Powers and Abilities
The Earth-Two Superman has super-strength, the power of flight, super-speed, super-breath, arctic breath, super-hearing, super-vision (including X-ray, heat, microscopic and telescopic visions), and invulnerability to most forces other than magic, psionics, and Kryptonite.
An additional ability that actual Golden Age Superman possessed, which his modern counterpart does not, is an ability to "mold" his face to disguise himself, as chronicled in several Golden Age tales. This ability was never specifically ascribed to the specific Earth-Two Superman or shown in any specific Earth-Two Superman story, but was mentioned only in Golden Age stories.
Originally, Kal-L was significantly weaker than the Silver Age Superman of Earth-One or the Modern Age Superman; it was later revealed his powers took longer to develop or be discovered. While Kal-L could only super-leap an eighth of a mile until adulthood, as costumed Superman, Kal-L later gained full-fledged flight by the early 1940s. By the time Kal-L met Kal-El in the late 1960s, the two heroes were almost evenly matched in powers. However, almost all later renditions of the Earth-Two Kal-L showed him exhibiting his more limited abilities, including a temporary reliance on his leaping ability while allied with the Justice Society on a case involving his cousin Power Girl and the immortal criminal Vandal Savage.
Based on Superman's first origin and subsequent reference by U-Ban, this Superman came from a race of Kryptonians that possessed superhuman strength, leaping ability, and some visual aptitudes to compensate for that planet's greater gravitation pull. Most accounts of the Kal-L's origin state that his powers came from his Kryptonian heritage, not from the energy of a yellow sun (Secret Origins #1 ), and that he retained them in red sun systems (Superman Family #186 and 207). A later conflicting reinterpretation stated that his powers fluctuated when under a red sun, as noted in Infinite Crisis and All-Star Comics.
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Famous quotes containing the words powers and/or abilities:
“He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. But we would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Your friends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own, without thinking that you should follow theirs. Thus, in fact, they all think themselves wiser than you, whatever they may say.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)