Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-3406131-20140314000018/@comment-61371-20140326013403

Edkaufman wrote: I would go even further: I've noticed that every vampire character has had every power every vampire has ever shown listed under powers - this irks me badly, since (to my knowledge), we have never seen an in-universe explanation of Vampire's powers and so we cannot be sure they all possess the same power set. Do they all know mind control, for example? Or super speed? Can they all transform into bats?

So yeah, i absolutely agree wholeheartedly: Unless it's confirmed, it's speculation. And we never add speculation as fact.

There are in-universe explanations of the powers via the Handbooks, but different vampires might have different abilities (due to various reasons. Think, oh, Eternals, who all have the same basic powersets, but certain members may excel at certain ones, i.e. Makkari's speed, Sersi's matter transmutation, Forgotten One's raw power, etc. Or they may have sacrificed some ability for another) and there are also different vampire races with unique abilities (fairly certain there are some that don't transform into bats, but some other animal. But I'm no vampire expert).

As far as alternate universe characters...it's tough. There are certain things that can just flat-out be assumed based on how different the reality is: if Daredevil killed Kingpin circa Daredevil #200, we can mostly assume events happened the same as they did in Earth-616 up to that point, and we can reasonably assume he hasn't gained half-an-inch in height between realities. But if we have a 1602 scenario...we kind of run into problems. Or, especially, an Ultimate universe scenario, where the characters are purposefully different, not simply time-displaced.

I do agree that simply going through and adding generic info based on the 616 character is a bad idea, but I'd say we CAN assume certain things, safely. What we can assume is really a case-by-case basis.