Grey Hulk and Thing Revision

[Antvasima]

Okay. My apologies about that then.

 

[LordTracer]

That's alright.

 

[ByAsura]

No. We should just downgrade them. We all know that the only thing that would come out of this is that they'd never be downgraded and the wank would just pile up on itself.

Nothing is piling up here, you're just being paranoid. Again, no offense intended.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

You'd imagine power inconsistencies in Marvel + the Hulk having an in-lore explaination for how power varying from panel to panel would make people shy away from powerscaling everyone to and from the Hulk. I'm sure scaling to the Thing will have this snowballing into far too many people in Marvel than it's worth.

Sometimes the Thing can fight the Hulk, sometimes he can't. It depends on what author you're asking. Same goes for Grey Hulk.

If you're asking me, any scaling between Green Hulk and other characters is automatically questionable given Hulk isn't always consistently on the same level of power both between authors and within the same authors for reasons both related to interpretation and related to his actual set of powers.

So count me against this.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Dargoo.

 

[LordTracer]

Thing being 4-B isn't solely via scaling to The Hulk though.

 

[Antvasima]

Nothing is piling up here, you're just being paranoid. Again, no offense intended.

I have similar experiences, and do not think that he is being paranoid. Once we start using long scaling chains for something as inconsistent as Marvel, we inevitably end up with increasingly unreliable statistics.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Thing being 4-B isn't solely via scaling to The Hulk though.

Is this the part where I go over how Marvel being inconsistent isn't something exclusive to the Hulk, just that the Hulk has an actual explanation in the story for his inconsistency?

 

[LordTracer]

I'm well aware Marvel is inconsistent. I was just pointing something out, since your previous comment was primarily related to The Hulk.

 

[Hellbeast1]

I'd also note were suggesting a Possibly rating

Honestly kinda gonna unfollow this since were getting nowhere

 

[Yobo_Blue]

Is this the part where I go over how Marvel being inconsistent isn't something exclusive to the Hulk, just that the Hulk has an actual explanation in the story for his inconsistency?

Well, I do agree with you, but examples without counter examples tends to make the idea that it's inconsistent more questionable. Hence why we need scans of those counter examples to continue

 

[LordTracer]

Yes, this is what I've been saying for a while. People keep saying it's inconsistent for Thing to be possibly 4-B, but nobody's posted any actual scans to show that.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I agree with Dargoo.

Likewise, I do too.

 

[Antvasima]

It takes a lot of time to go through all of his appearances to find counter-examples, and unlike the opposite there are no available specific antifeat-threads with scans to cheat with online.

He doesn't have any feats of his own anywhere near that scale though, and neither do most of the 4-B Marvel characters in this wiki.

I trust Matthew's sense of judgement regarding this, and would appreciate if he organises a thorough downgrade thread. He can ask for help from any members that he wishes.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Well, I do agree with you, but examples without counter examples tends to make the idea that it's inconsistent more questionable. Hence why we need scans of those counter examples to continue

So, we're saying Green Hulk is consistently comparable to Thor, and we're trying to scale Thing to people in Thor's weight class.

That's weird, I remember Thor OHKOing him. Man, not really feeling it here.

He seemsto get his shit kicked in by Sandma quite a lot,too. 4-B Sandman confirmed?

His punches don't seem to be doing anything to Sentry. Sentry just messes with him and kicks his shit the entire fight.I get Sentry being generally above Thor and regular Hulk, but they at least flinch him. Or alternatively crack his head open, that too. Depends on who's writing, I guess. Heck, even Iron Ma gets a good headshot.

Must have been really weakened when Spider-Man could damage him. Twice, huh.

Luke Cage doing a number on him hereand here.

Hey, look, Iron Fist's getting in on the action too.

Yikes.

And that's maybe, like, 20 minutes of google searches. I'm sure people who've throughly read the comics, unlike myself, can provide far, far more examples.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out Dargoo.

 

[DanielIH15]

Seeing the route of this whole discussion, now I'm not agree even with the "possible" tiering. As I said, In my opinion, if there is a character that Thing could scale without exagerating too much is Wonder Man for being the weakest 4-B character of Marvel right now in the wiki, but the main reason of him having such statistic is "He shouldn't be much weaker than Red She-Hulk", and, since Wonder Man and Red She-Hulk never clashed, that's just a big assumption.

