With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[NameOrdane]

Like, as another simple example; Superman almost never bothers to learn how to fight. He never studies martial arts or anything like that, which leaves him open in the rare but inevitable circumstances where he runs up against someone that he can't just brute force his way through.

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That's already been addressed in the story. It was a whole plot point in the beginning of the story that Dinah teaching Kon was detrimental, as martial arts for baseline humans is useless with super strength. The only person who could teach him was Diana, and she learned through decades of experience.

Superman is improving himself now though, the moment he got access to Torquasm from Overgirl, which is the only meaningful way to train without sparring with Diana (which he did IIRC). Or Barda.

Edit: but yes, Hal could be doing more. I do remember him improving his constructs over time at least once.

 

[Neruz]

That's already been addressed in the story. It was a whole plot point in the beginning of the story that Dinah teaching Kon was detrimental, as martial arts for baseline humans is useless with super strength. The only person who could teach him was Diana, and she learned through decades of experience.

Superman is improving himself now though, the moment he got access to Torquasm from Overgirl, which is the only meaningful way to train without sparring with Diana (which he did IIRC). Or Barda.

Edit: but yes, Hal could be doing more. I do remember him improving his constructs over time at least once.

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I'm talking in general, in this story specifically thanks to Paul pointing out the flaws the various members of the Justice League have been addressing some of their issues.

 

[Mr Zoat]

"acquire"

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Thank you, corrected.

... maybe I'm having a blonde moment, but why are the (yellow) crystals disrupting Paul's orange constructs?
Green sure, noted canon weakness. Orange lacks that weakness.
Which implies that it's an innate feature of the crystals, rather than their color (which might stem from their creation method), and that would be... rather a big deal.

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There is a reason, and they work it out during the next episode. Fear projection wouldn't work on Lantern Jordan either.

Yes, they need to put in a lot of work to properly understand the mechanisms they're reproducing, but as we saw in the previous chapter, Hal is entirely capable of creating a MIM-104 Patriot.

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Eh... He can create a construct that looks like an MIM-104 Patriot. There's no actual fuel or explosive in there, it's just a construct.

This makes sense from an external narrative perspective as it makes stories standalone and thus allows new people to get into things at any point without needing to work their way through a vast amount of prior stuff in order to understand what is going on. But from an in-universe perspective it is an inexplicable blind spot that unnecessarily hampers the heroes, and from an in-universe perspective Paul is not wrong to lambast them for it.

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The issue is that time spent learning new skills is time not spent helping people with the skills you already possess.

The problem Paul has is that they don't invest the time, despite the fact that it's not really that major of an investment in the grand scheme of things and would exponentially increase their effectiveness. Even just six hours a week spent studying the relevant technologies would go a long way towards expanding their capabilities..

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Yeah, that.

It would take very little actual investment of time for Superman to learn even the basics of hand-to-hand fighting, but he never does, even after that lack bites him in the ass.

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Comic Superman from the era where I read comics and this story's Superman have both studied Torquasm. It actually required a lot of investment, not so much in time, but in finding an actual source when everyone who knew the style is dead due to Krypton exploding.

 

[Neruz]

Comic Superman from the era where I read comics and this story's Superman have both studied Torquasm. It actually required a lot of investment, not so much in time, but in finding an actual source when everyone who knew the style is dead due to Krypton exploding.

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Which doesn't really make sense given that most iterations of Superman have a Fortress of Solitude with an AI that has everything Jor-El could gather on Kryptonian culture, which should include things like Kryptonian martial arts. But that whole aspect is frequently criminally underutilized in general, with the Fortress's knowledge base being used only as a macguffin when there's no other way to learn something.

 

[Darko]

Which doesn't really make sense given that most iterations of Superman have a Fortress of Solitude with an AI that has everything Jor-El could gather on Kryptonian culture, which should include things like Kryptonian martial arts. But that whole aspect is frequently criminally underutilized in general, with the Fortress's knowledge base being used only as a macguffin when there's no other way to learn something.

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Reading things from a manual is useful, but it's not a guarantee that you'll be able to do what it describes.

The AI himself may not have been of much help, since if Jor-El didn't know the martial art himself, then his AI may not have been able to give pointers.