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Pre-Crisis Superman's 2-C Revision
- Thread starter Stefano4444
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The explanation for the Anti Matter-wave was that it woke him up and got him back to his original form, its also stated in the original part of the story that he outright absorbed the anti matter, meaning that anti matter wave had to have been power he himself transmitted, plus its implied the only reason he had never done the AM wave before was because of the never-ending stalemate he and the Monitor had, once he realized (as the image mentions above) that destroying the Positive Matter Universes itself weakened the Monitor and made him stronger did he finally go through with the plan
Hell the very image you yourself posted stated the Anti Matter woke him up from his prison that was created after exhaustively fighting the Monitor for eons.
also, the Anti Matter wave didn't just destroy Positive Matter as we know it, it was also shattering dimensional barriers and throughout the timestream. Positive Matter in this context also meant space/time, and the Anti-Matter Universe was absorbing ALL of the Positive Matter Multiverse.
The only "anti-feats" he has are against Supergirl, who with this scaling wouldn't even be 2-C to begin with, and him getting slightly singed by his own creations which he easily dispatched of once he got serious.
He needed a Anti Matter Cannon to destroy the rest of the Positive Matter Universes BECAUSE the Monitor had specifically put them in a place beyond his normal reach, that's an issue of Range, not Destructive capacity. This was also done with devices that the Monitor specifically designed to stop the AM wave to begin with.
He was directly stated to have battled the Monitor himself, who had the entire power of the Positive Matter Multiverse flowing through him, in a battle that lasted eons.
But if thats not good enough for you, if Supergirl, Maaldor, Time Trapper, and Darkseid are all given 2-A tiers because of those three feats, then he would have battled 2-A opponents and survived. Darkseid was specifically worried about his power, Time Trapper and Maaldor weren't considered threats to him, and other characters like Dr. Fate also couldn't directly combat him either. So there would be your 2-A power scaling for you.
It wasn't just affecting the universes themselves, but their space-time continuums as well, that's why when all the worlds merged their timelines also got crossed and ALL of time was merged together.
Pretty sure that outright is a Tier 2 feat.
It does when the full power of the Positive Matter flows through you as it does with the Monitor. The Positive Matter in this case also doesn't just mean the Universes themselves, it includes their entire timestream as that was also being absorbed by the AM wave.
Also, the DC Universe has been stated to be an "infinite expanding reality" and has been described as infinite realms multiple times. So yeah, it could classify as infinite reality.
It is pretty consistent though, DC has established since the beginning that each Universe and divergent timeline is just a series of choices that is made within each universe, and this spreads beyond each variation. This exists both Pre and Post Crisis with explanations of infinite divergent timelines coming from infinite choices.
I'm sorry, but arguing that the GL's power not only destroying the entirety of the alternate earths and timelines of Earth 1, but actively SUPPRESSING their existence except for 2, only for the counterpoint of energy generated by Jaxon and Superman not only reversing the effects, but also allowing the entirety of those dimensions and their entire timelines to be restored, and arguing that's somehow not at least Universal in power is massive downplay I'm sorry.
The Time Dimension in DC is weird, it basically encompasses all 4th Dimensional structures throughout all of the Multiverse, with each Universe having its own dedicated timestream and 4th-dimensional structure that all feed directly into the Time Dimension itself. It's why the Time Trapper can affect the realities and divergent time differences of multiple dimensions from within his own all-encompassing one. It also ties directly into Hypertime in Post-Crisis, which encompasses multiple 4D timestreams all into one giant glob of time. Is it stupid and weird, yeah, but to argue that someone that means because of it the other parallel worlds (no idea why you put them into quotations when they literally are) don't have their own 4th dimension seems like you're really reaching for some downplay?
The reason the Anti Monitor was a big tier threat, was that he was a threat to ALL creation. Jaxon and Superman fight restored an infinite number of Earth 1 Realities, but thats still a fraction of all the realities that exist within the DC Multiverse. Maaldor was destroying all parallel universes and the Multiverse itself, but there would still be pockets of reality that would've been protected from his attacks. The AM was going after all of it, even places like the Time Dimension (which the Trapper himself feared despite being able to manipulate infinite timelines himself) and Darkseid, who specifically had to prepare Apokolips because he feared the Monitor himself would destroy it, with the AM being confident Darkseid would escape him either. Anti Monitor was a big guy threat because he was the final boss of literally everything.
