Disabled Superheroes

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's an interesting post about disabled superheroes with attention to combinations of disabilities and superpowers. 

One reason I think supports such combinations is that the acquisition of superpowers is often violent.  If you don't get some kind of regenerative ability, you are rather likely to sustain permanent damage: Dr. Laser has disfiguring scars.  Other times it may be transient but still really uncomfortable: Aquariana has hypersensitive skin so she can't wear clothes comfortably, which might or might not improve.  Certain causes that may be less violent can still have negative side effects: Koroleva is a supervillain whose powers probably came from radiation -- her parents were evacuated from Chernobyl -- and her right hand has fused fingers.

Another obvious reason is that superhero work is dangerous.  Soldiers, police, firefighters, etc. all work high-risk jobs and have a consequently high rate of retiring due to disability.  Cheersquad has Super-Speed but is mostly paralyzed now; he used to drive a zoom ambulance until someone crashed into it.  Then again, some people keep working despite disabilities.  Dr. Doohickey lost his legs and kept going.  Valor's Widow deals with monumental grief.

Factors can combine, too: Groundhog has Flight, but never uses it due to agoraphobia, acrophobia, and weak lungs.  It manifested when he was an infant, he went sailing up into the sky, and the altitude injured his lungs before anyone could get him down.  Then his parents kept him indoors while he was growing up.

Comments

Disability and superheroes

[dialecticdreamer]

-- It /really/ tends to follow the 'Daredevil' script, better than 'normal', not-really-a-disability, and it /PEEVES/ me to no end.

I mean, /honestly/, could you imagine the hue and cry if /all/ redheads were portrayed as psychic? No one, but no one would tolerate that, even if it were /always/ a positive portrayal.

And what if all blue-eyed people were portrayed as morally 'right' and perf-- (oh, wait... we did that for a long, long time... Sigh.)

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

You know, I'd like to see a superhero [or hera] who's power come about because of their disability.. not in a DareDevil sort of way, which is more a common origin, but more like: Well, for example, imagine a tetra-paraplegic with a powered exoskeleton controlled by brain/machine interface... now imagine she/he built that themselves and just kept tinkering with it. Add in a dash of super-science and give it tactical mounts for weapons... and boom, sort of ironman.

Or if you want to go down another route, given the sort of will-power that's needed to overcome disabilities and function in a world designed for able-bodied people, imagine that with even a touch of psi or magic! You ccould go a long way with a little of that and lot of stubborn.

My point being, I'm sick of seeing disabilities touted as handicaps to be overcome, or flaws to balance out superpowers. It takes a near-superhuman effort to adapt and move past being disabled into differently able [or so I'm told]... what if they just kept on going? What if, that is what makes them super?

What if they were just people who took the stick they'd just been handed the shitty end of, and used it to beat life with it?!

[patina.livejournal.com]

Hmm, what happened to Groundhog sounds awfully ironic. I'm going to have to read more of your heroes fiction.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I don't know. If superheroes are common you're going to get super-scientists and super-mages and some of them are going to develop super-healing and then disabilities in general might be a thing of the past. Or a cosmetic thing where your replacement limbs look weird.