10 Heroically Terrible Superpowers Writers Should Feel Embarrassed They Invented

8. Maggott

The Distinguished Competition have come in for quite the kicking so far, so how about we focus our sights on the Mighty House of Marvel? More than any section of the Marvel Universe, the bulging pocket that houses those Uncanny X-Folks has seen some of the more...esoteric mutant powers. There is actually a lot to recommend Japheth, as a "flamboyant" South African character who spoke in Afrikaans slang - woo, diversity - but then you get onto his powers. Which - again with the literal naming - are the pair of giant maggots that would periodically burst out of his stomach, eat any substance and then dive back into his guts, somehow imbuing him with superpowers. Yes, sounds like an X-Man created by body horror pioneer David Cronenberg, but the men responsible for Maggott are actually Scott Lobdell and Joe "Mad" (as in, "mad-long delays") Madureira during the 90s EXTREME era, another fertile time for stupid superheroes. I could just as easily have picked, say Marrow - whose bones grew on the outside of her body and she could use them as weapons, I guess, because the only thing keeping us from doing that is our bones being on the inside of our bodies stopping us from collapsing into jelly - but Maggott stands out for...well, obvious reasons. Besides the shakily-explained powerset, he also has something of The Smurfs about him, and despite his thematically appropriate origin story in apartheid-era South Africa, he was never a feature of any great storylines. In fact he dropped off the face of the Earth after a move to the younger Generation X team, resurfacing in a recent arc just to be killed off, and then was resurrected again, and then disappeared again. Oh wait, his twin maggots are called Eany and Meany! That's the stupidest thing about Maggott. Sorry writers...but not really.