Captain America DOES have super powers.

I love Captain America. I always have. I remember as a little kid destroying our garbage can lids pretending to be him. That said he really should never be showing up on any lists for non-super powered characters. This Includes the Earth 616 variation by the way. Am I alone in thinking this?

If he has super powers, shouldn't Batman also have super powers?

@doctor_law: Shouldn't Iron Man have super powers?

@supremegeneration: He does have powers. Extremis grants him superhuman abilities.

I would say so, because of the SSS.

Anything that pumps your abilities above any level humans are capable of should be classified as super powers.

@supremegeneration: Tony stark is connected with his suits so he basically does have super powers

To be fair, the suit is what gives him the power.

The only valid argument is @doctor_law saying Extremis...

@supremegeneration: :D

@doctor_law: No. It's not possible for someone to be at the absolute human max for everything. Batman may have trained himself to peak levels but the levels are still within the realm of possibility. It's one thing to maximize your potential, it's another to be at the absolute max for a human being. Think about what that means. Watch a strong man competition. They are huge guys, doing some pretty amazing things, but Captain America is still going to be stronger then any of them because he is at a humans max potential. Even the absolute biggest and strongest (and they would have to be the strongest in EVERY event) could never hope to be but equal to Captain America. Yet at the same time his agility is still better then any Olympic Gymnast to ever compete (unless some one has reached maximum human potential then they are still only equal). So it's not going to be physically possible for a normal person to be at the Max for say a marathon and also the max for a bench press. The build needed for each is totally different. Its the fact that Captain America can that makes him super human.

Nope. Bats didn't undergo the same experiment that Cap did.

Batman is beyond the realm of possibility in all areas too. He regularly lifts weight that maybe a handful of the strongest people ever could manage in their prime, on their best day, something that should be physically impossible. At his max he is significantly stronger than any of them. And then we have the outright superhuman speed and agility he has, what with dodging bullets and easily evading Nightwing.

I can see your point, and I suppose you could make a case for Batman being listed as superhuman but I haven't seen him consistently portrayed at these levels. He is also never (to my knowledge and I am often wrong) always described at the maximum human level but rather at peak levels. If you take a look at actual feats Captain America consistently is portrayed with more impressive physical feats. Not to mention a life time of training vs getting dosed with the SSS to reach this level.

the way its described looking at various wikis, cap seems to be roughly 50% better at any physical activity than what current world records are. example he can benchpress 1200 lbs, world record without a lifting shirt is in the 700's i believe (lifting shirts can add several hundred pounds).

i would say being that much better in any physical contest than the 'best' people - who all specialize in that one thing - would make him superhuman.

currently, that is. because how do we know what the limits of human physcial potential are? people have been saying 'cant get any better than that' for decades.

but at what cost??? "Alcohol Immunity: Captain America is virtually immune to intoxication by consuming alcohol." (taken from marvels wiki)

@supremegeneration: @kfabz-23: Extremists grants him Technopathic abilities plus other things that he can do

@pdunaga Fair enough. My view, pretty much, is that practically every superhero is superhuman by our worlds standards so it gets murky when you want to define superpowered. I mean I could name characters with actual superpowers who are weaker in their respective fields than people that aren't, it changes verse to verse. In terms of places like this I agree that the Captain is better than Batman and what I would consider the beginning of a superpowered body.

@kgb725: I know

The cost is TOO HIGH!!!

@alphaq: @pdunaga

No human being can be Batman. The best raw lifters in the world, in a hevier weight class than Batman, while using drugs cant even come close to benching 1000 pounds raw as a max, while Batman does it for reps. Batman with his built can lift that much yet is extremely agile, masteres every martial art (wut lol), is faster than any human being alive and he looks like a bodybuilder. I could keep on naming things but no human could do these things even if they were billionaires.

Captain America does have super powers, the people that say he is a regular human are ridiculous to be honest.

he has no superpowers just the full potential of the human body. isnt is stated explicitly that hes not a superhuman?

just peak human potential..........no flight or teleportation or telepathy or anything of such

@masterkungfu: Cap is stated to be at the absolute Max for for strength, speed, agility etc. However it's not physically possible for a human to be at the absolute Max for all of these at once. For example it's not physically possible for someone to be more agile then the best Olympic gymnast, stronger than the strongest Olympic weight lifter and be able to beat the best marathon runner at the same. The body types and even muscle fibers needed for each discipline are different. Each ability that Cap has may not be superhuman but having all of them at once is.

