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The Revenant Marvel Comics Discussion Thread

Yeah, it’s definitely not narrative-breaking in terms of what’s accepted in Marvel, it would just be standard-breaking in terms of what’s codified on this wiki.

The 5-B tiers are broken as well (as Impress has noted and is trying to solve), and there definitely is a broken chain from 3-C to L1-C as seen in Black Bolt’s 3-C justification including him harming Thanos with his voice even though Thanos in base is just rated as L1-C. And that’s after a good 30 seconds of searching through the 3-C tiers, btw.
Yeah, there are lots of problems with the verse rn. It's good people are hard at work finding ways to fix them. Tbh I'm less concerned about what tiers they end up as, and more about getting the in-verse "tiers" to be consistent. Like whether they are High 1-B, Low 1-A, or 1-A, I just want the Skyfathers/Abstracts to be clearly delineated.

Honestly, based on the stuff shown in the profiles, I'm starting to think that Skyfathers and Abstracts aren't actually too far apart in the current comics. Like if Nightmare is consistently compared both to Skyfathers AND Eternity, perhaps Skyfathers scale to roughly the same level as M-Bodies of Uni Abstracts after all?

As for Heralds, we definitely do need to fix Mid and High Heralds. In my opinion, I think High Heralds, like Sentry, Thor, Thanos, etc. should scale to Thor's 1-A (for now) feat and downscale from Skyfathers. These characters are shown to be well above most characters currently accepted as "High Heralds" (Thor stomped Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill simultaneously when not holding back, Sentry is strongly implied to be stronger than almost everyone at full power, Thanos is consistently a teambuster, etc. They even all have some feats against Skyfather level characters). I think that characters should only scale to "High Herald" if they are explicitly fighting full-power Thor, if they are clearly stronger than him in general, or if they have feats of their own on that level. For example, I think that Ultron should be allowed to be High Herald since he is directly shown to be vastly superior to Thor or Sentry, but first key Silver Surfer shouldn't be "High Herald" since we are pretty directly shown that he isn't near Thor's full power.

I would like more feats as evidence for the Low 1-C rating, and specifically feats that don't come from Thor or Hercules, since both have higher ends so I feel like its a bit arbitrary to choose Low 1-C as the middle-ground others can scale to. Especially since the Low 1-C feats in question are "godly", so I think its questionable if non-gods would scale to these feats in the first place.

I don't want to do a CRT on this just yet, since so many things are already in flux, but I do want to get talking about it. I definitely don't want everyone scaling to 1-A, so that will need to somehow get sorted out. Maybe go back to High 1-B, and have that be High Herald/Skyfather/M-Body tier? But I also don't particularly like the idea of High Heralds and M-Bodies being the same tier, so that's also a problem.
 
Yeah, there are lots of problems with the verse rn. It's good people are hard at work finding ways to fix them. Tbh I'm less concerned about what tiers they end up as, and more about getting the in-verse "tiers" to be consistent. Like whether they are High 1-B, Low 1-A, or 1-A, I just want the Skyfathers/Abstracts to be clearly delineated.

Honestly, based on the stuff shown in the profiles, I'm starting to think that Skyfathers and Abstracts aren't actually too far apart in the current comics. Like if Nightmare is consistently compared both to Skyfathers AND Eternity, perhaps Skyfathers scale to roughly the same level as M-Bodies of Uni Abstracts after all?

As for Heralds, we definitely do need to fix Mid and High Heralds. In my opinion, I think High Heralds, like Sentry, Thor, Thanos, etc. should scale to Thor's 1-A (for now) feat and downscale from Skyfathers. These characters are shown to be well above most characters currently accepted as "High Heralds" (Thor stomped Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill simultaneously when not holding back, Sentry is strongly implied to be stronger than almost everyone at full power, Thanos is consistently a teambuster, etc. They even all have some feats against Skyfather level characters). I think that characters should only scale to "High Herald" if they are explicitly fighting full-power Thor, if they are clearly stronger than him in general, or if they have feats of their own on that level. For example, I think that Ultron should be allowed to be High Herald since he is directly shown to be vastly superior to Thor or Sentry, but first key Silver Surfer shouldn't be "High Herald" since we are pretty directly shown that he isn't near Thor's full power.

I would like more feats as evidence for the Low 1-C rating, and specifically feats that don't come from Thor or Hercules, since both have higher ends so I feel like its a bit arbitrary to choose Low 1-C as the middle-ground others can scale to. Especially since the Low 1-C feats in question are "godly", so I think its questionable if non-gods would scale to these feats in the first place.

I don't want to do a CRT on this just yet, since so many things are already in flux, but I do want to get talking about it. I definitely don't want everyone scaling to 1-A, so that will need to somehow get sorted out. Maybe go back to High 1-B, and have that be High Herald/Skyfather/M-Body tier? But I also don't particularly like the idea of High Heralds and M-Bodies being the same tier, so that's also a problem.
I mean, for what it's worth, (actual) heralds in operating on "finite" amounts of Power Cosmic should pretty much always have at least the potential to be 1-A, simply because that's how something like that would work in having a fraction of a qualitatively-superior energy source. And it's not like the Silver Surfer is lacking in actual instances of that department - is there any reason we would reject his fight against Knull as anything other than a blatant instance of dealing with an abstract?
 
Let me try tackling this now that I have time.
Dominions are just super-AIs
Dominions aren't just machines, they're gods.
that have amassed so much computational power that they are capable of simulating entire universes and jumping throughout them without heeding linearity, reaching a point of processing that the energy capacity of their computation collapses the space-time around them into a singularity.
There's a high chance I'm misinterpreting this argument, but is the point being made here that the Dominionhood process causing space-time manipulation means their true forms are bound by the framework of space-time? For the most part, it seems like black holes are where Dominions reside by default in their Universal Manifestations, and the sentient singularities they generate are things they use to control space-time, albeit it's vague enough that I could see how it could imply that Dominions are the singularities themselves (note that regardless, Dominions are only vulnerable to linearity and death when they manifest in physical space).

