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Marvel Comics: Revising the Cosmic Hierarchy

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Kepekley23

VS Battles
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This is a long overdue thread, given the current dire state of the higher-tier Marvel profiles. Let's just dive into it already.

Introductio
Currently, a large portion of Marvel Comics's higher-abstract profiles are rated as 1-A (Outerverse level), for one reason or another. There are a considerable number of profiles that are assigned this rating (here is a noncomprehensive list of the Tier 1 Marvel entities in the wiki, a good portion of whom scale to this tier), but, ultimately, all of those profiles are considered to be 1-A via powerscaling to the feats attributed to the following characters:

One singular thought must be flowing through all the heads of those reading this right now; "what does that have to do with anything?".

To put it simply: absolutely none of those characters, with the sole exception of Oblivion, currently have or ever had 1-A statements or showings at any point in their history, and all the statements and justifications we use to rate them as such are completely out of context, and are nowhere near actually 1-A.

Of course, just claiming and blabbering without actually providing analysis and rebuttals on the scans presented hardly demonstrates one's ability to debate a point, so I will heed the mental requests you're all probably having and elaborate on this issue, one profile at a time.

The Living Tribunal
The judge of all multiverses and the manifestation of the whole of creation, who is meant to be at the top of the Abstract Hierarchy in Marvel...but what about his justifications?

You know we're off to a good start when, right off the bat, the very first justification scan is meaningless drivel about Alpha and Omega that wouldn't belong even on a Low 2-C's profile, let alone on the uppermost cosmic being who is the embodiment of an infinite-dimensional set of realities in a series as popular and important as Marvel. Even the part about him being the heart of all creation isn't to be taken at face value, considering that, as we have seen numerous times, the Tribunal's death has no significant effect on the multiverse's well-being - other than the creation of a chain-reaction in the imbalances between good and evil, solely due to the fact the Tribunal was the one who judged and dealt with said imbalances, and him not being there to judge them leading to a cumulative effect.

Overall, this isn't even a Tier 2 statement, let alone something that can be used as a justification for 1-A.

Sounds like a fine justification! Until we read the actual scan and realize that this is stated nowhere and is blatantly rewriting the actual affirmation. All that is actually stated is that the Tribunal is beyond "the realms of space and time". There is literally no choice of wording out there that could be vaguer or wider in meaning that they could have chosen, and the fact that the very next part of the sentence mentions "all the opposing realities", with Silver Surfer replying by bringing up the chaos within one single timeline shows that the context is no more than the Tribunal transcending the space and time within a single 4-D multiverse - this too belongs absolutely nowhere in a profile of this scale and accomplishes nothing in terms of justifying 1-A. At the very most, this is a High 2-A supporting statement, which, again, is irrelevant to a Tier 1 entity.

And finally, we reach the classic blanket "duality!" justification that jus t needs to exist in every verse out there with this kind of cosmology. There are just too many problems with this to summarize in a single paragraph, so let's go over them in a list:

  • 1. This is yet another case of rewriting the scan and rewording the character statements to make them suit the proposed rating more. Concepts are, case in point, mentioned absolutely nowhere in this scene or in the storyline. We only have vague general statements, just like the previous scan that claimed it was stated he transcended the concepts themselves. We need to stop embellishing evidence like we always do for nearly every single character under those tiers. Just present it the way it is written.
  • 2. The first scan is an ephemeral statement, from the Silver Surfer, who states that he realized "all the infinite dualities from Galactus in his war against the In-Betweener". That's literally all there is to it. No further elaboration or context is provided here, so I trust everyone to have some common sense in this regard and realize this is utterly unusable for absolutely anything. There is zero context on what these dualities are; if anything, this is presented as fancy wording for the contrast in point of views between both sides of the war, and the senseless fighting that results.
  • 3. In terms of definition, the word "duality" does not merely extend to the mathematical definition that our Transduality page is based off of - it also refers to any mere difference in two point of views, two polar opposites. For example; Good and Evil in many religions represent a duality, for they are opposites, standing in contrast to each other. The Living Tribunal's very job is to safeguard the mystical balance between good and evil throughout the multiverse, being more than willing to obliterate universes to prevent the balance from becoming unstable. Therefore, contextually, whenever the Tribunal states he "judges the dualities", it is far, FAR more likely that he is referring to this definition of duality. On that account, all of those scans are meaningless in terms of Tiering.
  • 4. Most importantly, even taking them to refer to the conceptual dualities, which they aren't - there are many types of Transduality in our system, including ones where the characters are simply superior to a dual system within a certain scope of reality. It requires a much more elaborate and detailed explanation than the Tribunal's vaguest-in-all-fiction scans to establish 1-A levels of Transduality, so, all in all, literally nothing about those scans is applicable as far as getting anything remotely above High 1-B goes.
So, conclusively, we can establish the Classic Tribunal has no 1-A scans throughout all of his run. But wait, he still scales to 1-A characters, right? Or does he?

