Green Lantern vs. Silver Surfer

[Skyserpent]

Okay, now GL is one of the most powerful members of the DC Pantheon, capable of insane levels of power... whereas Silver is arguably the toughest hero in all of Marvel. Cosmic energy vs. GL power? hm... this seems like a tough one...

[sun_tzu]

I say Silver Surfer. This is mostly speculation, but I think his power level is a notch or two above GL's. Also, while GL is restricted to making forms out of thin air, SS's cosmic power is very versatile...

[Roland St. Jude]

My answer to all these comic books character questions is always..."whomever the penciller/writer/GM wants to be more powerful."

Seriously, they both have the same type of energy construct cosmic power and the same mental vulnerabilities. Like sun_tzu said SS has shown far more veratility, even than the new more versatile Kyle Rayner GL.

And GL has to go back to lantern to recharge (even the newest one, although not as often as past GLs.) SS, however, draws his energy direct from the cosmos, which is nice. And now that he's free from Galactus's energy-barrier around the Earth, the universe is his oyster.

I'd say SS is tougher. Of course, if GL ever falls in a fight, the Corp. will back him up (or recruit a new one).

I'd go further and compare their past deeds, but I've used up all my geek points for the day just typing the above. :P

[KayJay]

You'd need to specify which GL, but more likely than not, the Silver Surfer would win, as he has the raw power to decimate entire armadas by himself on a normal day, whereas someone like Hal or Kyle would have to put in a monumental effort to channel enough willpower to do a similar thing... I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but they wouldn't be able to do it for long.
I'm not sure about whether Kyle could do it now that he's Ion- we haven't seen him use his powers enough to even begin to gauge them.

[Alchemistmerlin]

While Green Lantern is tough,
Surfer wins this one. He has the Power Cosmic granted to him by Galactus Devourer of Planets. He is the herald of one of the greatest immortal beings of the Universe. Even DEATH does not mess with Galactus.

[Skyserpent]

so.... it seems pretty one-sided... should I change it to something different? like Captain Marvel? or Supes?

[CelestialStick]

so.... it seems pretty one-sided... should I change it to something different? like Captain Marvel? or Supes?
Nah, if you want to do that, start a new thread. :)

I don't know anything about Silver Surfer, but I'd have to give it to Green Lantern on names, because Silver Surfer has got to be one of the dopiest superhero names ever! :D

[Finwe]

Nah, if you want to do that, start a new thread. :)

I don't know anything about Silver Surfer, but I'd have to give it to Green Lantern on names, because Silver Surfer has got to be one of the dopiest superhero names ever! :D


He's definately much cooler than the green lantern though. How awesome is a flying surfboard that can travel at thte speed of light? Besides, all the SS needs to beat the green lantern is a can of yellow spraypaint.

[CelestialStick]

My answer to all these comic books character questions is always..."whomever the penciller/writer/GM wants to be more powerful."
This of course is the best, most accurate answer of them all. :)






He's definately much cooler than the green lantern though. How awesome is a flying surfboard that can travel at thte speed of light? Besides, all the SS needs to beat the green lantern is a can of yellow spraypaint.

A silver surfboard that can travel at nearly the speed of light? That's even dopier than the name. Also, as you approach the speed of light, times slows down, and thus the Silver Surfer would actually at 99% of the speed of light, slow himself down so much that the universe would have ended by the time he got anywhere. :D

Finally, once the Green Lantern Corp realized that the Power Core contains a yellow being of fear, any Green Lantern can overcome the yellow weakness by simply understanding that fact and recognizing his own fear.

Reading the Wikipedia entry on Silver Surfer, I have to say that, profound dopiness aside, he does sound incredibly powerful, so I'd probably give it to Silver Surfer against Green Lantern. Of course if Lantern could somehow trick SS into traveling at 99% of the speed of light, the universe would have ended by the time SS got anywhere and thus Green Lantern would have long ago won by default. :D

[Skyserpent]

hey you! Don't bring actual physics into our superhero world!

[CelestialStick]

hey you! Don't bring actual physics into our superhero world!
ROFL!!
By the way, welcome back my dopplegangerish friend. ;)

[dragonseth]

hey you! Don't bring actual physics into our superhero world!
I actually find this hard to do. I can't help but point out the Physics issues with movies and such. It's kind of annoying sometimes.

Edit: Forgot, first post ever!

[Alchemistmerlin]

A silver surfboard that can travel at nearly the speed of light? That's even dopier than the name. Also, as you approach the speed of light, times slows down, and thus the Silver Surfer would actually at 99% of the speed of light, slow himself down so much that the universe would have ended by the time he got anywhere. :D

Finally, once the Green Lantern Corp realized that the Power Core contains a yellow being of fear, any Green Lantern can overcome the yellow weakness by simply understanding that fact and recognizing his own fear.

Reading the Wikipedia entry on Silver Surfer, I have to say that, profound dopiness aside, he does sound incredibly powerful, so I'd probably give it to Silver Surfer against Green Lantern. Of course if Lantern could somehow trick SS into traveling at 99% of the speed of light, the universe would have ended by the time SS got anywhere and thus Green Lantern would have long ago won by default. :D



No no, time slows down for HIM. That means he could traverse more space in less time. Therefore he would get places even faster.