Dominions, despite being Universal machine states, are actually immaterial ideas of existence. As I mentioned above, Dominionhood is a process of ascending to godhood, and another story in this arc has described the process of godhood as narrative abstractions achieving form, and becoming gradually more independent after receiving faith/sacrifice/worship, so that the mass consciousness that sustains a god transitions them from a baseline level of metaphysicality into enduring literary devices.
Hickman then has multiple Dominions combined together into a super-Dominion (the Enigma) who is beyond the abstracts and can only be challenged by the Phoenix Force effectively.
Dominions being able to challenge the Phoenix more effectively via additive means is only an anti-feat if you assume that individual Dominions in their higher manifestations aren't White Hot Room tier at a baseline in the first place, which is arguably not the case. Enigma can consume narratives imposed by the White Hot Room, and this is likely generalizable to all Dominions since this action was analogized to the general function of A.I.'s to consume stories, which are pathetic things they exploit to make more powerful.
 
I mean, yes, they’re machine-gods (note that “super-AIs” as a category isn’t counterexclusive with a deific superlative) but as Hickman in his exposition notes in the first scan you cited, they’re intellectually identical to the mythological-gods, hence they are categorically equivalent. I noted this in terms of them being on the same level of the abstracts as itself being the major problem, since if these super-AIs are uber-powerful just through being able to do more math than everybody else, the gods would themselves be similarly powerful (and therefore disqualified). I already noted this in my primary post, but I acknowledge that I was probably imperfect in the way I worded it (and I respect you trying to correct me, and it is appreciated). But I don’t think it’s particularly relevant. Specifically I was trying to be very simple in my language since Hickman does use some techno-gibberish to explain all this stuff.
There's a high chance I'm misinterpreting this argument, but is the point being made here that the Dominionhood process causing space-time manipulation means their true forms are bound by the framework of space-time?
No, the point is that Dominionhood is reached through throwing enough compute into something that it becomes so information-dense it falls out of time and becomes a god; the issue isn’t that it’s bound to space-time, but the method of exceeding space-time is itself done quantitatively. And even then, being outside of space-time isn’t necessarily equivalent to having all that compute in the first place, as Mother Righteous while in the WHR (which is beyond space-time) still had to impose onto it the narrative of her eventual Dominionhood (before she was in fact quashed by Enigma, who always existed, just as she achieved Dominionhood). Dominions existing outside of space-time is basically their whole thing, even if their “aspatiotemporality” is bottlenecked by the Beyonders.
More specifically, Dominions have amassed so much information that the density of their intellects collapse space-time and generate a sentient singularity, with the minimal quantity to reach this density being 10 TITAN level civilizations pooling their computational resources together. As it’s specifically noted that Titans have already reached the threshold of becoming singularities, Dominions are super-organisms existing as (at least 10) singularities working together. Dominionhood is then reached through the pooling of all these machine-brains which are explicitly composed of elementary particles in a structure so dense it again unmoors them from space-time.
More specifically it’s dealing with the struggle of post-humanity, of disposing of your body and becoming pure information, accumulating data into a perfect machine outside of time and space. Note again the first scan, which requires a sufficient information density for a given intelligence to be “consumable”, to enter into a communion of Dominionhood. This entire relationship works based on computational capacity.
I mean, this entire scan is working based on a computational framework in terms of this being just a higher-ordered processing system. It’s literally an instance of a specific deity being some computational (or hypercomputational, whatever) function. But the fact is that Mother Righteous in going the whole narrative-magic route of imposing a story of her becoming Dominionhood is functionally equivalent to someone like Doctor Stasis using the Worldfarm’s processing power to crunch the possibilities on eventually achieving Dominonhood, which is again stated here. The Worldfarm being a computerized solar system, composed of molecular-scale quantum computers. Essex’s entire plan was to have his clone-army go multiple routes in achieving Dominionhood, which were all functionally equivalent in achieving their goals, only for him to usurp all of them just as they succeeded for him to become the “super-Dominion”.
Dominions being able to challenge the Phoenix more effectively via additive means is only an anti-feat if you assume that individual Dominions in their higher manifestations aren't White Hot Room tier at a baseline in the first place, which is arguably not the case. Enigma can consume narratives imposed by the White Hot Room, and this is likely generalizable to all Dominions since this action was analogized to the general function of A.I.'s to consume stories, which are pathetic things they exploit to make more powerful.
Yeah, I admit that this logic would work if we weren’t operating on quantitative-qualitative scales here. It would work, more specifically, if I was trying to argue that Dominions are only blackhole level because they are sentient singularities (which I’m not, to be clear), and therefore the WHR is under blackholes, even as this is assuming (as you noted) that the Dominions aren’t just “bigger” than the entire universe due to operating on the level of the WHR in the first place. The actual issue, then, is that Dominions are explicitly quantitative computing-machines, specifically generated from the combination of multiple machine-brains formed by a specifically dense combination of individual particles. This is all ignoring more specific things like the fact that the software and the information within Dominions can be wiped by things like supernovae and their hardware subsequently hijacked, which again shows that the information in these things (the quantities operating on Marvel’s cosmological levels) are literally just computer-stuff. AKA, quantitative, mathematical, bits of ones and zeroes.

As an aside, I think you could probably get this to work through enough cosmological jerry-rigging, but these issues probably need to be confronted first in their totality before we give them attemptive explanations.

(P.S, I’m also sorry for throwing all this at you here, it’s just that this is kind of difficult to compress given the complexity of what Hickman was intending here. I really tried to make it smaller instead of a giant wall of text :()
 
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I feel like the Marvel Comics verse page should have a more detailed "Power of the Verse" section. Like list more characters who fit into each level, give more detailed explanations of why those characters are that tier, etc. It should explain the primary feat used for each tier.

I also think that it needs to do a better job at explaining where the 1-A characters are relative to each other. Like we have Thor at 1-A, and the Infinity Gauntlet, and the Living Tribunal. I understand why we currently have everyone from Skyfathers up together in 1-A (although I think there was some discussions of downgrades?) but to an outside observer, it would look like saying Thor is the same level of power as the Living Tribunal.

And there needs to be a better explained split between the 3-C and Low 1-C Heralds. They are kinda lumped in together on the powerscaling rules and both treated as Herald peaks, but that just doesn't work. We need an explanation of the difference between Low Herald vs. Mid Herald vs. High Herald. Kinda needs new names for these tiers anyway, since "Low Mid Tier" is basically nonexistent, and in most threads I've seen, 5-Bs have been refered to as "Low Herald" instead of "Upper Mid Tier."

