1. Throwing playing cards super hard

OK, OK, so we’re really talking about telekinetic ability here. But that ability, historically, seems to have a lot of overlap with … the jack of clubs. Just saying.

(Photo via: 20th Century Fox)

2. Communing with squirrels

Whether or not Aquaman’s power is any good is a subject for another debate. At least he can control everything in the ocean.

Imagine, though, that your powers were limited to one species, and that one species was a rodent who ate out of the garbage. Now stop imagining, because that’s an actual superpower. That somebody thought up.

Apart from the amazing power to clear pests from outdoor eateries, we’re not sure how often this Squirrel Girl’s power would actually help. Then again, squirrels are kinda cute.

(Photo via: Marvel/ComicVine)

3. Being ugly

Being unattractive is generally not considered a selling point. Being so unattractive that people can’t even look at you … we suppose this one has some applications, but we just feel bad for the people cursed with this one.

Medusa was probably the earliest one to wield this “power;” in more recent history, Yukk! the dog (Mighty Man’s comic relief) was so hideous that his face could scare fictional monsters on movie screens; he had to wear a doghouse on his head at all times.

(Photo via: Ruby-Spears Productions)

4. Super-seduction

Marvel’s Starfox — not to be confused with Nintendo’s Star Fox — has the power to “excite pleasure in others,” which is code for “make them fall madly in love with him.” It’s not the worst skill to have on hand, but it’s not particularly useful for fighting crime. It’s canon that Starfox used it to make a prostitute (named Heater Delight, if you must know) become infatuated with him.

In what we have to imagine is a coincidence, an X-Men mutant named Stacy X had the same power (chalked up to “super pheromones” in her case) … and she was a former prostitute.

(Photo via: Marvel Comics)

5. Knowing the Bible by heart

Far be it for us to diminish the Good Book. However, knowing which chapter and verse is applicable in any given situation doesn’t strike us as particularly good for fighting crime. That said, it suited Bibleman pretty well — he even got his own video game.

(Photo via: Pamplin Entertainment)

6. Having your arms detach

Lots of superheroes get named after their powers, but perhaps none so bluntly as Arm-Fall-Off-Boy. This DC hero can detach his arms and use them to beat people up. You know, like you can do with your permanently-attached arms. But he can reach a couple feet farther. That’s about the extent of it. So to speak.

(Photo via: Corbis)

7. Mood swings

Most of us would consider wildly unpredictable emotions to be a bad thing. But at least one superhero wields it like a weapon: Rainbow Girl, a vaguely sexist creation who has the power of the “emotional spectrum.” She can use the colors of the rainbow to change her mood. Except she can’t really control it. We assume her sidekicks are Tissue Paper Boy and Chocolate Girl.

(Photo via: Corbis)

8. Flying through the Internet

A humble, overbite-stricken IT guy pulls a power cord out at the wrong minute. The result: Megabyte Man. He has the power to travel anywhere by flying through the Internet. Which is totally plausible. After all, it’s just a series of tubes.

(Photo via: Pillar Entertainment)

9. Frenchness

In the 1970s, there was a wave of nationalist sentiment in France, to which French children’s love of America’s Superman contributed. This nationalism manifested as a questionable hero named Superdupont, who fought a nefarious and highly specific villainous organization called Anti-France. He wears a beret, smokes cigarettes, drinks red wine, and boxes his opponents. And he’s notoriously chauvinistic. Vive la France!

(Photo via: Pilote)

10. Making people eternally restless

Ammit was an ancient Egyptian demon with the face of a crocodile, the front half of a lion or cheetah, and the back half of a hippo. She could appear anywhere instantly and devour evil-doers — at which point she condemned them to “eternal restlessness,” which is apparently something Egyptians were pretty freaked out about.

(Photo via: Public domain)

11. Bounciness

Some abilities are more defensive than offensive: Think invisibility and impenetrability. In terms of ways to get out of sticky situations, though, being able to inflate like a beach ball and bounce around like one probably isn’t high on the list of desirable options.

That said, Bouncing Boy may not have been the biggest thing in comics, but he did find his way to the Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon.

(Photo via: Warner Bros.)

12. Setting off volcanic eruptions … on another planet

Sabu is a recurring character in Chacha Chaudhary, an Indian comic book. Sabu is a giant from the planet Jupiter. He decides to stay on Earth after sampling some of Chacha Chaudhary’s wife’s cooking. Whenever he gets angry, a volcano on Jupiter erupts. He’s basically causing another Pompeii on his home planet whenever something upsets him.

(Photo via: Corbis)

13. Tentacle arms

Not every mutant who passes through Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters has equally impressive gifts. A woman named Callisto has tentacles for arms.

That’s it. Her arms are tentacles. Useful if you’re a cephalopod on the ocean floor, at least?

(Photo via: Marvel Comics)

14. Turning disco music into light beams

In the late 1970s, a record company decided to sponsor a cross-promotional tie-in for KISS. Enter Dazzler. Initially, Casablanca Records wanted her power to be the ability to get people to tell the truth. But Marvel wanted it to be disco-related, so they went with “she turns sounds into lights and stuff.”

The project suffered so many setbacks that by the time Dazzler debuted, disco was over.