Please if you're going to use silly physics, use silly physics right.

[6079smithw]

I'd go with Green Lantern, on the grounds that his comics don't bore the hell out of me.

On the other hand, Constantine is a Silver Surfer fan (or so I gather from his Sandman appearance,) so maybe he'd show up, and the legions of Hell would get involved. That would be interesting.

[Finwe]

Of course if Lantern could somehow trick SS into traveling at 99% of the speed of light, the universe would have ended by the time SS got anywhere and thus Green Lantern would have long ago won by default. :D


Way to counter comic-book-science with garbled physics! ;)

If you travel at the speed of light, time will seem to pass slower for you, correct, but for the rest of the universe you'll still travel at 99% of the speed of light. So even though time passes incredibly slow for you, you still travel incredibly fast. Thus if you traveled at 99% of the speed of light for what seemed to you a short amount of time, a much longer amount of time would have passed, and you would have travelled an immense distance. If relativity worked the way that you describe it, the fasest way to get somewhere would be to walk backwards!

[KayJay]

Actually, I think Hal could conceivably win, as lnog as he cops a super-charge from the main battery. He did it once when he needed to get that Ooze monster that was feeding off Oa off the planet, and he did it again (more permanently) when he turned into Parallax. having done it twice, I reckon he could do it again, and someone with that level of power could beat the Surfer easily. (I think a normal experienced green lantern is in Silver Surfer leagues, but only for short periods of time.)

[Rex_Hondo]

Well, Silver Surfer got more votes the last time they fought. Of course, even the writers couldn't quite figure out how it would go. They just showed the faceoff, a huge flash of unleashed cosmic fury, and an unconscious Kyle Rayner draped over the end of Silver Surfer's board...

[CelestialStick]

Way to counter comic-book-science with garbled physics! ;)

If you travel at the speed of light, time will seem to pass slower for you, correct, but for the rest of the universe you'll still travel at 99% of the speed of light. So even though time passes incredibly slow for you, you still travel incredibly fast. Thus if you traveled at 99% of the speed of light for what seemed to you a short amount of time, a much longer amount of time would have passed, and you would have travelled an immense distance. If relativity worked the way that you describe it, the fasest way to get somewhere would be to walk backwards!

Actually, I'm fairly confident that you've got it backwards, which is why science fiction is full of stories about people who travel at high relativistic speeds arriving only to find that in the decades of their absence from normal time, the people back home built FTL drives (which do not cause time dialation for the crew) and got there first, even though from the perspective of the crew traveling at high relativistic speeds, a short period of time had passed.

[Adeptus]

Actually, I'm fairly confident that you've got it backwards, which is why science fiction is full of stories about people who travel at high relativistic speeds arriving only to find that in the decades of their absence from normal time, the people back home built FTL drives (which do not cause time dialation for the crew) and got there first, even though from the perspective of the crew traveling at high relativistic speeds, a short period of time had passed.

No, he has it right, I'm afraid. Time dilatation just means that the object travelling close to the speed of light experiences less time than passess in the rest of the universe. That means that the trip seems shorter to you than it does to the rest of the universe. It doesn't make you go slow while the rest of the universe ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilatation

Also Silver Surfer can teleport vast distanses so he doesn't have to just tool around flying at the speed of c. He can if he want's to, but that's not what he does if he's in a hurry.

I like SS, even though he's an absurdly trippy character. The surf board is a very odd touch.

[CelestialStick]

No, he has it right, I'm afraid. Time dilatation just means that the object travelling close to the speed of light experiences less time than passess in the rest of the universe. That means that the trip seems shorter to you than it does to the rest of the universe. It doesn't make you go slow while the rest of the universe ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilatation

Also Silver Surfer can teleport vast distanses so he doesn't have to just tool around flying at the speed of c. He can if he want's to, but that's not what he does if he's in a hurry.

I like SS, even though he's an absurdly trippy character. The surf board is a very odd touch.

Thanks for the reference, as it proves that I'm right.

Time dilation would make it possible for a fast moving clock to travel into the future, while aging very little. That is, the clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than stationary clocks. For sufficiently high speed the effect could be dramatic. For example one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1g acceleration would permit humans to circumnavigate the known universe (with a radius of some 15 billion light years) in one human lifetime. The space-travellers could return to earth billions of years in the future (provided the Universe hadn't collapsed and our solar system was still around, of course). A scenario based on this idea was presented in the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.

[Alchemistmerlin]

Right but what you're trying to say is that it would take him LONGER to get places, which isn't true.

It would take him much less time to get places. And since he is a cosmic being he understands these principles and makes them work to his advantage.


Essentially what it seemed you were trying to say was: Going faster makes you slower.

What the truth is:
Going faster makes time around you slower.

[Finwe]

Thanks for the reference, as it proves that I'm right.