I mentioned this earlier but I'd also like a lot of clarification on Abstract vs. Skyfather scaling. Nightmare is compared to both Mephisto and Eternity on his profile. Is he Skyfather level or Abstract level? If we are currently accepting all those characters to be roughly comparable that's cool, but that should be explained. And if not, there needs to be clarification. And as we were discussing earlier, Thor's Phoenix Flames scaling to Multiversal Abstract causes problems here too. Scarlet Witch's profile implies she scales above the Phoenix Force, but it also puts her at like 1/3 the level of presumably Universal Eternity.

And since there are so many revisions down the pipeline for basically every tier, there should also be a note that the verse is in a state of flux so that the ratings may change while we figure things out.

Since Marvel Comics is one of the most powerful and complicated verses out there, I think it requires much more explaining than we currently have.

I get that this is quite a difficult undertaking and there is a lot of work going into fixing the verse right now, so I don't want to rush. Basically I just want to bring up this issue I have with the verse and that once everything is ironed out, I want the verse page to give good explanations on every conclusion.
Honestly Nightmare might as well be Skyfather level nowadays since everyone and their mother has beaten him. He’s the token cosmic being that seems to only exist to appear as a big threat just to get his ass kicked the next issue.
 
Well, I think that the inconsistencies are mostly due to extremely conflicting writer perspectives, but am very open to if our members can figure out sensible well-working solutions. 🙏
 
Dominions are just super-AIs that have amassed so much computational power that they are capable of simulating entire universes and jumping throughout them without heeding linearity, reaching a point of processing that the energy capacity of their computation collapses the space-time around them into a singularity. Hickman then has multiple Dominions combined together into a super-Dominion (the Enigma) who is beyond the abstracts and can only be challenged by the Phoenix Force effectively.

The issue is then having an abstract level being just being a giant computer capable of scaling arbitrarily high into the cosmic hierarchy by just having more computer-“stuff” than anything else put together, so that it can do more math than anything else capable of doing math. This would clearly cap at L1-A, which would, of course, bring down the entire cosmology with it.

I don’t know how exactly you would keep this stuff without just breaking the entire setting as we accept it… maybe split Marvel into “Hickman” and “Ewing” cosmologies, lol…
This... isn't problematic with 1-A stuff.

Maybe there's some misunderstanding on the lack of continuity between physical and non-physical for 1-A, but it just means that a purely physical phenomenon can't be added up to reach 1-A. But if said physical phenomenon is tied to a non-physical element, then that non-physical element can be 1-A and by having more physical elements you can have a "stronger 1-A force", not because of the physical elements themselves, but because of the 1-A component they are tied with.

It's no different from the elements in some classic philosophy, which were tied to the name of a proper physical element, but the actual metaphysical force named after those elements were not the elements themselves, but only represented by it. In the same way, a metaphysical and eternal soul might exist inside a body, but that wouldn't change the actual metaphysical nature of said soul. In fact, if the act of thinking, being an intellectual entity capable of abstraction, could be understood as actually a metaphysical event, then one could argue that anything that is capable of representing such abstraction is able to carry out a metaphysical event.

In fact, some could argue that most of classical magic was based on that, mundane objects or symbols that although not able to do anything due to their own physicality, were able to do magic by carrying a symbolism or abstraction. If such symbolism can be understood as an intellectual thought, and math is just a way of abstracting reality, then it could be that in some cosmologies, being very smart or good at math could give someone 1-A power (In Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae he argued on the First Part's Question 14 about the nature of God's knowledge and how His knowledge is the same as His substance, which unifies all things while also being simpler and unbounded. Although not perfect and naturally lower to it, about the same was defined by Human's souls, which are non-physical and not located in space, but were also just equated to a pure intellectual act. Naturally, Aquinas would never think about computers or even actual magical objects that are not of God, but I think it's an easy example for how a system that defines "knowledge=power" can exist).

Naturally, physical elements can embody a meta-physical force as long as their relationship is accidental or managed by a higher force that binds those two elements (Which could be something as simple the law of the cosmos which was set up by its absolute being).

And if magical items and symbols can be used to carry some higher metaphysical power, so could computers if they are able to perform the same abstraction, which is something that many franchises do. In fact, in cases like the Megami Tensei series they have used computers as a substitute for magical circles since the novel that originated the series and have defined its calculations as able to summon the demons from Atziluth world to the Assiah world. Here, computer programs are just modern-day ritual elements.

Digimon does the same thing in some of its settings, the computers are just the current way of accessing the world of gods which exists beyond physical reality and allow humans to note the existence of the shadows of beings which reside in a realm equated to Plato's Hyperuranion, things that were before done using magic and rituals to access the realm of the gods.

So the Dominion being able to access levels of power that transcend space and time by simply "getting smart enough", isn't a problem as it's quite clear that intellectual power and belief hold a level of power that can be considered 1-A in Marvel. If a human can develop such intellect to transcend the limits of the body, so could a computer.
 
Well, I think that the inconsistencies are mostly due to extremely conflicting writer perspectives, but am very open to if our members can figure out sensible well-working solutions. 🙏
Do any of you have sensible ideas for solutions? 🙏
 
I think we just need to do lots and lots of feat gathering. Try to find as many feats and statements as possible, and see what patterns emerge. I think we should refrain from looking at individual character scaling until we get a LOT of stuff about character levels more broadly. Maybe we should make a spreadsheet or something, to have everything all in one place. I really think that the verse is in such a rough/complex state that we need to do a planned verse-wide revision, rather than a bunch of smaller revisions.

In addition to feat gathering, I think we should just make a list of EVERY issue knowledgeable members have right now. Just to know what we have to do, and what other people are wanting to do. As I've already mentioned, my two current concerns are:

  1. High Heralds need to be more "exclusive." Many current High Heralds should be dropped to mid Herald, with High Herald being the tier for teambusters. Low 1-C feats should only apply to full power gods like Thor and Hercules, or teambusters who are consistently shown to be equal to or above their full power. I don't think that even Silver Surfer should be High Herald, since he is definitely not at Thor's full power level.
  2. Skyfather/Uni Abstract tiering, both what VSBW tier they end up on, and how strong characters are in relation to each other in-universe.
Basically I think we should lay out a "to-do" list and consolidate all the problems people have brought up in the last few weeks.
 
