Superman Analogues: Speedsters

If you're fast enough, do you really need any other super powers?

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Original Text: So today is Wednesday and that is a day named after Odin of Norse mythology, but due to his trickster nature and tendency to appear all over, he's considered the parallel to Mercury, rather than Zeus. (Yes, this is a #SupermanAnalogue post, bear with me)
Now, I could talk about characters who had direct ties with Mercury, but I wanted to take this opportunity to elaborate on a point I made a while back in @certainpovmedia: a good Flash story IS a good Superman story.
Speedsters have drawn iconography from Hermes since the earliest days, but his role in stories fits a very specific style of Superman type. With their vast speed, they are effectively unstoppable and empowered to solve problems with creative, impossible solutions.
While their powersets tend to be more limited, I can easily reference plenty of speedsters that are capable of flight in addition to moving fast. Such as Johnny Quick.
Or Northstar. Northstar actually has a secondary power where he becomes MORE invulnerable the faster he goes. Plus when you get into the details of punching someone at superspeed, it's basically the same thing as super strength.
What I'm getting at, is that characters with impossible speed are capable of solving anything and only being impeded by very specific things that can defeat them. Most of these guys can catch bullets which effectively is the same thing as having it bounce off their chest.
On top of that, speedsters usually are associated with optimism. Even the angriest and most impatient ones still are doing things that the human mind can't wrap their head around. It's a power fantasy in exactly the same way (even if it's more specific) as Superman
And while the list of vulnerabilities is a little bit longer for someone whose powers are not as broad as Superman, the fact that their potential is as deep in the case of most comics speedsters make them effectively the same archetype.
For me, the classic example of Superman's potential, is the story where he ends World War II in one page. It's not the best Superman story, but it is the most pure expression of the idea in all of its rawness. Stories like that are exactly why we tune into the Flash.
This is a spoiler, but I absolutely will not be discussing the Hulk as part of this series, and that is because it's not about just being strong. It's about how power works in terms of the story and the fantasy being presented.
And a fact that is somewhat underrated is that while Superman is the prototype for costumed superheroes, and the Fantastic Four kicked the conventions of the genre to the curb, it was #TheFlash that launched the Silver Age of comics.
That fantasy is just so engaging. @Nika_Howard modelled her character on @DnDPodcast
on it. The thing people remember about Zack Morris is a version of this. the first thing we bring up when we talk about Superman, is that he is faster than a speeding bullet.
And I'm not going to go into specific characters. There have been a lot of super speedsters with distinct styles that were created as homages to the Flash.
But I wanted to bring up that the Flash was a distillation of the Superman archetype and I couldn't be going on 2 months talking about Superman almost daily on this weird website without bringing it up.


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