Worst comic book superfight ever

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Based on Chuckg's position, I alluded to this earlier but I think it should be mentioned again.

 

If I use his criteria, which McCoy and Suleyman Rashid both seem to support - enough that they wish to rep him for providing the criteria - then why haven't any of them nominated the bulk of conflicts between Galactus and Earth's Superheroes?

 

By their criteria, the Fantastic Four's continual success against Galactus is a much worse comic book superfight than Spidey vs. Firelord.

 

Marvel Earth should have been destroyed a long time ago - for continuity's sake.

Refresh my memory. When did the FF physically overpower Galactus? IIRC his first apperance he was driven off by (1) the intervention of the Watcher (2) turning his herald against him and (3) recovering the mcguffin he feared.

 

If instead of Reed threatening him with the Ultimate Nullifier, Ben had pummeled him into unconciousness, I would agree it was a bad story. But that's not what happened.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Yup. Stan Lee used:

 

a) Winning the respect/friendship of the antagonist and turning him from the Dark Side (Silver Surfer)

 

Stalling until you can do a run-in with a cosmic macguffin (Ultimate Nullifier)

 

c) Bringing another heavy hitter into the fight (the Watcher)

 

Which are three of the classic ways in which heros defeat cosmic things way bigger than them, in well-written stories.

 

So yes, that's *exactly* like Spidey-vs-Firelord. Only, you know, with 100% less Galactus beatdown.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Is Gary seriously claiming that Sanctuary II did not attack Firelord?

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

If Firelord has about 45 Con which seems reasonable to me, and Thor can occasionally Con Stun him with his fist, then all Spiderman needs to do is to be within 10-12 DCs of Thor's fist damage in order to be able to leak Stun through to Firelord. And the DC difference can be even greater than that if you give Firelord Damage Reduction.

 

I don't think anyone would find it unlikely that Spiderman going all out is going to be within 10-12 DC of Thor's fist.

The problem with the "leaking STUN though" hypothesis is that when Peter went on the offense he was clearly in an altered state, not dodging, not paying attention to his Spider Sense, not realizing that he was putting a Rodney King on an unconcious man until Captain America pointed it out. One More Attack by Firelord, an RKA or even activating his Damage Shield, would have resulted in Spider Flambe. So Firelord had to be either stunned with the first punch, or if we are really generous with the SPD chart KO by the second one.

 

Any way you cut it, that's punches in the Thing/Thor/Hulk range that Spider-Man has not been able to throw before or since.

[Hermit]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Clearly, Spider-Man had finally tapped into the full strength of the Spider Totem that fuels his...

 

*hears the sounds of guns clicking*

 

...err... shouldn't go there, huh?

 

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Is Gary seriously claiming that Sanctuary II did not attack Firelord?

Let's see, the exact quote is

It wasn't a full broadside. It was excess shield power from shields that were already straining to hold off Captain Marvel.

If I understand it correctly, he is claiming that Sanctuary II did not fire its main weapons, but somehow used the "excess" power of the shields to do a Force Wall shove / knockback only attack.

[CBikle]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Clearly, Spider-Man had finally tapped into the full strength of the Spider Totem that fuels his...

 

*hears the sounds of guns clicking*

 

...err... shouldn't go there, huh?

 

 

No, especially since you're wrong.

 

At that time, Firelord was really fighting the Clone Spider-Man and not the real Spider-man, Ben Reilly.

 

Obviously, the Jackal enhanced the clone's strength-level, far beyond the original.

 

Do I get my Marvel "No Prize" ?

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

No, especially since you're wrong.

 

At that time, Firelord was really fighting the Clone Spider-Man and not the real Spider-man, Ben Reilly.

 

Obviously, the Jackal enhanced the clone's strength-level, far beyond the original.

 

Do I get my Marvel "No Prize" ?

Better than Red Sun Radiation.

 

Seriously, I stopped being a Marvel Zombie before the clone came back story arc. Has the MU been retconned to that was the clone?

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Refresh my memory. When did the FF physically overpower Galactus? IIRC his first apperance he was driven off by (1) the intervention of the Watcher (2) turning his herald against him and (3) recovering the mcguffin he feared.

 

If instead of Reed threatening him with the Ultimate Nullifier, Ben had pummeled him into unconciousness, I would agree it was a bad story. But that's not what happened.