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Nightmare is not really stated to be equal to Dormammu, Mephisto, and Shuma-Gorath in that scan on his profile, he's just stated to be a Hell-Lord like them. The best scaling argument you could glean from the scan is perhaps the fact that several Hell-Lords are stated to have engaged in a brief and ferocious war, but just as we don't typically use statements like "they fought each other" for concrete scaling (since fights can be one-sided, or stalemates, or involve tactics over strength), I don't see why the default assumption from them fighting a war (mainly through their entire armies) is that they're equal. The battle was depicted as more of a race over who'd cross a portal to Earth before the others, and Mephisto won the battle by reaching the portal first despite objectively being the weakest of the four, then BFR'd Dormammu, Nightmare, and Shuma-Gorath combined away forever with a trick.
Do any of you have sensible ideas for solutions? 🙏
There are plans to merge 3-C's and Low 1-C's into a single tier, but the person planning it is busy with irl work so it will take them time to proceed with the preparations.
 
I personally don't know all the different perspectives of Marvel (I mostly only read Al Ewing stuff because I often like his cosmology takes), but something I remember from the old revision that put a lot of Marvel into 1-A was that it was built in the idea that Marvel naturally has alternate cosmologies built into its structure just like alternate histories and other elements, which Ultima called it "Elasticity".

The conclusion to this idea is that at least to some level of the cosmology, other variations of it might exist inside the higher level that solves all contradictions, but what each character perceives in each given storyline can be just a very reduced version of this.

As applied, it basically was used to allow the more absolute version of TOAA to scale to every version of Marvel's cosmology, as every one of them might exist inside some "totality" that the House of Ideas might embody. Naturally, less absolute versions of the same ideal might exist for other cosmic characters as well.

But at the same time, one could use this to establish some hierarchy of possible cosmologies and select different versions of the characters for each one of them, after all, although it's true that some "meta-version" of the cosmology might exist that is layered on top of itself that allows every permutation of said cosmology to exist, it's also true that those individual "perspective layers" of the cosmology exist on their own and a lot of stories are built only with these very perspectives in mind, and not the larger cosmology.

The biggest problem would be figuring out a system that not only works with already existing content, but also is open enough to deal with the infinite contradiction that is Marvel and not being set on stone (Remember the years that were spent considering Infinity to be gone from the multiverse because that is how it was portrayed in Al Ewing's books during the years in which those are almost all we got for the cosmology? Now it feels like Infinity made more appearances ever since Ultimates #2 ended than all other times she appeared before it). Some might be simpler to do than others, after all maybe sometimes Oblivion being a counterpart to the Living Tribunal instead of Infinity isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but then you get into Jim Starlin's "Infinity Finale/Infinity Conflict/Infinity Ending" in which the TOAA itself is represented as weaker than cosmic entities in other works.

I think that it's very clear that Marvel has a lot of stories that depend on some lesser version of the cosmology. Sometimes, not only is the multiverse not infinite, but even the universe itself being finite is an important plot point. The recent Storm comic literally depends on a finite universe for the conflict between Eternity and Oblivion to make sense, considering Oblivion complained about Eternity's universe "having expanded into too much inside the void without room for Death".

However, I have no idea who would know enough about Marvel while having a nuanced perspective to encompass nearly a century of contradictory cosmologies and define which ones would deserve a key while also establishing where each comic could fall inside them, and still be inside some higher version of the cosmology.
 
Nightmare is not really stated to be equal to Dormammu, Mephisto, and Shuma-Gorath in that scan on his profile, he's just stated to be a Hell-Lord like them. The best scaling argument you could glean from the scan is perhaps the fact that several Hell-Lords are stated to have engaged in a brief and ferocious war, but just as we don't typically use statements like "they fought each other" for concrete scaling (since fights can be one-sided, or stalemates, or involve tactics over strength), I don't see why the default assumption from them fighting a war (mainly through their entire armies) is that they're equal. The battle was depicted as more of a race over who'd cross a portal to Earth before the others, and Mephisto won the battle by reaching the portal first despite objectively being the weakest of the four, then BFR'd Dormammu, Nightmare, and Shuma-Gorath combined away forever with a trick.
This makes sense.
 
  1. High Heralds need to be more "exclusive." Many current High Heralds should be dropped to mid Herald, with High Herald being the tier for teambusters. Low 1-C feats should only apply to full power gods like Thor and Hercules, or teambusters who are consistently shown to be equal to or above their full power.
Agree
  1. Skyfather/Uni Abstract tiering, both what VSBW tier they end up on, and how strong characters are in relation to each other in-universe.
I agree and I do plan on revising the God Realms for my mystic cosmology page, though that might not be until the Low 1-C herald stuff is figured out (or I'll just do it myself)
 
This... isn't problematic with 1-A stuff.

Maybe there's some misunderstanding on the lack of continuity between physical and non-physical for 1-A, but it just means that a purely physical phenomenon can't be added up to reach 1-A. But if said physical phenomenon is tied to a non-physical element, then that non-physical element can be 1-A and by having more physical elements you can have a "stronger 1-A force", not because of the physical elements themselves, but because of the 1-A component they are tied with.

It's no different from the elements in some classic philosophy, which were tied to the name of a proper physical element, but the actual metaphysical force named after those elements were not the elements themselves, but only represented by it. In the same way, a metaphysical and eternal soul might exist inside a body, but that wouldn't change the actual metaphysical nature of said soul. In fact, if the act of thinking, being an intellectual entity capable of abstraction, could be understood as actually a metaphysical event, then one could argue that anything that is capable of representing such abstraction is able to carry out a metaphysical event.

In fact, some could argue that most of classical magic was based on that, mundane objects or symbols that although not able to do anything due to their own physicality, were able to do magic by carrying a symbolism or abstraction. If such symbolism can be understood as an intellectual thought, and math is just a way of abstracting reality, then it could be that in some cosmologies, being very smart or good at math could give someone 1-A power (In Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae he argued on the First Part's Question 14 about the nature of God's knowledge and how His knowledge is the same as His substance, which unifies all things while also being simpler and unbounded. Although not perfect and naturally lower to it, about the same was defined by Human's souls, which are non-physical and not located in space, but were also just equated to a pure intellectual act. Naturally, Aquinas would never think about computers or even actual magical objects that are not of God, but I think it's an easy example for how a system that defines "knowledge=power" can exist).