The Pre-Retcon Beyonder
Ah, the Beyonder. By far the most controversial character in all of Marvel Comics, especially with his numerous retcons and contradictory showings of power, and almost certainly the one people get the most heated about when debating. He is currently rated as "At least High 1-B, likely 1-A". Is his "likely 1-A" justified? Let's see. Spoiler alert; it isn't.

Right off the bat; extreme lack of common sense abound. Anyone who clicks each of the scans in question can see that, contextually, they are referring to "dimensions" in the sense of "universes", not in the sense of infinite higher dimensions. This literally couldn't be made clearer by the first scan, which includes the word "adjacent" - which means something that is parallel to something else, ie, a parallel/nearby dimension. Literally each and every one of these scans uses the exact same context, describing the Beyond Realm as a universe that transcends time and space throughout each of the known dimensions and worlds that compose the multiverse and are known. Never, ever is it implied that these are infinite higher dimensions. Whenever Marvel makes a reference to higher dimensions, they make it completely clear that is the intent. For example, the Beyonder being described as infinite-dimensional:

They reference the three basic dimensions and explain them to the audience before making the reference that he has an infinite number of those, among a plethora of other concepts that establish this in a higher-dimensional context.

These are just a minutia amount of examples in a sea of scans, but it should get the point across; whenever higher-dimensions are involved in a Marvel storyline, there is a relatively in-depth and clear explanation that the characters are talking about higher-dimensional space. Literally every single scan with the Beyonder lacks said context, and the context we do have makes it clear that it's not talking about infinite higher dimensions.

Him existing beyond the multiverse is vague as heck and depends on additional context and statements to be anything meaningftul, and regardless of that is not a 1-A statement by any means. Him being the mightiest being is likely the profile trying to scale him to Oblivion, which is something I will talk about in a farther-removed section of this same thread, since I feel such an argument has additional implications for the verse that are more important than just powerscaling the Beyonder.

Concluding this section; The Beyonder is yet another character currently rated at 1-A...that has no showings or statements that are actually 1-A in the franchise.

The Beyonders
A short bio before I go about the Beyonders. I legitimately understand those who believe the Beyonder is a 1-A character, and while I disagree and assert that he has absolutely no 1-A showings, I can see why some would think a character as powerful as him could be that high. The same with TLT.

However, when it comes to The Beyonders, I can not for the life of me fathom how them being 1-A was ever accepted in this wiki. I legitimately believe that 1-A Beyonders is the most massively inflated (to avoid the W-Word) rating to ever grace our profiles, beyond all reason. Before I further elaborate on that, let's tackle their...1-A "reasoning" (aside from killing TLT)

The scan describes the Beyond Realm as transcending all there is, and to be outside Eternity (the multiverse and time) itself. That is clearly 1-A!

Until you read the literal very next panel in this scan, which explicitly states that this is strictly referring to only 4-Dimensional Space, even talking about how the Beyond Realm is lined up across a 4-D space-time barrier, and the context only focusing on it being outside of Universal Eternity.

I am baffled that this is in the profiles and that we pretend this to be supporting evidence for 1-A. That aside:

The Beyonders killing The Living Tribunal is an extreme, astronomical outlier that is completely beyond everything else they've ever done by an infinite number of infinities.

There, I said it.

Literally absolutely everything else The Beyonders have ever done is Tier 2. Killing the multiverse's Celestials one dimension at a time, Universal Eternity and Infinity (the text explicitly states they only killed universal versions of the abstracts, not the full entities all at once), being matched by The Infinity Gauntlet, their power being enough to materialize whole universes and timelines, the energy from their universe forming Cosmic Cubes...the Beyonders don't have one single feat that tops Tier 1. The fact that we're somehow willing to scale them to The Living Tribunal when we're so strict with DC and Marvel otherwise is baffling to me, and is the type of thing I never thought I'd see on serious profiles.

Downgrade them ASAP. The absolute most they can get is "At least 2-C, likely 2-A to far higher" via scaling to Molecule Man and Beyonder post-their retcons, which is far more consistent with the feats attached to their names.

And this includes downgrading Doctor Doom, Molecule Man and anyone who scales to them.

General Arguments
Overall, Oblivion is the only Marvel Abstract who has legitimate 1-A statements and showings; a void preceding the multiverse, the very existence of the concepts of shape and form, devoid of all time and space, that completely transcends a High 1-B multiverse to the point of it being fictional/illusory in comparison. This is a consistent description for Oblivion's true-self.

