Comic Book Heroes with Super Jump?

[DoctorDitko]

AFAIK, it was absolutely the animation team trying to make it easier on themselves, and DC just said, "Whatever, he can already do almost anything, flying isn't much of a stretch!"

 

The Silver Age later took this to extremes, with far less justification. Leading to the Super Creep Problem.

 

If anyone cares, and doesn't know, the radio show was responsible for the invention of Kryptonite, when Bud Collier desperately needed a vacation, so they came up with a plot device that would weaken the Man of Steel so that he could be whispered by another voice talent. Thus giving the writers a slight antidote to the Super Creep Problem.

 

Edited October 9, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[drbuzzard]

I don't believe anyone mentioned the Toad. He would be one of the first super jumpers, and it was his only power initially. 

 

Oh, and since someone mentioned the LSH, Bouncing Boy. 

[Wobegone]

DC Comics had quite a few who could super leap(as it's called in DC).  Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Doomsday, and Lobo all have super leap.  

[Techwright]

Inspector Gadget.  

 

Surely one of Ben10's avatars can do it, though I never stuck around to figure them all out.

 

I'm guessing The Thing likely could.  He's gone toe-to-toe with Hulk, and although Ben Grimm is weaker, he's definitely got the strength.

 

But one group not being mentioned are the characters that have connections to the main characters.  That is every Kryptonian, and even Bizarro, for Superman.  why, even Doomsday was introduced as jumping.  Most every Hulk adaptation, including Abomination.  

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

OK, Ben Grimm could certainly superjump, but he's a test pilot with access to a Fantasticar.

He gets an all-season pass!

Plus, he can take the Hulk out with judo. Smarter, not harder FTFW!

 

And when Reed or Plasticman (or Elongated Man, who was created because Julius Schwartz didn't realize DC had bought the rights to Plasticman -- true story!) needs to cover lots of ground, they could pull off some serious leaps!

 

[Sir Myshkin]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:55 PM, Sovera said:

I think it's just that everyone agrees super jumping is a terrible thing to do in practice. With the Hulk it's just hand waived, but THINK about it. You're super leaping, have zero control where you're going to land. Oh look, it's an old granny walking her dog. Welp, I have no control where I'm landing so she goes splat.

If I recall the source correctly there was commentary in Netflix’s Jessica Jones about this. Jones had the ability to “leap tall buildings” yet chose not to because it tended to end badly for specifically the quoted reasons. 

[Mister Mass]

19 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

And I'm pretty sure that was due to either ease of animation, or confusion to someone reviewing the animation in that the "super leap" was confused for flying and they just stuck with the idea since. I'd have to look it up to be sure, though.

The Fleischer studios immediately realized that animating flight was easier than animating leaps.  Proto-DC okayed the change, then began to implement flying in the comics to match the cartoons.  But this was essentially recognizing a process that was already in place in the comics: Superman had often demonstrated an ability to control his leaps that defied the laws of physics - often with the explanation that his cape allowed him to alter his trajectory, but often with no explanation at all.  Being able to fly  just made it easier to explain how Superman could pull off some of the super feats that his writers & artists wanted him to do.
 

This actually it pulled into the infamous Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit.  Neither character could fly at first, but both were shown demonstrating increasing control on their leaps, & eventually flying on very similar timescales.  The Proto-DC lawyers pulled a bunch of examples of super-stunts performed by Superman that were duplicated in Captain Marvel comics a few months later.  The judge looked ready to rule in Proto-DC’s favor, until the Fawcett lawyers pulled examples showing that many super-stunts performed by Superman were previously performed by Captain Marvel.  So both sides were shown to have engaged in selective use of evidence, & the lawsuit dragged on for years.

 

Since I am pontificating on comics history, I do want to note that the likely source for Superman’s Action #1 super leaping was John Carter of Mars.  Carter was a prominent star of newspaper comics, in addition to pulp novels, & his creator Edgar Rice Burroughs explicitly stated that the reason the earth man native could leap such prodigious distances on Barsoom was because Mars’ gravity was so much lower than Earth’s.  The same explanation was given for Superman, as native of the high gravity planet Krypton.  Joe Schuster learned to draw by tracing newspaper comics, & his leaping Superman was likely taken from renderings of John Carter.