 

[Antvasima]

Thena, Ikaris, and Sersi are all far weaker than Wonder Man, and there are likely others that should be downgraded as well.

 

[DanielIH15]

Is not Ikaris one of the strongest eternals? Anyway, I can't say anything about him being 4-B, or not, I know too little about the character, but you're probably right. Maybe it's better to scale him to Namor (they likely fought to stalemate in the All-new Invaders series). .

 

[Yobo_Blue]

See, the issue was, Dargoo, Matt spent the last week not doing that

I do agree with Dargoo tho

 

[Antvasima]

Matthew seems to be busy and tired of these types of arguments at this point.

I would still very much appreciate if he could handle a revision thread of our 4-B Marvel characters though.

 

[ByAsura]

Dargoo's scans are, like the others, taken out of context. I'll provide the explainations in a second.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Alright, although make sure to pair scans with your counterclaims so I can follow with the argument properly. I don't profess to be a Marvel expert in the slightest, I'm just aware of its unreliability in scaling.

Although it's rather suprising you're claiming all of them are out of context. Many of them seem rather straightforward, only about 2-3 of them could have context involved that might make them less reliable.

While I have you, though, thought it'd be interesting to ask. Is there a single feat independent of powerscaling that supports 4-B Thing? Like, one single feat, outliers included. Genuinely curious.

 

[ByAsura]

I know you didn't. I reverse imaged searched them and they show up everywhere.

No, most of them are out of context. I only say most because I can't find two of those issues.

Nah, he's got like 1 Low 5-B and a billion others that are all over the place. This is why I'm suggesting possibly 4-B and not just straight up 4-B.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Alright. Waiting on your explanations, then, I suppose.

Edited in an additional question in the post above, by the way.

 

[ByAsura]

I've responded to the question.

So, we're saying Green Hulk is consistently comparable to Thor, and we're trying to scale Thing to people in Thor's weight class.

He seemsto get his shit kicked in by Sandma quite a lot,too. 4-B Sandman confirmed?

Must have been really weakened when Spider-Man could damage him. Twice, huh.

Luke Cage doing a number on him hereand here.

Hey, look, Iron Fist's getting in on the action too.

Yikes.

No, the point is that The Thing is somewhat comparable to Hulk and quite significantly inferior to somebody like Thor or the Silver Surfer when he's amping his strength with the power cosmic.

The Sandman in FF #177 also clapped most of the Fantastic Four and matched Thundra, so it's an outlier on his part. Ben also knocks him out at the end of the issue. I can't find the other Sandman issue.

The Thing's tired because he fought Wonder Man and She-Hulk. Ben in that other scene is one of the Worthy with Asgardian hammers, so it's likely an outlier on Spider-Man's part. Also, Spider-Man vs The Thing was one of the examples that came to mind when Stan Lee talked about random fictitious power-scaling.

This wasn't the original Thing, it's a power suit that's almost as strong and Ben wasn't even used to it, and Luke Cage in this same storyline could overpower the Invisible Woman's forcefield. In that other issue, The Thing outclassed Luke Cage fairly easily, although he claims his skin is almost as durable as his rocks. I can't speak for that other issue, because I can't find it.

I can't find this issue, at all.

This is part of the Out of Time story arc. It's non-canon, and takes place in a far future. It's also the cover art, and doesn't occur in the issue.

 

[Sir_sun_man]

wow what a come back

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I mean, my point was regarding power inconsistencies; it kind of remains if Sandman suddenly became as strong as the Thing, or the Thing became suddenly as weak as Sandman. It's why I made a bit of a sarcastic snip at the end; the stats here aren't very reliable. That said, there's no objective difference between "Sandman was stronger than usual" or "the people Sandman fought were weaker than usual," since the author is only saying "Sandman is strong enough to fight these people".

I totally agree it's an outlier on Spider-Man's part. Which is kind of my point entirely, power levels be inconsistent.

The issue kind of remains with 'mostly full power Thing' as 'mostly 4-B' or even 'mostly 5-A' would prove more than enough to shrug off attacks from Luke Cage effortlessly. Although, again, Cage being more powerful than he usually is or the Invisible Woman and Ben being weaker than usual are kind of equally likely scenarios here. There's no objective way of determining this, as the author clearly saw Luke Cage as 'powerful enough to toss fists with Ben using most of The Thing's power'.

Fair enough on the last one. I was iffy on it myself and used it almost-jokingly, so I'll concede there.