Now people barge in coming at me, saying TLT, Beyonder and etc. all receive scaling from Oblivion. Let's dismantle those claims one at a time:

"The Beyonder and Molecule Man are both described as being the mightiest beings in all of existence during their epic clash, that means they receive powerscaling from Oblivion!"
Oh yes then. I guess Multi-Eternity also receives powerscaling from Oblivion and The Tribunal because he was stated to be the most powerful entity in the whole multiverse by Dormammu as well.

And because he was stated to be the embodiment of everyone, everything, and all levels of creation and existence, which would mean TLT is just a figment of him:

Out of context statements are hilarious. Excluding the fact that Oblivion completely transcends existence and the multiverse as a whole and those concepts are illusory puppets to him, meaning he wouldn't even be a part of the "existence" in question, we can't just ignore the context and take the statement at absolute face-value, ignoring everything else in the storyline. Oblivion doesn't even appear in Secret Wars. We're shown nearly all the Multiversal Abstracts, including Multi-Eternity and the Full Tribunal, in a cosmic meeting. All of them bow down to Molecule Ma. Oblivion isn't a part of the comparison

Here, once more. It is stated that MM is the most powerful entity of the multiverse (note that the Beyonder, a being of equal or slightly superior power to MM isn't a part of the comparison because he resides outside the multiverse - the same logic applies to Oblivion, except on an even higher scale). As comparison, we're shown pictures of Chaos, Order, The Tribunal and Multi-Eternity, who are treated as the measuring sticks for Owen. Oblivion literally never made a single appearance in the storyline. He is completely exempt from the statement just like him and TLT are exempt from the aforementioned claims about Multi-Eternity because the context and storyline didn't include them.

"Oblivion is just one of the four cosmic entities alongside Multi-Eternity, Infinity and Death. He is bound to the law and authority of the Tribunal, and is his inferior!"
First of all, the first part of this claim is false and our profiles don't even use it. The Chaos King is stated by Eternity itself to be its equal opposite, and The Chaos King is just an infinitesimal avatar of the true bounds of Oblivion. Multi-Eternity and Infinity are both infinitely inferior to Oblivion; Even the gap between the physical multiverse and the edge of the nonexistential void that is Oblivion is stated to transcend Eternity and Infinity. The actual void is infinitely greater.

Oblivion is never stated in the comics to be an entity bound to the authority of the Tribunal and never interacts with the original entity. This claim originates from a secondary-canon handbook. It's completely unsubstantiated by the actual work. Whereas the Tribunal represents the totality of the multiverse and reality, Oblivion transcends the multiverse and all its concepts altogether and is far older than the Tribunal (who is the embodiment of one of the latest iterations of the cosmos; as we've seen before with the whole First Firmament storyline, there have been many multiverses, and The Living Tribunal has only existed, and only represents the sum totality of the newer multiverses). It makes absolutely zero sense for him to be inferior to the Tribunal, and the actual work outweighs a secondary-canon handbook that also claims Oblivion is bound by time (which he obviously isn't).

The only direct statement comparing the two within the work compares the New Tribunal to Oblivion, stating that Oblivion is the only entity in creation to be able to survive a multiversal crisis that can claim the lives of Eternity, Death, Infinity and the Tribunal. However, since the old hierarchy is meaningless by then, this is just for the sake of compilation.

Conclusion
Our 1-A Marvel profiles suffer from severe issues with justification and tiering - every single character who is currently scaled to 1-A, with the sole exception of Oblivion, will need to receive a downgrade back to High 1-B. Considering the fact that the Tribunal and the Beyonder are the ones that scale to everyone else, we will just need to:

  • Revert the Tribunal back to High 1-B via powerscaling to Eternity, Infinity and Death
  • Revert the Beyonder back to a definite High 1-B powerscaling from the statements currently listed in his "At least High 1-B" key, removing the "likely 1-A" altogether
  • Downgrade the Beyonders to "At least 2-C, likely 2-A" via powerscaling to Post-Retcon Beyonder and Molecule Man's feats, as I argued above.
And that's about it. Peace.
 
I think Beyonders and modern molecule man being Big 1-B off LBG being unable to affect him and being terrified of him is still fine
 
Lifebringer Galactus
 
I feel like the people on ant's comics list should be allowed to comment regardless of staff or not, given that ant has them listed like that for a reason.
 
Yeah I agree with the downgrades. As you've said none of the evidence for 1-A (besides Obilvion) is actually evidence for 1-A.
 
