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Marty writes...

Hi Greg! Thanks for answering our questions!!

In the comic book world, Superman's ability to freeze things can be fully explained by the "Joule-Thomson effect" in physics - Where the release of highly compressed air through a valve (such as pursed lips) causes it to drop radically in temperature. (Wikipedia!)
With HIS level of muscle strength doing the exhaling, he could freeze things easily.

Also, a major by-product of invulnerability should be that his lungs are alot tougher than normal humans and even other superhumans. So logically, his lungs should be able to COMPRESS and store much more air than normal people because he can handle higher levels of air pressure.

Sometime last year, you said the reason why Superman doesn't have his freeze breath in your show was because it wasn't believable enough.
It's a very fair point and i do respect your opinion, but which part was it exactly that's not believable?

In a way, his freeze breath can be explained by real-world science better than his heat vision. :)

That's my fanboy moment done!!!
Thanks for your time. Your doing a brilliant job.

Greg responds...

Yeah... I'm still not buying it.

I buy heat vision (for Superman, not Superboy) because the guy is solar-powered, and who's to say what Kryptonian eyes are like.

But the ability for a lung to compress air just doesn't play for me. Volume is limited. So being able to take in enough volume of air to create "super-breath" isn't working for me. And the ability for pursed lips to than take this "compressed air" (which again I'm not buying into) and "valve" it into something truly freezing still isn't working for me.

And that's on top of the fact, that it's just too goofy for me visually and conceptually.

Response recorded on October 29, 2012