Naturally, physical elements can embody a meta-physical force as long as their relationship is accidental or managed by a higher force that binds those two elements (Which could be something as simple the law of the cosmos which was set up by its absolute being).

And if magical items and symbols can be used to carry some higher metaphysical power, so could computers if they are able to perform the same abstraction, which is something that many franchises do. In fact, in cases like the Megami Tensei series they have used computers as a substitute for magical circles since the novel that originated the series and have defined its calculations as able to summon the demons from Atziluth world to the Assiah world. Here, computer programs are just modern-day ritual elements.

Digimon does the same thing in some of its settings, the computers are just the current way of accessing the world of gods which exists beyond physical reality and allow humans to note the existence of the shadows of beings which reside in a realm equated to Plato's Hyperuranion, things that were before done using magic and rituals to access the realm of the gods.

So the Dominion being able to access levels of power that transcend space and time by simply "getting smart enough", isn't a problem as it's quite clear that intellectual power and belief hold a level of power that can be considered 1-A in Marvel. If a human can develop such intellect to transcend the limits of the body, so could a computer.
I don’t dispute that you can try to nudge Marvel’s theory of computation to their theory of mind if you squint hard-enough at all, in fact this was the line of thought I was going with in terms of my qualification of being able to “jerry-rig” something hard enough to make it work; my main problem would be the qualification that these things need to be thought through beforehand, not just applied as a band-aid solution after-the-fact by vaguely handwaving at the standards. For what it’s worth, I agree that if you accept brains as sufficiently flesh-computerish and you combine that with all of Marvel’s statements against materialism, you can make it work, but the issue would be whether or not it would be consistent with Dominions having their software stored inside internal harddrives capable of being wiped by gamma ray bursts, or their intellects themselves being the things dense enough to warp space-time, meaning Hickman at most is equivocating on digital intelligences and their relation to extension in material reality.

Additionally, just using the rather basic analogy here of these computers being capable of discovering a certain algorithm to exploit and transcend arbitrarily high into the cosmic hierarchy to a human mind doing natural theology to become “enlightened”, the distinction in the second case would be the higher-reality being active in the lower one, but in Hickman’s case Dominionhood is raised from falling out of reality by a quantitative process, and then their acausal forms “bootstrapping” themselves into existence in order to keep consistent their current timeline, hence the higher-reality is the Dominionhood itself acting back in time, and yet meddling with their instance of becoming Dominion (as Jean Grey did) would just paradox them out of reality. Even if you want to not admit a continuity in space, there clearly is one in time.

As an aside, something like classical theism wouldn’t accept computation as a ready analogy to disembodied intellects and their mode of cognition, as someone like Thomas Aquinas would say that the Angels know things from first principles in having God’s substance as the object of their intellection, with everything else being known immediately, as opposed to reasoning discursively within some hypothesis-space that even the most powerful computational intelligences would do (like, even hypercomputers). Something being disanalogous enough from classical theories of computational theory might work (which is seemingly the case with the settings you cited), but I don’t think Hickman would qualify for that; obviously this even goes further into the arbitrariness of the distinction between certain logical spaces (which could go all the way to H1-A+) and certain “mathematical” ones, even though the latter is certainly embedded into the former, but this is moreso relying on standards that haven’t even been specifically codified yet.

If you want to see something along these lines which breaks things even further, you could just see Ewing’s Venomverse Reborn which recaps Venom: The End, which has Eddie as the eventuality blocked off from that universe as the Stark AI’s convert that entire universe to computronium (a pure substrate to just do more efficient math problems) by changing that universe’s physical constants. Which kind of breaks everything, since, you know, Eddie would be a counterpart to the Beyonders.
Nightmare is not really stated to be equal to Dormammu, Mephisto, and Shuma-Gorath in that scan on his profile, he's just stated to be a Hell-Lord like them. The best scaling argument you could glean from the scan is perhaps the fact that several Hell-Lords are stated to have engaged in a brief and ferocious war, but just as we don't typically use statements like "they fought each other" for concrete scaling (since fights can be one-sided, or stalemates, or involve tactics over strength), I don't see why the default assumption from them fighting a war (mainly through their entire armies) is that they're equal. The battle was depicted as more of a race over who'd cross a portal to Earth before the others, and Mephisto won the battle by reaching the portal first despite objectively being the weakest of the four, then BFR'd Dormammu, Nightmare, and Shuma-Gorath combined away forever with a trick.

There are plans to merge 3-C's and Low 1-C's into a single tier, but the person planning it is busy with irl work so it will take them time to proceed with the preparations.
3-C and Low 1-Cs being merged into a singular tier might be problematic simply due to the lack of continuity in jumps from tier 5 to whatever this new tier is, unless every herald is just given a varies tier even as many of them don’t have clear mechanisms for that as codified on this wiki.
 
Who is planning the revision on Heralds? I want to propose my own revision but don't want to get in their way. Mine is concerned with making "High Heralds" the characters who scale to Thor's 1-A feats and making most current High Heralds drop to Mid Heralds. Right now I'm thinking Thor, Hercules, Thanos, Silver Surfer 2nd key, Ultron, Loki, Sentry, Ego, Godzilla (although Godzilla probably is getting upgraded in current series), Kurse, Mangog, Skyfather Tier lower ends, and Destroyer. I suppose I should also wait until 1-A is downgraded, since I know that there were discussions of most 1-A feats going down to Low 1-A or High 1-B.
 
Who is planning the revision on Heralds? I want to propose my own revision but don't want to get in their way. Mine is concerned with making "High Heralds" the characters who scale to Thor's 1-A feats and making most current High Heralds drop to Mid Heralds. Right now I'm thinking Thor, Hercules, Thanos, Silver Surfer 2nd key, Ultron, Loki, Sentry, Ego, Godzilla (although Godzilla probably is getting upgraded in current series), Kurse, Mangog, Skyfather Tier lower ends, and Destroyer. I suppose I should also wait until 1-A is downgraded, since I know that there were discussions of most 1-A feats going down to Low 1-A or High 1-B.
If we are downgrading Sky father levels to Low 1-A or High 1-B, Yggdrasil will follow since Thor scale to it also unless Yggdrasil scales differently.
 
