Pre-Crisis Superman Feat and Correction

[Jared1111]

Spectre is the only character in DC Comics that is somehow more inconsistent than Superman. And that says a lot.

 

[SuperAPM]

I thought that was Lobo

 

[Antvasima]

Again, I would appreciate if somebody could politely ask all of the above members to help out, as nothing is likely to happen here otherwise.

 

[Jared1111]

I'll ask, hopefully they aren't busy.

If nothing can be compromised, i'd be fine with his ranking being "2-C, possibly 2-A " if we don't wanna fully commit.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

"I also wonder if an amped Pre-Crisis Superman would get considered since he was able to momentarily fight off a near full power Pre-Crisis Darkseid, who was stronger than both Mordru and Time Trapper?"

Are you talking about when Highfather summoned him and Supergirl and amped them? Cuz Supes got immediately BFR'd and Supergirl started getting tortured, and neither did any damage to him.

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

I just want to say that I haven't read anything Pre-Crisis in years, and that my opinion is based on my own fairly spotty memory of what went on in those comics.

...Having said that, just based on this info alone, I'm pretty sure this is going to need a lot more supporting showings backing it up before we go through with this kind of an upgrade. Because A) Pre-Crisis Superman is notoriously inconsistent and has a lot of ridiculous high-end showing that are outside of his commonly portrayed upper limits, and B) one showing from PC Supergirl doesn't change the fact that several characters who scale to her and Supes haven't displayed raw feats or upper limits anywhere near this high, which really does matter in a franchise like DC where characters go from beating up universe-busters to getting kicked in the face by Batman.

Darkseid in particular doesn't start showing multiversal levels of power on his own until his true form is revealed. The story said form is revealed in makes a very big deal of the fact that we've never seen him anywhere near this powerful before, which wouldn't make sense if his far shittier Pre-Crisis avatars were already infinite multiversal on their own.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I agree with Mr King and I think PC Supes is fine where he is. Even he's often shown to be less than Universal, but has enough Universal feats to justify the rating.

 

[Jared1111]

Well, I mean... Supergirl did manage to power through one of his attacks and got one good hit on him... before being tortured and they did, momentarily knock him for like... 2-3 seconds before getting BTFO. So that's gotta count for... something I guess


Y'know, for being the "OP Mary Sue who can do anything" of Supermen. Silver Age seemed to get his ass kicked a lot.

 

[Antvasima]

MrKing does make sense, yes. The problem here is that we scale Superman to Low 2-C from a feat that is at least 2-C and possibly 2-A in raw power.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

King's points about Superman are solid.

@Ant

Since Maaldor's direct feat was only explicitly 2-C, I don't think he should be considered 2-A. Even if you wanted to take the Joker's word over the Phantom Stranger's, it seems highly likely Maaldor would have only been a threat to the entire multiverse over time, since he would just keep destroying the universes around his own.

@Jared

I know, but in-context it seems pretty clear Darkseid used a casual attack on Supergirl, not expecting her amp to be that powerful, and then quickly corrected himself when he super easily started to torture her. She would have been completely helpless if not for the Legion coming in. I know this is a minor issue but my point is that, even heavily amped, Supergirl didn't show enough to scale to a weakened Darkseid.

 

[Antvasima]

A 2-C Maaldor seems appropriate then, and pre-Crisis Kryptonians should not scale from pre-Crisis Darkseid, no.

 

[Jared1111]

...Having said that, just based on this info alone, I'm pretty sure this is going to need a lot more supporting showings backing it up before we go through with this kind of an upgrade. Because A) Pre-Crisis Superman is notoriously inconsistent and has a lot of ridiculous high-end showing that are outside of his commonly portrayed upper limits, and B) one showing from PC Supergirl doesn't change the fact that several characters who scale to her and Supes haven't displayed raw feats or upper limits anywhere near this high, which really does matter in a franchise like DC where characters go from beating up universe-busters to getting kicked in the face by Batman.

Darkseid in particular doesn't start showing multiversal levels of power on his own until his true form is revealed. The story said form is revealed in makes a very big deal of the fact that we've never seen him anywhere near this powerful before, which wouldn't make sense if his far shittier Pre-Crisis avatars were already infinite multiversal on their own.

