Basic Action Super Heroes!

This a problem I see all the time in wolverine. Because his primary weapon is obviously quite lethal, it creates a problem with writing him. In the comics, he doesn't really have much of a problem as long as he can kill the target (and by 'can', I mean 'may'). But this causes obvious problems in situations where he isn't allowed to kill, such as for example in cartoons. Though he was allowed to be appear in x-men evolution, he was strictly forbidden from using his claws on anyone. In fact, I think the only time you see him pierce or cut anything with his claws was when he used his claws to skewer an apple. Literally. The show's infamous for that, and I think that may be why when he appeared earth's mightiest heroes, he rather savagely hacks apart a bunch of dinosaurs (though you can only see his shadow while he's doing this...)

To me, wolverine (and katana too) are good demonstrations why you don't give heroes real weapons. Knocking people around is one thing, giving them stuff that they can only slice and dice with is another.

Today, I started thinking about making a sort of archer-type character, but I got to thinking. The character's supposed to be a hero, but she really can't hit people with her arrows without causing serious harm. She could use the bow to deliver things like smoke bombs and maybe grapple lines, or to staple people to a wall, but that's all I can think of. I'd like her to be a hero, but I find it hard to think how she could use her bow as anything other than a gimmick-delivering device. Granted, I also envision her as a martial artist, who is a decent melee combatant, but still I'm kinda uncomfortable with her using something that could easily kill.

What do you guys think? Is there a way to give a character an obviously lethal weapon without making them a murderer? I know there's characters like green arrow and hawkeye, but I've never really seen much of these characters, honestly the only time I've ever seen green arrow is in one episode of justice league unlimited (a show I lost interest in after the first episode or two). I think it would be pretty haphazard at the very least.

edit: fixed typos

This is something that Green Arrow struggled with on the live action TV show. He killed numerous people in Season 1, and then had a crisis of conscience, so he started doing more non-lethal shots*, disarming shots and so forth.

* non-lethal by the standards of action movies, where you can always shoot someone in the leg or shoulder without having them bleed out.

With Wolverine's claws there's not really a good work-around. With archers, it all depends on how campy you're willing to be. Blunt shock/stun arrows, boxing glove arrows, explosive arrows that always manage to land at the target's feet knocking him back with non-lethal concussive force (aka 80s TV explosions). There are a lot of possibilities with a more silver age approach. With gritty realism, you're more limited.

The more realistic you get with superhero game the more it starts to break down.

Three Words: Boxing Glove Arrows.

They do the same damage as regular arrows, without getting all PG-13.

If you think that is too cheesy, have them be blunt impact arrows that don't have a boxing glove shape to them.

I did actually just have a thought...

TASER ARROWS!!!!!!!

Or I could just make her a demon hunter or something...That's an idea I had earlier.

Sort of a theme in my superhero setting, where fantasy elements like magic are much more prevalent, and science fiction is virtually non-existent. Mad scientists really do little more than manufacture military technology that civilians legally can't own. As for why I would have this? Well, for one I don't care for science fiction. But mostly, I just found it weird that superhero worlds have so much advanced technology yet average people pretty much aren't anymore advanced than we are! I came up with this mostly just to fix that issue. Off-topic, I know. All I'm saying is it will NOT be that unusual for my characters (and likely my sister too) to be fighting supernatural monsters.

I hear that. Why doesn't Reed Richards make free unlimited supplies of electricity and various other "breakthroughs" he has developed over the years available to everyone instead of hording them to himself and loaning them to other superheroes on rare occasions?

"Those peasants don't need unlimited electricity! Let them kill each other for oil." Just doesn't seem like something Reed Richards would say, but seems to be the impact of him withholding his inventions from the general public.

When I was a kid my dad would take me bird hunting with him and gave me a set of "bird arrows" (which I don't think is the official term for them) which had something like an 1.5 inch diameter rubber ball attacked to the end. Getting hit by such an arrow from a real bow (not the 20 lb draw kid's bow that I had) would be very painful.

I couldn't find exactly what I was using but did find a "soft-tipped" version for archery tag (can you imagine such a thing - thankfully, they just use 25 lb and under bows).

http://tac-ellas.webs.com/apps/photos/p ... =174053128

A hero might just replace the soft-tip heads with ones of hard rubber. With bow of higher draw weight (40-70 lbs), even these arrows could have lethal effects if they hit a (Normal) target in a vulnerable area. A mixture of these blunt arrow heads (in soft and hard formats) as well as the traditional pointed ones would make a traditional, non-gadget archer character a well-rounded super.

BASHMAN wrote:I hear that. Why doesn't Reed Richards make free unlimited supplies of electricity and various other "breakthroughs" he has developed over the years available to everyone instead of hording them to himself and loaning them to other superheroes on rare occasions?

"Those peasants don't need unlimited electricity! Let them kill each other for oil." Just doesn't seem like something Reed Richards would say, but seems to be the impact of him withholding his inventions from the general public.

I agree that this is an odd stance for a "hero" to take. The only rationalizing for it that I can come up with is that we humans do nothing better than figure out ways to kill each other with greater efficiency. Governments would quickly subvert that Kia Rio-sized quantum generator, which powers whole cities, into a backpack-sized power source for qiga-watt level laser rifles, able to cut tanks in half. Mr. Richards would probably feel that its better to keep any advanced tech out of general civilian (and military) access.

We know how to provide 100% clean energy to the world right now, there just isn't enough Helium-3 on Earth to use as fuel. So that's one reason you can say that hi-tech inventions aren't in wider circulation - they require some extremely rare components (basically the same reason that Batman has kryptonite bullets in case he ever needs them, but every crook in Metropolis doesn't).

Also, some of Reed's gadgets aren't really very impressive in retropect.

Plus, Reed Richard's inventions usually have some sort of problem that prevents it, like accidentally opening a portal to * or something (though still not as many as some of Hank's).