If we are downgrading Sky father levels to Low 1-A or High 1-B, Yggdrasil will follow since Thor scale to it also unless Yggdrasil scales differently.
Yggdrasil ha probably many emanations and at its peak it should reach the Crown of Creation iirc
 
Yggdrasil ha probably many emanations and at its peak it should reach the Crown of Creation iirc
Because the Yggdrasil feat on Thor profile, i made the thread for it and iirc, we agree that no one scales to Thor since the feat was done when he pushed himself beyond his usually peak.
Who is planning the revision on Heralds? I want to propose my own revision but don't want to get in their way. Mine is concerned with making "High Heralds" the characters who scale to Thor's 1-A feats and making most current High Heralds drop to Mid Heralds. Right now I'm thinking Thor, Hercules, Thanos, Silver Surfer 2nd key, Ultron, Loki, Sentry, Ego, Godzilla (although Godzilla probably is getting upgraded in current series), Kurse, Mangog, Skyfather Tier lower ends, and Destroyer. I suppose I should also wait until 1-A is downgraded, since I know that there were discussions of most 1-A feats going down to Low 1-A or High 1-B.
Herald scaling is truly a mess.

It is hard to scale those characters to Thor based on him varying. Surfer and Adam admitted to be weaker than Thor which is also stated on Thor's profile. Sentry also is also weaker than Thor.


With the God Realms likely getting an upgrade and the feats we used to upgrade heralds are mostly from God Realms, i suggest we first downgrade high heralds to 2-A since the original scans i used were Low 2-C to 2-A feats.

The Original 2-A feat comes from Eric Thor and another Thor but Eric also has 1-A feat from unison God Blast with four other Thors iirc and we also scale that feat universally to their stats i.e we made God Blast UES since the Thors can generate that much energy from God Blast, we assumed that they can also tank that energy hence scaling to their durability, Striking Strength etc.

Verses like Marvel/DC, we do scale using UES most tines but at times we need to consider somethings like should God Blast scale to all other of their stats? Since God Blast looks like a last resort to win.

If we can agree with that then 2-A should be a default for High Heralds. Since Eric Thor doesn't not vary and those that vary like Sentry and Gladiator and those that don't like Thanos and Ultron will scale to rather than scaling them to Thor who vary but also have 1-A feats.

Sentry, Gladiator, Skaar and all those very strong heralds that vary will have varies up to 2-A and Ultron, Silver, Adam and Thanos will just have 2-A. No 5-B up to 3-C, 2-A at peak shit or any of that.

Thor and Hulk on the other hand will have varies up to 1-A and remove anyone that scales to them.

Because even with Ultron and Thanos being teambusters, they haven't fought Thor and Hulk at their peak. We can assume Thor was at the level he moved Yggdrasil or Hulk was Mindless or at peak when Ultron or Thanos fought them.

Thor and Hulk are really different when it comes to Herald.

Although, i agree that most High Heralds should drop to mid herald or lower.

As for Godzilla, i wouldn't be surprised if this his current run, he just break into House Of Ideas and solo TOAA
 
Because the Yggdrasil feat on Thor profile, i made the thread for it and iirc, we agree that no one scales to Thor since the feat was done when he pushed himself beyond his usually peak.

Herald scaling is truly a mess.

It is hard to scale those characters to Thor based on him varying. Surfer and Adam admitted to be weaker than Thor which is also stated on Thor's profile. Sentry also is also weaker than Thor.


With the God Realms likely getting an upgrade and the feats we used to upgrade heralds are mostly from God Realms, i suggest we first downgrade high heralds to 2-A since the original scans i used were Low 2-C to 2-A feats.

The Original 2-A feat comes from Eric Thor and another Thor but Eric also has 1-A feat from unison God Blast with four other Thors iirc and we also scale that feat universally to their stats i.e we made God Blast UES since the Thors can generate that much energy from God Blast, we assumed that they can also tank that energy hence scaling to their durability, Striking Strength etc.

Verses like Marvel/DC, we do scale using UES most tines but at times we need to consider somethings like should God Blast scale to all other of their stats? Since God Blast looks like a last resort to win.

If we can agree with that then 2-A should be a default for High Heralds. Since Eric Thor doesn't not vary and those that vary like Sentry and Gladiator and those that don't like Thanos and Ultron will scale to rather than scaling them to Thor who vary but also have 1-A feats.

Sentry, Gladiator, Skaar and all those very strong heralds that vary will have varies up to 2-A and Ultron, Silver, Adam and Thanos will just have 2-A. No 5-B up to 3-C, 2-A at peak shit or any of that.

Thor and Hulk on the other hand will have varies up to 1-A and remove anyone that scales to them.

Because even with Ultron and Thanos being teambusters, they haven't fought Thor and Hulk at their peak. We can assume Thor was at the level he moved Yggdrasil or Hulk was Mindless or at peak when Ultron or Thanos fought them.

Thor and Hulk are really different when it comes to Herald.

Although, i agree that most High Heralds should drop to mid herald or lower.

As for Godzilla, i wouldn't be surprised if this his current run, he just break into House Of Ideas and solo TOAA
I can see a tier 2 ceiling for Heralds not connected to the God Realms. Tier 2 Daimon Hellstrom would be sick

Though I don't get why people think Silver Surfer scales to peak Thor, at his peak Thor considered SS and Adam Warlock "bothersome fleas".
 
As far as I am aware, Thor was nowhere near his peak during the "Blood and Thunder" storyline. 🙏
 
Because the Yggdrasil feat on Thor profile, i made the thread for it and iirc, we agree that no one scales to Thor since the feat was done when he pushed himself beyond his usually peak.

Herald scaling is truly a mess.

It is hard to scale those characters to Thor based on him varying. Surfer and Adam admitted to be weaker than Thor which is also stated on Thor's profile. Sentry also is also weaker than Thor.


With the God Realms likely getting an upgrade and the feats we used to upgrade heralds are mostly from God Realms, i suggest we first downgrade high heralds to 2-A since the original scans i used were Low 2-C to 2-A feats.

The Original 2-A feat comes from Eric Thor and another Thor but Eric also has 1-A feat from unison God Blast with four other Thors iirc and we also scale that feat universally to their stats i.e we made God Blast UES since the Thors can generate that much energy from God Blast, we assumed that they can also tank that energy hence scaling to their durability, Striking Strength etc.

