Forget deciding whether Hawkeye or Green Arrow is the better archer. I always wanted to see a crossover in which Alfred the butler was forced to pit his skills as a gentleman’s gentleman against those of Jarvis, the butler at Avenger’s Mansion, by a representative of a powerful alien race obsessed with domestic service.
My vote goes for Mephisto (Marvel). For this reason: Mephisto can not be killed as long as people believe he exists. Therefore unless you kill off everyone who believes in the Devil, you can’t seriously do anthing to Mephisto, except annoy him.
At least that’s my understanding of his portfolio.
WARNING! I know very little about comics.
This information comes from a role playing game, and thus is probably not canon.
To encompas normal as well as superpeople, this game uses(used) a logrithmic scale to represent attributes–so a strength of 19 was 10(I think) times as strong as strength 18. I think mass and speed and other units were also logrithmic
The most powerful characters were the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, (from the whole Crisis soryline) which had, IIRC, an omni-“do anything” power of 23
IIRC the highest power was DarkSieds teleportation of 41
(sorry, I dont remember any popular superheros stats for comparison)
Sorry to be so vague. I dont even own the game in question, I just rememebr reading a review of it somewhere.
Brian
I think I have that squirrelled away somewhere at home. I’ll have to take a look. But, wasn’t it Andrew Jackson who said something like “The Supreme Court has made its ruling, now let’s see them enforce it”? The Living Tribunal can make a ruling, but does it have the power to back it up? I recall reading a “What If?” story in which the L.T. judges Michael (a.k.a. Korvac) a threat to the universe and attempts to destroy him by nova-ing Sol. Cosmic judicial activism at its worst. It doesn’t work because Michael is powerful enough to protect the Earth (and for some reason, the moon, which by this point is a ring around the Earth because the Stranger tried to crash it into Earth, but I digress). The L.T. says something like “I’ve meted my ultimate punishment and he’s not dead” and skedaddles off to another universe where he also has responsibilities. This leads me to believe that a) the L.T. is not such a badass after all and b) he’s multiversal in nature and thus may be beyond the scope of the OP.
In the same “What If?” story Michael eventually wipes out Eternity itself with the Ultimate Nullifier, thus destroying that universe and leading the Watcher to intone gravely, “And so, the number of universes will forever be one less than infinite.” What a dink, that Watcher. Later, Dr Strange, Phoenix and the Silver Surfer, whom Michael had previously banished, returned to the void that was that Universe and find the Ultimate Nullifier. They plan to reverse the nullification by nullifying the void and theoretically restoring the universe, but the ghost of Eternity (presented as female as I recall, unlike the mainstream Eternity who is presented as male) implores them not to, to allow the void to stand as a warning to anyone nutty enough to try to destroy the universe or gain ultimate power or something. Phoenix and the Surfer hightail it to dimensions unknown but Dr Strange stays in the void, as he is the Sorcerer Supreme of that universe and says he has no place anywhere else.
So I hope that by posting this I have accomplished my two-fold purpose: disproving that the L.T. is the most powerful Marvel charatcer; and earning my membership into the SDMB comic book geeks honorary division.
Im not gonna argue about it. Hands down the most powerful being strength wise anyway, is the Hulk. Its been a few years since I read any of his stuff, but he has been my fav since I was a wee tot, so I know the hulk. He gets stronger and stronger depending on how mad he gets. Its limitless. I cant remember where I read the limitless part, but does anyone remember Secret Wars 4 I think. The one with the hulk on the front holding up a f**king mountian range to keep the other heros alive!! Not a mountain. A mountain range!! The heros picked on him to make him madder so he wouldnt drop the mountain.
Nuff’ said.
Depends on which Alfred you’re talking about – the Adam West Batman Alfred, the Detective Comics Alfred, or the modern Batman: The Animated Series Alfred.
Me, I say Jarvis would out-class all the Alfreds except the B:TAS one, who has a background in the British Secret Service (as revealed in the episode “The Lion and the Unicorn”).
Am I a geek, or what? 
