You'd think Superman would be content with being one of the most powerful characters in all of pop culture. He's already got super-strength, invulnerability, flight, heat-vision, and cold breath, but that hasn't stopped the Man of Steel from showing off various other abilities over the years. Some of his secondary powers are bizarre, wacky, or completely useless except in very specific circumstances.

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Super-Mathematics

Shouldn't you be punching Lex Luthor or something?

Super-Ventriloquism

What the?!?

Super-Weaving

Super Shape-Shifting & Super-Telepathy

How is his face not in unspeakable agony?

Super-Mini-Me Generation

This being before the word "midget" was deemed offensive.

Super-Caller ID

Super-Amnesia Kiss

"Lois, could you angle your forehead 30 degrees to the left?"

Super-Dancing

Super-Eating

With this week's Superman #38 granting the hero another new power, we thought it would be fun to look back at previous Superman stories in comics and film to explore his most bizarre super-powers.VariousWriters tend to have their own takes on just how smart Superman really is. If he can move incredibly fast, can he also think incredibly fast? Apparently so, and at one point the hero even relied on a skill he dubbed Super-Mathematics. We're not convinced his bean trick is something any garden variety math whiz couldn't manage, but Lois sure seemed impressed.Golden & Silver Age SupermanVentriloquism was all the rage if the days of radio serials and pulp heroes like Green Hornet and The Shadow. For a time, that popularity also translated to superhero comics. Several stories saw Superman make use of his Super-Ventriloquism ability, where he could use his powerful vocal cords and project his voice across a room or through a window with flawless accuracy.It's not even the ability itself that was so bizarre as the fact that even Krypto could make us of it. Apparently Kryptonian pets are fully capable of mimicking a human voice. It's a bit alarming to contemplate.Golden Age SupermanApparently Superman is something of an aspiring fashion designer. Maybe if this whole superhero thing doesn't work out, he can take his flair for designing wedding gowns at hyper-speed and try out for Project Runway or something.Golden Age SupermanSuperman displayed these two bizarre and unrelated abilities in the same issue. After being kidnapped by a race of strange, white aliens, Superman revealed that he can influence the minds of others just by concentrating hard. Basically, he's a Jedi on top of everything else.But this adventure only grew stranger as Superman physically rearranged his face to make himself resemble one of these aliens. His skin may be unbreakable, but that apparently doesn't stop him from rearranging it like putty when the mood strikes him.Silver Age SupermanThere have been stories where Superman's body has been duplicated or split into red and blue variations. The ability to generate a clone may be a little strange, but it's a useful power nonetheless. Just ask Multiple Man.However, Supes displayed a very unusual (and incredibly specific) take on the power of duplication when he temporarily gained the ability to shoot a miniature version of himself out of his hand. The comic in question saw Superman lose most of his powers. Luckily, no problem he encountered that day was one that couldn't be handled by the ability to fire a mini-Superman at it. In the end, Mini-Supes sacrificed itself to save its big twin, restoring Superman's normal powers in the process.Silver Age SupermanWe've already established that Superman has the ability to control the minds of others. But it turns out he can also read minds. Moreover, he can somehow sense the identity of whomever is calling him on the phone. Is he reading the phone's mind?This power has pretty much lost its usefulness in today's era of Caller ID and smartphones, but at least we can rest easy knowing Superman will never be tricked into dealing with a telemarketer.Silver Age Superman / Superman IIEasily one of the most infamous moments in the generally well-regarded Superman II came during the climax, as Superman delivered a passionate kiss to Lois Lane that somehow wiped away all traces of her memory of his secret identity and the previous few days. We can only assume he used his heat vision to burrow into her brain and burn away a tiny portion of her hippocampus.But for those accusing the film of being unfaithful to the source material, the same thing actually happened in a Superman comic several decades previous. Lois tended to spend 97% of her waking life in those days trying to expose Superman's identity. When Super-Ventriloquism fails, a Super-Amnesia kiss is usually the most reliable method.Bronze Age SupermanSometimes super-strength isn't enough. Sometimes you need a little finesse to go along with it. Supes proved he can be a master of the dance floor when the situation calls for it. He used his strengths and his hot, sexy moves to generate vibrations and disarm a series of hidden bombs. And he didn't even have to break cover.Our only question now is, if Superman can do this, why hasn't Michael Flatley become a superhero?Bronze Age SupermanSuperman's powers come from his ability to store and process yellow solar radiation. As he's essentially a human plant, he doesn't actually need to eat food. Not that this has stopped him from showing off his ability to cram incredible amounts of food down into his indestructible stomach.

Super-Cellophane

Super-Diamond Production

The Super-Force Field

We're disappointed this issue never led to a "Superman vs. Jughead" crossover special.Superman II (1980)Among many other things, Superman II taught us that Supes' costume is about more than just form. It's also got useful traps and gadgets, like this removable S-shield that turns into giant cellophane trap. It managed to inconvenience Non for all of... three seconds. So that's something.We like to picture this as the filmmakers' way of making up for the fact that there were no Batman movies to be had in the early '80s. A cellophane S-shield seems like something Adam West's Batman would appreciate.Silver Age Superman / Superman IIIHere's another peculiar ability that fans mock the Christopher Reeve movies for but actually hails from the comics too. Superman has demonstrated the ability to crush a lump of coal with such force that it turns into diamond.We're not sure what's more impressive about this ability - the fact that the diamond is only marginally smaller than the coal that formed it or the fact that it emerges already pre-cut.Post-Crisis SupermanAfter Crisis on Infinite Earths created a more streamlined and grounded version of the DCU, writer/artist John Byrne set about revamping Superman for the hip, discriminating audience of the 1980's. Somewhat misguidedly, Byrne made it his mission to provide pseudo-scientific explanations of how Superman's various powers work.

Super-Entropy

Electric Superman

Great. So where is he?

The result was that Superman gained the ability to generate a constant "electropsychic" force field around his body. This force field accounted for his invulnerability and his flight. It even explained why his costume never seemed to get damaged in Clark's many tussles with the likes of Bizarro and Parasite.It was a valiant effort to ground a larger-than-life character in reality, but these days DC's writers tend to just rely on the explanation "Because he's Superman."Superman IV - The Quest for PeaceThe Christopher Reeve Superman era was capped off with one of the hero's most unlikely powers ever. During his battle with Nuclear Man, Superman showed an ability to reconstruct broken objects by firing a beam from his eyes. He fixed the shattered Great Wall of China with these entropy-reversing eye beams.Considering that Superman had to scream a lot and spin the planet backwards in order to achieve the same effect in the original film, this was definitely a step forward for our hero. Which is not something that could be said for the movie as a whole.Post-Crisis SupermanDC's Superman editorial staff faced an uphill battle in the late '90s. How were they supposed to replicate the massive success of the Death of Superman crossover, especially now that the bottom had fallen out of the comic book speculator market? Their solution was to give Superman his most significant and unloved power change ever. The hero morphed into an energy-based state, and the Electric Superman Saga was born.Electric Superman hearkened back to the hero's many strange transformations during the Silver Age. The problem being that this storyline lacked the goofy charm of those old comics, and this status quo long overstayed its welcome. By the times Supes split into red and blue selves, flew away, and came back in his normal body, fans were too weary to even question things.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter , or Kicksplode on MyIGN