• This forum is strictly intended to be used by members of the VS Battles wiki. Please only register if you have an autoconfirmed account there, as otherwise your registration will be rejected. If you have already registered once, do not do so again, and contact Antvasima if you encounter any problems.

    For instructions regarding the exact procedure to sign up to this forum, please click here.
  • We need Patreon donations for this forum to have all of its running costs financially secured.

    Community members who help us out will receive badges that give them several different benefits, including the removal of all advertisements in this forum, but donations from non-members are also extremely appreciated.

    Please click here for further information, or here to directly visit our Patreon donations page.
  • Please click here for information about a large petition to help children in need.

Pre-Crisis Superman's 2-C Revision

Okay. I think that Jared linked to those scans, so let's wait for him to see if we can get more information.
 
Well, defeating a Superman via his magic weakness does not scale, but withstanding blows from him probably should.

Also, wasn't there a scan of him making a better show against the Spectre than Pre-Crisis Superman did?
I think superman is immune to magic in pre crisis.
Shouldn't world forger alpheus get a possibly 2A also? Plus maybe a low 1C as his multiverse had apokalips?
Which could probably mean has its own version of the Sphere of gods.
 
No, as the scans above said themselves, Superman was more vulnerable to magic Pre-Crisis.
 
Well, I remember several statements from reading old comics long ago in which Superman or Superboy were stated to be vulnerable to magic.
 
The scans with Superman and Martian Manhunter in it are from the non-canon Super Powers comic from the early 1980s, which (nominally) took place in the same continuity as the Super Friends cartoon, not Earth-One.

Also, I mentioned the one where he fights "evil Superman" earlier, and specifically indicated that he could do that only because of Superman's magic vulnerability. So using Doctor Fate vs. Superman for scaling just isn't going to work.

Well, I remember several statements from reading old comics long ago in which Superman or Superboy were stated to be vulnerable to magic.
The pre-Crisis Superman was consistently and clearly shown to be vulnerable to magical forces on many, many occasions. Any time in which he wasn't ought to be disregarded as stupid or lazy writers. (I'm guessing it came from the pre-1964 period, or otherwise from the Silver Age JLA; Gardner Fox didn't exactly have the best handle on how to portray Superman's capabilities -- Basically if that scan has Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, or Mike Sekowsky pencils on it, I call foul)

I do agree that there never was a resolved issue within the comics of Supermans 1/3rd power, but the comics themselves blatantly show that the grew far more powerful and was able to perform far greater feats of strength than whatever he could do in the Silver Age (though his wackier abilities started to fade) either way it wouldn't really matter, as they'd still be the same tier.
We'll have to agree to disagree here about treatment of Bronze Age Superman, but as an aside, Superman's "wacky" Silver Age powers are also sort of exaggerated in retrospect by people taking scans and taking them out of the greater context of the era's depiction, as well as by the era's unfortunate sensibilities in deciding what should go on the cover. (As someone who read every issue of Superman, Action Comics, and World's Finest from 1958 to 1969, I made the observation that the story featured on the cover was often the least interesting and the most misleading/insipid/juvenile, since the format for a while was to include 2-3 stories in each issue.) Most of those "wacky" powers were one-time abilities, hoaxes, or powers which Superman only developed due to some peculiarity of circumstance, whereas super-hypnotism and super-ventriloquism (arguably the two most "out there" powers of pre-Crisis Superman) still saw frequent usage throughout the whole Bronze Age, even if not quite as often as in the Silver Age.

Back to the Bronze Age vs. Silver Age power level thing, I'm just going to insist that the biggest reason I'd rank Silver Age Superman higher is because the general depiction in that era was to make him "feel" more powerful, more unstoppable, and more invulnerable. We agree that the reason Bronze Age Superman got tossed around a lot more often was because he faced threats that were much more adequate to the task of doing as much, but to me, it all goes back to the types of stories and conflicts that the writers wanted to portray.
 
Last edited:
I think superman is immune to magic in pre crisis.
Superman was absolutely not Immune to Magic in the Pre-Crisis era, yeah he could absorb magic and could somewhat resist magic like he did against his enemy Satanus in the later Bronze Age (even outright phasing through Magical blasts, even sending the sorcerer back in time) However, he's always been susceptible to it, way more than his Post-Crisis counterpart. It was a genuine thing he had to get help to combat and he often outright failed at defeating Magical foes (though TBF, said foes were often way more powerful than him to begin with)

The scans with Superman and Martian Manhunter in it are from the non-canon Super Powers comic from the early 1980s, which (nominally) took place in the same continuity as the Super Friends cartoon, not Earth-One.
This is true.
Also, I mentioned the one where he fights "evil Superman" earlier, and specifically indicated that he could do that only because of Superman's magic vulnerability. So using Doctor Fate vs. Superman for scaling just isn't going to work.
I do disagree, Doctor Fate took a direct hit from Ultraman and it dazed him for a page before he got right back up, and he has directly scaled attacks from the likes of the Spectre, who was never, even at his weakest, shown as inferior to Superman in any capacity. He clearly ranks higher above Superman in most cases, it's just his magic outright defeats Superman in most fights anyway.

