Yeah, I think Molecule Man vs. Manhattan is pretty well balanced, possibly the edge to Owen. The only other human I’d think would have an advantage would be another one Moore worked on, Mad Jim Jaspers. Universal-scale reality warping is quite hard to counter.
Doctor Manhattan is Little Lotta, as strong as God.
Little Dot could be Little Microdot, the Acid Queen.
I like this Harvey crossover stuff.
The Comedian is of course Jackie Jokers.
Is Spooky Rorschach?
I don’t see how “senses” are an auto-win, or are even relevant; Superman has a vast array of inhuman senses, and has been mind-controlled on any number of occasions. (He’s likewise been hit by hallucination-inducing stuff, and it hasn’t really mattered how good his senses are; he believes he’s sensing it, and so he – does.)
But, again, I’m not talking about Doctor Strange moving someone’s body to another location – because I’ve seen Manhattan relocate his body over intercontinental and even interplanetary distances. I’m not talking about Strange physically zapping the guy’s body – because, sure, I’ve seen Manhattan shrug that off before getting right back to his usual “teleport around and zap stuff” ways.
I’m talking about Strange going after the guy’s mind – and I don’t recall ever seeing Manhattan square off against an illusionist, or get hit with vast hypnotic powers, or whatever. (Superman does; Superman lives in a world where people have access to amnesia-inducing plot devices and hallucination-inducing technobabble – and they work on him, despite his senses. Why wouldn’t they work on Manhattan?)
Superman has senses in the conventional sense. He sees with his eyes, he hears with his ears, he feels with his skin. All those senses travel along nerve cells to be interpreted by his brain. While he has much better seeing/hearing/feeling than a human, he still experiences the world in fundamentally the same way.
Dr. Manhattan retains the shape of a human being but I get the feeling that more out of a lack of desire to try out a winged monkey form than any need to stay that way. He doesn’t so much see or hear things, he simply knows what is, past present and future (modulo some tachyonic interference).
If you put Superman in a room, turn out the lights, and toss a ball in the room, he couldn’t see the ball (although his super hearing would be able to track it), so he couldn’t tell you what color it is. If you did the same to Dr. Manhattan, he might not even notice that the ambient level of photons is different after turning the lights off, and he can not only tell you what color the ball is, but the name of the third-world peasant that operated the machine that made it, how many molecules are contained within it, and which child will play with the ball after you’re finished with this silly experiment. He might not really care about any of those things though, and decide to will the ball out of existence. Or turn it into a cat that the little girl would prefer to have instead of a ball.
Superman can be affected by an illusion because he still uses eyes to see, and can be affected by mind-control because he still has a brain. Mr. Manhattan would respond to an illusion about the same way a rock would, and I’m not even sure Professor X would be able to register his thought patterns as a mind at all.
Superman could punch the heads off the Minutemen (minus Manhattan) in milliseconds if he was so inclined, and they would be unable to stop him. Dr. Manhattan could cause the Suicide Squad to cease existing with a thought. They’re both game-breakers to the scenario, but one is clearly above and beyond the other.
To be clear: I do not want to come across as thread shitting, and am enjoying the thread.
I have to say, though, that when I first saw the thread title, the first thing that came to mind was “but Suicide Squad is a kind of Marvel Team Up for DC bad guys; Watchmen is the best goddamn standalone 12-issue run ever created (ever!!! ;)) and the heroes were each created with specific purposes to explore (and explode) different comic tropes.”
It doesn’t mean that a fun comparison like this thread couldn’t exist - heck, I don’t know *what * point I am trying to make. But I would never have thought to assess Dr. Manhattans god-ness relative to other normal-comics-series heroes. He was set up to be god-like because it was fascinating to explore, via Alan Moore, what it would be like if a truly super-powered hero did exist.
Keep in mind that Manhattan was actually defeated psychologically, and by an opponent who didn’t even have any mind-control powers. If Ozymandias can psych him out of a fight, I have a hard time believing that the likes of Professor X couldn’t do so, too.
That said, though, I don’t think that any of the members of Suicide Squad actually have any mind-control powers, unless you count Joker’s ability to induce insanity (which just might work).
