The Most Worthless Superheroes Ever

In a reality where writers can make any quirky doofus throw on some tights and call themselves a superhero, creating great characters is pretty hit or miss. You have your greats like Superman and Wonder Woman, but you could also fill an entire New York borough with the losers. While some heroes are comedically written to be cheap versions of great heroes, there also those who just suck by accident. Here are ten super-zeroes.

Like a version of Google Translate that you have to feed and worry about, Cypher is a mutant whose only power is to understand every language, and maybe sometimes read your mind if he squints really hard. Only useful on missions to outer space or the deep south, Cypher's super-interpreter ability isn't enough to be worth a damn in battle, so he was killed in 1988. He was brought back to life in 2009, only because the X-Men had nothing better to do.

Comics are full of characters who are unkillable, like Plastic Man, Lobo, and Deadpool, and all of them have real superpowers in addition to immortality. So, while Mr. Immortal comes back to life every time he's killed, he can't really do too much when he's alive other than throw himself in front of another bullet or distract the bad guys with a sassy dance. He's usually depressed, and when he comes back to life, he's consumed with a rage that can only be quelled by a psychic dinosaur. Then, it's right back to being a human shield.

Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing, isn't much more than a Robin who didn't die soon enough. As Batman's young ward, Grayson was tolerable as a foil to Batman's dour personality, or at the very least, a disposable distraction that Batman could deploy. Now, Nightwing patrols his own city like a bootleg Batman. At one time, Nightwing's boot had a miniature fax machine in it. That's like Batman filling his utility belt with Doritos and copies of E.T. for Atari. There are better ways to spend your suit budget, dummy.

As part of Image Comics' Youngblood series, the hero originally known as Bedrock was created by chronic regurgitator Rob Liefeld as a blatant copy of Marvel Comics' Thing, in both powers and appearance... except for the fact that Bedrock would also invoke the Power of Cringe by shouting "yabba dabba doom" as a battle cry. Image had to quickly change the hero's name to Badrock after being contacted by Hanna-Barbera, making the character even more extreme to the max, if at all possible.

Idea for a new and interesting character: a sexy ninja. That's it. That's all that Frank Miller was able to come up with when he created Elektra. There's so little to say about what makes Elektra interesting that this space would be better filled with instructions on how to prepare macaroni and cheese. At least that stuff is delicious, whereas Elektra is a nobody character who won't stop showing up, for no good reason other than to cheese off Miller, who was promised the character would never be used again after he killed her off. If you have to lie to someone, lie to Frank Miller.

Lasting one tragic issue published by Wizard World in 2012, The Situation is the fictional story of the titular Jersey Shore jackass...but with superpowers. Someone, somewhere, thought that casting the oft-inebriated, allegedly tax-evading meathead in a comic was a good idea, but the reality is that Mike Sorrentino was just too reprehensible a human in real life to sustain an audience who could actually read words. Useless in real life, and useless as a superhero, Mike.

Bug-themed superheroes are usually pretty great, like Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and The Tick, but Red Bee is an exception to the rule. Despite bees being the most fearsome of all insects, Red Bee has sucked no matter who was wearing the striped costume. The first Red Bee armed himself with nothing but a "stinger gun" and a bee named Michael that he kept in his belt, which seems like the worst place on a human body to keep a bee. His grand-niece took the name many years later, but she went crazy and tried to take over Earth before giving up heroism, which should have happened the moment someone thought that "Red Bee" was a good superhero name.

Because Marvel Comics is shameless, author Fabian Nicieza wrote a 12-issue series starring NFL Superpro as part of a licensing deal with the NFL. That's right, this was all about money—there's no other reason that this guy exists. Using a special football outfit and a clichéd, tragic accident, Superpro barfs out football puns as he fights crime and wastes everyone's time. He's such a generic marketing tie-in that he makes people hate comics and sports at the same time, which truly is an amazing power.

Blue Beetle is a classic hero in the truest sense, with origins dating back to 1940. Unfortunately, in a world with superdudes around every corner, he's pretty useless as a superhero, even if he's a great character. Fighting criminals with blasts of light and air never really held up as the world around Blue Beetle changed, but his oldschool humanity was used to great effect, with writers giving him a weight problem, but also a great friend and foil in Booster Gold. Still, if there's a real problem, you should probably send out Green Lantern to deal with it instead.

A human skunk only loved by furries, Hepzibah is an alien with all of the powers of a cat, plus extra pheromone stuff. Hepzibah isn't even her real name, because her actual name is a series of smells, because that's a great way to introduce yourself. Hot Summer Garbage Soup is a member of the Starjammers, an equally forgettable team of heroes that are like a sucky Guardians of the Galaxy. So, if you ever need your drapes clawed up, Hepzibah's got it covered.