He should very much scale, especially his stronger incarnations and his fusion with Nabu that easily puts him within the 2-A category. At least for now until we get better pages for his feats.
We'll have to agree to disagree here about treatment of Bronze Age Superman, but as an aside, Superman's "wacky" Silver Age powers are also sort of exaggerated in retrospect by people taking scans and taking them out of the greater context of the era's depiction, as well as by the era's unfortunate sensibilities in deciding what should go on the cover. (As someone who read every issue of Superman, Action Comics, and World's Finest from 1958 to 1969, I made the observation that the story featured on the cover was often the least interesting and the most misleading/insipid/juvenile, since the format for a while was to include 2-3 stories in each issue.) Most of those "wacky" powers were one-time abilities, hoaxes, or powers which Superman only developed due to some peculiarity of circumstance, whereas super-hypnotism and super-ventriloquism (arguably the two most "out there" powers of pre-Crisis Superman) still saw frequent usage throughout the whole Bronze Age, even if not quite as often as in the Silver Age.
Yeah, wacky may have not been the operative word here, i just mean the more silly powers like Shapeshifting and whatnot, though most of his weirder powers were often just one time abilities or just extensions of his other powers. Though I've noticed his ability to use telekinesis and telepathy stuck through the entirety of the Bronze Age, so I think those were just standard-issue powers of his, dude was a telepath i guess.
Back to the Bronze Age vs. Silver Age power level thing, I'm just going to insist that the biggest reason I'd rank Silver Age Superman higher is because the general depiction in that era was to make him "feel" more powerful, more unstoppable, and more invulnerable. We agree that the reason Bronze Age Superman got tossed around a lot more often was because he faced threats that were much more adequate to the task of doing as much, but to me, it all goes back to the types of stories and conflicts that the writers wanted to portray.
Yeah i get that, I'd argue he's more powerful because he dealt with less powerful things during that age, almost none of his villains ever got beyond Galaxy level at best during the Silver Age, but became full out Gods of Destruction in the Bronze Age.

Its like how in DB, Kid Goku often felt more jokingly invincible than DBZ Goku felt, because of how often the stakes ramped up. It's a difference in writing style I guess.
 
Superman was absolutely not Immune to Magic in the Pre-Crisis era, yeah he could absorb magic and could somewhat resist magic like he did against his enemy Satanus in the later Bronze Age (even outright phasing through Magical blasts, even sending the sorcerer back in time) However, he's always been susceptible to it, way more than his Post-Crisis counterpart. It was a genuine thing he had to get help to combat and he often outright failed at defeating Magical foes (though TBF, said foes were often way more powerful than him to begin with)


This is true.

I do disagree, Doctor Fate took a direct hit from Ultraman and it dazed him for a page before he got right back up, and he has directly scaled attacks from the likes of the Spectre, who was never, even at his weakest, shown as inferior to Superman in any capacity. He clearly ranks higher above Superman in most cases, it's just his magic outright defeats Superman in most fights anyway.

He should very much scale, especially his stronger incarnations and his fusion with Nabu that easily puts him within the 2-A category. At least for now until we get better pages for his feats.

Yeah, wacky may have not been the operative word here, i just mean the more silly powers like Shapeshifting and whatnot, though most of his weirder powers were often just one time abilities or just extensions of his other powers. Though I've noticed his ability to use telekinesis and telepathy stuck through the entirety of the Bronze Age, so I think those were just standard-issue powers of his, dude was a telepath i guess.

Yeah i get that, I'd argue he's more powerful because he dealt with less powerful things during that age, almost none of his villains ever got beyond Galaxy level at best during the Silver Age, but became full out Gods of Destruction in the Bronze Age.

Its like how in DB, Kid Goku often felt more jokingly invincible than DBZ Goku felt, because of how often the stakes ramped up. It's a difference in writing style I guess.
I guess the question regarding Doctor Fate is to what extent you want to regard him inherently a being of magic as opposed to being merely empowered by magic. Which I guess is the question of whether Doctor Fate, while he has the helmet on, should be thought of as an extension of Nabu, as opposed to Kent Nelson just being possessed by Nabu. If that makes any sense. I don't know if it matters, but when I was referring to "evil Superman," I meant the one created by the Johnny Thunder of Earth-One who showed up in the first scan. I wasn't contesting the Ultraman feat. Also, Superboy once fought a Lord of Chaos named "Doctor Chaos" on Earth-One, who was basically just an evil counterpart to Doctor Fate, so I don't know if you'd want to use that.