I honestly disagree with the notion that the Beyonders can't be Tier 1. They've been repeatedly and consistently stated and explained to exist outside and beyond the Marvel Multiverse. That's been their whole thing since the 1980s.

Also the quote about the Living Tribunal being the Alpha and the Omega isn't nonsense, it's simply a poetic way of explaining that he resides at the center of all things, which spin and whirl around himself without stop.
 
I must say that I agree with Kep.

Comics as a whole are a massive knot to untangle. Marvel Comic's cosmic beings are a whole other can of worms entirely. As such, I would see why people would want to rate them higher.

That said, Kep's point are spot on and we have to hold these characters to what is actually shown.
 
I've already heard most of it from him already, but my main disagreement is tier 2 Beyonders race. 1-A might not be best due to TLT's 1-A being tenuous, but there is still the matter of Molecule Man making a box with an omniverse (within the context of marvel, this does have meaning) and being 2spooky4Lifebringer. Fine with people not called Oblivion being High 1-B.
 
The Beyonders are Tier 2 in every single other feat, and have far more feats and showings on that scale. Even most of their feats of killing the Celestials involved effort on their part, and their murder of the Abstracts was, for the most part, the Universal fragments, not the full versions at once, so I personally am nearly dead-set that them being anything Tier 1 in scale is an outlier. I can accept them being above Eternity if that's the final consensus, I simply think it's not at all consistent.

The Beyonders have never been described in any High 1-B or 1-A sense when it comes to their level of existence. As I pointed out, one of the scans we used to justify their realm being 1-A literally said it was 4-D and that it only transcended Universal Eternity.
 
I'd just like to let it be known that molecule man's stuff isn't just from scaling but also his own interactions with Galactus as I know more about him than the Beyonders as a race. If them scaling to him isn't allowed that's one thing but MM himself being of such a level in the present doesn't seem that absurd imo.
 
I also recall Lifebringer Galactus being troubled by a mere avatar of the First Firmament at one point, though that's neither here nor there.
 
Also, the versions of Chaos and Order that Galactus fought were implied to be M-Bodies, not the full entities. Not to mention the fact that the hierarchy had been disrupted.

Anyway, this is a discussion for another time.
 
Pretty sure his High 1-B is mostly off of eternity
 
Yeah, Molecule Man with the Beyonders' powers in The Ultimates was more or less treated as the most powerful being in existence and randomly created an Omniverse (AKA, a complete High 1-B Multiverse).
 
To be fair, in the Ultimates, "Omniverse" is just a fancy way of talking about the normal Multiverse.
 
Anyway, as I said earlier, I can concede to the Beyonders if that's the consensus. The main point is the revision thread itself.
 
Kepekley23 said:
To be fair, in the Ultimates, "Omniverse" is just a fancy way of talking about the normal Multiverse.
Pill to swallow: There is no differentiation between Omniverse and Multiverse in the Ultimates. They are all simply referring to the Reality embodied by Eternity or someone else. Which we accept to have infinite dimensions.
 
I recall Matt was going to revise Marvel's definition of Omniverse as being High 1-B structure. That being said, I can agree that 1-A is iffy and that they should be downgraded, but I support him on what they'd be after that.
 
I think that Kepekley seems to make sense.

However, there are a few issues:

1) What, if anything, should we do about The One Above All's tier 0 ranking? We would also have to stop scaling the Above-All-Others incarnation from the Tribunal.

2) If this is accepted, we would have to link to this thread in the Discussion Rules page and in footnotes for the relevant profile pages, to avoid having to deal with constant here debunked arguments.

3) It would probably be a good idea to ask Sandman31, Crimson Azoth, PrinceOfTheMorning, and Ultima Reality to comment here first.
 
Okay. I just meant that we should remove the mention of the Tribunal as a justification though.
 
Okay. Thanks. This seems to be reliable then.
 
I know that this is staff only, but can I say something? I promise that I will make it count.

For the Living Tribunal, the scans Kep linked only add to the notion that the Living Tribunal is a tier 1-A character.

Take, for example, this scan:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fwf2HIZV...AttI5p9V5jHaqYjQACyYJACHMYCw/s1600/RCO021.jpg

"The pulse of creation reverberates throughout him, for he is its heart."

This means that the Living Tribunal is the core, the fundamental conceptual essence, even the very source of creation, and not just the embodiment of the multiverse per se.

"His motives are unfathomable, even to Eternity itself"

This means that even Eternity itself cannot comprehend the Living Tribunal at its truest level. The Living Tribunal's motives alone are beyond Eternity's understanding, let alone the Living Tribunal itself.

"Alpha and Omega revolve on the wheel of destiny...a wheel spun by his mighty hand."

