Since I didn't get too much feedback on this topic in the Comic Book Questions thread, I thought this might be a better approach (which means a little pasting from that thread, so please bear with me).
Unlike, say, Strength or Speed, Agility seems to be perhaps the most complex of the basic athletic abilities. It seems to be comprised of 5 basic components...
1. Awareness: you need to know, of course, what's happening in your environment and with your body.
2. Coordination: moving your body so as to avoid getting hit.
3. Flexibility: the more you have, the more options you have for moving your body out of the way.
4. Balance: maintaining control of your body and movements.
5. Speed: obviously, the faster you are, the harder it will be for something to strike you (all else being equal).
In the Comic Questions thread, I then asked, who would be considered more agile - Spider-Man or the Flash? Why? Someone said Flash, because of his speed; another said Spider-Man.
Certainly, Flash is much faster and tougher to hit. But is that, strictly speaking, Agility? His movements are (AFAIK) rather simple compared to the acrobatic, bouncing-off-the-wall Spider-Man does. Speed factor aside, Spider-Man displays the superior coordination, flexibility and balance; he's multi-directionally evasive, whereas Flash is more linear, just ultra-overwhelmingly faster (sort of like the difference between how a human plays chess and how a computer plays chess).
So then, what gives? Should Speed be given the overwhelming consideration? Should it be factored out to level the playing field?
I'm asking all this because we have an overall Power Ranking System, a Strength Ranking System; I thought it might be interesting to come up with something on Agility. So far, the factors I'm trying to organize are...
1. Amount: number of incoming assaults to avoid.
2. Direction: number of different directions of incoming assaults.
3. Time: duration between incoming assaults.
(Obviously, I'm kind of defining Agility as the capacity to dodge something.)
All feedback is welcome.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
I think of agility I think of it more in terms of coordination and balance rather than speed, in fact I've never thought super speed had anything to do with agility.
So I would always say characters like Spider-Man, Nightwing, DareDevil, Nightcrawler, Gambit etc. are more agile than Flash, Superman, etc. Dodging something doesn't always = agility.
I disagree. Physical agility can be demonstrated empirically/concretely.
This is indeed a nice sound-bite definition, though one could analyze "easily" and "gracefulness" in terms of Coordination, Flexibility and Balance. However, with "quickly," it would appear that Speed is being emphasized over the other elements.
Here Agility could be classified as abstract. But for the purposes of this thread, mental agility is irrelevant.
KMC Community Forums
May 23rd, 2007 11:46 AM
