Greetings and salutations, my dearest viewers. My name is Tareeza. Or if you prefer my full title, Doctor Altinz Tareeza. Now, don't let the name fool you: I'm not actually a doctor. And I'm not one of the many superpowered warriors that inhabit this world. I'm merely an alchemist of Bluestone. If you don't recognize that name, don't fret over it. It's unimportant. So you may be asking why someone such as I would gaze into the affairs of another world? Well, it's because I'm intrigued by it. See, the comic book universe operates under some obviously very inconsistent logic. And when there's such disregard for consistency in even the abilities of the inhabitants of a world, loopholes can be found. So for the sake of science, I'm going the many issues these heroes and villains would cause for not just others, but themselves, just by existing.

Now, before I get started here, I'll emphasize this is not new material. Dozens of others have posed the same thought experiments before. And as such, if you're familiar with these things, chances are my conclusions will be rather predictable. But who knows? Maybe I'll mention something you haven't considered before. Also, yes. I am fully aware that I'm just finding flaws in a world that's meant to be fun first, and accurate second. I'm bringing these to attention because it's actually an interesting subject.

So let's start with the first hero to come to mind: The Flash.

Case 1: The Flash: Banned from the Olympics:

Oh, Flash. The lovable knucklehead who's color palette makes his costume look like a viable redesign for Condiment King. Anyway, speed is undeniably a very sweet perk, in the game of natural selection, but if Flash actually existed, there'd be a multitude of problems with his powers. Now, I'm not even gonna touch on the fact that he got his powers by being struck by lightning. It's simply too easy to point out how that's ludicrous. What I want to bring to your attention is that if Flash followed the rules of the real world... he'd be dead. Why is that? Friction. You probably recall how rubbing wood together creates heat. And with enough heat, comes fire. If Barry were to run at the incredible speeds he's shown to be capable of, the friction his body would create with the air molecules around him would turn him into a giant fireball. Like you know in the movies, when a spaceship comes in for re-entry, and starts getting engulfed by flames? It's pretty much that, in a nutshell.

But Flash is lucky, in that he has a canonical explanation for how this doesn't happen. I cannot recall the source, so feel free to do some research of your own if you so choose, but in one comic, the reader is informed that the material in Flash's costume prevents this exact problem from occurring. So count your blessings, Flash. You're safe on that count. Or atleast, you would be, were it not for the holes in the mask exposing your mouth area and your eyes! Call me crazy, but your eyes are kinda important when you're running at insane speeds like you do. And if you think that's bad, consider this: the faster you go, the quicker you cover more distance. So if you're running hundreds of miles an hour, and you can't see, what's stopping you from crashing into a car? Or a building? Or even a person, who happened to be in your way? This is the exact reason you can't take your eyes off the road when you drive.

But what if we ignored that issue altogether by saying... I dunno, that flash's protection extends to his exposed skin. Kinda stupid, but bear with me here. Our man in red spandex STILL isn't safe. You probably think I'm referring to his need to react to obstacles in his way when he runs, similar to before. Considering the normal human eye can't process what it sees fast enough, before Flash reaches it. But Flash has also been shown to have increased processing speed to avoid this very problem. No, the real ace in the hole here is that the Flash is one brightly colored nuclear bomb waiting to happen! Gives that whole "Flash" name a whole new meaning, huh? Remember, Flash is a man who has regularly been shown to be able to run on water. And on the extreme end, run fast enough to time travel. Moving that fast has some very serious consequences. When Barry runs into the air, the atoms in that air wouldn't have enough time to move out of the way of him. So his body would be slamming them together. The result is that it would create a nuclear explosion that would easily kill not only him, but also any normal person who was unlucky enough to be within the blast radius.

And one final nail in the coffin? Even if he survived all this devastating stuff, his speed would cause his organs (namely his brain) to be violently jerked one direction, and then when he stops, they come to a screeching halt and slam headfirst into his bones in the other direction! So perhaps his lungs or heart could crash into his rib cage and rupture themselves, or his brain would be sent on a collision course into his skull and give him the world's most serious concussion. So remember to run responsibly, kids. This is an example of how NOT to treat your body.

So sorry, Flash. We tried to give you a break, but not even you can outrun your own death.

