Re: Variable Power Levels for Heroes
Oooh, very good question.
This is one of those "in the source material," issues that doesn't work as well in a lot of roleplaying games. I mean, in Super-teams, how often is every individual member of the group balanced with all the others? Even the X-Men have their 'heavy hitters'. Nevermind other groups. The Authority, for instance, has a number of interesting roles. Apollo versus Swift, for instance? So it's definately the kind of thing that has potential.
However, in Roleplaying games, you'd have to have players that are mature enough to not care about the 'power imbalance'. Supreme's method strikes me as an extremely good one, since it gives everyone their own niche. In a way it makes Hero a bit 'class based'. You've got the Combat class, the Non-Combat class, and the crossover class.
This helps eliminate some of the problems. There's less worry about "someone else having a stronger character", because there are still things you can do that this other person can't. As noted, however, there are still other problems such as how to make combat interesting for both. I'd say that the solution is not to hugely worry about it. Just make sure that the game focuses on non-Combat stuff, as well.