Flying? Super speed or strength? Invisibility? Teleportation? These are the sort of superpowers everyone always picks. But I’ve always had a very particular list of desired powers, and here they are.
The Punch Through Time would allow me to punch the writer of any letter sent to a newspaper of magazine, regardless of the time that has passed since they initially wrote the missive. This one was devised years ago after reading some of the insane letters printed by Dragon magazine back in the early 1980s. It’s a mysterious and uncharacteristically (for me) violent power that I probably never would have actually used.
With the near-death of print this power could be updated to include online comments, which could certainly keep a wielder busy considering the toxic ‘discussion’ so prevalent online these days. Writers of such comments may think again if a superhero with this power existed.
The Telestrator Of The Devil is a power that would give me the ability to draw on a TV screen so every viewer could view your creations. At the least you could send funny messages to millions, and at best you could strike a blow against untruth, deception and propaganda. While this one was developed after watching too much shopping TV back in the 1990s, it would certainly be more relevant and useful today.
Given that TV is also essentially dead, and that no-one under 50 seems to even know what a telestrator is, this one has also upgraded over the years to the reality-warping ability to change the words on any signs or billboards in the real world. Imagine the fun!
The last power – Franchise Teleportation – is the one I’d most like to have in real life. It’s a simple one: I could teleport between franchise locations. Walk into Maccas in the USA and walk out in Australia or Japan or anywhere else I’d been. This cosmic power had an important restriction: I would need had to have visited the target first. So I couldn’t teleport to any McDonald’s (or Starbucks, or KFC, or Walmart), only between the ones I’d ever visited. If I had this power I’d probably use it almost every day 🙂
Alas I’m no superhero. I can’t bend reality or punch through time or take daily trips to arcades in Japan. But wouldn’t the world be more interesting if I could?