Time dilation would make it possible for a fast moving clock to travel into the future, while aging very little. That is, the clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than stationary clocks. For sufficiently high speed the effect could be dramatic. For example one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1g acceleration would permit humans to circumnavigate the known universe (with a radius of some 15 billion light years) in one human lifetime. The space-travellers could return to earth billions of years in the future (provided the Universe hadn't collapsed and our solar system was still around, of course). A scenario based on this idea was presented in the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.



I think you've gotten confused by how relativity works. Although to you it will SEEM that only one year has passed, to people in a reference frame that was not accelerated, you've been traveling for ten years. Thus you are now 9.9 light years away from your original location.

[Skyserpent]

So what difference does this make on how SUrfer can kick Hal/John/Kyle's butt?

[Rex_Hondo]

So what difference does this make on how SUrfer can kick Hal/John/Kyle's butt?

Don't forget Guy! ;D

Or what about the rest of the GL Corps? Like Kilowog. I think Kilowog could take him.

[Skyserpent]

wait... was Kilowog the pig guy or the M&M ?

[Rex_Hondo]

wait... was Kilowog the pig guy or the M&M ?

More of a mean-tempered space-hippo. Kyle had to rescue him from hell when he resurrected the GL Corps.

[StudlyDuck]

Totally depends which GL you're talking about. I'd say the Surfer wins unless it's Hal Jordan.

[Rex_Hondo]

Totally depends which GL you're talking about. I'd say the Surfer wins unless it's Hal Jordan.

Well, Hal only wins by default, since Silver Surfer's cosmic pride probably won't allow him to fight a cardboard cutout. ;)

http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050905.html

http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050907.html

[Skyserpent]

So when exactly did Hal Jordan become GOD? I think I missed that... I remember reading one issue where he started going nuts and taking all the Power Rings...

[Rex_Hondo]

So when exactly did Hal Jordan become GOD? I think I missed that... I remember reading one issue where he started going nuts and taking all the Power Rings...

As I recall, he attempted to resurrect the whole of Coast City in the aftermath of Reign of the Supermen, and went mad in the process, GLs not being allowed to use their power in that way. He then started offing other GLs and collecting their power rings, becoming the hideously powerful Parallax and triggering the Zero Hour crossover, attempting to remake the entire DC Universe to his own liking. (Also resulting in one of DCs many "resets") Then, at the end of the Final Night story arc, he came to his senses long enough to use all of his remaining power to re-ingnite the sun, sacrificing himself to save the Earth. THEN he was chosen as the new Spectre. I'm still not sure how he came back to life. The powers that be most likely decided that he had atoned enough as Spectre to be given another chance at life, or some such...

In other words, the most (if only) truly interesting thing Hal Jordan ever did was go stark, raving, bonkers. His fanboys, of course, hated it.

[KayJay]

He then started offing other GLs and collecting their power rings, becoming the hideously powerful Parallax

Not quite, he took the power rings, but intended to go to Oa and claim all of the central power battery for himself, which would've given him the power to change things. He stopped after he killed Kilowog, as he realised he'd crossed a line, and my understanding has always been fuzzy here of what happens next. The guardians then decided to banish him into the central power battery, but then had a change of heart about 30 seconds later, and all decided to sacrifice themselves to free Hal again, and give him the power to be Parallax. The only survivor was Ganthet, who forged Kyle's power ring from the remains of Hal's ring.

[CelestialStick]

I think you've gotten confused by how relativity works. Although to you it will SEEM that only one year has passed, to people in a reference frame that was not accelerated, you've been traveling for ten years. Thus you are now 9.9 light years away from your original location.
Nope. I have it quite right. At nearly the speed of light SS will think he has gone for only a year, but in real time he will have been gone for 10. Time does in fact slow down for him. If SS goes to a quasar and back, he will think that he has spent only a year (1g constant acceleration gets you around the universe in a year of subjective time), indeed he will have spent only a year of his subjective time, but the rest of the universe will have aged a trilion years or so. This is what the quotation from Wikipedia said and what I said from the outset. It's also what you said, but for some reason you think that's different from what I said.

It's also not a matter of going slower as you go faster. It's a matter of time moving slower as you go faster. I mean for goodness sakes, read the damned Wikipedia entry that one of you goofballs thought contradicted me. Then come back, admit I'm right, and we can drop it.

[Finwe]

First of all, I think that a textbook on physics is a far better reference on relativity than wikipedia is.

Secondly, 1g of constant acceleration is completely different than 99% C.

Thirdly, my original point was that you DID imply that you go slower as you get closer to the speed of light, and I was correcting you. See, the way relativity works, when you're travelling at 99% C, even though time has slowed down for you, other observers still see you as going 99% C. Even though time passes slower for you, you STILL go incredibly fast. According to your post,

"at 99% of the speed of light, [the silver surfer would] slow himself down so much that the universe would have ended by the time he got anywhere."

But if all he wanted to do was go down the street to get some orange juice, he'd arrive pretty much instantly.


The problem with your logic is that you don't have the whole picture of relativity. You're thinking "well, time is passing slower for him. That means that if he's travelling 99% C in his frame of reference, he must be travelling much slower than that in everyone else's frame of reference." In reality, he's still traveling 99% C in a bystander's frame of reference.