Yes. And Poil is Silk Spectre.
Veidt is naturally Richie Rich.
Now picture Casper patiently explaining to him that he’s walked across the sun.
:dubious:
Axel Pressbutton? Um, the Fury in Captain Britain, was that Moore? Tom Strong?
Nah, this is not a general rule.
Good point.
I don’t think the Joker has ever been a member of Task Force X.
That said, Enchantress was originally a poorly-defined magic-user. She could probably turn Osterman back into a human if he annoyed her enough, which I’m sure a writer in the Moore or Gaiman style could find interesting enough to write an issue about.
Heh. I’m reminded of that villain Aquaman telepathically dropped in the first story of Grant Morrison’s JUSTICE LEAGUE run: he was a shapeshifter, he could’ve taken a “winged monkey” form if he ever felt like it, and he thinks at superspeed and so manages to give the Flash a run for his money – and none of that means anything when someone goes after his mind.
Same story, as it happens, where the bad guys don’t have any Kryptonite, and so they instead incapacitate Superman by psychically making him believe a small chunk of the stuff is right there. Same story where the bad guys – shapeshifters who can all do the “winged monkey” act – get their memories wiped at the end, too.
(Morrison’s follow-up story: Superman, now in a weird energy form that can move the moon and wrestle an angel, gets – taken out by a mind attack.)
I think you’re exaggerating. Doc is, after all, the guy who sees a thin man in a dark suit at Eddie Blake’s funeral and – tries but fails to place him. (I mean, all of Doc’s flashbacks look the same as everyone else’s flashbacks, but that may just be for the readers; but the fact that he genuinely can’t figure out who that is leaving those flowers at the grave, that’s a different kind of regular-guy-ness.)
At that, Doc is the guy who – when Laurie notes that he acted surprised by those cancer allegations – explains that he pretty much had to act as if he were surprised: stammering and expressing the appropriate emotional reactions while going through the motions of not actually knowing what the journalist was about to tell him.
(Before that, of course, Doc was the guy who tried something new in bed with Laurie, and then – apologetically followed up by saying he thought she’d enjoy it.)
Sure, he has the sad little super power of later saying he knew all along it was going to happen that way, and that he wasn’t really surprised but had to act that way; for all I know, Doc would react to someone who could induce hallucinations by – acting like he was hallucinating, and then later saying he knew all along that he wasn’t, but, y’know, had to go through the motions.
(Remember when it slips Doc’s mind that Laurie is going to need air on Mars and how it then tales him a while to figure out what’s troubling her? I guess Doc must’ve known that was going to happen – but I guess he has to act like he doesn’t realize what’s about to happen, or what’s going on while it’s happening.)
(That’s also when he notes that she’s going to surprise him with the knowledge that she’s sleeping with Dreiberg, and then she – does, and he acts all surprised.)
I dunno. I mean, they show us in some detail that his mind formed a brain and eyes with a nervous system before forming a partially-muscled skeleton, and it apparently took him months to finally get it right; does that count? (Does it matter?)
Sneak attack! Unfair!
By that logic, Ant-Man would beat Ghost Rider.
In conclusion, I like that logic.
As someone who previously thought that Dr. Manhattan was omniscient, omnipotent, and totally unbeatable, I want to state for the record that I thought of all these objections before I formed my opinion and worked out well-reasoned and insightful rebuttals that clearly refute them. But…um…I’m going to act like I didn’t. Because that’s what happens.
One of the founding members of the 80s version was.
She didn’t survive their first adventure (Captain Boomerang did not like her at all, and arranged for her to get squished, because he’s an asshole and a psychopath), but she was a member.
They’ve also had at least one reality warper…Grant Morrison.
Who also didn’t survive his first adventure with the team. On the same team was Karma, whose ability was to cause attacks on him to boomerang. Though, as he didn’t survive, either, that was clearly not foolproof.
Ah, looking at a full member list, they also had Manchester Black at one point.
It is indeed. But you might want to check out this: Before Watchmen - Wikipedia. The Dr. Manhattan one, written by J. Michael Straczynski, is particularly good.