Just because something is 2-A doesn't mean it can't be manhandled by something that is also 2-A. The same reason a Low 2-C character can be almost infinitely outmatched by another Low 2-C character, AM being the final boss and still being 2-A doesn't mean he can't heavily outclass almost every other 2-A being that came before him.
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I think it was stated affecting infinite timelines or universes grants 2A?
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Wait why is timeline destruction suddenly not Tier 2?
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It is tier 2. The guy saying it’s not is just trying to word his opinions off as facts.
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If consistency of Earth1 Superman is weird, what's the consistency with the other cast comparable to him?
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Maaldor was consistently stated to be a threat to the entirety of the Multiverse, both through the Phantom Stranger and through The Joker using his powers. Maaldor not only somewhat scales to Superman who not only took direct blows from him but was able to resist his control long enough to lobotomize him enough to destabilize the entirety of his dimension. Phantom Stranger considered Superman enough of a threat to Maaldor to actively recruit him, and Maaldor later stated he saw him as a great adversary.
Maaldor also directly scales to the power of the GL corps, who also performed the 2-A feat through Jaxon, so there is further scaling there.
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Did they elaborate on what kind of threat this state of Maaldor was? Was he going to absorb/eat/destroy the entire multiverse at once/eventually?
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It’s implied that he was already inserting himself into all dimensions that ran alongside his, which we see with Earth 1 already compromised. From what the Phantom Stranger said it looked like it was very urgent as he needed Superman and Joker to work fast.
So I assume it was at worst something that would’ve occurred very quickly, like within a day since it already was destroying Earth 1.
I honestly contend that it’s really not that inconsistent. Silver Age Superboy to Superman ranges from Solar System to potentially Multi Galaxy level/Universe Level (Scaling to new gods and early fight with Maaldor), with Bronze Age being clearly 2-C to 2-A depending on how hard he pushes himself. Likewise if characters like Supergirl or Mongul scale to his Bronze Age self they’d get the higher keys.
Golden Age, Superboy-Prime, Krypto, and other Silver Age only villains would scale to his weaker self. Likewise for the non GL Justice League. Maybe with the exception of Flash depending on how we interpret the AM wave feat.
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I know that I haven't posted much around here, but while you're on the subject of pre-Crisis Superman and antimatter for scaling feats, perhaps you'd also consider when the blast radius of an antimatter needle-bomb nearly killed him in Superman (vol. 1) #205.
Also, I would contend based on canonical developments and actual depiction that the Bronze Age Superman was weaker than the Silver Age Superman, not the other way around. Superman was said to have permanently lost 1/3 of his total power to the Quarrmer in Superman (vol. 1) #242, and in spite of frequent allegations that this was subsequently "ignored," the Quarrmer made a return appearance in the Superman vs. Shazam! one-shot, showing that these events were never called into question. Furthermore, the Silver Age Superman was more frequently shown doing absurd things such as hauling an entire daisy-chain of large planets through space on a chain (a very widely distributed scan, to my eternal lament), while the Bronze Age Superman was sweating bullets after being forced to move the Earth a comparatively short distance in DC Comics Presents #3.
Also, I would contend based on canonical developments and actual depiction that the Bronze Age Superman was weaker than the Silver Age Superman, not the other way around. Superman was said to have permanently lost 1/3 of his total power to the Quarrmer in Superman (vol. 1) #242, and in spite of frequent allegations that this was subsequently "ignored," the Quarrmer made a return appearance in the Superman vs. Shazam! one-shot, showing that these events were never called into question. Furthermore, the Silver Age Superman was more frequently shown doing absurd things such as hauling an entire daisy-chain of large planets through space on a chain (a very widely distributed scan, to my eternal lament), while the Bronze Age Superman was sweating bullets after being forced to move the Earth a comparatively short distance in DC Comics Presents #3.
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He was weaker at the start maybe, but by the end he was absolutely had the better feats. Feats like flying outside infinity and his battles with Maaldor prove he had to have gotten stronger.
I think I read an interview once where one of the editors/writers even mentioned depowering him for a bit at the beginning but eventually gave up after a while, even pointing out an issue where Superman pulled the Earth and saying “well that didn’t last”.
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A part of this perception probably originates from the change in storytelling from the early Silver Age to the late Silver Age and Bronze Age. Until 1964, it somehow didn't occur to most writers that you could get a lot of mileage by pitting Superman against a powerful opponent, so a lot of space got devoted to comedy, romance, gimmicks, and silly plots that only existed to set up "surprise" twists. Starting with the coming of the Composite Superman, but really getting into full swing after Jim Shooter and Cary Bates started contributing more and the older 1950s writers got incrementally phased out, the method of plotting shifted gradually more to prioritize action.
