Karate Kid: versatile.

I don’t follow you.

Reminds me of this:

http://nedroidcomics.livejournal.com/tag/karate+fight+chronicles

My intro the character (and the Legion) had him locked in a dungeon. Since he had nothing better to do he decided whittle a knife out of the stone piller using karate chops.

I still have no idea what good the knife was supposed to do since obviously his hands were harder and deadlier but damn…

That was bad ass.

The world needs more Karate Kid.

I think Superboy and Mon-El were taking a dive to make him feel better. Anything else is just stupid.

“– I’m not mocking. Any non-powered guy who can still give the likes of Superboy and Mon-El a hard time with his bare hands deserves respect. –”

Oh please, he can chop through just about anything with his bare hands. If that’s not a superpower, I don’t know what is.

Admittedly, I’m not up on the Legion, but does Karate Kid ever try kicking anybody?

When all you have is a karate, everything starts looking like stacks of boards on cinder blocks.

mymatedave: 14 year olds do have a tendency to use non-verbs as verbs.

I like how in the second panel the other guy’s eye beam things are looking at the door handle as if to say: “Kid, wait. There’s a perfectly good door handle right there. Let’s use it instead of noisily breaking down the door huh?”

ooh! ooh! Do Superman’s freeze breath next! Or something with Wonder Woman’s lasso!

Next up: Bouncing boy, does stuff with, well, bouncing…

Worth Noting: I AM AMUSED BY THIS POST. I love Karate Kid. There I said it.

I like how he always has his hand open for his karate chops. You used to see that all the time in the ’60s and ’70s. (And they’d do it by only moving their arms, sometimes with the rest of the body kept stiff.) I sometimes wonder if anyone had ever seen real karate back then.

I do remember Karate Kid stopping some seismic shock wave by stomping his foot on the ground. Is that super enough?

This is the first I’ve ever heard of this character. A few panels, and I already hate him. Please tell me he died painfully. Perhaps at the hands of an insane Betty Cooper in an intercompany crossover?

There was actually a letter to the editor back in the Silver Age saying “Why doesn’t he punch or kick someone for a change? Actual karate people don’t go around chopping 24/7.” After that they tried to vary his routine a bit.

I love the guy. He punched the Emerald Eye to pieces, stopped that Manhattan-wrecking earthquake by stomping his foot, and once actually KOed Superboy. Oh, and he judo-tossed M’onel into another solar system once, and I mean that completely literally. And that was Post-Crisis! His character concept is totally insane.

Someday there will be a crossover between him and Marvel’s Mantis, and the resulting levels of implausible karateness will cause the pages to burst into flame.

Yeah, he can kick. He knows savate, not to mention fencing, kendo (which is what he’s chopping the stick for), boxing, Jovian gladiatorial tridents and Gaman Tol’s krishnu gauntlets, among others.

Even if you don’t respect the man’s skills (and really, if you don’t, phooey on you, you’ve got respect the vast reservoir of balls it takes to hang with the superfolk on skill alone. He’s like Batman, only without the crutch of all those gadgets.