[CelestialStick]

First of all, I think that a textbook on physics is a far better reference on relativity than wikipedia is.

Secondly, 1g of constant acceleration is completely different than 99% C.

Thirdly, my original point was that you DID imply that you go slower as you get closer to the speed of light, and I was correcting you. See, the way relativity works, when you're travelling at 99% C, even though time has slowed down for you, other observers still see you as going 99% C. Even though time passes slower for you, you STILL go incredibly fast. According to your post,

"at 99% of the speed of light, [the silver surfer would] slow himself down so much that the universe would have ended by the time he got anywhere."

But if all he wanted to do was go down the street to get some orange juice, he'd arrive pretty much instantly.


The problem with your logic is that you don't have the whole picture of relativity. You're thinking "well, time is passing slower for him. That means that if he's travelling 99% C in his frame of reference, he must be travelling much slower than that in everyone else's frame of reference." In reality, he's traveling 99% C in both frames of reference.
The actual original point was that if Batman could get him to travel a great distance at close to the speed of light, the earth would be long gone by the time SS returned, and thus from Batman's perspective he would never have returned. Thus Batman won. You and I both know that's correct, so give it up. I was right, those who told me I was wrong were wrong, and we all know it now. Enough said?

[Finwe]

The actual original point was that if Batman could get him to travel a great distance at close to the speed of light, the earth would be long gone by the time SS returned, and thus from Batman's perspective he would never have returned. Thus Batman won. You and I both know that's correct, so give it up. I was right, those who told me I was wrong were wrong, and we all know it now. Enough said?


That's correct, but I never said anything to the contrary. (However, even that's technically wrong because if the SS wanted to get somewhere fast, he'd enter hyperspace, where not only can he travel faster than light, but is unneffected by time dilation ;))

However,


"at 99% of the speed of light, [the silver surfer would] slow himself down so much that the universe would have ended by the time he got anywhere."

is flat wrong.

I get no readout from the sarcasm detector when I read that quote, so tell me if it should be going off.

[CelestialStick]

That's correct, but I never said anything to the contrary. (However, even that's technically wrong because if the SS wanted to get somewhere fast, he'd enter hyperspace, where not only can he travel faster than light, but is unneffected by time dilation ;))

However,



is flat wrong.

I get no readout from the sarcasm detector when I read that quote, so tell me if it should be going off.
You're interpreting "at 99% of the speed of light, [the silver surfer would] slow himself down so much" as "the higher his speed, the lower his speed." I see from your post on the current OOTS comic thread that you might be having an off day here, so let me just say that I didn't mean anything so stupid; I meant that as he goes faster time slows down for him.

With regard to Silver Surfer going into hyperspace, my original comment was a joke to point out the futility of Batman trying to fight Silver Surfer.

[rlee1185]

So, I haven't read all of the posts, but I'm curious. How do you think the new Ion would do? Not the first one that happened when Kyle retook the green lantern energy that used to be parallax/oblivion that had grown to the level of the power battery. This new one is the one with the power of his green lantern ring and the Starheart green lantern power, which is now called the "Ion Power." I think that this gives him a bigger advantage than he would normally have. Also, Kyle's ring can never completely run out of power, as he coded it to do so when he was the first rendition of the Ion.

Anyway, I think that the new Ion/Green Lantern/Starheart Kyle could be a much tougher foe than he was before. Also, if you read the comic that had Cyborg, Parallax, Kyle, SS, and... who was it? Thanos? Kyle takes all of the power that Hal Jordan had taken from SS and all the energy that Thanos had taken from the remnants of Oa. If Kyle can do that on a normal day, can he do that with the Ion Power? He could potentially weaken SS if that is so.

[Nightwing]

There is a company cross over were this happened:

A SS with only about half his normal power (he gave some to Parallax) vs a rookie Kyle ( Parallax was still alive ) and GL one easily. so I don't know. It is hard to says because SS wasn't a full power.

[Blue Paladin]

[Surfer] has the Power Cosmic granted to him by Galactus Devourer of Planets. He is the herald of one of the greatest immortal beings of the Universe. Even DEATH does not mess with Galactus.And Green Lantern has the power granted to him by the Guardians of the Universe. He is a representative of twenty of the greatest immortal beings of the Universe. (And Death does not mess with Galactus because she knows that he kills millions upon millions of beings as a light snack. Why bite the hand that feeds you?)

It seems people have a rather outdated view of GL's powers, and are comparing it unfavorably to the more consistent SS (who pretty much has always had the power cosmic).

First off, no more yellow weakness. The current power rings can affect yellow, dependent on the experience of the wielder. This is without doubt the single greatest change to the GLCorps mythos (and IMO a really stupid one: the whole point of Rayner's ring was that it functioned differently; now all 7200 rings are like that).