Then in the mid/late-1970s, writers like Elliot S! Maggin and Marty Pasko figured out that they could do with an enormously powerful Superman by just facing him off against ridiculously powerful foes. And so it became more commonplace to have Superman do things like exceed the boundaries of infinity in DC Comics Presents #29 and so on and so forth. Incidentally, in spite of the insanity of the "exceeding infinity" feat, the whole purpose of that storyline was to teach Superman that he has limits and vulnerabilities that he ought to acknowledge. For example, Superman contemplating that the missile launched by Warworld might actually kill him as he sees it approaching, and the Spectre telling Superman to talk to the hand in the end. But that's beside the point, I think.
The real reason I say that Bronze Age Superman is weaker than Silver Age Superman is because he demonstrably had to put a lot more effort into his feats than SIlver Age Superman, who could do many of the same things but with hardly any exertion for the most part. And also, Bronze Age Superman's invulnerability was more frequently compromised than Silver Age Superman, but that could again be attributed to the storytelling shift.
Excuse me, I'm rather chatty and kind of new to this forum space.
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Nice write-up man, and welcome to the forum, glad to have you here!
While I agree that there were a lot fewer wacky powers in the Bronze Age, and obviously towards the beginning they actively tried to dial down his powers, I have to say doing research there's a clear overall power gap between Silver and Bronze Age. Bronze Age not only had the introduction of the more ridiculous Universal feats like him resisting the Big Bang, Jaxon, Maaldor, and of course the Monitors, but I'd argue he faced his greatest threats during the Bronze Age.
I'd go as far as to say he only really felt less "invulnerable" because he had to deal with foes/challenges that way outpaced anything he dealt with in the Silver Age. Hell, he wasn't introduced to guys like Darkseid to the tail end of the Silver Age. I'd also argue against him having to put in more effort than Silver Age Superman because I've found plenty of feats of him pulling off the same ridiculous feats or surviving similar occurrences to his Silver Age counterpart. Including no selling supernovas and moving entire planets at FTL speeds, even while severely weakened.
References for his Bronze Age feats are here.
And if we do agree that Silver Age Superman was stronger than Bronze Age for whatever reason... well that only means he was somehow even more OP and he'd actually scale higher.
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One thing I will agree upon is that Superman fought a lot more powerful villains in the Bronze Age. In the Silver Age, the most physically intimidating baddies Superman fought that didn't rely on exploiting a weakness were the Parasite, Validus, and the Composite Superman, who each only showed up twice in that era. In the Bronze Age, there was Mongul, the Galactic Golem, Starbreaker, Karb-Brak, Blackrock, Maaldor the Darklord, Neutron, King Kosmos, and Pulsar Stargrave. among others. Not to mention Bizarro started being used as an actual physical threat. While Darkseid was the first distinctly "Bronze Age Superman" villain, the only time they traded blows during that era was in the Great Darkness Saga when a Highfather-amped Superboy and Supergirl double-teamed an empowered Darkseid (the power-ups allowing the super-cousins to ignore the red sun that Apokolips was under at the time and making that instance not very good for comparisons). And even then, Darkseid sent Superboy back to his own time-period using Omega Beams. In Forever People #1, Superman tussles with Darkseid's Gravi-Guards, but it wasn't Jack Kirby's concept for Darkseid to show off his power in full-blown fights.
I will still say that Bronze Age Superman had to put in more effort than Silver Age Superman, based on the numerous occasions when they would depict Superman strain at something. There is no consistency here. As previously noted, Superman strained moving the Earth a few inches in DC Comics Presents #3, he couldn't manipulate the tectonic plates of the Earth in World's Finest #208 (which actually has Superman make an aside about how his power level decreased recently, though there was also alien and magic nonsense involved so I don't know if you would count that), straining while surpassing numerous superluminal velocity thresholds on the way to "beyond infinity" in DC Comics Presents #29, getting severely winded after pulling Hawkman's Thanagarian spaceship out of the gravity well of a neutron star in Justice League of America #80, etc. It was more common for Superman in the Bronze Age to wonder if something was actually powerful enough to hurt him, whereas Superman in the Silver Age would consistently express surprise if anything other than Kryptonite (or magic) were able to harm him... even in the late Silver Age when it was getting commonplace enough that the surprise should really have worn off.
