Cut the most useless member of the following teams, however you personally define useless...lack of power, redundancy, bad attitude, whatever.
In the cases of the JLA, JSA and Avengers, who have had so many classic line ups, please state which line up you're talking about. Add any team you'd like as well.
Fantastic Four-Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben
Authority-Jenny Quantum, apollo, Midnighter, Hawksmoor, Engineer, Doctor, Swift
Perfectly valid.
I like the archers, personally. Realistically they bring more with their personalities than their power set. Still, i'd never sell them short in a fight.
Fantastic Four - has to be Ben or Johnny, and if I have to pick one I'll go with Ben.
Reed has the brains & tech and considering the things he's done over the years he can do more with prep against more powerful enemies than anyone else on the team. With a little prep he could solo the rest of the team. Sue has the most power and with no prep could solo the rest of the team, and the whole PMS aspect of her modern personality makes her a dangerous opponent. Johnny's flame and flight come in handy too and he has the nova blast, potentially the team's most devastating single attack. As for Thing... he has strength. No speed, no flight, no particular brains, no other powers.
If they need a building held up? Sue can do it with force fields.
Need to smash down a wall? Sue can probably do something with ff or Johnny can blast it.
Need to fight a brick? If he's Thing level or lower Sue can probably beat him with ff. If he's more powerful than Thing she probably still has a better chance with her power levels these days.
JLA - Aquaman. The guy can just swim fast. OK just kidding, Black Canary or Green Arrow. They are both kind of redundant and underpowered, but no denying the archers are useful sometimes, just ask Hawkeye.
JSA - that patriot/america guy, or whoever that guy with the whip was. Don't remember him or his name, can't even be bothered googling him. He has no right to be on that team.
Defenders - Nighthawk. I once made a thread about who can Nighthawk actually defeat and I think the conclusive answer was nobody. I don't think he ever won an actual fight. I think he hit Spider-Man across the room once which was probably the pinnacle of his career.
Hawkeye's an obvious choice, but I think this is a reasonable one too.
For the more powerful Avengers line-up, Thor is basically just another flying brick, but Hype does the "Hulk-level" stuff, Skinny starman does the Silver Surfer-lite feats etc.
The "One man army" stuff, demolishing the opposition, that's Hulk's forte more often than not.
And we don't see him doing anything at all, when it comes to magic, so yes ... extraneous team member.
Yeah, Swift absolutely for the Authority. Useless.
Batman and Robin - Robin. He's like a redundant Batman-lite but not as good at prep, fighting, deductive reasoning, gadgets, etc. Isn't filthy rich. Doesn't look cool, or intimidating, doesn't have a batmobile or a batcave, or a mansion, can't say things like "I'm Batman!" or "I'm the goddamn Batman!" Stick to the Titans, Robin. There's a reason why they don't let you into the JLA.
Simon Baz - is he in a team yet? If so then Simon Baz for that team. Worthless character.
[QUOTE=14907193]Originally posted by riv6672
[B]
Fantastic Four-Cut: Ben
Authority- Swift
Defenders- Valkyrie. You need a mystic who's not as good as strange, a flying brick not as good as Namor, or a land brick not as good as Hulk? Hellcat has her demonic powers, and Nighthawk can lead, at least.
Alpha Flight-Tbf, the entire team's useless.
JLA-Green Arrow was the conscience of the team. Hawkman was pretty useless, until they got him Thangarian tech. Otherwise, Huntress.
JSA-Mr America. Was gonna say Ma Hunkel, but she's too important. Maybe Wildcat - at least AMerica has some range. When one of your powers is I have 8 lives, that's kinda shitty.
Really interesting choices and rasoning. By interesting i dont necessarily mean good, in some cases, but thats not what this is about.
Cant say i disagree on Mr. America. Indiana Jones he's not.
In Squadron Supreme( JMS version) , either Power Princess or Whizzer. Power Princess because she wasn't as strong/fast/cool as Hyperion. Whizzer was a really useless version of Quicksilver, and his name makes him sound as though he has incontinence issues. Oh, I forgot about 'fish-girl' (she's so crap I can't even remember her name!) All she ever seemed to do was run out of water and have to get rescued by Spectrum. So, quite a few to choose from on that team.
As far as the X-Men ( or the various x-incarnations go) is there anyone even in the same ballpark as the uselessness that is Jubilee?
As for the Fantastic Four, I am going to take a risk here and say Reed. Specifically, Reed's stretchiness. As a power, it's always seemed pretty redundant to me in any encounter, since he is usually written as a sort of human Pez dispenser as far as 'solutions' go. Usually his stretchiness is just a gimmicky thing used by the artist to jazz up the page a bit: "Ooh look, Reed's really concerned. Look how he's wrapped his arms round Sue twelve times. Ooh look, Reed's thinking super-hard - look how his skull has stretched to six times its normal size." I think a cool plot development would be to make Reed really really stupid for a few issues, and see if his rubberiness would help out the team that much.
Fantastic Four ... gonna go with the Torch as the one to boot. Sue can pretty much be the "energy projector/manipulator" of the group, but she's a glass cannon. There should be a brick/tank around, good for melee, to balance things out.
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