No disrepsect, but i don't really follow a lot of this.

1.) While PC Superman is inconsistent, it's not like he has that many wildly out landish feats outside his normal range. He's pretty consistently shown at bare minimum to be Universal+ and many of the feats that we used to scale him to Universe+ were actually 2-C to 2-A anyway. He's not as agregious as Post-Crisis ironically enough.

2.) "One showing from PC Supergirl doesn't change the fact that several characters who scale to her and Supes haven't displayed raw feats or upper limits anywhere near this high"

But she does scale to someone else with 2-A power, Superman with his Jaxon feat. That's the entire point of me bringing it up because theres two solid 2-A feats for Superman, one directly and one from someone that scales to him. Really don't see how this is a problem. I wouldn't have brought up the AM feat if i felt like it didn't alreay have another PC feat. Yeah, DC is inconsistent i know, but we're not scaling a character like Post-Crisis Superman to Soulfire Darkseid, it's a guy that was well established as being a OP character to feats that don't really break the verse.

Even if we use the absolute low end and say it's 2-C at best, guys like Dr Fate, Spectre, Time Trapper, Darkseid, Mordru ect. all have at least those level of feats, and arguably even higher, and they are still compared higher than Superman.

Also, what do you mean Darkseid being Multiversal breaks the verse? Darkseid spent the entirety of the Great Darkness Saga absolutely destroying guys like Time Trapper and Mordru, and they are at absolute worst Low Multiversal to potential Multviersal+... and he even mentions in the final issue that his power has waned over the Millenium and even after all those power ups he still isn't at his absolute peak. If that's the case, saying he ain't at absolute worst a high end Low Multiversal level being is a bit ridiculous. Real Form Darkseid is a 5th Dimensional being anyway, so yeah, even if his avatars were Multiversal+ they'd still be Infinitely weaker than his real form.

Also to @DarkDragonMedeus, actually with his Maaldor feat being revoked, and the fact that this Jaxon feat isn't a Low 2-C feat now... Superman doesn't have that many blatant Low 2-C feats anymore, at least not enough to counter balance his other showings.

 

[SuperAPM]

I'll agree with most of MrKing's points except the part about Darkseid. True Darkseid is at least High 2-A, or 5th Dimensional (I'd honestly consider that a lowball), so him showing 2-A levels of power as an Avatar, Pre-Crisis no less, doesn't necessarily contradict this.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Actually, there's the feat where Pre-Crisis Superman withstood a big bang that gave birth to a Universe; that's the main reason for his Universal rating. And destroyed some box that withstood that same big bang. He also survived a 3-B magic blast that destroyed a hundred galaxies. It's 3-B and he was severely injured, but that was mainly due to magic being Superman's weakness. He also does have casual Tier 5 to Tier 4 feats for sure.

 

[Jared1111]

Yeah, but like you said those are 3-B to potentially one good Low 2-C feat at best. By that logic we can't scale up Superman to Low 2-C because you only have that, his feat with Blaackstar, and scaling to Captain Marvel who scales to Invincible Man. Unless I'm missing one, that's not a lot of consistent feats either. All Supermen have variable levels of power, but I argue that at least his 2-A feats are well explained and pretty clear

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

3-A honestly seemed like enough for Pre-Crisis.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also the "Maaldor threatens multiple universes" is not a feat. It's just a statement of scale of threat. MCU Thanos is a threat to the universe even without the Stones but that doesn't make him 3-A.

 

[SuperAPM]

That's way to much of a lowball to be honest

 

[Eficiente]

I agree with Matt here.

 

[C2_of_Omegon]

Out of curiosity, if Supes' rating is changed, would this effect anyone else. Like from scaling or whatnot?

 

[Jared1111]

Also the "Maaldor threatens multiple universes" is not a feat. It's just a statement of scale of threat. MCU Thanos is a threat to the universe even without the Stones but that doesn't make him 3-A.