The next point is, which Green Lantern? Hal Jordan? John Stewart? Kilowog? G'norrt? While there's only been one Norrin Radd with a relatively stable power level, there have been multiple Hal Jordans (GL, Parallax, Spectre, Post-Spectre GL) and multiple Kyle Rayners (Pre-Ion GL, Ion, Post-Ion GL, Post-Starheart Ion), each with wildly differing power levels. Even John Stewart (GL, Darkstar) and Guy Gardner (GL, Sinestro-Ring, Warrior) have multiple power levels.

As a final point, SS got his power from Galactus, making it fairly safe to say Galactus > Silver Surfer. Galactus -could not follow- his rogue herald Terrax into a black hole (and had to recruit Dazzler to do so in his place, but we won't delve further into why a cosmic-level entity empowered a roller-skate disco diva). Recent Green Lanterns are shown to use black holes as expressways (which induces more eye-rolling from me, but that's beside the point). So in at least one particular instance, it's pretty clear that GL > Galactus > SS.

Just food for thought.

[Baalzebub]

Doesn't SS beats GL in the Marvel vs DC crossover?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Doesn't SS beats GL in the Marvel vs DC crossover?

those were determined by fan votes (how did Storm beat Wonder Woman? How didn't Thor's magic hammer beat the **** out of Superman).

I'd personally say tie until the GL's ring runs out of juice. Unless we're talking about Alan Scott*, who would kick the SS' ass. 'Cause he's just that cool.

*Current Ion mode not counted, since Kyle's power level is unknown and he's not going by GL

[Koga]

There's no way the green lantern's ring can rival the power cosmic.

Green Lantern is still human, The Silver Surfer is not. GL can't hope to rival The Surfer's power.

[Dhavaer]

How didn't Thor's magic hammer beat the **** out of Superman).

Because Superman fought Hulk, not Thor. Thor fought Captain Marvel.

[elliott20]

Well, there are several things we have to keep in mind with SS vs GL.

They both have the power to manipulate pure force, but SS has more flexibility when it comes to manipulating the elements. However, their abilities are still quite similar. So, in that sense, it's all about how much raw energy and how focused they are with their use of said energy.

From the looks of it, power cosmic seems to just draw energy right from the surroundings while a GL ring has a definitely finite energy level. By that token, if SS understands how GL works, he could win by virtue of power attrition, seeing as he has an infinite power source.

However, I'm also functioning off of the assumption that SS can be destroyed if overwhelmed with ENOUGH force. That means that GL might have a shot at winning if he can focus enough to put enough power behind his blows to put SS away before GL runs out of juice. But he doesn't have a lot of chances of that and so he has to really make his GL power count.

I'd say SS has the advantage here.

[Elliot Kane]

According to the SS/GL team up the GL power ring is "the most powerful weapon in the universe" and the Surfer believes that a sufficiently experienced ring wielder could beat him.

The Marvel vrs DC thing proves nothing at all: fan votes had Wolverine beating Lobo, let's not forget...

As far as who is cooler: SS looks like a hood ornament. That's not cool, so GL wins hands down.

[elliott20]

yeah, that's pretty much the way I see it too.

While SS does have a ridiculous amount of energy within him, he does have a very much limited durability and endurance for damage. So, with enough skill and focus, a GL can pretty beat him by overpowering him fast enough.

[Selrahc]

Because Superman fought Hulk, not Thor. Thor fought Captain Marvel.

In JLA versus Avengers though. Thor fought Supes and it was a draw. Supes not getting smushed by the hammer.

[Revlid]

Which is ridiculous, as Superman has been shown to be vulnerable to magical cards, so a magical hammer wielded by a being with super-strength equal to his own should have pulped him.

[Gavin Sage]

Silver Surfer takes this even against a top GL like Hal or Guy. Silver Surfer is currently the Herald of Galactus once again and has had his power augmented by the Devourer of Worlds so is stronger then ever. GL constructs have their limits power wise and can be broken, and right now SS is well into the cosmic range on power when say Superman or Thor only nudge into it. Plus Surfer is faster, well for a fight anyways.



those were determined by fan votes (how did Storm beat Wonder Woman? How didn't Thor's magic hammer beat the **** out of Superman).

Umm, while I can't remember all the smaller encounters, Superman fought the Hulk in Marvel vs DC while Thor fought Captain Marvel. They did fight in the later JLA/Avengers crossover I've heard, which wasn't fan votes and still Supes won. With the note that he said Thor might be his toughest opponent ever and Thor that now he had Supes mark. Magic being Supes weakness means like Sleep or Charm, he has normal Will saves but still has elemental resistances, gobs of hitpoints, and high AC. Just because damage comes from a magical source though doesn't mean Supes is suddenly SOL. Otherwise Captain Marvel would beat Superman in a punch, when instead they go on all out slug-fests and Marvel generally looses.

[Blue Paladin]

Offtopic tangent: In the JLA/JSA crossover with the two genies battling (the one where T-Bolt changes hands to Jakeem), Captain Marvel does take out Superman with one punch.

Also tangent: Guy as "a top GL" makes me laugh. The whole "Honor Lantern Guy" nearly makes me bwahaha!