Not to be confused with the Smart Green Hulk around issue 400 (IIRC) that occured after Dr. Leonard Sampson got to the root of Dr. Banner’s psychological trauma (observing his father murder his mother and being forced to lie about it in court) thus allowing Dr. Banner’s mind to be inside the Hulk’s body. Which needless to say, kicked arse.
The side-effect was after watching his wife get shot, he got angry to the point that he transformed into a person with the Hulk’s mind inside Dr. Banner’s body. Basically a wimpy physicist with an eternal temper tantrum.
That’s when I stopped reading, Peter David notwithstanding.
[Edited by Alphagene on 10-22-2001 at 04:53 PM]
The problem of the overhead mountain range was solved when Mr. Fantastic, having never before seen Tony Stark’s design, rewires the Iron Man armor in a matter of seconds, allowing it to channel power provided by Captain Marvel and the Human Torch into it’s repulsor rays, which enabled Iron Man to vaporize half the mountain range. Definitely a situation requiring everyone to push the envelope.
By the way, this was the smart green Hulk. He got dumber as he got stronger when Reed Richards called him a ‘mewling whiner’ in an attempt to keep Hulk’s strength at maximum. I think the dumb green Hulk was stronger still.
Even so, I doubt a mountain range is the largest mass ever manipulated in comics.
I didn’t read that story but that ghost was probably Infinity who is basically Eternity’s female counterpart.
Saltire,
I am not saying that the hulk got them out of the mountain. He held the mountain up so they could figure a way out. As far as physical manipulation of a mass, I am sure that a mountain range is up there if not the largest.
The Hulk is well established as the strongest “normal” character in Marvel, but even he couldn’t support an entire mountain range. He had levered a pocket within which the good guys were able to temorarily reside. Still, that’s a hell of a feat.
What’s this “honorary division” stuff? You’re a full-fledged member, Otto and as one of two nominal chairgeeks (Hi Fiver!), you’re welcomed in! (Gee! This is JUST LIKE Matter-Eater Lad’s welcome to the Legion of Super-Heroes!)
However, I disagree: the Living Tribunal should be Marvel’s most God-like being and if he’s not presented as such, the writer’s doing something wrong. (Kurt Busiek said something similar about Adamantium: if the writer shows anyone breaking it, the writer goofed. Busiek was so annoyed by this that he invented “secondary”(?) Adamantium, which is just like Adamantium, but it can be broken).
Anyway, in the Living Tribunal’s initial appearance in Strange Tales around 150-something, he was casually considering “turning off” a universe (ours) because…er…something was out of whack and could upset all the others. This was a serious enough threat that Dr. Strange and Eternity got into a tizzy about it, and presumably they’d know if the LT couldn’t enforce it. In another story, the LT slapped around Lord Chaos and Master Order, who are as powerful in their universe as Death and Eternity are in “ours”. (I can’t cite this one. But I remember the In-Betweener launching himself at the LT, to no avail.)
I rembember the What If you’re talking about (1st series, around #30, I believe) with Michael, and I didn’t buy the LT’s characterization.
The Beyonder may be an entire universe, but so’s Eternity and whoever holds the Infinity Gauntlet (the gems are broken-up bits of a Beyonder-esque being). The Living Tribunal should have the oomph to keep them ALL in line. It’s his job, after all.
Alphagene: the Banner’s body/Hulk’s brain thing lasted a few issues at most. It was during a phase where Peter David either was having editorial troubles or had no idea of what to do in terms of an uber-plot (which, IMHO David is notorious for: each issue’s great, but when read as a group they don’t make much sense).
And the “cure” of remembering what his dad had done has been retconned out. The “Banner’s brain, Hulk’s body”/“Hi Honey! I’m Home!” guy turned out to be just another personality, (now nicknamed “The Professor”) albeit a more healthy one than Mr. Fixit or Big-Dumb-Malajusted Superbaby Hulk or the Mindless Guy. Other than the logistical problems of having a sane, healthy Hulk, we only saw Banner go to a few sessions with Sampson over the course of a couple of weeks/months. You don’t heal a trauma that bad that quickly.
