Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Tonight I was sorting and filing photographs. They were mostly wire-service pictures of superheroes and occasionally supervillains and Greyghost claimed to find some value in keeping them around.

But as I worked through them I noticed something. I don't know if anyone else ever picked up on this, but there are a lot of different ways for superheroes to fly. I don't mean the actual means of propulsion; I mean the physical position of their bodies as they go about it. A classification:

- Basic Superman: prone, arms extended ahead. Daylighter's variation is to have only one arm extended ahead; very showy

- I'm A Airplane!: prone, arms extended to side. This is Cassie's style

- Human Cannonball: prone, arms straight at sides

- Drop And Gimme Ten: prone, mostly, arms straight down. This is what you do if you're flying by means of retro-rockets, or Ms. Moxie's blue-force-power, shooting out of your hands. A variation has your hands on jetpack controls if necessary

-Braced On Barstools: standing upright, arms straight down, palms down. Generally the antigravity guys make use of this one. I'm not really sure how they control horizontal motion

- Glinda The Good Witch: standing upright, arms wherever. It takes some pretty freaking impressive powers to be able to do this one, which implies a total lack of respect for basic physics

And none of this is even counting the guys with wings on their heads, with helium shoes, with air cycles or any of the other mutations or technological absurdities superpowers have given us. There's a thesis to be written about this stuff. Maybe I should pass it on to Ingrid; she must know somebody.