Except it wasn't just stated he "just" was a threat to multiple universes, it was stated that he was creating links to other dimensions, and so when his dimension collapses, it will threaten to drag all neighboring dimensions into it. That and even if you don't want to take Jokers word for it, i still think the fact that he has the power and the insight into Maaldor's powers should count for something, that's still a 2-C feat at absolutely worst.

Unless you're trying to imply that the Phantom Stranger apparently lied or doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[SuperAPM]

TheC2

Golden Age Superman, Supergirl, Krypto, Comet, Composite Superman, Karate Kid, and Validus, as well as an At Least rating for Darkseid, Spectre, Doctor Fate, Time Trapper and Mordru.

 

[Antvasima]

@Matthew

Thank you for helping out.

 

[Jared1111]

3-A honestly seemed like enough for Pre-Crisis.

Aren't you one that wanted him to be Low 2-C in the first place? Are you so opposed to our idea of upgrading Superman to even 2-C level that you're willing to just downgrade him an entire tier just because?

I'm gonna laugh if by the end of this we somehow send Superman back to 3-B because we don't consider the 3-A feats good enough either. I never thought bringing up high end feats for a character would somehow downgrade him, that's gotta be a first.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

@SuperAPM

Time Trapper scales from his own feats, not off of Pre-Crisis Supes.

Also @Matt

Maaldor wasn't just stated to be a "threat", it was explicit that every universe around his own was going to be destroyed. Sandman already gave a good case why Superman shouldn't scale to him though.

 

[Jared1111]

@SuperAPM
Time Trapper scales from his own feats, not off of Pre-Crisis Supes.

Isn't Time Trapper consistently seen as on or above Superman's power level? Wouldn't that mean he would scale above Superman if his tier was upgraded?

Not only that, like Sandman said, Time Trapper also had a hand to play in not only fighting the GLC, but also redirecting their attack into the Time Dimension that destroyed infinite timelines while also apparently being totally fine. I'd say he would still scale to that feat.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

I said that because Super APM was under the impression downgrading Pre-Crisis Superman would affect Time Trapper, when in reality nothing about his feats would change.

If Superman was upgraded to 2-A then yeah Time Trapper would scale, but Superman getting upgraded to 2-A seems incredibly unlikely at this point.

 

[SuperAPM]

Sorry, didn't mean to suggest that, I was under the impression that Supe's tier change would only be an upgrade.

 

[Js250476]

I remember in Matt's thread about Time Trapper he created a universe that Pre-Crisis Supes couldn't escape from or something along those lines so yeah he scales to Supes.

 

[Jared1111]

If anything he may be getting downgraded. I'd honestly be fine with a compromise of just Low 2-C/2-C to possibly 2-A if it meant something positive coming out of this.

Just kinda sucks these feats are being thrown out without any real dig into if they're valid or not just basically on the premise that it would be weird for the guy was so broken DC created a reboot with one of the main reasons to get rid of him is apparently too out there to be upgraded to 2-A.

Is it also because it would be deemed controversial? Cause i can understand that at least

 

[SuperAPM]

I find it a little weird to be honest. Dante and the rest of his Verse's top tiers were upgraded significantly based on one feat without much difficulty (I say that but I can't imagine how migraine-inducing of a process that must have been, I peaced out for the vast majority of it) and that was through scaling.

Different verses different rules I'm sure, and I agree that a rating so high it completely breaks the scaling and lore regardless of feats should be avoided (In Supe's case, High 2-A would be hilariously contradictory, even if he did get a feat in that range), but in this instance I struggle to see why even 2-A would be to outlandish for the guy that was so ubsurdly broken his writers had to go full Gurren Lagaan on his verse just to make a version of him that wasn't flubbing stupid. It doesn't really flub the scaling at all considering almost all his major threats who are typically stronger than he is are Multiversal Reality Warping Gods already.

 

[Jared1111]

Funnily enough this same sort of thing is happening to the DBS tiers as well. So I guess characters like Goku and Superman are more scrutinized, which I sorta understand.

Still think if the feats are factual and even Sandman or Prince do t object to them being 2-A they shouldn't be dismissed out of the gate just because Superman is inconsistent.