Back ontopic:

GL constructs have their limits power wise and can be broken...Hal has (on multiple occasions) entered the Oan power battery for direct access to its power, and his willpower has been trumpeted a bazillion times. Kyle's ring (after he integrated the "lantern rock" into it) had no power limit, and the only throttles on the thing were his inexperience, his "not Hal level" willpower, and the fact that he was terrified of the possible abuses (you know, I could split atoms with this thing. If I thought about it...). And that was pre-Ion, where he became deific.


right now SS is well into the cosmic range on power when say Superman or Thor only nudge into it.I think you underestimate DC... Even B-listers like Phantom Stranger and Zatanna (who are about even up with Dr. Strange in terms of pulling things out of their... thin air) or C-listers (who would normally be a cakewalk if you do a straight power comparison) like Amazing Man (which would be amusing once he turns into whatever Silver Surfer is made of) or Matter Eater Lad (which would be hilarious if he weren't dead, or not born yet, your choice).

And in terms of straight up power, Superman and Captain Marvel are easily class 100, and Kara-Supergirl is explicitly stronger than Superman. Mon-El and Zod. Power Girl, if she's done having fluctuating powers now that IC is over. Random Superman villain of the month, who needs to establish "cred" so is shown smacking Supes to the moon.

Put it this way: Thor (who I tend to assume has parity with Supes & Capt. Marvel) has punched holes in Celestial-armor, which I think SS (even super-empowered) would be hard pressed to do. In fact, I'm wracking my brain, but I can't think of an instance of SS showing anything close to class 100 strength. He always uses his ill-defined power cosmic: blasty transmuting hand-wavium...

[Gavin Sage]

I'll leave the tangent on Supes noting it would have to be everytime but that argument is not this thread.

And I don't underestimate the DC at all. They have a lot of powerful character. The Phantom Stranger is one of the most powerful, B-list (or even lower) is not a nessecary measure of power.

Nor is strength relative to the matter at hand either, as GL's are not particularly strong hand to handers last I check. Surfer is listed in class 100 last I checked some of the guides floating around. He's thrown down with Thanos who is about as strong and powerful as they come. Once he fought through most of the Marvel, and I've seen him listed as recently being reserve to stop Cable at full Omega mutant power. And he's got wide power array besides. Add to that he is incredibly fast and more durable then a GL who under that green glow tend to be fleshy little humanoids with no outstanding powers.

GLs are mighty, but unless one wants to count Parallax Hal as one the Surfer is mightier still. He's a real demigod of the Marvel universe, when even 'real' gods like Odin and Thor are more bit players.

(Oh one final note, Kara has not proven stronger then Supes. He had doubts but figured out she lacks the innate caution he does from his powers developing slowly growing up, while Kara's were kickstarted to full blast and so she uses full blast. Though she may end up with some weird powers once her current arc is done, there's still that breaking kryptonite thing she did. I read Supergirl far too much....)

[Blue Paladin]

I'll leave the tangent on Supes noting it would have to be everytime but that argument is not this thread.Agreed.


Nor is strength relative to the matter at hand either, as GL's are not particularly strong hand to handers last I check.Really, it depends on the GL in question. Kilowog is naturally superstrong. Ch'p is not. I'll avoid trying to classify Mogo's strength :)


Surfer is listed in class 100 last I checked some of the guides floating around.Ah, but he's not naturally class 100. He's superstrong to some unknown degree, and uses the Power Cosmic to reach (and breach) the 100 level (to the Hulkth degree). So if we start with Kilowog and have him use his ring to increase his strength (the way Kyle does with his mecha-suits), then we've got a potential match.


...I've seen him listed as recently being reserve to stop Cable at full Omega mutant power.Cable isn't Omega level, so whoever wrote that is misinformed. Cable is a high Alpha, like Magneto and Xavier. Omega level is reality warping beings, like Jean-Grey-Phoenix and Gabe "Ridiculous" Summers... or Iceman*. And everybody loves Franklin Richards.


And [Silver Surfer has a] wide power array besides. Add to that he is incredibly fast and more durable then a GL who under that green glow tend to be fleshy little humanoids with no outstanding powers.Well the whole point is to compare the power cosmic vs the power ring. Underneath his silver skin, Norrin's a fleshy little humanoid with no outstanding powers. I mean, comparing (any) GL without powers to SS with his powers defeats the purpose of this exercise. Any GL has a wide power array, and is incredibly fast, and protected from mortal harm (unless the failsafe is shut off or the ring charge runs out).

Consider, Green Lanterns have been taken over by aliens (ref: Starro). Silver Surfer has been taken over by aliens (ref: Carnage Cosmic). Green Lanterns have had their powers taken away by technology (ref: Qwardian power rings). Silver Surfer had his powers taken away by technology (ref: US Military missile based on Reed Richard's design). Both sides have demonstrable strengths and weaknesses.