As for telepathy and telekinesis... I do not recall pre-Crisis Superman making regular (meaning outside of a one-time gimmick) use of either power, though Supergirl inexplicably used telepathy in one of the awful Mike Sekowsky era stories (so did Black Canary in a Mike Friedrich JLA story from around the same time) and one of the Private Life of Clark Kent features revolved around Clark getting temporary psychokinesis from exposure to violet-sun radiation. I said super-ventriloquism and super-hypnotism (the latter of which was always sort of ambiguous whether it was an inherent power or a learned technique; as the Bronze Age went on, it seemed to lean more towards the latter with hypnotism being facilitated by tricks; Superman #330 gave us a stupid explanation of the Clark Kent disguise that relied on super-hypnotism being an inherent super-power, but that explanation was implicitly ignored and explicitly contradicted afterwards, as well as being declared non-canon to Earth-One retroactively by one of the COIE compendiums). Also post-Crisis Superman demonstrated super-ventriloquism in Superman/Batman Annual #1 and Torquasm-Vo arguably being a post-Crisis equivalent of super-hypnotism (which is made more complicated when you consider that Marty Pasko retroactively introduced Torquasm-Vo back to Earth-One continuity from post-Crisis continuity in DC Retroactive: Superman-The '70's #1)

Re: Satanis, I don't consider the magic blast to have actually hit Superman, hence why he wasn't affected by it.

EDIT: Another dubious example of Superman's mental abilities occurs in World's Finest #200, where he gets in a war of wills with two psychic aliens who want to use him for an energy source and overcomes them, but the way I interpreted that is that Superman's willpower held off and deflected the aliens' own telepathic attack back at them, not that Superman has the ability to launch a telepathic attack of his own. Also, maybe telepathy/telekinesis showed up in a later World's Finest issue written by Bob Haney, but most those starting from the mid-70's don't count and happened on other planes of reality. Either way, even by the end of the pre-Crisis period, telepathy and telekinesis certainly weren't part of Superman's accepted power set like super-hypnosis and super-ventriloquism were.
 
Last edited:
Kerfuffles2 makes sense to me. Thank you very much for helping out. I hope that you will stay around in this community in the long run, as we do need your help.

Anyway, would it be acceptable for us to scale Pre-Crisis Doctor Fate from briefly standing up to The Spectre in some of the scans posted earlier in this thread, or should we give him unknown statistics in lack of better options?
 
I guess the question regarding Doctor Fate is to what extent you want to regard him inherently a being of magic as opposed to being merely empowered by magic. Which I guess is the question of whether Doctor Fate, while he has the helmet on, should be thought of as an extension of Nabu, as opposed to Kent Nelson just being possessed by Nabu. If that makes any sense. I don't know if it matters, but when I was referring to "evil Superman," I meant the one created by the Johnny Thunder of Earth-One who showed up in the first scan. I wasn't contesting the Ultraman feat. Also, Superboy once fought a Lord of Chaos named "Doctor Chaos" on Earth-One, who was basically just an evil counterpart to Doctor Fate, so I don't know if you'd want to use that.
Yeah, i think scaling Dr. Fate to Superman is a fine process, yeah he did use magic against that evil Superman, but that same story mentions him being able to approximate Supermans power level with his own magic, so either way he should scale to Supermans level. Even his original Kent Nelson incarnation was usually stated to be on par if not outright superior to Superman in almost every capacity. His higher power counterparts easily outstrip Superman even at his best.

