1. Flight
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an overweight What Culture writer with super powers? Screw you gravity! I can fly! Who needs aeroplanes or hang gliders when you yourself are gifted with the amazing ability to fly like a bird? You wouldn't need a passport! You wouldn't need to buy a ticket anywhere! You could just pack a suitcase, grab your significant other and zoom off to your chosen holiday destination - just be careful nobody shoots you down in the meantime. But of course this is real life (boring) and getting shot down by the armed forces who think you're a UFO isn't the worst thing that could happen. For starters how fast do you expect to go? If you can only fly as fast as you can run then you're not going anywhere fast and whatever crime you're trying to prevent will be long gone by the time you actually get there. Imagine running the length of the USA to stop a robbery? How long do you think it would take to run the distance of the Atlantic Ocean? The easy fix is to make sure you fly at super speeds to go along with your super powers then right? Fair enough but what happens when you torpedo into a bird? Bird strikes as they are known have caused around 200 worldwide deaths since 1988. If they can cause that much havoc with a plane what do you think they'll do to your face? If you manage to overcome that issue then you'll have problems with navigation, the intense cold (see Iron Man) and the fact that the faster you go the more likely you are to turn yourself into a human flux capacitor because of your spandex costume. It's bad enough when you get an electric shock from a hand rail imagine that about a thousand times more potent after a quick trip across the globe at 30,000 feet? There are of course other super powers out there but don't kid yourselves folks science has ruined those ones as well. You might as well resign yourselves to the fact that if you're ever going to end up as a hero then you could do worse than model yourself on a guy like The Punisher. At least he relies on guns and years of training over anything superhuman to catch the bad guys. You'd also get to wear a pretty wicked t-shirt which is way cooler than a pair of red pants and a cape.