Agent X

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

What do you mean?

If he corrected himself later, cool. But I lost patience with his explanations as I've read old Thor comics too.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Yes, I agree with you this, and I thnk that's what the body of work says, myself. But I think to be fair the body of work has also spent a lot of time sending a signal that he is much like Batman in being "human" in essence, and as such I can see the notion that the stories that go above this are the problem/anomaly, even if they occur frequently. Don't agree, as I said, but I understand it and am sympathetic to it.

 

However, in another part, I also don't agree with the limitation of the "human" hero as much as many others do in general. I am NOT arguing in favor of "Batgod" but I DO believe that Batman (or Daredevil) can rise up many ranks from their station reasonably well and that in fact that's the purpose of their characters - to show that the humble human can stand up to anything and everything.

 

Along these lines, I do buy the argument that Spiderman should not be able to normally beat up Firelord or another demi-god...the key word being "normally." If Firelord came screaming from above with powers all ablaze, I'd call BS as well on this encounter's resolution. But he didn't. He just wanted a simple piece of pizza and that fly kept annoying him.

 

I do think the sequence leaves too much in question as to Firelord's hesitation. I would like to have seen him throwing punches into the air again and again (a single panel of blurred strikes), all missing Spiderman, to help demonstrate he wasn't simply standing there. Or something (better written than this) such as "You can sting me all you want, no matter how tired I am I can just strike you down, you annoying gnat!"

 

But none of that disqualifies this as "one of the worst". And I have to say that I really love the nuance of the pizza thing. It's tremendously meaningful and tremendously personal.

Firelord was suffering from low blood sugar.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Let me see if I can find the thread where it happened.

 

Here we go. link

 

Mr Busiek's first post is at the bottom of the page, and he debates the point for a few pages.

Wow, I don't really have a problem with the notion that Supes can withstand a blow from Mjolnir much as the Hulk or Gladiator can.

But Busiek is on drugs when he talks about the "properties" of Mjolnir.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Enforcer84 and Snake Ghandi made a similar argument' date=' and I think that's not "just" a personal preference, that is really a significant and meaningful argument (ChuckG has also alluded to it if not been explicit, but it's just been less of a central thrust in his arguments). I don't happen to exactly agree, but I agree to the extent that there's a fine line to tread with the Spiderman character. I see this situation, again to repeat but I don't know how many of these posts you've read, as down his alley against the backdrop of Firelord's dropping in for pizza and seeing a scrawny, unknown mutant buzz around him annoyingly. I do agree that the story would be stronger if either Spiderman's major or first meaningful attack were more cleverly staged or if Firelord's response/reasoning were better directly explained (doesn't have to be a narrator's box, of course, but some exposition on his behalf in the beginning of the end). But I don't think the beatdown goes beyond the meaning of Spiderman, as it were.[/quote'] I understand that argument a little better as it's a matter of taste. I think the problem for me is that I've read enough Spidey over the long haul to have a less restricted notion about what the character was about. I started reading comics in 1975 and there were plenty of reprints of the older stuff to boot. I never got the sense that Spidey was ever meant to be only the top end of the "Street" Supers.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

\

 

I don't know if I read that one, GOOD POINT

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Nobody's debating that it's a whole lotta weight' date=' [b']but we need to narrow it down a little finer than that[/b].

 

I might also point out that unless it's an inverted pyramid, the entire mass of the pile is not going to be balancing on one point at the bottom -- i.e., Spidey might be buried under it, but he doesn't have to lift *THE ENTIRE THING* to get out, he merely has to shift the parts that are directly on him to somewhere off of him.

Not to mention that you're trying to use a pretty exacting notion of physics for a comic book.

This isn't about counting punches or measuring weights. It's about who Spidey can hurt and who else it takes to hurt who Spidey can hurt and who can hurt Firelord who has hurt Firelord.

Everything else is a distraction.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

I think it makes the difference between knowing whether 2 or 20 of course are on him, plus his quote is fairly clearly conjectural. He knows there are trains in Penn Station, he knows what's fallen on him is beyond his expectaiton, and he puts two and two together. But quantity and status of those trains is really unknown. On reflection, we can pretty much trust he's right that there's "trains" on him, but very hard to say what it means in weight or numbers.