Case 2: Green Lantern: Gonna take fear down to zero:

I'll admit, I have a soft spot for dear old Hal Jordan. We both wear the same color attire, after all. And since Flash was one of the most extreme instances of superpowers backfiring, there's nowhere else to go but up. Buuuut that doesn't mean he gets a free pass. Instead of accidentally killing people or himself, Green Lantern and the other lantern corps, have power that's either almost useless, or downright world breaking. For the sake of simplicity, let's focus on the green lantern corps. They have the power to make objects as strong as their will. Pat yourselves on the back, that's a neat power. But "willpower" is very poorly defined. I mean, everyone knows what will is, I'm not saying that. But where does that gradient of power start and end? The way I see it, there are two possibilities.

The first, is that Green Lantern has the willpower he possesses at that precise moment. If this is the case, he would never be useful at the start of a fight. Because will is something that only manifests in the face of adversity. In the face of danger, or something else of the sort. So unless he's fighting someone like Doomsday, where he should know ahead of time just how severe of a threat he is, it's gonna be rather difficult for his willpower to manifest. You wouldn't say you have a strong will while taking on a completely normal human like the Penguin, would you? No. The second possibility is that Green Lantern's ring channels his will at the strongest it has been thus far. If that's the case, the ring's power has no limit! I mean sure, Green Lantern is weak to the color yellow, but he's battled the Sinestro Corps hundreds of times, and it doesn't seem to hinder him that much, at the end of the day. Now, you may not understand how I could arrive at that conclusion, but let me set up a hypothetical scenario, yeah?

Let's say two green lanterns of equal power train together. As in, they fight one on one until one or both can't fight anymore. Such battles would push their will to new heights, given they're fighting someone just as capable as themselves. This process could repeat over and over again, until some sort of power goal had been achieved. And that's not even counting that a lantern can wear more than one ring, as proven by Hal Jordan on his way to becoming Parallax. If there is a limit, where is it set? What is the maximum potential of a lantern? Because having no cap on your power would sorta undermine any physical threat in your way, doesn't it? And the red lanterns would be even worse in this respect, because they're powered by anger. An emotion that is very easy to generate. Don't lie, you know it's true.

So Hal my boy, you may be a laughingstock for your bad movie, but you'll have a special place in my heart.

Case 3: The invisible woman: Don't play hide and seek with her:

And to end our day, how about everyone's favorite power of all. No need to be ashamed, we've all thought about the things we would do if no one could know we were there. Just kidding. You should totally be ashamed, you sick freaks! Stellar comedy aside, let's address the elephant in the room here: the invisible woman's powers are... kinda obsolete thanks to modern technology. I mean, her biggest application is for stealth, right? That's the entire point of being able to turn invisible. But considering she's gonna be infiltrating organizations with some seriously heavy security, like A.I.M, H.Y.D.R.A, or Doctor Doom's castle, it's probably not a stretch to say their cameras have thermal vision. Rendering her powers completely useless, unless she can also lower her temperature to hide the fact that she's... y'know... alive.

But that's the least of her problems. If she truly is invisible, and her name does indeed imply as much, that means light would travel through her or around her. Because we can only see something of light bounces off of it, and said light returns to our eyes. But in giving that single explanation, I have just told you precisely the problem I'm alluding to. Sure, light doesn't bounce off of her for others to see. Pat yourself on the back, blonde. But that means her eyes aren't getting hit with light either. So unless you're familiar with the drawbacks of being blind, you're in for a rough night. And let's say that she's in a fight with the Trapster, and he gets a good shot on her with his glue gun. The glue would not only submerge her, but also make her just as easy to see to the naked eye as the fact that the new New Warriors comic series is a bad idea.

Conclusion:

So I hope you've all enjoyed this little analysis of mine. Hopefully you don't take this as a serious critique of comic books, because I get it. Nobody has the time to research every little thing about science and try to cram it all into a fictional story somehow. Doing that would really suck the fun out of what makes these worlds so... well, super. And hey, maybe you learned something today that you didn't know before. If you wanna learn more about these kind of "what if" scenarios, TED-ED has an entire video library covering what if you had certain superpowers in real life. So with all that said, I should probably get back to my research. Lady Sera is definitely gonna be impressed with my collection of potions when she gets back from her little inter-dimensional escapade. This has been Tareeza, signing out.