My point really isn't to say Cap is superhuman and Batman isn't. You can make an argument that Batman too should be considered superhuman. However I would like to see some examples where Batman is consistently presented as benching around a thousand pounds and not a one off where an errant writer didn't really get how heavy that was. It also comes down to how they are normally presented. Batman may have occasional feats that actually seem superhuman but he is never really presented as the Strongest non-enhanced man in the world, or the most agile non-enhanced etc.

@pdunaga

Here's a website with some nice feats, there are two feats side by side of him lifting over 1000lbs.

He probably wouldn't be in his own world, he would be in the real one.

he has Superpowers

Thanks for the link. That's a really good example of an errant writer though. There are no such things as 500 pound plates and even if he had them made they make no sense. No effective way to warm up, no way to do drop sets or pyramid the weight. I think its almost as likely the writer is trying to demonstrate he is benching 500lbs as he is 1000lbs since he obviously has no concept of lifting weights.

By real world's standards... both are superhuman.

By comic book standards neither are because the writers and the universes laws state that their physicals arentry beyond what a human is capable of without training. Captain America is at the height of a humans potential at this point in our evolutionary development. Anything better and he would be considered superhuman. Batman is considered the same but without genetic tampering.

I know people try to push that he's only peak-human, and even some sources claim that he is, but after seeing the many feats he's displayed over the years, I personally believe that Cap is super-human. People try to compare him to Batman, who is peak-human, but the difference is that Cap has the Super-Soldier Serum, where as Batman literally trained his body physically without any outside help. So because Cap has the SS Serum, it's easy to believe that it may have amplified his abilities far beyond peak-human and into super-human levels.

Personally, and speaking as a huge Captain America fan, I have nothing against this.

I absolutely agree with this.

Of course. People don't even understand what peak human means when it comes to captain america or shangchi. It seems "Fist of the North star"-level at times.

@war_killer: just because cap was chemically enhanced doesn't mean he is beyond what a human is capable of

He does have them.

Look at a strong man and then look at a gymnast, they clearly have different body types.

You can't be the best at everything, there will be men with bigger frames than steve and therefore more potential to lift heavier weights and there will be gymnasts with wiry frames that can do things Steve physically cannot because his own body gets in the way. At best you can balance

Actually, you can be good at everything.

@dextersinister: That's my point though. i bigger man should have more potential for strength, but they don't with Captain America. That's why he is Superhuman

But in both DC and Marvel you have had naturally born humans, huge in size that where stronger, best example being Kingpin who is larger and physically stronger than Cap

Cap Murica don't need no damn dirty super powers

I thought the super-serum gave Captain America enhanced strength and healing.

How many times does marvel have to say he doesn't have superpowers before people accept it

Absolutely correct. Cap does have super powers, along with strength and agility the serum also doesn't let his body feel fatigued meaning he doesn't get tired out.

@war_killer: Plus Cap doesn't need to work out to maintain his strength and whatever else. I don't get how ppl don't see that has a super power lol.

this

By comic book standard batman and cap are peak humans, they have reached levels that all humans should possibly be able to get to, batman more so because he did it without drugs.

in the comic book universe he is still considered non superhuman i guess.

it is a comic book universe after all...with comic book rules.

Because what Marvel says is true and then compared to the actual feats they display Cap showing in pretty much every form of entertainment contradict each other. Marvel can say all day that Cap is "peak-human," but when they have him hitting people so hard that they go flying across the room, that's not a "peak-human" feat.

@war_killer: peak human for comics. I know his feats would be superhuman for real life but in comics there's a different threshold for superhuman and marvel has said he's right at that threshold. Even the lowest street levelers could be considered superhuman compared to real life.

@rpgesus: I know we probably won't agree on this, which is fine as it's ultimately not a huge deal. I do hear your side and can see where you're coming from, but from my point of view Cap has displayed too many feats of super-human levels for me to consider him simply "peak-human," but that's just my thoughts on it.e

hes advertised as peak human

he, however has way too many "bs" feats that put him at low meta human level

@lesterlawton: @pdunaga: I don't see what you mean. Captain America is peak human, so is Batman.