10 Heroically Terrible Superpowers Writers Should Feel Embarrassed They Invented

4. Dazzler

Like Squirrel Girl, Dazzler has actually tangled with some of the Marvel U's biggest villains and come out on top. And, like Squirrel Girl, Dazzler has a totally banal set of superpowers that bely both her thirty year history and the fact that she actually had her own series. A lot of that is down to her bizarre and long-winded origin, which also explains those crappy, crappy powers of hers. Unlike some of the other losers on this list, Alison Blaire wasn't cooked up by a naive young comics creator/acid casualty, depending on the era. Nope, she was commissioned by Casablanca Records (us neither) as a sort of multi-media behemoth who could have roundly disappointing adventures in her comic books and would also exist as a real-life, roundly disappointing disco pop star; hence the glitter and roller skates. Even back then, the ultimate goal was for Marvel and Casablanca to eventually get some of that sweet Hollywood cash in the form of a film adaptation, which never actually came to fruition. Neither did Dazzler the real-life singer, so instead the House of Ideas was saddled with her. It took four years for the first issue to actually come out, during which it was cancelled "five or six times". What's so egregious about Dazzler? Is it that she was created as a cynical marketing ploy? Is it because she totally missed out on the fad she was meant to be capitalising on like Captain 3-D? Or is it because her superpower is that she can make lights appear out of her hands? Probably the last one. The lights don't even cause any damage, unlike the X-Men's Jubilee she can just make pretty lights. Admittedly it would make a pretty good power for a pop star if you coupled it with the ability to auto-tune your voice in real time, which she didn't have. Instead she had lights. No less than heavyweights editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and Stan "The Man" Lee were not only responsible for this fiasco, but were also the ones who pushed for her comic to launch despite the dissipation of the Casablanca deal because, quote, they had "faith in the character".