All super heroes can be categorized into three groups; those without powers, who practice skills such as martial arts and use high levels of intellect and technology to defeat their enemies; those with limited powers, who either use moderate-level technology, intelligence, or skills to enhance their powers to defeat their enemies; and the over-powered, who have so many powers, that they don’t need many special skills or a lot of intelligence to fight their enemies, and simply are Super by their natural strengths.
In the first category of super heroes without powers, we have Batman and Catwoman. They lack any natural super-natural gifts that exceed the limits of an ordinary person. They were born human but master technologies or martial arts to live up to Super hero characteristics. Batman witnessed the deaths of his parents and trained himself physically and mentally in the pursuit of fighting crime. He uses a large range of technological devices, some that allow him to simulate flying or gliding, to scale walls and buildings with ease, and others that grant him the ability to fight crime from a distance (the Batarang).
Catwoman has cat-like speed and reflexes but is really just a well-trained acrobat with a mask and whip which she employs to swing around, climb, and disarm opponents without Batman’s often-necessary fists and feet. Faster and more agile than Batman, she offers finesse instead of force, and could easily be considered even more physically trained than him, all of which reduces her reliance on advanced technology. Both Batman and Catwoman are simply Super without any real super-powers because of their respective devotion to their personal strengths (intelligence and honed physical abilities) and access to high-level or rare technology.
Spiderman and Daredevil are in the second classification; semi-humans who have limited powers. In contrast to the human heroes before, their limited super-powers are often gained through horrible accidents, and use their moderate-level intelligence and technology to enhance these powers to achieve a Super status. They both started out as normal, every-day people, but through some horrible accident (a radioactive waste spilling on Daredevil, and a radioactive spider biting Spiderman), they achieved enhanced abilities. Unlike Batman and Catwoman, their supreme phsyical traits were not self-trained and they never had the self-motivation to actually achieve these strengths on their own, but instead were gifted a select few.
Spiderman enhances his gifted agility with wrist technology that produces web ropes and nets for him to swing around and capture his enemies, but relies only on this form of technology. Like the relationship between Catwoman’s greater physical abilities and Batman, Daredevil’s sense of smell, hearing, touch and powers of concentration are super-human in standard allowing him to rely less on technology than his spider-like counterpart. His only form of moderate-level technology is his billy club, disguised as a blind man’s cane that can powerfully spring-launch towards enemies, or split into a baton and curved hook. Both Daredevil and Spiderman have been granted the status of Super, but the weakness of being human still forces them to rely on a little bit of technology obtain an advantage over their enemies.
In the third category of Super, all members of this group have large amounts of innate super-powers, or few extremely, sometimes over-powered, strengths. A good example is Superman, who has the ability to fly, has x-ray vision, super-speed (he once turned back time with this), super-strength, and is impervious to all forms of harm excepted when attacked with a rare material from a meteorite known as kryptonite. He holds very little in the area of high-level intelligence doesn’t use any form of technology or rare devices to augment his great powers.
Likewise, Wonder Woman has similar characteristics to Superman. She is also non-human in birth and holds many super powers; from healing herself, to sinking in the earth to regain her stamina, to super-human strength. She is near-immortal like Superman and requires no superb levels of intelligence or technology to enhance her supreme powers. Neither Supman or Wonder Woman trained themselves physically and mentally or make use of advanced technology, but simply are Super by their very super-human nature.
It is easy to see that any hero, not matter how intriguingly different, are very similar. They all fall into three simple classifications, showing an adverse relation of technology and real skill with boundless, sometimes god-like, powers. And whether they are natural-born superheroes, awakened by radioactivity, or they adopted themselves into becoming superheroes, they are all against evil. Even though they are so very similar, superheroes teach us morality and give us strength and inspiration, from generation to generation.