 

I think it just means "it's an awful lot of weight"!

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

That is a good point.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

And could you stop using the crude acronyms?

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

And if that "super energy projector" is *also* a Hercules-class brick?

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Given that Spidey KTFO'ed Firelord, and people are making some kind of Rhino = Thor = Firelord and/or Spidey = Thor analogy, asking if Thor's ever KTFO'ed Firelord is a legit question.

 

And, as you say, Stunning and KO'ing are two different things, and while Thor's Stunned Firelord once (out of several tries that failed, lifetime), he's never KO'ed the dude.

The comparisons have been made concerning how hard Spidey hits and how hard a hit Firelord can take.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

The Spidey-Sense lets Spidey know that he is in danger even if his five normal senses give him absolutely no input to let him know that he's in danger. I agree, damn handy ability.

 

OTOH, it don't tell him *what* danger, merely *how much* danger. (edit -- OK, it doesn't *usually* let him know what danger. There have been isolated exceptions. Generally, however, Spidey merely gets 'Spidey-Sense tingling! And it says JUMP!' *bam* 'oh, so that's what it was!')

 

And, well, that much wreckage coming down -- the ol' Danger-Meter is pegging high even if there *aren't* any trains, as that's enough mass to squish people quite handily.

 

As for "can deduce from the speed that the roof is collapsing that there's something heavy above it" -- ummm, Petey's a biochemist, not a civil engineer. He can guess, but his guess is no more likely to be accurate than mine. Now, if Tony Stark were making that guess, I'd believe him -- he knows how to scientifically judge the load-bearing strength of structures just by looking at them and stuff.

Oh yeah, and writers and artists will fudge quite a bit to tell the reader what is going on.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Well' date=' that's what Spidey is guessing, but unless he's borrowed Superman's X-Ray vision, I don't think he can actually *see* through that roof.[/quote']

 

See, Spidey is being used for a bit of exposition - it's a standard literary technique.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Thanks. I do think it's a rather tiny weight compared to ChuckG's question' date=' but it's very hard to assign any intent one way or the other in terms of the artist/writer. Especially as [b']I generally assume they weren't even considering any real world weights or consequences[/b].

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Penn Station scan did not have Spidey lifting Penn Station or even remotely near Penn Station. It had him lifting a big chunk of wreckage from when Penn Station done got collapsed, presumably by some big supervillain attack.

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=929502#post929502

 

Note -- Andrew claims that 'all of Penn Station' is on his back, but that's not what's shown on the page... especially not given that a) most of the rubble is piled loosely upon the one concrete block, not attached to it and in the second page, the concrete block Spidey is lifting is not only in such close focus that we can't see the top of it any more, but it's /tilted/, so we have /no/ way of knowing how much is still on top, and how much has /slid/ off. (Spidey is tilting it over instead of pressing it straight up for a /reason/, after all. GW Bridge lift, otoh, was a squat press straight up... and not only did we get shown the entire bridge, but the chief engineer on the construction crew is specifically pointing out that Thor is the sole source of support for one end of the entire bridge.)

 

And for that matter, even if we allow in every piece of metal and concrete that we see in the first scan -- "most generous interpretation of artwork", again -- that still ain't anywhere near a sizable fraction of the GW Bridge.

IOW, you're taking those two panels way to seriously as a way to judge relative super-strength.

Another problem with your fixation on proportional strength is that lifting strength isn't the only thing that determines how hard you hit. I'd have to say Spidey's probably got about as good a set of body mechanics as any super for using his strength to its optimum.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

It deliberately wastes time and sidetracks a discussion that's having enough problems staying focused as is.

 

Not to mention that first you insult me, then you trivialize my arguments childishly, and now -- when I politely ask you to stop -- you instead make it *my* fault, becuase I'm 'humorless'?

 

Remember yesterday, when I was hailing Squirrel Girl? And gladly accepting her kicking the crap out of Thanos? If something is genuinely funny, I laugh. No humorless person can see the joke in Squirrel Girl, and yet I did.