(1) That's so trite. (2) The Silver Surfer is no match for Galactus (3) That's "cheating". How could Reed Richards threaten someone who can give others the Power Cosmic? Galactus could have simply disintegrated Reed where he stood before Reed could have used the Ultimate Nullifier. Fat lot of good the Ultimate Nullifier is to someone who ranks up there with Death and Eternity.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Yup. Stan Lee used:

 

a) Winning the respect/friendship of the antagonist and turning him from the Dark Side (Silver Surfer)

 

Stalling until you can do a run-in with a cosmic macguffin (Ultimate Nullifier)

 

c) Bringing another heavy hitter into the fight (the Watcher)

 

Which are three of the classic ways in which heros defeat cosmic things way bigger than them, in well-written stories.

 

So yes, that's *exactly* like Spidey-vs-Firelord. Only, you know, with 100% less Galactus beatdown.

Ah, but Galactus can, with a mere thought, endow someone with the Power Cosmic. Stands to reason he can disintegrate them just as easily.

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

(1) That's so trite. (2) The Silver Surfer is no match for Galactus (3) That's "cheating". How could Reed Richards threaten someone who can give others the Power Cosmic? Galactus could have simply disintegrated Reed where he stood before Reed could have used the Ultimate Nullifier. Fat lot of good the Ultimate Nullifier is to someone who ranks up there with Death and Eternity.

For all we've disagreed before, this is the first time I recall that you came accross as trollish.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Let's see, the exact quote is

 

If I understand it correctly, he is claiming that Sanctuary II did not fire its main weapons, but somehow used the "excess" power of the shields to do a Force Wall shove / knockback only attack.

Guys, don't distort someone arguments just to try to get the "win". One of you guys claimed that the space gun was ramped up on lots of extra energy for an extra special super big ray blast thingie. GAry was pointing out that was unlikely to be all that much power.

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

If I understand it correctly' date=' he is claiming that Sanctuary II did not fire its main weapons, but somehow used the "excess" power of the shields to do a Force Wall shove / knockback only attack.[/quote']

 

The quote is "Focus on the hot spot, and hit it with all the trans-shield power we have to spare!"

 

The narration then goes "Instantly, the section of shield under Firelord's barrage erupts like a great solar flare, slamming into him with such force that he's sent flying away from the battle zone and towards a nearby moon..."

 

So yet again, we have a Gary-ism interpretation, where he tells the literal truth, but only half of it. Yes, they attacked by focusing energy through the shields. But *no*, said energy focus was not some attack inferior to a typical barrage... between 'All the power we have to spare!' and 'erupts like a great solar flare', it looks like that they focused a power surge from the entire main reactor on him.

 

You know, how the Enterprise dumps the entire warp engine through the deflector dish to slam a Borg cube? An attack *more* powerful than their usual phaser barrage? (which is why they do it, despite the overload risk)

 

So yet again, Gary tries to tie things up by quibbling about interpretation. Slamming Firelord the way they did, the way it was described and shown, a very credible case can be made that he was hit with MORE force than a typical broadside from their guns.

 

I didn't try to make that case and went for the lesser claim of 'broadside' because, amazingly enough, I have actually been trying to err on the side of *caution*(1) re: gauging Firelord's abilities, not the side of Firelord-is-God. Not that anybody except you will believe it.

 

 

 

 

(1) Note, that's the side of caution, not the side of Spiderman-must-win. There's a difference between a conservative estimate and a ridiculously low-ball one. Upper bound, *lower* bound.

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Ah' date=' but Galactus can, with a mere thought, endow someone with the Power Cosmic. Stands to reason he can disintegrate them just as easily.[/quote']

Stands to reason, if they didn't have the Watcher backing them up. Not to mention possibly being behind Sue's force field at the time.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

For all we've disagreed before' date=' this is the first time I recall that you came accross as trollish.[/quote'] This cracks me up. You rep a guy who calls me a liar in this very thread but I'm the one being trollish, not him. This is especially funny to me, because I'm using the thought processes he's demonstrated in this thread to make the argument that Galactus should have won and that, therefore, it's poor writing that Marvel Earth is even around.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Stands to reason' date=' if they didn't have the Watcher backing them up. Not to mention possibly being behind Sue's force field at the time.[/quote'] What exactly was the Watcher doing besides clueing Reed into the Ultimate Nullifier? What's Sue's paltry power to that of Galactus?

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Guys' date=' don't distort someone arguments just to try to get the "win". One of you guys claimed that the space gun was ramped up on lots of extra energy for an extra special super big ray blast thingie. GAry was pointing out that was unlikely to be all that much power.[/quote']

I posted his exact quote, then said "If I understand it correctly, he is claiming. . .." He was not saying it was unlikely to be that much power, he was saying that the main guns could not be fired with the shields up. He may be right, I don't have the book in front of me. But in this case, you're the one distorting the arguement.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

I posted his exact quote' date=' then said "If I understand it correctly, he is claiming. . .." He was not saying it was unlikely to be that much power, he was saying that the main guns could not be fired with the shields up. He may be right, I don't have the book in front of me. But in this case, you're the one distorting the arguement.[/quote'] We're talking about different Gary posts.