And for people who insist Power Cosmic > Power Battery, Kyle Rayner's power battery (the remnant of the then-destroyed main Oan Power Battery) was one of the artifacts of power in the JLA/Avengers crossover. The Cosmic Cube counted as one of the artifacts; all of the Infinity Gems together counted as one of the artifacts. Your own interpretation of Infinity vs Power Cosmic applies here. [This argument is entirely moot anyway, since the Surfer only has a fraction of the Power Cosmic, and the Power Ring only channels a fraction of the Oan power. What fractions? 1/10th? 3/17th? 1/49th? No one knows.]


...Kara has not proven stronger... she lacks the innate caution [Supes] does... Kara's [powers] were kickstarted to full blast and so she uses full blast.But Batman said so! And Batman can't be wrong because of his batness. QED.[/tongue in cheek] I hated the fact that Kara came in out of nowhere and was stronger/faster/better... Happy to hear she got nerfed.

As a final note of no consequence to any of the above, I'd just like to say how great it is to be able to argue about comic book nothings again. I haven't had a worthy person to bounce ideas and views against since I moved out of my last apartment and lost my roommate. Thank you everyone who's replied in such a well-reasoned, well-thought and civil (so rare on the internet!) manner.

*this one actually makes sense if you stop to think about it. cold is the absence of heat, so bobby doesn't "generate cold", he destroys heat. which breaks a pretty fundamental law of physics.

[mroozee]

First, the Silver Surfer is capable of traveling far faster than the speed of light via hyperspace. And he is way more powerful than any Green Lantern. Oh, and Hal Jordan still kicks his a**.

That being said, relativity is not really that mysterious.

When you talk about something moving at 0.99c, it ONLY makes sense to talk about it RELATIVE to a FRAME OF REFERENCE. If according to YOUR inertial reference frame, I am moving away from YOU at a constant velocity of 0.99c, then in MY inertial reference frame, YOU are moving away from ME at the same 0.99c. We both perceive our own clocks as "normal" and we both perceive the other's clock as "slowed". If we are both moving in the same direction at the same speed, we are stationary with regard to one another and there is no time dilation. Put another way, you are currently moving at 0.99c (in virtually all directions) if you get to pick your frame of reference. There is no absolute reference frame from which we can determine an objects "actual" velocity and the various worlds throughout the Marvel Universe are not stationary with respect to one another.

The interesting effects in Special Relativity occur because there is an agreed upon reference frame (usually something common, like the Earth - often presumed stationary). If the Silver Surfer accelerates from the Earth reference frame to a speed close to c relative to the Earth, his clock looks slower to people on Earth. When he arrives at his destination, if it shares the Earth's frame of reference (unlikely), he will decelerate until he is at rest with the Earth reference frame and his clock will once again appear normal - albeit behind the clock on earth. If his destination is NOT aligned with the Earth frame of reference, his clock will appear slow to the folks on Earth even though his destination world perceives him at rest and his clock as normal.

[Tallis]

I'm going to have to vote Silver Surfer. His power is arguably more versatile, but more importantly it's innate to him, not part of an object he wields. He is capable of the ruthlessness necessary to lead Galactus to populous worlds that he will consume. He's certainly capable of chopping off GL's hand, thus depriving him of his ring (unless we are referring to Kyle Raynor as GL).

[GoC]

those were determined by fan votes (how did Storm beat Wonder Woman? How didn't Thor's magic hammer beat the **** out of Superman).

Even stupider is that sups didn't just use his super speed (comic book writers always seem to forget it), dodge all Thor's blows and wear him down.

Superboy-Prime beat the GL corps single-handedly so I think SS would win.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Don't confuse Superboy-Prime with the power levels of, say, regular modern Superboy. Prime has all the powers of the Silver Age Superman. Silver Age Superman is invincible. He moves planets with ease, can fly faster then light, and worst of all, went insane and thus didn't hold back any of his hits. It took a severe beating by a Speed Force infused Barry Allen, a battle with the entire Green Lantern Corps, a fight with TWO modern-powered Supermen, a flight through a red star (an innate WEAKNESS), and a battle on an entire superpowered world that was against him in order to just retain him. I can't think of a single character across DC or Marvel that could actually stand one-on-one against Superboy-Prime.

[ravenkith]

Silver Surfer wins this, hands down.

Why?

Well, quite frankly, Green Lanterns are limited to what they can imagine, and by the strength of their will, when it comes to shaping the DCU's version of the power cosmic.

The Silver Surfer Has no similar limitations.

Green Lanterns can die of old age.

Silver Surfer is functionally immortal.

Green Lanterns can be removed from their power sources.

Norrin Radd is his own power source.

Green Lantern rings run for 24 hours before needing a recharge (like a cell phone).

Norrin Radd (Silver Surfer) is always ready to party (like a land line).

In terms of raw power, Ion (current version) might have an edge...but his inexperience and human imagination would fail him, I think...and we don't have a lot of data on his current capabilities (he used to be able to split his consciousness and likeness across several light years with no lag and no disorientation, until he got upwards of 12-15 hims-he hasn't shown the capability to do this since kick starting the battery).

Sure, he can imagine Japanime powersuits...

But the surfer isn't limited to inspiration found in this world...

Only one person has ever managed to crack the silver surfer's skin: and that was Morg the Executioner, IIRC, who was specifically given enough power by Galactus to kill SS. SS has since been amped up even higher on the power scale.