This means that the Living Tribunal determines the fate of the whole of creation, from the beginning and the first ("Alpha") to the ending and the ("Omega"), which supplements to the fact that the Living Tribunal isn't *solely* the embodiment of the multiverse, but rather the underlying principle that orders and sustains it.

Now to debunk this specific argument from Kep:

"Even the part about him being the heart of all creation isn't to be taken at face value, considering that, as we have seen numerous times, the Tribunal's death has no significant effect on the multiverse's well-being - other than the creation of a chain-reaction in the imbalances between good and evil, solely due to the fact the Tribunal was the one who judged and dealt with said imbalances, and him not being there to judge them leading to a cumulative effect." - Kep

That was an M-Body, Kep. Every time the Living Tribunal "dies", it's an M-Body, and not the true Living Tribunal.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2e9ea506dd98d90de9f9b79b06cd95fc

"Before all was, I am. After all ends, I am. I live, I die, I live again."

The Living Tribunal in full predates the Marvel multiverse, in any iteration, and will endure well after it's long gone. No matter how many of his M-Bodies fall, the true Living Tribunal can never fall to anyone, not even the Beyonders.

Even if you believe that the Living Tribunal is merely the embodiment of the Marvel multiverse, with no outerversal attributes to his name, the fact that the multiverse didn't go kaput upon his apparent death should alone prove that all the Beyonders killed was an M-Body.

Now for the three scans that justify the Living Tribunal's transcendence and transduality:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6I4jTZdAXUk/VoTgpwMwcaI/AAAAAAAAWLw/ksFEkETO6OU/s1600-Ic42/RCO025.jpg

"I transcend the realms of Death and Eternity, Order and Chaos...all the opposing realities"

How anyone cannot see this as evidence of a transdual nature is beyond me, as the context clues of the statement itself should tell us what the Living Tribunal means by "opposing realities" (he means dualities). He transcends their "realms" (i.e. their general mode and expanse of existence) the same way that Umineko witches transcend the "realm" of human beings.

In fact, he transcends it the concept of duality so fundamentally that he is the Living Trinity. A Type 4 Transduality. A Plurality.

The above scan contextualizes this scan:

https://m.imgur.com/oOpOHzu

"I transcend the realm of space and time...all the opposing realities"

The Living Tribunal does not transcend "the realms of space and time", but, a bit more concisely, their "realm", a notion supported by the fact that he is completely unaffected by time stops.

Kep brings up Silver Surfer bringing up Chaos, but this only contextualizes it even further towards a 1-A rating, as it shows that, yet again, the Living Tribunal refers to dualities when he talks of "opposing realities".

And also the statement from Silver Surfer that "Galactus taught me all the infinite dualities in his war with the In-Betweener".

Again, context clues should be here. In the scan, the "infinite dualities" are blatantly the same as the "opposing realities" the Tribunal talks of. This also mean that there is an infinite number if dualities that the Living Tribunal transcends.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1bCT3OyFTEg/VoTgqeeZmHI/AAAAAAAAWMA/bMCsdYja4FM/s1600-Ic42/RCO027.jpg

"Everywhere in the realms of duality, is the presence of Trinity."

The Living Tribunal is not only transcendent of duality, but likely embodiment of it as well, which ties in nicely with the scan showing the Living Tribunal to be the amalgam of all the cosmic entities of Marvel.

TLT is the combined form of the abstracts
The rest of this scan:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1bCT3OyFTEg/VoTgqeeZmHI/AAAAAAAAWMA/bMCsdYja4FM/s1600-Ic42/RCO027.jpg

Is basically some poetic bilge about how the Living Tribunal bestrides (i.e. spans) all dualities, but is himself "not unified" (as he doesn't have his fourth face), so that he might understand their (not his, but the dualities') nature.

"I, who could be whole, must be but a part! I must be apart!"

Apart of what, you might ask. I say, apart from union with his fourth and final face.

As an aside, existence (Eternity and Infinity) and nonexistence (Death and Oblivion) are a duality.

As for Pre-Retcon Beyonder:

There is no reason to believe that, in some of those scans, the term "dimension" cannot refer to both higher dimensions and universes. Especially considering the fact that the Beyonder's definition of existence beyond the multiverse kind of necessitates him being beyond its infinite-dimensional expanse anyway.

An aspect of him being infinite-dimensional doesn't really contradict this.

In fact: https://m.imgur.com/rSZqTbS

"Meanwhile, in a universe beyond time, space, and all dimensions known to any in our universe."

