them. Every single one. There isn't one of them I haven't read. You don't want to step into this arena, other people have already tried and failed.

You want to claim that they aren't actually always as powerful as I claim, back your **** up.

I've provided literal books worth of scans in the past to provide my figures and provided scans of even higher end feats to prove that they aren't the highest end outliers.

Superman in Post Crisis at his highest end outlier was able to absorb an entire sun's worth of anti matter, and believe me, the energy figures on THAT are rather absurd.