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

I'll agree with most of MrKing's points except the part about Darkseid. True Darkseid is at least High 2-A, or 5th Dimensional (I'd honestly consider that a lowball), so him showing 2-A levels of power as an Avatar, Pre-Crisis no less, doesn't necessarily contradict this.

1. We had True Darkseid at 2-A for a fairly long time before any of the 5-D stuff was looked at, because that was what his other, most obvious displays of power peaked at.

2. My point is that True Darkseid is the only version of the character (sans amps like Soulfire) which is legitimately portrayed as being multiversal in-story. The narrative makes it clear that his avatars weren't nearly that powerful before, and all of his strongest avatars are consistently shown to max out at much lower levels.

Unless you look exclusively at scaling VS other characters, which is terribly unreliable without any raw feats backing it up.

 

[SuperAPM]

Thing is is that your statement isn't even correct, I mean when you have Darkseid take out two 2-C charactes in the form of Time Trapper and Mordru (even that's kind of a lowball) whilst heavily weakened, draining both their powers in an attempt to regain his own, and still not being anywhere close to his own full power after the fact, I think the question of whether or not Pre Crisis Darkseid is Multiversal or not becomes mute. There's no way Darkseid Isn't at the very least Low Multiversal, unless you want to downgrade Time Trapper below what his feats showcase him to be.

 

[Jared1111]

1. We had True Darkseid at 2-A for a fairly long time before any of the 5-D stuff was looked at, because that was what his other, most obvious displays of power peaked at.

2. My point is that True Darkseid is the only version of the character (sans amps like Soulfire) which is legitimately portrayed as being multiversal in-story. The narrative makes it clear that his avatars weren't nearly that powerful before, and all of his strongest avatars are consistently shown to max out at much lower levels.

Unless you look exclusively at scaling VS other characters, which is terribly unreliable without any raw feats backing it up.

1. Except True Form Darkseid has been described as a being beyond and space for years, and Final Crisis went out of its way to point out that Darkseid is at least a 5th Dimensional level being, and that comic came out over a decade ago.

Just because "we" say something for the longest times doesn't mean it's right, or that we properly looked through everything. "we" thought that Dante was only City to Continent level, and then we started using feats from the first games that contradicted that and made him 3-A. "we" thought Kratos was High 6-A and now he's upwards of 2-C. We dont' always have the answers, we change our minds and rethink how we see characters all the time. Most people didn't even know of this Jaxon feat til a few years ago, and it's existed since the 80's.

2. Pre-Crisis Darkseid had an entire storyline, as mentioned before, that showed him being a potential multiversal level threat, beating the crap out of people that were 2-C to 2-A in power, and could take 2-A attacks, and he constantly scaled higher than people who threatened existence on multiple occasions. Again, the distance between 2-A and High 2-A is infinite, so even if his avatars are presented as infinitely below the true form... that doesn't mean they can't qualify for Multiversal+.

Like dude, literal nobody Pre-Crisis New Gods like Magnar, that appear in like 4 stories, can easily dish out Multi-Galaxy attacks just to show off, and were able to go toe to toe with beings that can shatter timelines. This isn't that outlandish

And hell, the reason we scale Pre-Crisis Darkseid is exclusively because he's stronger than Pre-Crisis Superman. Hell, all of his scaling for Pre-Crisis is based on whose ass he kicked. And the reason we are trying to scale up Superman is because of a RAW feat of him reversing an attack that destroyed INFINITE timelines.

How much more "raw" can you get than that?

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

You directly missed my point on every account.

1. Part of this is setting up and destroying an argument I never even made. I never said what we had Darkseid's true self rated as was correct, just that it's an indicator of the fact that Darkseid wasn't consistently portrayed as being that powerful before that, because his true form is the only one that's been consistently portrayed at that level.

2. And that's the name of the game with DC; consistency. Not just having a handful of feats spread across a few characters, but actual consistency.

Right now you have:

• Exactly one 2-A feat from Superman
• Literally one showing of Supergirl "sort of" contending with a 2-A
• One story where Darkseid beats up characters who are multiversal

Versus how many years of other stories and showings that happened during the Pre-Crisis era? And you're telling me "this isn't even that outlandish" because there are weaker characters with feats that are also nowhere near this level of power?

