Chuckg

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.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever It took a basketload of generous assumptions just to get this far, and even after all of those, the writing *still* doesn't logically hold up re: Firelord's just standing there like a slack-jawed moron. Any story whose writing can't hold together even AFTER you spot it a basketload of free assumptions *and* interpret the artwork as generously as possible in the story's favor is one seriously shoddily-put-together story.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever No, I am making the case that inconsistencies exist in comics, which means that any defense of SM-vs-FL based on 'It happened, we have to accept it!' -- such as, oh, yours -- therefore does not hold up. SM-vs-FL is stupid writing. It is not, however, the *ONLY* stupid writing. I make nobody's case but my own.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever *sigh* I am currently discussing with Andrew the "what if" where even if we assume that the fight went on for longer than ten punches, it *still* doesn't hold up. If you can't do anything more than repeat the same things we've said to each other ten times already, please don't interrupt when people are actually having an even partly constructive dialogue.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever > I haven't really seen that. The Thor and Firelord fights all seemed to end > within a few blows. Has he fought Hercules for much longer? First appearance, he fought Hercules both on-screen and off(*) for pages before Thor finally broke up the brawl. When Thor finally arrived (see below for why he was delayed), neither Firelord nor Hercules were even starting to get winded, much less visibly mussed. This is after a minutes-long fight where they'd both been beating each other so hard that they had each gone on multiple flights through walls, and for the coup de grace, out a fifth-floor window. (*) I.e. -- *here* we have a *legitimate* reason to go '# of punches total, not the same as # of punches seen', because the camera cut away from the fight in mid-fight and didn't cut back until a page or two later. (As opposed to the SM-vs-FL final sequence, where the viewpoint never leaves Spidey for an instant.) I mean, if the camera actually goes away, and we don't get back until minutes later, they obviously weren't standing around with their hands in their pockets waiting for the director to yell "Action!" again the whole time. Fight would still be happening even as time passed elsewhere. This is a genre convention I will accept, because the alternative is the one that's logically absurd. As opposed to certain other conventions, where it's the alleged *convention* that's the one reaching, and the *conservative* estimate is in fact the other one. At any rate -- during this length of time Dr. Donald Blake had been able to go all the way down several flights of stairs (or wait for the elevator) and out in front of a building. And remember, Dr. Donald Blake, him got the gimpy leg and stuff, so, not walking too fast. Especially given that the reason he was walking down there is because his cane had gotten knocked out the window, and he had to go fetch it before he could turn into Thor. So, that's several *minutes* of off-screen rock-em-sock-em action, at minimum... the length of time it would take a normal human, with a crippled leg, to limp down several stories and then go out front, and then search around the sidewalk there for his lost cane.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever BTW, best strength feat for Thor that I know of... DAMAGE CONTROL (correction) #1. In this, Thor is squatting, on his shoulders, half the weight of the (correction)(*) George Washington Bridge. (The supports on one end, totally got shot out in a superfight -- Thor is holding up one end of the bridge by himself while the construction crews run around to get some bracing back under the end of it.) This is a useful high-end benchmark because in this, Thor specifically notes that he's starting to get really tired, and would they please hurry up and finish before he drops the damn thing? i.e. -- we can see he's close to his top limit. OTOH, by this point, he's also been holding the bridge up for, IIRC, around fifteen minutes, so it's still enormously impressive. Can anybody here imagine Spidey even holding up a *tenth* of this? Note -- even *if* we accept the scans that have been posted as not being SM-vs-FL material themselves, the weights involved in them (Doc Ock's big metal lab equipment thingy, chunk of Penn Station, etc.) are nowhere near one-zillionth of half the entire bleedin' George Washington Bridge. (*) Yes, that's two corrections. When you're working from memory, it happens. *shrug*

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Re: What was your first character like? My very first character was 1st edition AD&D. He was an elven wizard. That could cast Fireball. A lot. ... what? I was ten freakin' years old! You want actual role-playing, wait till I'm older!

Re: Champions "What Ifs" I was actually considering making that dude the Warlord, but abandoned the idea after the problem '... so, WTF wasn't he affecting the timeline at all for 60 damn years?' question proved too annoying to answer. And suspended animation has been *so* overused before...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... My Aberrant character, commiserating with an NPC upon how my character's son feels totally overshadowed by his nova father and is estranged from him, and the NPC counters with something like 'at least you /have/ a family, all I can get is meaningless one-night stands with nova groupies'. (He's got a little Taint problem, so hardcore nova groupies are about the only women who will go for it.) Me -- "An outside observer would have trouble deciding which one of us to envy."

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever BTW, I'm curious... ... if we assumed, for the sake of argument, that the Spidey-vs-Firelord fight went on longer than was shown, how many extra punches do you think Spidey got? Was that fight really... 15 punches long, not 10? 20 punches? 30? 50? 100? A million? Ballpark figure. What are you guys thinking?

