Classic Enemies Cavalcade!

Theron "My Dice Are Older Than You" Bretz has written a series of reviews / rumination on the various teams and solo villains if this classic Champions supplement -- one that provided many a GM with powerful opposition (and the occasional useful mort) to bedevil his players.

Here's my reaction to one of my faves in his series of posts:

The Ultimates!

While it's true that Binder, Plasmoid, Blackstar, Slick, and Charger offer varying degrees of well-roundedness, lameness, and complexity in build -- I think that when they worked together as a team, they were pretty devastating.

Binder (with his various glue gun attacks), along with Slick (and his friction-reduction attacks) tended to hamstring the heavy hitters of the hero team. With their mobility, they can stay out of reach while their teammates run interference and take out the immobilised heroes.

There's a pretty tough physical attacker in Blackstar, a pretty dangerous ranged attacker in Charger, and a devastating area effect / energy projector in Plasmoid.

If the Ultimates have their teamwork down, they have a rough fight ahead of them.

Earth-641: Keeping Metahumanity in Check

On Earth 641, a place where DC & Marvel superhuman populations have been combined, there are things that will keep their numbers in check (and thus avoid a very dangerous future for normal people).

What are the options?

Several come to mind (spoilers for those unfamiliar with old and not-so-old comics history):

• The Sentinels -- for comics readers of my generation, these were THE anti-mutant bogeymen. They were self-replicating, constantly adapting robots with a  mandate to capture and/or kill any mutants. As reflected in the "Days of Future Past" storyline in Uncanny X-men (the basis of the movie), the Sentinels eventually extend their mandate to all superhumans, and then to all humans. These are great for opponents when you've earning some kind of government enmity in your campaign. Or perhaps as a 3rd party foil when trying to capture some metahumans on the grey side of the law.
• The OMAC Project -- in one of the many iterations of the mainstream DC Universe, Batman built a machine called Brother Eye. This machine, meant to watch over the metahuman population (because Batman didn't trust members of the Justice League -- some might say with good reason -- after revelations made during Identity Crisis), was subverted by Maxwell Lord along with some pretty powerful nanotechnology that can turn human sleeper agents into powerful robotic creatures capable of taking out most metahumans.
• Aliens -- no, seriously. From the DC Universe Dominators, who've always shown interest in the meta-gene, to the Kree Supreme Intelligence looking to humanity as an inspiration for the next step in Kree evolution, there's always the potential for some alien race (or set of races, as in DC's Invasion! crossover arc) that decides that Earth is a danger to their continued dominance or existence.

What are your favorite choices or excuses for keeping metahuman numbers in check in comics?