Even still though, my determination that Bronze Age < Silver Age is more qualitative than anything, more based on the observations I've made reading through hundreds of Superman comics from the pre-Crisis era than anything super-concrete, so feel free to dissent on the basis of actual objectively superior feats, because I don't disagree by any stretch that there were more of them in the Bronze Age.
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I've re-read the Maaldor comic, and here's what I've documented. I wouldn't really consider this a 2-A feat for Superman.
- DC Comics Presents Vol 1 #72 | August 1984
- The balance of all things is at risk.
- This universe and all other universes that exist around it are threatened with destruction.
- Maaldor was tricked into becoming a universal intelligence.
- The madness that is Maaldro’s universe has gone astray, growing and reaching out beyond his own sphere of reality. This creates tenuous but very real links between interlocking dimensions. Thus, as Maaldor’s dimension collapses in upon itself, it threatens to drag all neighboring dimensions into it, creating first madness, then chaos, and finally cessation of all existence.
- Maaldor easily toys with Superman in his universe.
- Joker is able to harness this power of madness.
- Maaldor needs to be stabilized if this dimension is to hold along with all others.
- Superman will die if Joker doesn’t do anything.
- Joker opens himself to the madness, letting it become one with himself.
- Madness Amped Joker no-sells a punch from Superman, easily flicking him away and messing with him.
- Joker says they’ll save the whole multiverse from going splat. He thinks about killing Superman and going universe conquering on his own.
- They travel to the core of the dimension, Maaldor’s consciousness centered in one place.
- With some of Maaldor’s power usurped and distracted by Joker, Superman concentrates and fires heat vision, piercing Maaldor’s defences.
- Maaldor still lives. The intelligence behind that mind lies forever sleeping. Superman cut off that part of Maaldor which was evil. He gave a cosmic lobotomy to a cosmic intelligence.
- The universe is stabilized, and the madness is gone.
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Yeah, I agree that Superman obviously doesn't scale 1v1 to Maaldor, but within the comic itself, we obviously see that Superman can withstand hits from Maaldor, even before he starts toying with him, and though Joker is distracted like you said he was able to pierce his defenses directly and lobotomize a consciousness that was so powerful it could pull within it all creation. You can't even really argue that it occurs over time since I'm pretty sure you can't timescale an infinite multiverse being destroyed. That and we clearly see Superman being able to somewhat resist Maaldors control even when he's near the heart of the madness.
Plus, if Superman was so below Maaldor that he was of no use to the fight, there's no reason Phantom Stranger would've called upon him to help battle Maaldor in the first place or for Maaldor to call upon him to help his suffering. Superman obviously isn't as strong as Maaldor, he's never been, but he's been enough of a threat to him to refer to him in later conversations as a worthy foe.
That and one of the biggest points I wanted to make was Maaldor's return when he battled the Green Lantern Corps, who also directly scale to Superman through the Jaxon feat, and was ultimately defeated by them as well. Maaldor would still directly scale to the 2-A power of the corps because of their destruction of all Earth 1's timelines with their ring power, so Superman again even being able to damage that consciousness, pierce his defenses, and still take several hits from Maaldor during that run at least means he's at least comparable.
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Superman seemingly defeats Maaldor (or at least visibly hurts) Maaldor in DC Comics Presents Vol 1 #65. Thoughts?
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I'm mostly a pre-Crisis Superman kind of guy, though not totally ignorant of the other eras either. If you look at a lot of the pages on DC Database for the pre-Crisis Earth-One Superman and a lot of his supporting characters and villains, I've overhauled many of those.
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That's the scan currently in useSuperman seemingly defeats Maaldor (or at least visibly hurts) Maaldor in DC Comics Presents Vol 1 #65. Thoughts?
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"The madness that is Maaldro’s universe has gone astray, growing and reaching out beyond his own sphere of reality. This creates tenuous but very real links between interlocking dimensions. Thus, as Maaldor’s dimension collapses in upon itself, it threatens to drag all neighboring dimensions into it, creating first madness, then chaos, and finally cessation of all existence."
I'm not sure. From the way it's described, it seems more like environmental destruction or chain reaction from the collapse rather than AP. What do you guys think?
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I could see it being a chain reaction, but the way it mentions that it first creates all these links between every dimension, and then when it finally collapses and uses those links to simultaneously destroy all of the multiverse doesn't seem like a chain reaction over time feat. We see in the story that the madness dimension creates rifts that open up on Earth 1 first, meaning it breaches into the Universe but doesn't automatically destroy it, therefore I think it's implying it's just creating those portals to all the multiverse and then when it collapses, boom goes the multiverse.