And yeah, Superboy was clearly inferior to the Doctor Fate expy, magic or no magic.
As for telepathy and telekinesis... I do not recall pre-Crisis Superman making regular (meaning outside of a one-time gimmick) use of either power, though Supergirl inexplicably used telepathy in one of the awful Mike Sekowsky era stories (so did Black Canary in a Mike Friedrich JLA story from around the same time) and one of the Private Life of Clark Kent features revolved around Clark getting temporary psychokinesis from exposure to violet-sun radiation. I said super-ventriloquism and super-hypnotism (the latter of which was always sort of ambiguous whether it was an inherent power or a learned technique; as the Bronze Age went on, it seemed to lean more towards the latter with hypnotism being facilitated by tricks; Superman #330 gave us a stupid explanation of the Clark Kent disguise that relied on super-hypnotism being an inherent super-power, but that explanation was implicitly ignored and explicitly contradicted afterwards, as well as being declared non-canon to Earth-One retroactively by one of the COIE compendiums). Also post-Crisis Superman demonstrated super-ventriloquism in Superman/Batman Annual #1 and Torquasm-Vo arguably being a post-Crisis equivalent of super-hypnotism (which is made more complicated when you consider that Marty Pasko retroactively introduced Torquasm-Vo back to Earth-One continuity from post-Crisis continuity in DC Retroactive: Superman-The '70's #1)
Yeah, Superman having mental powers cropped up from time to time, I only remember him using his telekinesis in a few later Bronze Age issues of the comics, either way, it was around long enough to be considered a part of his roster of powers, unlike say the rainbow powers which were clearly a one time gimmick.
Re: Satanis, I don't consider the magic blast to have actually hit Superman, hence why he wasn't affected by it.
Yeah, Superman was able to in both instances shrug off the blasts with phasing and using his speed to make sure it couldn't snare him, the point was he can avoid the attacks, and even absorb magic to become magical himself, but he was never immune to magic.

Kerfuffles2 makes sense to me. Thank you very much for helping out. I hope that you will stay around in this community in the long run, as we do need your help.

Anyway, would it be acceptable for us to scale Pre-Crisis Doctor Fate from briefly standing up to The Spectre in some of the scans posted earlier in this thread, or should we give him unknown statistics in lack of better options?
As i said, Doctor Fate should scale to Superman/Ultraman since he not only took direct hits from him, but was often seen as a superior being to Superman in pure power level, and regularly took battle with the Spectre, who even at his weakest, far outstripped Superman in every capacity, even his Bronze Age Counterpart, while Doctor Fate was considered a worthy opponent.
 
Okay. It technically makes sense to me that Doctor Fate would be at least comparable, but I don't know if we have sufficient concrete evidence for it.
 
Exactly, he could replicate Superman’s abilities quite easily, withstood direct hits from Ultraman who doesn’t hold back like Superman, and is comparable at most times to A lower tier Spectre who is above Superman casually. Fluctuating powers or not.

I think that is more than enough for them to be comparable.
 
Okay. I suppose that is probably fine to use then.
 
Alright, we’ll that’s everything I need for now, can we get the upgrades through now?
Let's wait a bit for more input first. Also, it is extremely important that the upgrades are applied in a proper editing structure manner, with justifications, image links, and preferably references included.
 
This should be all the profiles that will be affected by the upgrade.

This should be Pre-Crisis Superman's new justification, free to point/correct any grammatic error that i made.
 
Okay. I will try to unlock the pages with my automated script. Tell me here when all of the revisions have been applied and I should close this thread.

Also, remember that Superboy Primes should largely keep his variable tier, due to how inconsistent he is.
 
I handled it, although the Barry Allen and Hal Jordan pages were listed with the wrong titles.
 
@Firestorm808

Would you be willing to check that everything has been applied properly afterwards?
 
I suppose that "4-B normally, up to 2-C, possibly 2-A" should probably be fine.

I am not sure where we should rate Ion and the other emotional entities though. What are their greatest own feats?
 
Yes, but it seems too high compared to the feats that they otherwise tend to display.

What do the rest of you think?
 
I think scaling Ion (and the other entities) to Prime is fine. Also afaik, the only other people that’d scale to it are Crispus Allen Spectre, for fighting the Butcher, and Full Power Volthoom and Raw Willpower Hal for fighting Parallax Sinestro

Also kinda off-topic, but was the idea of giving Pre-Crisis Superman keys for earlier portrayals abandoned?
 
I think scaling Ion (and the other entities) to Prime is fine. Also afaik, the only other people that’d scale to it are Crispus Allen Spectre, for fighting the Butcher, and Full Power Volthoom and Raw Willpower Hal for fighting Parallax Sinestro

Also kinda off-topic, but was the idea of giving Pre-Crisis Superman keys for earlier portrayals abandoned?
I think we should follow that up in another thread, because this one was just about the 2-C feats and whether they count. I'll try to get together with Firestorm and Maverick (plus others) to try to gather all earlier Superboy and Silver Age feats to get a general understanding of where his tier is.
 
I think we should follow that up in another thread, because this one was just about the 2-C feats and whether they count. I'll try to get together with Firestorm and Maverick (plus others) to try to gather all earlier Superboy and Silver Age feats to get a general understanding of where his tier is.
Ah, okay.
 
By the way, i notice that in the Notes of Supergirl's profile that her clash with Anti-Monitor its considered to be an outlier.

But considering what its no longer then case, can i delete it?
 
Last edited:
Anyway, i'm going to sleep soon that its nearly midnight where i live, someone else will had to check if any other profiles need to be upgraded.
 
Back
Top