[McCoy]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

What exactly was the Watcher doing besides clueing Reed into the Ultimate Nullifier? What's Sue's paltry power to that of Galactus?

What's the sound of a troll being put on ignore?

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

*looks at the reflected quote*

 

To answer the point that I think he was trying to make -- vs. the combined opposition of Uatu and the Surfer, Galactus could not kill Reed *fast enough* to prevent him from activating the Ultimate Nullifier with his dying thought. Sure, at full power Galactus would smash through their combined defenses in a second or two. That's about 1-2 seconds too long.

 

The problem becomes even worse when you remember that saying that the Ultimate Nullifier is hideously unsafe to screw around with is a galactic-class understatement. Even with lengthy time to concentrate and focus, a mortal attempting to wield the Ultimate Nullifier still risks taking out him and everything near him -- 'everything' meaning the local galactic cluster he's standing in -- with the back-blast, if he doesn't focus his thoughts accurately enough.

 

A worried man with only a second or so to think at the Ultimate Nullifier before his being atomized? That would be enough to turn it on(1), but nowhere near enough to selectively control the detonation.

 

And an uncontrolled activation of the Ultimate Nullifier would have destroyed the entire universe. This is not exaggeration, btw. Virtually every time the Ultimate Nullifier is brought out, in any storyline, there is at least one warning -- 'Caution: Remember that screwing with this thing may accidentally destroy all of existence. Are you REALLY sure you want to do this?'

 

The reason Galactus backed off is because any sudden movements on his part were quite likely to result in the obliteration of all reality at the hands of a force even *he* isn't powerful enough to stop. At this point, a realist cuts his losses and goes and eats somebody else's planet, vast cosmic power or not.

 

 

 

(1) Yes, it has no safety catch. Yes, it's about the single most unsafe design you can possibly imagine. Yes, it was built that way anyway. There's a reason that Galactus keeps this thing on his worldship, in the box labelled "Do Not Open, Even If You're Me." AAMOF, his primary reason for hanging on to it seems to be for the purpose of making sure that nobody *else* ever gets tempted to use it, him being (unless Uatu is cheating majorly by using his cosmic near-omniscience to guide someone around Galactus' security systems, not to mention first teleporting them to Galactus' world-ship in the first place) very hard to get it away from.

 

Later on, after the security systems failed, Galactus shifted to the purloined letter technique of hiding it on his worldship. Thanos saw through that one.

 

God only knows where Galactus keeps it now. If I were him, I'd consider a sporran.

[CBikle]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Seriously, I stopped being a Marvel Zombie before the clone came back story arc. Has the MU been retconned to that was the clone?

 

I think so.

 

Honestly, I believe that the official Marvel policy is: "to not bring the Spider-Clone stuff up".

 

Ben Reilly, along with Madame Web, Dusk, Hornet, Prodigy, Ricochet and the Spider-Buggy have all been sent to Spider-Hypertime.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

This would require Spidey to be punching with at least equal power to Thor -- seeing as how' date=' unless he rolls the lucky 6 dance, that's all *Thor* can do to Firelord. Leak through a few STUN with every hit.[/quote']

 

OK, if we're going to Hero mechanics anyway.

 

There is a huge difference between slipping through a few STUN with every hit and Stunning a high CON character. What do we think Firelord's CON is? I'd probably put him at 40 or so. If Thor can get 40 STUN through with a good, but plausible, hit (based on Gary's two examples of Firelord being stunned), it doesn't seem impossible Spidey can get say 5 through on a decent hit (that's 10d6 less average damage).

 

We don't know how many times Spidey hit Firelord. We have one panel showing (Chuck's count IIRC) 10 hits. We also have Cap's comment that Firelord couldn't lay a glove on Spidey near then end, implying the actual endgame lasted long enough for Cap to watch and be impressed, not just one panel (only so many pages to cover the fight, and who wants that same panel repeated for a page or two?).

 

So Spidey (martial) dodges most phases to get out of Firelord's way, then sweeps in his extra phases (or are we arguing Firelord has equal/superior SPD as well?) to hit several times, leaking through enough STUN in a turn to offset Firelord's REC and gradually reduce him to 0 STUN. Once he's at/below 0, hits do double damage, easily bring Firelord down to -31.

 

That makes the only real disagreement whether Firelord's native defenses are so high SPidey has no hope of inflicting any STUN whatsoever. Given his portrayal over the years, I don't see Firelord having that level of defenses consistently.