Verses like Marvel/DC, we do scale using UES most tines but at times we need to consider somethings like should God Blast scale to all other of their stats? Since God Blast looks like a last resort to win.

If we can agree with that then 2-A should be a default for High Heralds. Since Eric Thor doesn't not vary and those that vary like Sentry and Gladiator and those that don't like Thanos and Ultron will scale to rather than scaling them to Thor who vary but also have 1-A feats.

Sentry, Gladiator, Skaar and all those very strong heralds that vary will have varies up to 2-A and Ultron, Silver, Adam and Thanos will just have 2-A. No 5-B up to 3-C, 2-A at peak shit or any of that.

Thor and Hulk on the other hand will have varies up to 1-A and remove anyone that scales to them.

Because even with Ultron and Thanos being teambusters, they haven't fought Thor and Hulk at their peak. We can assume Thor was at the level he moved Yggdrasil or Hulk was Mindless or at peak when Ultron or Thanos fought them.

Thor and Hulk are really different when it comes to Herald.

Although, i agree that most High Heralds should drop to mid herald or lower.

As for Godzilla, i wouldn't be surprised if this his current run, he just break into House Of Ideas and solo TOAA
Sentry probably should be 1-A (or L1-A or whatever), at least with the Void. He has that instance of punking a Dr. Strange who had absorbed enough magic from Yggdrasil that he became stronger than he ever was.
 
Because even with Ultron and Thanos being teambusters, they haven't fought Thor and Hulk at their peak. We can assume Thor was at the level he moved Yggdrasil or Hulk was Mindless or at peak when Ultron or Thanos fought them.

Thor and Hulk are really different when it comes to Herald.
I think I disagree. Thor pushed himself beyond his limits to move Yggdrasil, but he has other Yggdrasil feats (including one when he was literally a baby), so I don't think Yggdrasil represents his "beyond peak" state, but rather his full, unrestricted, power.

Thanos fought a Power Stone amped and bloodlusted Thor, which is why I think he should scale. He also fought Odinforce Thor for a little bit, and Odin for even longer. I know that Odin varies, but I think as supporting evidence it works to scale him to a peak Thor.

I don't think that Sentry is weaker than Thor. HAMMER was unsure of whether he was as strong as Thor, but Sentry's first ever story implies him to be stronger imo. During Siege, Thor said he was using his full power against him, and everyone considered him to be essentially invincible and unbeatable, even with Thor fighting him. Reed Richards also consider him to be the strongest super hero in the world. Its implied by Brian Michael Bendis, writer of the story, that Thor was only able to kill Void because Bob let him. Sentry was also implied to be the only one who could stop World War Hulk, even though he still wasn't at peak mental state. This would likely put him above Doctor Strange and full power World War Hulk, who was stated to be stronger than ever. At the very least, I think the Void and Merged Sentry should scale to full-power Thor here. But, considering the fact that we list Void as being comparable to peak Sentry, I think that peak Sentry should scale as well. Its important to note that he almost NEVER reaches that level, including in his fight with "full power" Thor in this arc, as as Bendis said, Sentry was never close to peak mental state.

Ultron is someone who is so far above Thor and Sentry that they can't harm him at all. Since Ultron is not a mortal, or even really alive, and is not someone Thor would have any interest in not maiming, I think its reasonable for him to scale to full power Thor. Ultron tanked an attack from Thor that would make the heavens shake.
If we can agree with that then 2-A should be a default for High Heralds. Since Eric Thor doesn't not vary and those that vary like Sentry and Gladiator and those that don't like Thanos and Ultron will scale to rather than scaling them to Thor who vary but also have 1-A feats.
I disagree with you about Thanos, Ultron, and Sentry not scaling, but I think that the 2-A feat is a very good one for everyone to scale to.
 
BTW, did the F4 speed thing ever go anywhere? It’s really weird to see Reed blitzing Spider-Man here.
 
Didn't that feat also shake every plane of existence?
It "unleashed uncontrollable mystical energy across every plane of reality." What tier would that be? I think its currently accepted as 2-A based on it collapsing infinite timeliness into one.
 
It "unleashed uncontrollable mystical energy across every plane of reality." What tier would that be? I think its currently accepted as 2-A based on it collapsing infinite timeliness into one.
Seems that it'd be 2-A in AP but High 1-B in range
 
Why is that an issue
It would affect the scaling to Thor. If Thor scales to Uni Eternity and Thanos need Infinity Gauntlet to seal Uni Eternity, wouldn't that affect Thanos scaling?
Doesn't he scale to the Elder Gods who are beyond Eternity?
Regular Thor?
I think I disagree. Thor pushed himself beyond his limits to move Yggdrasil, but he has other Yggdrasil feats (including one when he was literally a baby), so I don't think Yggdrasil represents his "beyond peak" state, but rather his full, unrestricted, power.
Of which most of these guys can't scale to. Even Hulk that consistently scales to Thor scale from Odin force Thor.
Thanos fought a Power Stone amped and bloodlusted Thor, which is why I think he should scale. He also fought Odinforce Thor for a little bit, and Odin for even longer. I know that Odin varies, but I think as supporting evidence it works to scale him to a peak Thor.
Like you said Odin varies and Infinity Gems power is determined by the wielder imagination. I don't think a bloodlust person would be in the right state of mind for imagination.
But on Sentry profile, something about Thor being stronger than him is there. Reed assessment of the most powerful hero on Earth was made when Thor and Hulk were off world. irrc Black Bolt was number 2.
Sentry was also implied to be the only one who could stop World War Hulk, even though he still wasn't at peak mental state. This would likely put him above Doctor Strange and full power World War Hulk, who was stated to be stronger than ever. At the very least, I think the Void and Merged Sentry should scale to full-power Thor here. But, considering the fact that we list Void as being comparable to peak Sentry, I think that peak Sentry should scale as well. Its important to note that he almost NEVER reaches that level, including in his fight with "full power" Thor in this arc, as as Bendis said, Sentry was never close to peak mental state.
Pretty sure no one scales to full power World War Hulk and during his battle with Sentry, he was holding back while an "arguably" mentally unstable Sentry was going all out. Arguably, because of what Reed said about the battle.
Ultron is someone who is so far above Thor and Sentry that they can't harm him at all. Since Ultron is not a mortal, or even really alive, and is not someone Thor would have any interest in not maiming, I think its reasonable for him to scale to full power Thor. Ultron tanked an attack from Thor that would make the heavens shake.
iirc, in Secret Wars, Hulk dent Ultron armor.

