The only argument more common amongst comic book nerds than “Why doesn’t my mother love me” is “Who would win?”. My research suggests this question is almost as old as time, and can be traced back to when Abel asked Cain “Who would win. My face or that stone?”
My opinion? Well debating comic book characters is a pointless endeavour, but endlessly enjoyable. Each character has such a nebulous power-set varying from writer to writer over decades of work. Do you take the strongest instance of the character (which in the case of comic books is generally godlike) or an average of their overall abilities? Where do you even get the average from? Wikipedia? One of those Character Guide books?
Maybe you decide to find instances of the characters performing various feats in the comics? Good lord that’s a rabbit hole. You can find almost any character doing anything. Could Batman beat the Silver Surfer? Well the Silver Surfer is a cosmic reality-warper who moves at the speed of light and time travel. Buuuut
Yeah Black Panther once put him in an armlock and he’s basically Marvel Batman so of course the actual Batman could do it. And of course Silver Surfer would be extremely susceptible to Batman’s trickery as shown here by that time he tricked and kidnapped by a group of Mexicans.
And of course it’s equally easy to find instances where characters accomplish something that should be far above their pay-grade due to plot contrivances or just refusing to acknowledge how crazy this is. Like every time Batman beats Superman. No I don’t care how smart or prepared Batman is. You can’t be prepared for when a guy punches you into the sun. Or perhaps less controversial, that time Deathstroke stabbed the Flash because reasons? Also in this same issue was Deathstroke beating Green Lantern, The Atom, Zatana, Hawkman and Black Canary all at once but then Green Arrow stabs him in the eye and they win.
Deciding power level by using an “A beat B who beat C so thus A>C” is also completely useless because of stupid stuff like this but it gets a whole lot more fun if we look a ways back when Marvel and DC used to do crossovers.
DC vs Marvel was a 4-issue collaboration between the comic book giants where the outcome of several battles were decided by a fan vote. Other than Aquaman beating Namor by dropping a whale on him, my favourite moment is when Wolverine beats Lobo off-screen because not even comic book writers could come up with a way for that to go down. Which is kind of surprising considering Wolverine is the king of stupid shit, like that time he regenerated himself from a single drop of blood. Well Lobo regularly fights Superman so thus Wolverine must be at least Superman’s level right?
The undisputed and unashamed queen of this kind of stuff is obviously Squirrel Girl. Aside from making Dr. Doom her bitch she’s also beaten Thanos and M.O.D.O.K. to the ire of the only person left in the world that cares about the integrity of comic books.
So where am I going with this? I’m not really sure. I mostly just wanted to share some goofy scans. Just remember tomorrow you could literally pick up a comic book with Batman punching out god. Or maybe he is god. Either way he still won’t beat 1 million superman because he’s basically super god. Or my OC Derek who is way stronger than Batman and Superman put together and would beat them both easy.
