Alan Moore Claims Superhero Powers Would Be Useless in Real Life
According to iconic Watchmen writer Alan Moore, superheroes’ powers would be useless if they existed in real life. Moore expressed his subversive thoughts during a storytelling course for BBC Maestro.
The DC Universe includes many characters with extraordinary abilities, ranging from Aquaman who can communicate with fish to Green Lantern, who can manifest anything he can imagine through his power ring. In recent years, many writers and artists have grounded superheroes in stories that are intended to resemble the real world as a way to connect with readers in a fresh way. Whether Superman is reimagined as Homelander in Garth Ennis’ The Boys or Batman is given a more realistic kevlar suit in a DC Black Label story, creators have frequently tried to bridge the gap between fiction and reality. Ironically, Alan Moore’s Watchmen has inspired many of these modern reinventions of mainstream heroes.
However, Moore believes that if people possessed superpowers in the real world, their abilities would be useless. In a storytelling course for BBC Maestro, the writer spoke to how he thinks superheroes would utilize their abilities if they were real. Moore elaborated on the thought, saying, “If you think about it, most superpowers are useless. If you have heat vision, how is that going to benefit you in any way? Well, you can set fire to things. If you've got a box of matches, you can set fire to things. The only thing heat vision would be good for is if you became some sort of short order chef."
In contrast to the way in which Watchmen presented superheroes in a more grounded light based on their distinct personalities and shared nihilism, Moore has a point in his theory of superpowers grounded in mundanity. According to him, they would loose their epic, larger than life quality, becoming obsolete in their practicality. The writer continued to give the example of super speed, saying, “If you could run really fast, what is there that's that important that you would have to get there that early, what good would that power actually be? What job would you get with super speed? You'd be in pizza delivery. There would be all these super speed characters flashing around the city, delivering peoples’ pizza.”
Although stories like Watchmen and The Boys are cynical in their approach to how superpowers would affect the average person’s psychology, Moore’s comments make such premises appear irrelevant. With speedsters like the Flash, the writer theorizes that such heroes wouldn’t be saving people— they would just be good at their minimum wage job. Similarly, Superman wouldn’t be defending the world from alien invaders with his heat vision. Instead, he would have a more convenient way to light a campfire or cook dinner. For a writer known to purpose superheroes as a menace to society, it’s ironic that his actual idea of “realistic superpowers” is so dismissive of what they could accomplish. Alan Moore’s unconventional outlook might not make for exciting storytelling, but it does have the ring of truth to it.