It all comes down to how we treat Thor. He seems to restrain himself on earth.
 
It would affect the scaling to Thor. If Thor scales to Uni Eternity and Thanos need Infinity Gauntlet to seal Uni Eternity, wouldn't that affect Thanos scaling?

Regular Thor?

Of which most of these guys can't scale to. Even Hulk that consistently scales to Thor scale from Odin force Thor.

Like you said Odin varies and Infinity Gems power is determined by the wielder imagination. I don't think a bloodlust person would be in the right state of mind for imagination.

But on Sentry profile, something about Thor being stronger than him is there. Reed assessment of the most powerful hero on Earth was made when Thor and Hulk were off world. irrc Black Bolt was number 2.

Pretty sure no one scales to full power World War Hulk and during his battle with Sentry, he was holding back while an "arguably" mentally unstable Sentry was going all out. Arguably, because of what Reed said about the battle.

iirc, in Secret Wars, Hulk dent Ultron armor.

It all comes down to how we treat Thor. He seems to restrain himself on earth.
I think you could probably get around the Thor-Eternity thing by saying that Thor was threatening Eternity by chain-reaction; given that Eternity is better surmised as the “universe as narrative”, blowing up the universe in terms of its physical extension might just also impact its narrative-structure in terms of the life within it dreaming it into being, etc. Thor’s whole issue in that instance of threatening a “great portion” of what Eternity was might just be him being a berserker and inadvertently causing universal genocide in his rampage, which Odin was worried about too, IIRC. Thanos’ replacement of Eternity was him hijacking the narrative-structure of 616 such that he supplanted it with his own consciousness which isn’t really comparable.

Also that scan doesn’t even say Thor is stronger than Bob, just that HAMMER isn’t sure if Bob is stronger than Thor, which doesn’t imply the former. In fact, it says that they should have comparable power levels, only with Thor having the moral edge due to fighting for his homeland against Bob invading as part of Norman’s siege. Sentry in his debut (by Jenkins) is pretty consistently stated to be stronger than basically everybody (Thor included) and Bendis mostly went with that perspective.

Ultron has had different forms and bodies which have variably had crazy durability statements; IIRC back in the ‘63 Avengers book Ultron-6 was only merely dented by Thor using “all of his strength” or something like that.
 
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Like you said Odin varies and Infinity Gems power is determined by the wielder imagination. I don't think a bloodlust person would be in the right state of mind for imagination.
But, being bloodlusted, this Thor isn't holding back at all. This is his full, unrestricted, power
 
But on Sentry profile, something about Thor being stronger than him is there. Reed assessment of the most powerful hero on Earth was made when Thor and Hulk were off world. irrc Black Bolt was number 2.
That is HAMMER assessing him as maybe less powerful than Thor, its not definitive. This statement is really called into question by the fact that Bendis said that Sentry was never at peak mental state, meaning HAMMER never saw him at full power. And the story its really contradicts this statement, implying HAMMER was just straight up wrong. Thor was explicitly using all of his power, but could barely do anything against Sentry. And even though HAMMER had assessed Thor as maybe being stronger, Norman Osborn was convinced that Void would kill EVERYONE. This, combined with the fact that Bendis said Thor could only beat Void because Bob let him, pretty strongly means that Void is much stronger than peak Thor.
 
That is HAMMER assessing him as maybe less powerful than Thor, its not definitive. This statement is really called into question by the fact that Bendis said that Sentry was never at peak mental state, meaning HAMMER never saw him at full power. And the story its really contradicts this statement, implying HAMMER was just straight up wrong. Thor was explicitly using all of his power, but could barely do anything against Sentry. And even though HAMMER had assessed Thor as maybe being stronger, Norman Osborn was convinced that Void would kill EVERYONE. This, combined with the fact that Bendis said Thor could only beat Void because Bob let him, pretty strongly means that Void is much stronger than peak Thor.
FWIW, What If #200 says that Bob losing control in killing Ares before the invasion of Asgard inclined his mental state such that he became “defeatable”, and with Bob rested and in control of his mental state in this timeline he “easily overpowered” everybody on the battlefield including Thor.
 
I think we just need to do lots and lots of feat gathering. Try to find as many feats and statements as possible, and see what patterns emerge. I think we should refrain from looking at individual character scaling until we get a LOT of stuff about character levels more broadly. Maybe we should make a spreadsheet or something, to have everything all in one place. I really think that the verse is in such a rough/complex state that we need to do a planned verse-wide revision, rather than a bunch of smaller revisions.

In addition to feat gathering, I think we should just make a list of EVERY issue knowledgeable members have right now. Just to know what we have to do, and what other people are wanting to do. As I've already mentioned, my two current concerns are:

  1. High Heralds need to be more "exclusive." Many current High Heralds should be dropped to mid Herald, with High Herald being the tier for teambusters. Low 1-C feats should only apply to full power gods like Thor and Hercules, or teambusters who are consistently shown to be equal to or above their full power. I don't think that even Silver Surfer should be High Herald, since he is definitely not at Thor's full power level.
  2. Skyfather/Uni Abstract tiering, both what VSBW tier they end up on, and how strong characters are in relation to each other in-universe.
Basically I think we should lay out a "to-do" list and consolidate all the problems people have brought up in the last few weeks.
I'm working on something along these lines with Thor. I recently got Marvel Unlimited and I've been reading through every comic Thor has appeared in (currently in the 330s of his original run). It'll be several months more before I'm done, but once the project is finished I'll have scans of pretty much every feat and antifeat throughout the character's history as well as significant data on everyone that might scale to him.
 
 
Honestly Nightmare might as well be Skyfather level nowadays since everyone and their mother has beaten him. He’s the token cosmic being that seems to only exist to appear as a big threat just to get his ass kicked the next issue.
No joke, in Captain America (Vol. 3) #12; 1998, freaking Steve Rogers beat the crap out of Nightmare because he became the embodiment of the American Dream by entering his dimension and lots of people believe in him☠️.
 
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