Fenris
Didn’t Spiderman become Captain Universe, or something?
He could fly and punched the Hulk into orbit.
bafaa
Nope. The ghost was explicitly called “Eternity.” So perhaps the real divergence point in that Universe was whatever caused Eternity to manifest as “female” rather than “male.” That’s assuming that I’m remembering correctly. I think I have that issue in the house. I have comics stored all over the damn place so I have no idea where anything is.
Fenris
Alas, since I haven’t read comics regularly since I broke up with my last boyfriend a few years ago, and hadn’t read comics regularly before that for about three years, I can’t accept membership. So this is actually more like Stone Boy’s welcome to the Legion.
Whether a character “should be” the most powerful doesn’t mean that s/he is the most powerful. A character’s as powerful as s/he’s presented. If it’s printed, it’s canon, unless or until it’s retconned out.
OTOH, since I’m drawing evidence from a “What If?” story outside regular continuity, I’m willing to call it a draw.
For those who are interested (and how can you not be?), Eternity’s exact quote from The Infinity Gauntlet is “I, Eternity, am the actuality that Thanos strives to usurp. I come seeking judgment from the one being I consider a peer.” L.T. hears the motion without there being an advocate present for Thanos, so I guess it was an ex parte motion for injunctive relief (oh how I love the legal humor!). L.T. denies the motion because Thanos trying to replace Eternity was just “natural selection” in operation.
Ack! Cosmic Spidey!
Not one of my favorite storylines, as anything involving the Microverse makes my head hurt. Spidey briefly recieved the Captain Universe powers during the Acts of Vengeance crossover, in order to bring the whole mess to an end, IIRC. (Acts of Vengeance, great idea there, but it got soooo lost in the execution) The whole idea of “Captain Universe” (an extradimensional ball that appears and powers up an individual only during a crisis, that vanishes as mysteriously as it came as soon as the crisis resolves) is a lousy plot device that serves only as a shortcut out of an otherwise unresolvable mess. Deux Ex Machina, anyone?
<rant mode off>
The Captain Universe powers are not real well-defined, but they seem to put the recipient on a par with the Silver Surfer. Pretty damn powerful, but nowhere near Living Tribunal or even Galactus levels.
Can I have a membership in the Legion of SDMB Substitute Comic Geeks? Huh? Can I? Can I? I’ve got a cold, I’ll wear little antenna thingies on my head…
Nope. Not even close. Depending on who the writer is, Superman - strictly in terms of physical strength - might well be the strongest guy in the comic book world.
I’ve seen him move the whole planet on two different occasions. Once, he really had to push himself to the limit, and the other time, he did it without breaking a sweat.
That’s why the Superman movies bothered me. They made him look like an UberWuss.
FWIW, in Marvel’s What If series (namely: What If The Hulk Went Berzerk), Thor had to come down and snap Hulk’s neck to put an end to his rampage. IIRC, he kinda got him by surprise, though.
Edit: I should have said that Superman was the strongest “good guy” in the comic book world. A guy like Galactus EATS planets, so pushing them around seems rather simple to a guy like that.
However, Galactus stands outside of the “good guy/bad guy” classifications.
I dimly remember a Spider-Man where he actually beats up Firelord (a former Herald of Galactus) in hand to hand combat.Firelord is vastly stronger and tougher but is unable to land a single punch while Spidey keeps chipping away with his own punches until a battered and exhausted Firelord collapses.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox *
**
I didn’t think Superman 2 was all that bad (except for the amnesia kiss).
But in terms of raw brute power, yeah, I’d agree: Superman Earth 1 is it. There was an issue of Superboy in the late-'50s, early '60s where Superboy, faced with a sun that had just gone out (it looked like a big cinder in space) flew to a forest planet, squeezed billuns and billiuns of trees together, mined sulpher, phospherous and whatever else and made a really big match that he struck against a planet. Once lit, he reignited the sun.
I’d like to see Hulk do that!
Fenris
You just gotta love the Golden Age – all the cheeseball stories you can take for five cents an issue.