Dimensions here clearly refers to spatiotemporal dimensions, not just universes. As "our" universe (I.e. the Marvel universe) contains many entities who know of the multiverse's true nature (or at least approach knowledge of such), it should be clear that the Beyonder is beyond the multiverse entirely.

Now for the Beyonders, I don't know too much about the first scan (seems wonky to me), but the second scan is clear:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/3le-JajeU...X5sLv194lyTJ8FX3Rhr7vrT8uA3f3fXCUlZ-61Q=s1600

"Outside everything you can imagine, in the wild spaces beyond reality"

This is a clear evidence of the Beyonders being 1-A. They exist beyond reality, in "wild spaces" outside of human imagination.

Now Kep argued that the Beyonders only hurt the universal versions of the abstracts. This would have been fine, except...

https://i.imgur.com/T6Xwik0.jpg

"I went mad. Lost in the fireworks of universal genocide."

Poetic language. Figurative speech. Literally only supplementary proof, if anything.

The Beyonders defeating an infinite-dimensional M-Body of the Living Tribunal is not an outlier. It's simple as that, really.

As an aside, the abstracts standing back to let Molecule Man talk to the Beyonder is not them "bowing down" to Molecule Man.

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d458a2de254213c2e5bbe7de98c35bbe

Finally, here is a nice respect thread that shows and explains scans that seem to heavily suggest that Oblivion is subject to the Tribunal's authority.

https://outskirtsbattledomewiki.com/forums/index.php?topic=17.0
 
Been off the computer for the whole day due to internet connection issues, will dismantle that post as soon as I get to my computer in ~30 minutes or so (I'm on the cellphone RN)
 
> This means that the Living Tribunal is the core, the fundamental conceptual essence, even the very source of creation, and not just the embodiment of the multiverse per se.

No to all of that except the Living Tribunal being the core, and even then that's just because he is the embodiment of the multiverse and all its entities.

All the quote means is that The Living Tribunal is responsible for maintaining the cosmic cycle and keeping it stable. We know for a fact that it isn't talking about him actually maintaining creation in any form. The tribunal died two times and was defeated once, and both resulted in...absolutely nothing. At least, nothing that threatened space and time on a beyond High 1-B scale. In fact, literally nothing happened. Feats override statements, every single time, especially when it comes to vague flowery language from the narrator that has one million interpretations.

> This means that even Eternity itself cannot comprehend the Living Tribunal at its truest level. The Living Tribunal's motives alone are beyond Eternity's understanding, let alone the Living Tribunal itself.

...Yes. Because Eternity is literally ust one among the many entities that compose The Tribunal. This is completely and utterly meaningless as far as establishing AP.

> That was an M-Body, Kep. Every time the Living Tribunal "dies", it's an M-Body, and not the true Living Tribunal.

This is headcanon. It is never ever stated that it was an M-Body. Aside from his dead corpse being found in every single reality and dimension of the multiverse, heavily indicating it to be the whole Tribunal, the story never, ever specifies or even remotely begins to indicate that it was just an avatar; in fact, the textbox for the scene where he is shown fighting the Beyonders outright notes "Behold; all of reality - the multiverse taken form!".

Lastly, the fact that TOAA has to replace him proves beyond any debate the Beyonders slaughtered the complete entity.

> Even if you believe that the Living Tribunal is merely the embodiment of the Marvel multiverse, with no outerversal attributes to his name, the fact that the multiverse didn't go kaput upon his apparent death should alone prove that all the Beyonders killed was an M-Body.

This is just circular reasoning and begging the question. My point literally is that the multiverse didn't collapse upon his death. You can't throw it back at me with your interpretation and act like it's evidence of anything, especially when the actual story says otherwise. The actual feats in this case completely override vague flowery language from the narrator.

> How anyone cannot see this as evidence of a transdual nature is beyond me, as the context clues of the statement itself should tell us what the Living Tribunal means by "opposing realities" (he means dualities)

1. No, he doesn't. This is yet another case of rewriting what is actually stated in the scan to make it closer to a pre-stated belief. The terms "reality and "duality" are not synonymous with each other, so this is just wishful thinking from your part.

2. That's literally...the vaguest possible quote you could choose to establish him as a Transdual entity. But as I pointed out in great detail, even if he were Transdual, it'd be meaningless in terms of proving him to be a 1-A transdual.

> The Living Tribunal does not transcend "the realms of space and time", but, a bit more concisely, their "realm", a notion supported by the fact that he is completely unaffected by time stops.

Okay. A bunch of Low 2-C to High 2-A scans that belong absolutely nowhere in a High 1-B's profile, as we have established, with the word "realm" being the vaguest possible word to use for an upgrade, considering its vast array of meanings. In fact, fictionally, "realm" can range from a country to a full-on multiverse when the context is a physical location, and, in the context of Tribunal's statement, can be assumed to be referring to "boundaries". So "the boundaries of space and time".