(Photo via: Corbis)

15. Controlling a skateboard with your mind

If you like to skateboard places, being able to control a skateboard with your mind might possibly come in handy. Except it’s only the one skateboard, not any skateboard. And if you lose it — like a hero with this power named El Guapo did — you’re out of luck.

(Photo via: Corbis)

16. Changing the color of things

When you get hit by a multi-colored mystery beam from another dimension, you expect something pretty cool to happen. Instead, Ulu Vakk, aka Color Kid, awoke with the power to … change the color of stuff.

In case that wasn’t enough proof that he’s a sucky superhero, Color Kid (a wannabe substitute in the Legion of Superheroes universe) has access to every imaginable color … and yet chooses to wear a kinda bland costume.

(Photo via: Warner Bros.)

17. Forcing people to play tag

Tag is a fun playground game. Throw in some “psionic powers,” though, and you’ve got an X-Man with the superpower to make people run toward you or away from you — and the nickname you deserve.

(Photo via: Corbis)

18. Moving people from one room to the next

Have you ever walked through a door from one room to the next? Have you ever thought, “This is an ability I would like to possess as a superhero?” Didn’t think so. Doorman, a Marvel creation, could teleport people from one room to another … but only from one room into the directly adjacent room.

(Photo via: Corbis)

19. Extra skin

More than a handful of superheroes have had the ability to stretch or contort their bodies. A mutant named Skin has that power too. Except that when he’s not stretching out, he has six feet of extra skin flapping around. (Apparently the X-Men’s medical plan doesn’t cover elective cosmetic surgery.)

(Photo via: Corbis)

20. Eating anything super fast

On Tenzil Kem’s home planet, microbes render all food inedible, so the humans have evolved to eat matter instead. Is food technically matter? Yes. But Matter-Eater Lad (as he would come to be known) can eat any kind of matter at super-speed, which totally comes in handy … Sometimes. Probably.

(Photo via: Warner Bros.)

21. Tar coming out of your pores

Unless you’re in the paving business, oozing tar out of your skin won’t come in handy very often. (Sidenote: The hero who did have this power was given the highly, HIGHLY questionable name “Tar Baby.”)

(Photo via: Corbis)

22. Turning blue

Unless you’re a huge “Arrested Development” fan, a Blue Man Group wannabe, or someone cosplaying as Mystique, being able to turn blue isn’t very useful. But that is Jazz’s only power. Somehow, he still got be one of the X-Men.

(Photo via: Corbis)

23. Giant stomach maggots

Imagine your stomach. Now imagine that instead of a pink, stretchy, largely stationary organ, it was two, blue, sentient, slug-like creatures that could escape your body and eat anything. And when they came back to your stomach, they turned your skin blue and gave you the power of whatever they’d eaten.

It sounds like a terrible, terrible curse, but in the world of X-Men, it was the superpower of an unfortunate soul even more unfortunately named “Maggott.”

(Photo via: Marvel Comics)

24. Ability to translate any language

This power got a lot less impressive after Google Translate was introduced. Sorry, Cypher.

25. Sound mimicry

Yet another superpower rendered irrelevant by the existence of the iPhone. At least Kylun also has a super-sword.

26. Skiing for death

A paralyzed Vietnam veteran gets another shot at full mobility when he’s turned into Black Racer, agent of Death. He decides the best way to get around and collect people’s souls when they die is by … skiing there. If there’s ever a DC Superhero Winter Olympics, we know who we’re betting on!

(Photo via: Corbis)

27. Spreading infections

Typhoid Mary isn’t usually thought of as a heroic prototype. But that didn’t stop Infectious Lass from applying to (and subsequently being rejected from) the Legion of Super-Heroes. She carries thousands of infectious microbes on her body, though she is immune to all of them.

Did we mention she can’t control whom she spreads diseases to? Yeah. Who knew the person in your office who doesn’t cover their mouth when they sneeze is technically a superhero?

(Photo via: Warner Bros.)

28. Turning into water

Jayna the Wonder Twin could turn into any animal. Her twin, Zan, could turn into… anything made of water. So, an ice cube, or mist, or a puddle. Sometimes he turned into a cool thing made of ice, like a jet engine or a giant or this handy “ice trapeze.” But the rest of the time, he was basically Jayna’s traveling hydration source.

(Photo via: Warner Bros.)

29. Acidic bodily fluids

Scientifically speaking, all vomit is acidic. You can thank your stomach for that. But at some point, it was decided that barf was a viable superpower. A mutant by the name of Zeitgeist could melt steel with his stomach contents. Just imagine being that guy’s dentist.

In case you were wondering what other bodily fluids you could theoretically weaponize, we turn your attention to another mutant, named Anarchist. He had acid sweat. And don’t forget about X-Treme, whose blood was acid.

(Photo via: Corbis)

20. Cross-dressing

Most crime-fighters wear a mask or full-body costume to protect their true identity. Somehow, it’s been decades since any hero has thought, “I know a great costume: An outfit and wig so I’ll look like someone’s grandmother!” But back in the 1940s, someone thought it’d be a great idea to have a character who was a washed-up actor don a matching coat and hat and beat up bad guys with a cane. The name? Madam Fatal.

(Photo via: DC Comics)