Justice League of America #10 and Bad Math: Now Hold on Just a Femto-Second!
Filed under: Comics
Scene from Justice League of America #10
Brad Meltzer, script; Ed Benes, penciler
Superman: Jeckie, You’ve got a femto-second to put that –
This has got to stand as the stupidest line in this comic, and probably one of the stupidest lines Superman has ever spoken (and Meltzer has ever written). What Superman is asking is literally impossible, even for a comic book.
A femto-second is a ridiculously short amount of time: 10-15 second (0.000000000000001 second), or one-quadrillionth of a second.
Practically, what does that mean? Speaking as fast as you can, it takes about 1 second to say Superman’s line — that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000 femto-seconds just to speak the words. Hell, for the sound of Superman’s voice just to travel the roughly 1 meter to Jeckie’s ears, it will take 0.0029 seconds — which is nearly 3 trillion femto-seconds. And even if Jeckie decides to do what Superman says, it will be several million femto-seconds for the nerve impulse to race down to her fingers, and even more millions of femto-seconds for the image of this action to register on Superman’s retinas. He’s setting her up to fail (and then never carries through on his implied threat — so why even make it? He’s Superman, he shouldn’t have to resort to hollow threats.)
It’s no secret that I find poorly written technobabble annoying, but demonstrably bad math is even worse.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:26 am
Enh. IMHO, it’s just exaggeration. You don’t really mean it when you say “put that down this second”, do you?
June 27th, 2007 at 3:59 am
See, Supes MEANT to say “you’ve got one space-future second”. They measure time differently in the future. And in space. In the future…
June 27th, 2007 at 7:01 am
“He’s Superman, he shouldn’t have to resort to hollow threats.”
Truer words have yet to be spoken.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Wait…there really IS such a thing as a femto-second? I thought h’
Supes was just being colorful, or using some sort of wacky “future”
speak” or something.
You learn something every day.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Post-Byrne, Superman’s sensory powers are psionic in nature. So he is just doing his Dream Girl impersonation here, telling Jeckie how long she has to make the decsion after he stops saying his sentence, the sound waves travel to her ears, and before the nerve impulses travel down her arm.
That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Yeah, like Andrew said, it’s hyperbole. He doesn’t mean it as a literal unit of time.
But it sounds too crabby for Superman to say something like that, like he’s a nagging schoolteacher talking to a kid (”Jeckie, you that that down right this minute, I’m telling you, I don’t want any backtalk, do it now …”)
July 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Why is Sensor Girl crying?
Is there a stupider nickname for someone than ‘Jeckie’? Every time
Superman says it I want to smack him upside the head.
Leave a Reply
Contact Me
About
Subscribe:
The Best Of...
Special Topics
Archives
Categories
Twitter
Comic Blogs
Medical Blogs
Currently Reading
Arbitrarily Interesting Medical Condition
The Net:
Contents may have settled during shipping. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Void where prohibited by law. All rights reserved. Not valid with other offers or specials. Professional driver on a closed track. Your financial institution may impose other fees. All models are over 18 years of age. Employees must wash hands before returning to work. Results not typical. Many suitcases look alike. 18% gratuity added to tables of six or more.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
© 2004-2008 Polite Dissent. Powered by WordPress