It's concerning his current tier.
Parallax (True Form) is justified as being
Low 2-C because it is comparable to
Io, who is listed as
Low 2-C for empowering
Sodam Yat to the point that he could fight evenly with
Superboy-Prime. This makes sense because unlike
Hal Jordan's possession by
Parallax,
Sodam Yat had no upgrades other than
Io when he fought
Superboy-Prime. The amp was entirely
Ion's doing, so it should be a good indicator of his base strength. But my point is that our ratings for the emotional entities all ultimately trace back to
Superboy-Prime.
It's nothing definitive, but I have some doubts about
Superboy-Prime being
Low 2-C, and thus, doubts about the emotional entities by proxy.
Superboy-Prime should be comparable to
Superman (Pre-Crisis), who is just straight up
2-C for performing
2-C feats, frequently contending with
2-C characters, and occasionally chipping at low
2-B characters. The reason we do not consider
Superboy-Prime 2-C is because, despite the aforementioned facts, he has a pretty notable anti-feat of
being knocked out by a
Low 2-C explosion. When you consider that anti-feat along with the years that passed between the Pre-Crisis era and Countdown, it seems most logical to assume that
Superboy-Prime's power was silently rebooted from
2-C to
Low 2-C by virtue of new writers, new stories, etc, as he was brought into the post-Crisis era. That's a perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at. However, I have one tiny point of contention with this line of thought. Specifically,
we were never told that the explosion knocked Superboy-Prime out!
It's clear that the explosion ended the fight, but of course it did. It destroyed the universe. There was nowhere else
to fight. The next time we see
Superboy-Prime, we find out the explosion
tossed him into the time stream, but if he's supposed to be unconscious, that is not made clear in this scene. He looks like he's just falling through the time stream.
The Time Trapper even calls him "lost in time" as though he's being tossed around by the currents. In fact, if you look closely at these events (9th panel),
Superboy-Prime even seems to
react in shock when
The Time Trapper grabs him and tosses him into the 31st Century! He reaches his arm out as he's being grabbed. That's not something unconscious people do. After
The Time Trapper throws him,
Superboy-Prime lands in a cornfield, gets shot at by a farmer, and
immediately stands up from his fall to start talking. If he was unconscious, wouldn't that be a very convenient time to wake up? Literally the moment he lands in the future? I think it's more likely he was awake for the whole trip.
It's been years since I read either of these stories, so I could be remembering them wrong, and I welcome any corrections, but as things stand, I don't think
Superboy-Prime was ever knocked unconscious by a
Low 2-C explosion. The ramifications of this interpretation are obvious. If
Superboy-Prime was never knocked unconscious, then there is no reason not to scale him from his Pre-Crisis
2-C feats, as it gets rid of the only thing suggesting he peaks at universal. And if
Superboy-Prime is scaled from his Pre-Crisis feats and upgraded to
2-C, then that would necessitate the emotional entities be
2-C in their base states as well, as their scaling ultimately traces back to him.
Thoughts?