And again, I support it being AP because how Maaldors exact power when controlled is still equal to the power of the GL Corps, which also have 2-A potential. So I think it remains consistent across those feats.
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The links only pull the Universes into the collapse, not destroy the Universes from the links.
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Anyway I agree with 2-A Superman and Supergirl becase 2-C Anti-Monitor makes me immensely depressed.
Anti-Monitor would later fight Nekron, who severely injured The Spectre just with his presence alone, but that form of Spectre is apparently Low 1-C so...take from that what you will.
Anti-Monitor would later fight Nekron, who severely injured The Spectre just with his presence alone, but that form of Spectre is apparently Low 1-C so...take from that what you will.
Stefano4444
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@Kerfuffles2
Good to have you here helping out.
So what tier would you suggest for the most well-known Pre-Crisis version of Superman?
Also, I thought that the DC Comics (and possibly the Marvel) wiki does not like our wiki, since it turns story characters into a list of statistics, so I am a bit surprised to see you here. Or at least I heard that view from Tupka217. We seem to get along reasonably well despite that though.
Good to have you here helping out.
So what tier would you suggest for the most well-known Pre-Crisis version of Superman?
Also, I thought that the DC Comics (and possibly the Marvel) wiki does not like our wiki, since it turns story characters into a list of statistics, so I am a bit surprised to see you here. Or at least I heard that view from Tupka217. We seem to get along reasonably well despite that though.
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Yeah the Spectre/Nekron stuff are things I conceded against in the Black Hand thread, ignore them.
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I mean, if you want to be fair about it, yeah, the links don't necessarily cause the destruction but the links allow the madness to drag all of existence to itself and then destroy it so... ok there's a few more steps, but i still don't see how being able to create such madness that you physically pull all of the multiverse within your own dimension (which he also describes as beyond time for whatever that's worth) and then systematically destroy them from the pure chaos of it doesn't count as 2-A.
Pulling the entirety of the multiverse within itself at least seems pretty 2-A to me, along with converting all of creation to chaos then utterly annihilating them from existence.
Stefano4444
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Wasn't that due be protected by Monitor and Harbinger's clone by making them merge with the Netherverse?
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Again, the reason he couldn't destroy the 5 Universes without aid was that the Monitor had specifically put them in a place he could not reach without the use of the Anti Matter cannon that was specifically tuned to destroy those 5 Universes, which existed in their own netherverse. That's an issue of Range, same with not immediately destroying Apokolips despite Darkseid and himself saying he absolutely could.
Monitor had already halted the efforts of the AM wave to begin with and the AM constantly talks about the Monitor interference being a problem. So i'm pretty sure the story is only saying that the AM needed the cannon to reach those 5 Universes, and when he realizes he can't anymore, he just gives up and absorbs the entirety of the Anti Matter Dimension (which now would encompass the entirety of the Positive Matter Multiverse plus its own) which we already acknowledge as Multiversal to begin with... which would beg the question, if its a question of AP, why would the AM not just absorb the Anti Matter Multiverse at this point and destroy the 5 remaining universes which he should be fully capable of doing with his power that outstretches the likes of Dr Fate and the Spectre, two characters who are absolutely beyond 2-C at their peaks? Because they were beyond his reach initially till he decided to destroy them at inception, again, range not AP.
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Did we come up with a feat to scale lesser-end characters to? I've been working on a few Pre-Crsis pages lately and that'd be nice so I don't make everyone 2-C lol.
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Anyone that directly scales to Bronze Age Superman or is superior would probably scale to 2-C to 2-A, 2-A for the absolute high ends.
For the ones that directly scale to early Bronze or late Silver Age I think we agreed on scaling through Multi Galaxy to Universe/Universe+ for guys like Golden Age since he was on par with him during that era.
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Characters in question are two Green Lantern villains (Shark and Black Hand). They both fought Hal across the silver and bronze age, but the latter nver quite did much to Hal. I guess they woulld fall into Low 2-C range, but we should probably have a hold-bacc tier for Supes and co though because they're of course not always hittng that hard. Respectng life and all that.
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As for 2-A scaling. I suggest:
- Superman (
- Supergirl
- Power Girl (currently revising)
- Doctor Fate
- Alan Scott
- Cosmics and stuff.
- Captain Marvel (currently makiing)
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