Tights -- I think tights are probably important, or at least a silly mask and one of your superpowers is keeping the mask on your face with no visible means of support (see Robin and Nightwing).

Also, Cataclysm arrived here and since I came home during a tornado warning -- well, it just all seems so right.

Tights are more popular than superpowers.

Well, superpowers don't look nearly so good stretched over those lovely superhero quads.

no visible means of support

Spirit gum. Clearly. That stuff is awesome.

Well, superpowers don't look nearly so good stretched over those lovely superhero quads.

Two words for you:

Clark/Bruce.

IJS.

How are you defining superpowers?

As what makes the hero a superhero. Be it being a brick, or shooting energy bolts, or being really fast, or squirting sticky goo out of your wrists, or being bugfuck insane.

Mmm, yeah, tights. Good point.

(plei just made my day lalalalalala)

As what makes the hero a superhero. Be it being a brick, or shooting energy bolts, or being really fast, or squirting sticky goo out of your wrists, or being bugfuck insane.

But being bugfuck insane (why yes, I am assuming Batman here. Don't I always?) is very specifically posited as not a superpower -- powers aren't just what makes a hero a hero, they're something supernatural or extranatural. The whole premise of the batverse is that it's the mission, not the being-from-some-weird-planet, that makes the hero.

Actually, I think the mission belongs on your list.

I was wondering how to express what I think you're saying with "the mission." Batman's I get (and I was kind of joking about insanity as a superpower, but that's a whole 'nother thesis), and Wonder Woman's is canon. But what's the mission of, say, The Flash? Does every superhero have a mission? Can they have a default setting of "stop bad guys?"

Save the world?

Save the world?

A lot.