If you're really intent on putting through an upgrade of this magnitude for characters in a verse that has its own scaling rules due to how inconsistent its "he beat up this guy who beat up this guy who did this thing that hurt this character" logic gets, you need more than this. Plain and simple.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

@MrKing

Just wanna point out that Supes/Supergirl, when amped, didn't even scale to a weakened Darkseid, so really there are two feats, not three.

 

[Jared1111]

Except that still doesn't make sense.

1. Except they explain his inconsistent power level through the various avatars he's had over the years, Darkseid in Pre-Crisis was pretty consistently unstoppable and was easily his most powerful avatar. I showed that you are wrong in saying that he never showed that he was Multiversal in power and now you're moving the goal posts. You said that that his Avatar was the only one "legitimately" portrayed as Multiversal in power when Darkseid was potrayed very easily as Multiversal in power. Pre-Crisis Darkseid was always shown as a beastly nigh unstoppable guy in the Pre-Crisis-verse and the story literally elaborates by showing how powerful he really was. You can't just ignore it because you don't like it.

2. By that logic you cant scale any Superman to any real feat beause his power level is all over the place. Hell, if you were to quantify it, Pre-Crisis Superman has far less Universal feats than Planet level feats, so should we automatically scale him back down to Solar System level?

Dante has more feats that can be interpreted as City level to Continent level in pretty much all of his games, and yet we take the Universe level feat because of the context in the story and how it scales.

I'm pretty sure we base feats on whether or not they make sense in context based on how many there should be. In context, rating Post-Crisis Superman as 1-A doesn't make any sense because he's consistently shown as a 3-D being and that one off feat doesn't make any sense. But Pre-Crisis Superman lives in a world where his bad guys are threats to all existence and shown as being Universal+ threats at bare minimum and upwards of 2-C to 2-A at worst.

So lets look at those "bad" feats in context.

1.) A well presented 2-A feat that is explained multiple times in the story as a 2-A feat. It is a feat performed by Superman and the GL goes into explicit detail of how they feat was performed, why it is that way, and why he needed Superman to accomplish it.

2.) A scaling feat where the character who is being scaled too was not even 10 pages before explicitly stated to be 2-A in his base form, he is never stated to have gotten weaker or been at a disadvantage. And there really isn't a sort of in the confrontation, seeing how she beat the shit out of him, tore down his armor, and forced him into retreat. She got killed by a powerful blast after fighting a battle with a guy who is casually Multiversal.

3.) A full on Darkseid story that goes into how powerful he is, showing him defeating characters that are all well established as being 2-C at worst multiple times throughout the Pre-Crisis DCU, and after absorbing all of their power and defeating them soundly, he still states that he is nowhere near his full power.

4.) Superman is still below beings like Spectre (who has casual 2-C feats and shown to be 2-A) Dr Fate (who also has 2-C arguably 2-A feats) Modru (2-C to 2-A) Time Trapper (Arguable 2-C to 2-A based on the Jaxon and preparation feats) and Darkseid (who is casually shown to be far greater than the last two).

So him being upgraded to at least 2-C, if not 2-A doesn't contradict the lore or ruin the "consistency" of the Universe. Green Lanterns have shown the capacity to destroy infinite timelines at full power as well, so he still has a scaling feat to other characters in the universe.

I don't really see why Superman, a character who has shown feats already ranging from Universal+, possible Low Multiversal, to be such a terrible character to scale to at bare minimum 2-C if the feats are wrong. Or if i'm completely wrong and the feats are just outright being misinterpreted than fine. But it seems to me these two feats aren't being told off because they are wrong, they're being told off because you don't like them.

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

@Prince: Right, forgot about that.

...That just makes this even less reasonable.

 

[PrinceOfTheMorning]

@Jared

"Green Lanterns have shown the capacity to destroy infinite timelines at full power as well, so he still has a scaling feat to other characters in the universe."

Who had this feat? Was it Hal?