 

The reason I'm not laughing at you? 'Cause you aren't being funny. You're just being an ***. You may have started out all civilized when you first got into this thread, but today, you have majorly backslid.

 

So *plonk* you.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

A tenth of half the George Washington Bridge?

 

Hint -- go back and look at the Penn Station scan. Note the chunk of concrete wreckage that Spidey is straining his absolute max to lift.

 

Notice that it's about one-millionth the size of the entire GW Bridge, not 1/20th of it.

 

The idea that Spidey could lift even a tenth of half the GW Bridge (i.e. -- 1/20th of the bridge) is ludicrous. He'd be just as likely to pick up an entire 20-story building on his shoulders. It's well beyond even his *MOST* generous lifting feats. Hell, it's well beyond his greatest lifting feat ever.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

OK, now you're *definitely* posting just to mock and annoy people.

 

What's the word for that again? Hint -- mythological creature, lives under bridges.

 

Zornwil, you're really not helping with this kind of stuff. If you can't be serious, then just be an amused bystander, not a deliberate goad.

Sometimes the troll is the one who accuses others of trolling as it suits them to so accuse.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

But that artistic convention was ratified in 1968 to indicate "Only speedsters may now qualify for implications of many unarticulated or not fully articualted actions in one panel." it's in Paragraph VII, Section E. of the Artist's Convention. ChuckG wins because this story occurs after Section E's revision...

 

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

The quotes of their posts tend to leave out the snide and the flamage and distill their points down to the salient bits only -- and said snide and flamage is exactly what they went on my Ignore List for me to avoid.

 

Besides, if I *don't* respond to their posts even after they're mirrored specifically for me to see, I'm 'ignoring their valid points'. But if I *do* respond, I'm 'not sincere about ignoring them'. You want to rig it so that it's heads-they-win-and-tails-I-lose, no matter which choice I make it's still wrong? Feh. I say again, feh.

How about we think it's silly that you put us on ignore, firstly, and secondly that you still respond to us.

Nobody's rigging anything on that score.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

You have to admit' date=' it's pretty funny that you and Gary are on ignore yet it's easy to get ChuckG to respond just by quoting you![/quote'] It's not just funny. It's silly.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Let me re-iterate a basic point:

 

For the entire duration of this discussion, I have been allowed to use only what I can explicitly, non-ambiguously, show drawn on the page.

 

Therefore, that is the same standard everybody who wants to try and counter-argue me will fly under.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

So, Spider-Man is the Flash now? He does dozens of actions in a blur beyond the power of the eye to see, in the space of a single panel?

 

I suppose that going from 'blatant double standard' merely to 'claiming superpowers for Spidey well above what he actually has' is an improvement, technically speaking... but it still don't do anything to cross that gap between 'not credible' and 'credible'.

 

The 'artistic conventions' to which you refer are traditionally used only for speedsters. If Quicksilver, Northstar, the Flash, etc. are moving in a blur, I'll accept that God knows any # of actions I can't see might be going on during that panel.

 

Spider-Man? Is. Not. A. Speedster.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Actually, he was clueing me in to something that certain people (clarification: one person so far explicitly, but his overall argument/position is one that at least two others were agreeing with consistently throughout this discussion) who are on my ignore list were saying in this thread. (edit -- specifically, their use of a specific "punch count" for another comic in service of their argument, while simultaneously denying people the privilege of doing so to the critical sequence of ASM 270. Apparently, they believe that you *can* count a finite # of blows from artwork, no more and no less -- but only if it's not in support of Firelord. In that case, imagination must reign and artwork, not. )

 

Since this guy, not known to be a liar and all, I took his word for it. (add -- especially since he just sent me another PM with a nicely in-context fulltext quote.) So no, he wasn't speaking for you, chill.

What Gary is pointing out by using the "count" method that you proposed is tha the "count" method would backfire against your case. It's not an attempt to accept your criteria. It's showing how your criteria works against you.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Just got a PM telling me that people have changed their mind and decided that you *can* count the # of punches thrown in a comics fight by looking at the artwork.

 

Concession accepted.