 

By the way, assuming the boys at Marvel are reasonable GM's, Firelord probably has a decent level of PD/ED, and Damage Reduction. That would explain why Spidey can get a few points in every hit when Thor can't consistently STUN him.

 

EDIT: OK, Gary adressed the DC spread a couple of pages back - buit given half the people here have half the rest on their ignore list, it bears repeating anyway.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Grean Lantern Corps #219.

Thank you much. It's going on my (very long) list of "I'll have to read that someday."

[Chuckg]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

> We don't know how many times Spidey hit Firelord. We have one panel

> showing (Chuck's count IIRC) 10 hits. We also have Cap's comment that

> Firelord couldn't lay a glove on Spidey near then end, implying the actual

> endgame lasted long enough for Cap to watch and be impressed, not just

> one panel [...]

 

Wrong. It lasted one *page*, with seven panels.

 

Panel #1 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #2 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #3 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #4 -- the big splash panel. This has the 'Maximum Spider' sequence of Spidey jumping around and around and around, in stop-motion. Spidey hits Firelord four times. (The artist helpfully includes *bok!* and *swak!* sound effects to help us count.)

 

Panel #5 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #6 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #7 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #1, next page. -- Spidey keeps talking. No punching. (It's an extreme close-up on Spidey's face. Panels 7, page prior, was also a close-up with Firelord out of frame -- the 'camera' has been focusing in tighter and tighter on Spidey for the past few panels, so we don't see the approaching Avengers -- but panel #7 included a *Bkak!* sound effect and a shot of Spidey's fist swinging so that we could tell there was a blow. This panel, none of that.)

 

Panel #2, next page -- Cap grabs Spidey's arm, tells him to stop.

 

OK, that's the hit count. Now, here's the timing indicators. Dialogue.

 

Panel #5 -- "You may be bigger and far more powerful, but that's just not good enough mister!"

 

Panel #6 -- "You'll never stop me... no matter how strong you are! I'm just too stubborn to know when to quit!"

 

Panel #7 -- "I'll keep on coming back... keep fighting... until I find a way to beat you! To win!"

 

Panel #1, next page: "I won't give up, you hear? I WON'T! I WON'T!"

 

Panel #2, next page: Captain America says "You don't have to give up, son -- you've already won!"

 

As we can see from the conversation, the one page flows into the other as a single uninterrupted sequence, with no time lapse.

[Agent X]

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

> We don't know how many times Spidey hit Firelord. We have one panel

> showing (Chuck's count IIRC) 10 hits. We also have Cap's comment that

> Firelord couldn't lay a glove on Spidey near then end, implying the actual

> endgame lasted long enough for Cap to watch and be impressed, not just

> one panel [...]

 

Wrong. It lasted one *page*, with seven panels.

 

Panel #1 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #2 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #3 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #4 -- the big splash panel. This has the 'Maximum Spider' sequence of Spidey jumping around and around and around, in stop-motion. Spidey hits Firelord four times. (The artist helpfully includes *bok!* and *swak!* sound effects to help us count.)

 

Panel #5 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #6 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #7 -- Spidey hits Firelord once.

 

Panel #1, next page. -- Spidey keeps talking. No punching. (It's an extreme close-up on Spidey's face. Panels 7, page prior, was also a close-up with Firelord out of frame -- the 'camera' has been focusing in tighter and tighter on Spidey for the past few panels, so we don't see the approaching Avengers -- but panel #7 included a *Bkak!* sound effect and a shot of Spidey's fist swinging so that we could tell there was a blow. This panel, none of that.)

 

Panel #2, next page -- Cap grabs Spidey's arm, tells him to stop.

 

OK, that's the hit count. Now, here's the timing indicators. Dialogue.

 

Panel #5 -- "You may be bigger and far more powerful, but that's just not good enough mister!"

 

Panel #6 -- "You'll never stop me... no matter how strong you are! I'm just too stubborn to know when to quit!"

 

Panel #7 -- "I'll keep on coming back... keep fighting... until I find a way to beat you! To win!"

 

Panel #1, next page: "I won't give up, you hear? I WON'T! I WON'T!"

 

Panel #2, next page: Captain America says "You don't have to give up, son -- you've already won!"

 

As we can see from the conversation, the one page flows into the other as a single uninterrupted sequence, with no time lapse.

That's not how comic books work. The artist takes the plot the writer gives and uses the panels to tell the story by giving us glimpses of what's going on. The dialogue is also used to do the same even though it often would be impossible for the dialogue and the scenes in the panels to truly match up if the story was done on a stage.

 

You can count panels and try to argue real time all you want but it's a bit silly considering that's not what the artists and writers are likely to be trying to represent.