 

One more fun tidbit - the first Kryptonian travel power wasn’t flight or super jump, it was super speed.  The very first panel of the newspaper comic strip that Siegel & Schuster hoped to sell was of a super speeding Jor-L running home from his lab, establishing that Kryptonians had superpowers naturally because of their advanced evolution.  When the boys from a suburb of Cleveland couldn’t sell their Superman strip to a newspaper comics distributor, they cut up the panels, which had been set in standard newspaper format, & reformatted them for comics magazine size, & reluctantly sold it to a comic book company looking to fill the 1st issue of their 4th monthly anthology title - Action.  And to everyone’s surprise, they changed history.

[Johnny]

All Might from My Hero Academia certainly used Super Jump. Making course adjustments with mere muscle flexing, he was effectively flying/gliding.

[Mister Mass]

16 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

And when Reed or Plasticman (or Elongated Man, who was created because Julius Schwartz didn't realize DC had bought the rights to Plasticman -- true story!) needs to cover lots of ground, they could pull off some serious leaps!

 

Actually, not quite true story.  Plastic Man was one of Quality Comics’ big stars.  As superheroes fell out of fashion in the mid to late 40’s, Plas was able to avoid cancellation by morphing from a superhero comic to more of a humor comic, particularly with the artwork of the brilliant Jack Cole.  So he was one of the handful of superheroes still active in the mid 50’s, outlasting even Fawcett’s Marvel Family.  But Quality was ready to get out of the game in 1956 & sold 4 of its most successful titles to DC - Blackhawk, GI Combat, Heart Throbs, & Robin Hood Tales - so 2 war comics, a romance title, & an adventure title.  There is no evidence that DC purchased Plastic Man or any of the defunct superhero characters at that time.

 

So when the Elongated Man made his first appearance in 1960 (a year before Reed & the Fantastic Four) DC wasn’t duplicating a character a character it already owned - unless you count Jimmy Olsen, who had been making appearances as Elastic Lad since 1958.  DC did begin publishing a Plastic Man title in 1966, during Batmania, apparently in hopes of launching a cartoon series with the character.  No cartoon & low sales led to the cancellation of the title until the 70’s, when Plas hit the small screen in cartoon form & got his title back briefly.  

 

Other Quality heroes were rebooted by DC as the Freedom Fighters in 1973, getting their own title in 1976, during the DC Explosion - only to be cancelled right before the infamous DC Implosion in 1978.  Almost coterminously, DC I believe leased, then bought, the rights to the Marvel Family from the heirs of Fawcett Comics in 1972, & started publishing the adventures of arguably their greatest rival from the Golden Age.  So I always assumed that DC had done the same with Quality heroes at this time, purchasing the rights to the characters & publishing new & reprinted adventures.

 

But there are many comic book historians who believe that DC had no legal right to the characters.  They note that the characters would have fallen back into the public domain if their trademarks weren’t being maintained by their original publishers, & since a decade or more had passed between the last published usage by the original publishers & DC’s subsequent usage, these historians believe it is clear that the trademarks had not been protected.

 

I don’t pretend to be a legal expert, but I do note that one of the Quality characters that DC revived as part of the Freedom Fighters was Phantom Lady.  After Quality stopped publishing her adventures in 1943, she was dormant for several years, until Fox Feature Syndicate gave her a solo title in 1947, with art by noted “good girl” artist Matt Baker.  Risqué cover art from this title would be part of Werther’s 1954 “Seduction of the Innocent” attack on comics as contributing to juvenile delinquency.  Phantom Lady stories would be printed by a few other comic companies on the late 50’s & early 60’s.  So it would be hard to argue that Quality was protecting their trademark on the character by the time DC claimed ownership of the character in the early 70’s.