 

[ByAsura]

My point was that these characters were clearly randomly amped to The Thing's level for these issues, so it's clear and definable outlier. On the other hand, The Thing has fought Hulk, Wonder Man, Namor, etc, on far, far more occasions than somebody like Spider-Man or Sandman.

The entire Fantastic Four and Thundra are weaker or stronger here, not just The Thing. This is why you can tell immediately that it's an outlier and nothing like his consistent fights. They didn't, that's why The Thing was weakened and still outclassed Luke Cage.

Spider-Man is probably the most inconsistent character in Marvel, honestly, especially in the 60s.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I'm not exactly sure what makes you come to the conclusion that the characters were 'randomly amped' when nothing directly suggests this in the issues themselves, other than them, well, being capable of fighting the Thing.

The weird thing about blanket statements like "the Thing has fought these characters far, far more often than these characters" is that, to actually prove that claim, you'd sort of need an awareness of every single fight Thing has been in. My only point is that he's inconsistent, and that there's no supporting feats on his parts regarding the scaling, so the scaling is extremely dubious.

Looking at this from the perspective of the author, the thought isn't "let's arbitrarily make this character weaker/stronger" it's "these characters are at the same level when I write them", since any given author has their own interpretation of them. It's never really an issue of 'I amped these characters and nerfed these characters' unless there's some kind of explaination besides "the author isn't agreeing with my interpretation of the character's level of power".

 

[ByAsura]

I meant to delete that part and absorb it into the second point. Basically, what I was trying to say is that the characters here are clearly different to their normal levels of power, and I already gave you the reason why in the second point and the list of debunks above.

I've already given all of The Thing's fights with the Hulk (which has happened 60-ish times) and most of his battles with Wonder Man. They do generally outnumber The Thing's battles with Street-levels.

This is the reason I'm suggesting possibly 4-B.

I'll probably be responding later if you post a reply. Anyway, a new thread might be needed soon.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

So I guess I agree with you there? That my examples are examples that the Thing has inconsistencies in his demonstrated power level? Like, my argument isn't that he's a street-leveler, I was just asked to demonstrate why I thought, specifically in regards to the Thing, Marvel has power consistency issues.

I mean, I feel like you'd agree that Green Hulk is far from consistent himself, considering that his power varies by nature in the story. Again though it's hard to say what outnumbers what without solid numbers; I'm sure if you went through every comic you'd find Iron-Man vs. Hulk fights in the same number without the prescence of the Hulkbuster armor, yet we wouldn't rate IM's lesser armors at Hulk's higher power levels for lack of feats.

If you're saying 4-B is a possibly, aren't you already conceding that 5-A is more consistent?

Same, I'm heading to sleep soon. Good talk, I will note that I'm more inclined to agree with you; although I still have my reservations. We'll see later how things go, I guess.

 

[ByAsura]

I do agree Green Hulk is inconsistent, but there's also supporting evidence in other characters. This is one of the reasons I think it's possible he's a 4-B. This will probably contradict my entire point from earlier, but you're right here. However, The Thing has done it so many times that I don't even think it matters. Like you say below, characters don't even need to have feats that outnumber lower ones for a "possibly" rating, and these are Street-level Marvel characters.

5-A is being discarded for The Thing and being replaced with a 5-B rating. The Thing is consistently 4-B in terms of scaling, but he doesn't actually have any feats in that tier, and people like Namor are already 5-A, possibly 4-B. This, combined with the first part of the comment, is why I'm suggesting he be rated as possibly 4-B instead.

 

[Antvasima]

Of course, a more reasonable alternative seems to be to give the Hulk a variable tier and downgrade quite a lot of current 4-B characters. Officially, Ikaris, Thena, and Sersi are supposed to be physically weaker than regular Carnage, for example.

 

[Antvasima]

Then again, officially, The Thing, Sandman, and Rhino are supposed to be roughly physically equal, and they have fought each other at times.

 

[ByAsura]

None of those make sense, and that's probably because they're handbook ratings. Practically every 4-B (including Sentry) has a 7 in strength and a 6 in durability, which is also on par with Sandman.

 

[Antvasima]

Technically, I think that Sandman and the Thing are supposed to be level 6 in strength.

 

[ByAsura]

I meant durability.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay.

 

[GojiBoyForever]

Some should be downgraded for sure because of Hulk's inconsistencies, but some should also stay. I still agree with possibly 4-B thing too.