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever The Rhino has been one-punched by the Hulk. My criteria works just fine.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever For the benefit of those who have trouble paying attention, I repeat some Rhino linkage: http://www.incrediblehulk.com/rhino.html Two in particular: (Edit -- I correct an earlier statement. Spidey did not witness this incident, Luke Cage did.) Also here: http://www.leaderslair.com/gammapeople/gammaattacks/gammaattacks.html

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever Which only takes us right back to *another* point you and others have failed to adequately address -- which is 'if it really took so long, WTF did Firelord just stand there?' If Firelord wasn't Stunned on the first or second hit, then arguing that the fight went on a long time is arguing that Firelord just stood there like a dumb mook for minutes on end. And yes, this applies even if you assume that Firelord swung back, with punches that were never shown -- even the single most retarded version of the Hulk is still smart enough to switch to other attacks (like thunder-claps) if he's repeatedly failing to connect with a punch, so to assume that Firelord is dumber than that only concedes that yes, he was really forced to job out like a mook by the writer to give Spidey the win. And if you argue that Firelord *was* Stunned on the first or second hit... well, that makes the "# of punches" argument totally irrelevant, don't it.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever No, I didn't miss the scan. But apparently, you guys missed the part where I listed to (or, more accurately, lnked to a list of) virtually every *OTHER* time the Hulk and the Rhino have fought, complete with descriptions of how it ended and how long it took the Hulk. Which in at least one case was 'the Rhino got one-punched'. (snip, see correction below) So, basically, you guys just cherry-picked the worst-ever showing for the Hulk against the Rhino and tried to use it as the baseline. Cheap. Very cheap. There's also that scan I posted of the direct strength comparision between the Gray Hulk and Spider-Man -- which ended with "Gray Hulk is vastly superior to the point where Spidey is just left gaping in awe".

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever Yes, but a blur of motion that can hide lots and lots of punches in a single panel, that is the traditional privilege only of true speedsters. Everybody else, we just accept the guy's gettin' smacked around half a dozen times or so in one panel. Oh, wait, how many shots did I guesstimate for that panel? Four. Topside, six. So even if we accept -- for the sake of argument -- that the 'Maximum Spider' panel in question has Spidey punching Firelord twice as often as is actually able to be drawn, that still means Firelord went down in <15 punches. 10 punches vs. 15 doesn't exactly make a material difference in the anti-SM-vs-FL argument. It's a point of detail, yes, but it doesn't actually be large enough to change the main gist. Fug, I could spot them *three* punches for every one shown, and we're still less than 20. (12 -- three times four -- in the one panel, 6 outside of it.) This *barely* starts to shift the odds here.

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever *looks at the quote* One, the idea that Spidey punches as hard as the Hulk is ludicrous, given that he's repeatedly failed to 4-punch-KO everybody from the Green Goblin to the Sin-Eater. So, 80+% of the Spider-Man Rogue's Gallery, tougher than the Rhino and tough enough to take on the Hulk then? I think not. And two, the Hulk has on at least one occasion KO'ed the Rhino in one. Game, set, nothin'. Given the consistent record of the Rhino getting pounded down by the Hulk, sometimes in as little as one punch, the one scan of the Rhino withstanding said punch like it ain't no thang would appear to be an instance of the Hulk really bottoming out on a damage roll. Which does happen. Occasionally.

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. And if they don't, they can accept being upbraided for blatant double-standardism, or they can kiss off. Nobody but nobody is getting the privilege of 'ambiguous artwork' or 'the artist didn't have room to draw it' if I don't get it. PS -- some people will probably try to remind folks that I have allowed in other 'genre conventions' for characters before, so it's really odd of me that I don't allow in 'using your imagination on the artwork'. Here's the thing. I allowed in those genre conventions as "Everyman Powers" for just about every damn character in comics. Buildings that don't collapse when lifted by the corners, costumes that don't get wrecked, hairdos and makeup that don't smudge... these are benefits distributed far and wide across comicdom and the argument, not restricted to Spider-Man alone. Furthermore, they're things we can *SEE*. The costume clearly isn't getting smudged. The building clearly isn't falling apart. Etc. Anybody can look at the page and non-ambiguously see it in action. So I am still being entirely consistent with my 'I gotta see it on the damn page' standard when I allow those genre conventions in, and yet don't want to allow in ambiguous artwork "interpretations" (i.e -- imagining up ****.)

Re: Worst comic book superfight ever No, no one else has said that. Not even me. I'm just not letting in any *more* punches until somebody can come up with something better than muttering "pacing" or "artistic conventions" (that traditionally apply only to a character type -- speedster -- that Spidey is not) to prove that they're there. If I'm not allowed to make up whatever 'evidence' I feel like -- and I'm not -- then nobody else is gettin' that privilege either. (edit -- movin' this into a separate post so that people will see it better)

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