The exact same quote untouched would be present in a High 2-A's justification, so it is meaningless for someone of TLT's level.

> Kep brings up Silver Surfer bringing up Chaos, but this only contextualizes it even further towards a 1-A rating, fas it shows that, yet again, the Living Tribunal refers to dualities when he talks of "opposing realities".

...No? I have literally no idea where you got that interpretation from. This is the quote:

Absolutely no idea how it is possible to get a "duality" interpretation from a quote talking about chaos in the flow of time. Seriously.

> Again, context clues should be here. In the scan, the "infinite dualities" are blatantly the same as the "opposing realities" the Tribunal talks of. This also mean that there is an infinite number if dualities that the Living Tribunal transcends.

Or, perhaps, like I spent multiple wall of texts pointing out in the text

  • * 2. The first scan is an ephemeral statement, from the Silver Surfer, who states that he realized "all the infinite dualities from Galactus in his war against the In-Betweener". That's literally all there is to it. No further elaboration or context is provided here, so I trust everyone to have some common sense in this regard and realize this is utterly unusable for absolutely anything. There is zero context on what these dualities are; if anything, this is presented as fancy wording for the contrast in point of views between both sides of the war, and the senseless fighting that results.
  • 3. In terms of definition, the word "duality" does not merely extend to the mathematical definition that our Transduality page is based off of - it also refers to any mere difference in two point of views, two polar opposites. For example; Good and Evil in many religions represent a duality, for they are opposites, standing in contrast to each other. The Living Tribunal's very job is to safeguard the mystical balance between good and evil throughout the multiverse, being more than willing to obliterate universes to prevent the balance from becoming unstable. Therefore, contextually, whenever the Tribunal states he "judges the dualities", it is far, FAR more likely that he is referring to this definition of duality. On that account, all of those scans are meaningless in terms of Tiering.
  • 4. Most importantly, even taking them to refer to the conceptual dualities, which they aren't - there are many types of Transduality in our system, including ones where the characters are simply superior to a dual system within a certain scope of reality. It requires a much more elaborate and detailed explanation than the Tribunal's vaguest-in-all-fiction scans to establish 1-A levels of Transduality, so, all in all, literally nothing about those scans is applicable as far as getting anything remotely above High 1-B goes.
> The Living Tribunal is not only transcendent of duality, but likely embodiment of it as well, which ties in nicely with the scan showing the Living Tribunal to be the amalgam of all the cosmic entities of Marvel.

As I have elaborated, there is absolutely no evidence that he transcends duality in our sense.

In fact, it is established multiple times throughout Marvel that the In-Betweener is the embodiment of Moral Dualism and Balance - ie, the aforementioned definition of duality that I mentioned - things such as the duality of good and evil, life and death. This is the context behind the "dualities" that the Tribunal judges - there needs to exist a cosmic balance between good and evil and etc., or else the universe's balance is threatened. This literally couldn't be said in clearer words by Chaos;

So, as I hope we can have established, the In-Betweener's "dualities" that Silver Surfer mentioned have absolutely nothing to do with the 1-A Transduality we mentioned earlier.

You can inform yourself more on our standards for Transduality, but at the very most the Tribunal fits Type 2 as outlined there. All of your scans, even taken at face value (which they shouldn't be), would result in no more than the Tribunal being a Type 2 Transdual. That is nowhere near 1-A.

> As an aside, existence (Eternity and Infinity) and nonexistence (Death and Oblivion) are a duality.

Indeed, existence and nonexistence form a duality. Oblivion, as established by the comics themselves, is unfathomably superior to Eternity, Infinity, Death. The Chaos King is the avatar of nonexistence who is equal to Multi-Eternity, and the Chaos King was stated by Oblivion himself to be no more than an infinitesimal aspect in the infinite cosmic void that he represents. So you can not try to make them comparable. Their importance in the Cosmic Hierarchy is comparable, yes. Their power? Not at all.

By the same logic, you can't compare the Tribunal and Oblivion without direct consistent statements in the comic, of which there are...zero.

> As for Pre-Retcon Beyonder: There is no reason to believe that, in some of those scans, the term "dimension" cannot refer to both higher dimensions and universes

There are many reasons, all of which I outlined in my post. You can't just brush it off and say it is because you believe it is. The terminology used clearly points to the term "dimension" meaning only universe or parallel dimension in-context. Much more evidence is required for it to mean higher-dimensions, and Marvel consistently provides said evidence in other references to higher layers of existence - there is no reason to give the Beyonder special treatment, pretending he is above evidence.