 

But as one of those precious few comic readers from the mid-70’s who enjoyed the Freedom Fighters, all of these facts are irrelevant.  Uncle Sam, the Black Condor, the Ray, the Human Bomb, & Phantom Lady (along with Plastic Man, Doll Man, Miss America, Kid Eternity, the original Quicksilver, Firebrand, & the rest of the Quality heroes) are part of DC lore now to stay. 😉

[ShardWarrior]

On 10/7/2020 at 6:07 PM, Player2 said:

The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman were jumpers.

Thanks.  Now I have that theme song stuck in my head.  ☹️

[Player2]

22 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Thanks.  Now I have that theme song stuck in my head.  ☹️

 

 

You're welcome.

[Vanden]

On 10/7/2020 at 6:49 PM, Hexquisite said:

Grasshopper was an example of super-jump being used by someone who didn't fully understand the full power of their means of leaping.

I don't think I fully understand it either, I mean look at that left leg. What shape is it?

[srmalloy]

On 10/7/2020 at 12:39 PM, EmmySky said:

Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Sounds like super jump to me.

Actually, if you go way back, he didn't have flight when he first appeared in 1938; all he had was super jump, and could leap to a height of 1/8 of a mile. He didn't get Fly until February of 1940, in the Superman radio show.

 

Also, it's not the traditional way it's implemented, but Bouncing Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes could be classified as having super jump.

[DoctorDitko]

6 hours ago, Mister Mass said:

Actually, not quite true story.

Wow, fascinating!

 

I had read what I reported in an interview with Julius Schwartz, so the reporter must have gotten it wrong. Because comic industry celebrities never misremember their history.

>KAFF< Excelsior >KAFF!<

 

Thanks for the details!

My introduction to the Freedom Fighters was in a ~100ish issue of JLA, and I still remember the scene of the Batman scaling the Nazi tower and terrifying the "Gott in Himmel!" out of some nasty brownshirts!

 

(Phantom Lady was pretty sweet, but I always liked the Daffy-Duck-I-can-do-this-trick-but-only-onceness of the Human Bomb!)

 

 

[lokpyrite]

Titan from the Superpowereds books but it's a series of novels not a comic 

[Twisted Toon]

3 hours ago, lokpyrite said:

Titan from the Superpowereds books but it's a series of novels not a comic 

Not only Titan, but, Energy-absorber-lad Jack-of-all, and Ettin also Super Leap.

[Sakura Tenshi]

forgive me for bringing anime into this but Saitama, of all his powers, explicitly does not fly. He jumps good.

 

 

Speaking of, debatable he's a super hero but Samurai Jack learned to Jump Good.

 

[Johnny]

9 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

forgive me for bringing anime into this but Saitama, of all his powers, explicitly does not fly. He jumps good.

Saitama seems to lean more on superspeed, though. His sidekick, Genos, routinely scouts by leaping between rooftops.

[Outrider_01]

On 10/7/2020 at 1:13 PM, Lines said:

Super Mario.

YouTube --> Mash Channel --> One Jump Man, Luigi

[Outrider_01]

On 10/7/2020 at 1:13 PM, Lines said:

Super Mario.

YouTube --> Mash Channel --> One Jump Man, Luigi

[Outrider_01]

On 10/7/2020 at 1:13 PM, Lines said:

Super Mario.

YouTube --> Mash Channel --> One Jump Man, Luigi

[Ratso]

Almost any character that Jack Kirby drew...

[DocSkinner]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:55 PM, Sovera said:

I think it's just that everyone agrees super jumping is a terrible thing to do in practice. With the Hulk it's just hand waived, but THINK about it. You're super leaping, have zero control where you're going to land. Oh look, it's an old granny walking her dog. Welp, I have no control where I'm landing so she goes splat.

 

Cars, buildings or houses (USA houses with that fame of being built out of carboard), people, even obstacles. Leaping, no control where ever the heck you'll be landing dozens of kilometers away and weighting something close to a ton. I'm not sure if even most bridges would take to a terminal velocity one ton small surface (relatively) object falling on it.

 

Kind of lampooned in The Tick as every leap is shown damaging the buildings he lands on.

[DocSkinner]

Double post, sorry.

Edited October 12, 2020 by DocSkinner