Most superheros spend their lives fighting evil transhumanist villains. They don’t tend to be transhumanist themselves, and their superpowers are (in Western tradition) gained by a nonreproducible accident.
Except the archetypal superhero, “superman”, whose powers are reproducible in the literal sense, including to a significant degree with humans. (It is notable that Clark himself doesn’t go out of his way to reproduce half-superbabies. In fact that sounds like something a villain might do and so is quite likely the plot of a comic somewhere.)
The next most famous superhero “Batman” also has powers that are reproducible. He has ridiculous amounts of money, a ridiculous amount of training and practice, an engineering department and brilliant foresight and planning. All of these are ‘just’ hard work and so are reproducible. In fact “The Batman” role even changes hands at times, which means it could be reproduced.
The instantiation of The Hulk I’m most familiar with quite possibly could be considered a transhumanist. Sure, he got his Hulk powers through an accident but that was an accident while actively trying to make himself transhuman through his genetic engineering.
Iron man. That’s not just reproducible. That’s mass-reproducible. In fact the most irritating thing about “The Avengers” is that Stark isn’t going to take the obvious next step: Make a goddam suit for Scarlett Johansson! Her agility and combat prowess would be perfect for controlling a suitably remodeled Iron Man suit—where that suit would offset her vulnerability and relative weakness.
Then there is “Captain America”. Wasn’t the “accident” there that the super-soldier enhancement program was destroyed, leaving only one? He was actively created as part of a (military run) ‘transhumanist’ research program.
Then, again on the ‘anti-reproducible status quo preservation’ side of things there is “X-Men” where one of the movies has trying to reproduce superpowers as the plot by the Villain that needs to be thwarted.
In fact the most irritating thing about “The Avengers” is that Stark isn’t going to take the obvious next step: Make a goddam suit for Scarlett Johansson!
This actually happened in the Ultimates comic, an alternate version of the Avengers.
That and equip all of SHIELD with suits—that kinda happened in The Ultimates too, but it’s stated that Tony only allowed it with an older form of the Iron Man technology. Selfish bastard.
Actually, while The Ultimates got kinda weird as time went on (especially with Ultimate Avengers), it does a good job on the difficulty of keeping technological genies in their bottles.
This actually happened in the Ultimates comic, an alternate version of the Avengers.
I was going to applaud Stark for not failing at rudimentary strategic thinking… but it sounds like this Stark is actually just a sappy romantic trying to woo Natasha with gifts. Oh well, that works too.
Except the archetypal superhero, “superman”, whose powers are reproducible in the literal sense, including to a significant degree with humans. (It is notable that Clark himself doesn’t go out of his way to reproduce half-superbabies. In fact that sounds like something a villain might do and so is quite likely the plot of a comic somewhere.)
The next most famous superhero “Batman” also has powers that are reproducible. He has ridiculous amounts of money, a ridiculous amount of training and practice, an engineering department and brilliant foresight and planning. All of these are ‘just’ hard work and so are reproducible. In fact “The Batman” role even changes hands at times, which means it could be reproduced.
The instantiation of The Hulk I’m most familiar with quite possibly could be considered a transhumanist. Sure, he got his Hulk powers through an accident but that was an accident while actively trying to make himself transhuman through his genetic engineering.
Iron man. That’s not just reproducible. That’s mass-reproducible. In fact the most irritating thing about “The Avengers” is that Stark isn’t going to take the obvious next step: Make a goddam suit for Scarlett Johansson! Her agility and combat prowess would be perfect for controlling a suitably remodeled Iron Man suit—where that suit would offset her vulnerability and relative weakness.
Then there is “Captain America”. Wasn’t the “accident” there that the super-soldier enhancement program was destroyed, leaving only one? He was actively created as part of a (military run) ‘transhumanist’ research program.
Then, again on the ‘anti-reproducible status quo preservation’ side of things there is “X-Men” where one of the movies has trying to reproduce superpowers as the plot by the Villain that needs to be thwarted.
This actually happened in the Ultimates comic, an alternate version of the Avengers.
That and equip all of SHIELD with suits—that kinda happened in The Ultimates too, but it’s stated that Tony only allowed it with an older form of the Iron Man technology. Selfish bastard.
Actually, while The Ultimates got kinda weird as time went on (especially with Ultimate Avengers), it does a good job on the difficulty of keeping technological genies in their bottles.
I was going to applaud Stark for not failing at rudimentary strategic thinking… but it sounds like this Stark is actually just a sappy romantic trying to woo Natasha with gifts. Oh well, that works too.