> Especially considering the fact that the Beyonder's definition of existence beyond the multiverse kind of necessitates him being beyond its infinite-dimensional expanse anyway.

1. This principle is completely false, as being outside ("beyond" and "outside" mean the exact same thing) a High 1-B multiverse doesn't translate to being infinitely higher, much like timeless voids/dimensions in verses with a linear 4-D universe/timeline doesn't at all translate to said voids transcending the normal universe. Just having different properties. The Beyonder's universe is never described as being trancendental to the multiverse in a level that warrants 1-A. Never.

2. The actual story says otherwise. It is stated that the Beyonder, and by extension the Beyond Realm, is an infinite-dimensional entity in his true state.

> An aspect of him being infinite-dimensional doesn't really contradict this.

Thsi is completely false. The quote is talking about the Beyonder descending from the Beyond-Realm into our universe, and as a result descending from his usually infinite-dimensional state into a mere three-dimensional domain. It is blatantly referring to his true self. It's impossible to claim otherwise.

> Dimensions here clearly refers to spatiotemporal dimensions, not just universes.

No.

This scan right here states the same thing - that the Beyond Realm is outside "all the infinite adjacent dimensions which make up the multiverse", yet it is blatantly referring to dimensions in the sense of parallel universes, since it uses the adjective "adjacent" to describe said dimensions (adjacent means "parallel" or "neighbouring", thus "parallel dimensions"). Therefore, interpreting the scan you posted - which I posted a rebuttal to on the OP as well - as referring to spatiotemporal dimensions isn't necessary. As I have pointed out many times, literally every single mention of a spatial dimension was made clear in Marvel, with analogies to hammer the point home, and explicit, non-ambiguous adjectives, such as "16-dimensional superspace", "5.82839 spatial dimensions" and etc.

Even other quotes involving the Beyonder have used such analogies to refer to him as an infinite-dimensional being. Why not include them here, unless it isn't talking about higher-dimensions? Which it, to be fair, blatantly isn't, considering the surrounding context.

> "Outside everything you can imagine, in the wild spaces beyond reality". This is a clear evidence of the Beyonders being 1-A. They exist beyond reality, in "wild spaces" outside of human imagination.

A quote that would belong in a High 2-A, or heck, even a Low 2-C's profile is somehow proof of 1-A. Not.

> Now Kep argued that the Beyonders only hurt the universal versions of the abstracts. This would have been fine, except...Poetic language. Figurative speech. Literally only supplementary proof, if anything.

Literally no one in the story had any qualms about using the word "multiverse" or "multiversal" to describe the Beyonders' actions throughout creation. But suddenly, them using "universal" is just "figurative speech". Nevermind the fact that it is repeatedly established they were killing the Celestials a universe at a time, thus proving they couldn't have killed the full Abstracts all at once.

> As an aside, the abstracts standing back to let Molecule Man talk to the Beyonder is not them "bowing down" to Molecule Man.

Apparently the multiple assertions that they are powerless, that MM is the only one capable of fighting him in equal grounds, and everyone being awed when he appears doesn't get the point across well enough. We need to focus on semantics now.

> Finally, here is a nice respect thread that shows and explains scans that seem to heavily suggest that Oblivion is subject to the Tribunal's authority.

Literally absolutely no scans that state or imply it to be subject to the Tribunal. One of them is literally the Tribunal describing the entities that are subject to him one at a time, failing to mention Oblivion, and the dude on that thread saying "it makes sense that Oblivion is the only face left that he didn't mention!" to make up for it. Not only that, the guy tries to equate a random statement about the "fathomless void" to mean the domain of Oblivion, when the full sentence makes it plain that it is merely talking about the background void of a universe

All-in-all...no.
 
Imma just post now,

As others have said I agree with everything outside the Beyonders absorbed MM being downgraded to 2-C to 2-A level.
 
I can accept the Beyonders scaling to High 1-B with everyone else. The most important aspect of this thread is downgrading the 1-A rating.
 
While many people believe that I am not a knowledgable member... This will be my only post in this thread (so please don't @ me ... As I want only you all to deal with this):

I can agree with what is said here as of now... For right now. I don't have the neccessary scans , tools , or anything to properly debate against this downgrade ... But I'm gathering the neccessary scans and conversing with several knowledgable members of Marvel about some misunderstood or to be correct cosmology stuff before I return and make a thread about it which may completely reverse how others believe Marvel is.. At least in concerning of the nature of the realities within it.

But for now... I agree with this. And if it helps any... I agree with 1A being a bit too much and either 2A or High 1B being okay for the moment.
 
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