Oh and FYI: Cable would be omega level if it weren't for the fact that his powers are constantly keeping the raging technovirus he was infected with at an early age in check, 24/7/365. (Cyclops & phoenix limited series).

[Blue Paladin]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who actually reads both sides. I'm not even particularly pro-GL, but upon review I sure sound like it...


Green Lanterns are limited to what they can imagine, and by the strength of their will, when it comes to shaping the DCU's version of the power cosmic.Wait... So you're actually claiming that one's imagination... is a limit? "Strength of will" is (and always will be) a subjective measure, and both Alan Scott and Hal Jordan have always been trumpeted as having unmatched willpower. Even the relative neophyte Kyle Rayner has shown incredible growth in both power and willpower.


The Silver Surfer Has no similar limitations.If by this you mean he has no imagination, I can agree... I've been reading The Ultimate Silver Surfer anthology (ISBN 1572970294); in one of the stories he is fighting the Red Giant, a schlub who wields magical fire. SS is shocked that he, who has flown through stars, could be so badly burned that he might actually melt. SS is losing badly before a random human offers him some water, giving him the revolutionary idea that water can quench fire! SS wins after taking the fight into the sea.

In contrast, when going up against the Uni-Lord, SS puts into motion a plan so complex, it smacks more of Doom or Batman than a simple Herald of Galactus.


Green Lanterns can die of old age.

Silver Surfer is functionally immortal.So, what then... you want SS to run away and wait for the Lantern to die? This is "winning hands down"?

I am also wondering about where you got the idea that SS is immortal. I can't find any reference that Radd will live forever. It is established that three generations of humans pass in the time it takes a Zenn-Lavian to reach middle age (I'm away from The Ultimate Silver Surfer at the moment, so I can't put the exact quote). But having a lifespan six times greater hardly counts as functional immortality... That's like saying a human is functionally immortal compared to a dog.


Green Lanterns can be removed from their power sources. Not all of them can be (ref. Mogo, Kyle Rayner).


Norrin Radd is his own power source....

Norrid Radd has access to a fraction of the power cosmic, as granted to him by Galactus. As long as the cosmos exists, SS has access to power. But he does not 'generate' his own power at all. Nor is his fraction unlimited, by any stretch. SS has, in the past, been exhausted (through simple use of his powers), been trapped (by cosmic entities as well as by magic), been de-powered (by a Reed-Richards-designed missile), had his powers stolen from him (caveat: it was Doom, but he's still a "mere mortal")...

The Silver Surfer is hardly immune to having his powers taken away; he is exactly as vulnerable to being de-powered as any GL: whenever the writer feels like it.


Green Lantern rings run for 24 hours before needing a recharge (like a cell phone).Not as true as it once was. The current, standard-issue GL rings can run out of charge before 24 hours if used excessively. They must be charged after 24 hours, even if not used at all. Rayner's ring had no time limit, only the charge limit. After his first stint as Ion, he no longer needed to charge, but allowed for "overcharging" if he needed to go above and beyond his normal power level.


Norrin Radd (Silver Surfer) is always ready to party (like a land line).Using excessive amounts of the power cosmic leaves SS drained, like (dare i say it) a battery. If you read the above anthology, a relatively trivial physical task (ferrying medical supplies across international lines) exhausts him (mostly because of the emotional strain, but it still happens). He needs a few minutes rest before being back to full power.


In terms of raw power, Ion (current version) might have an edge...but his inexperience and human imagination would fail him, I think...and we don't have a lot of data on his current capabilities (he used to be able to split his consciousness and likeness across several light years with no lag and no disorientation, until he got upwards of 12-15 hims-he hasn't shown the capability to do this since kick starting the battery).In terms of power, Ion (first version) clearly outclasses SS. That Ion had all of the emerald energy... all of it; Surfer, even the newly re-empowered by Galactus version, still has access to but a fraction of the power cosmic. Ion (current version) also outclasses SS. The addition of [half] a universe's worth of magic to the already souped-up version of his GL ring easily puts Kyle over the top.

Which is why we aren't comparing Ion to the Surfer, only Green Lanterns. So Kyle as a GL is still a valid choice for comparison, whereas Kyle as Ion (either one) is not.


Sure, he can imagine Japanime powersuits...

But the surfer isn't limited to inspiration found in this world...SS has shown an absolutely stunning lack of inspired thought through decades worth of stories. Given his demonstrated abilities, if he had an ounce of imagination, he'd be unstoppable. Thanos is collecting the Infinity Gems on his gauntlet? Screw Adam's stupid "The Surfer will fly by and grab it" plan! Don't aim for the Gems, and transmute the (non-cosmically powered) glove into caesium and water, giving Thanos a chemical slap on the hand while all the gems fall off. Now everybody grab a gem!

Raw power on a cosmic scale, physical strength boostable to Hulk-levels, super-speed comparable to DC's Flash, the ability to covert matter to energy and back again, empathic (and possibly telepathic) ability that stretches planetary distances, a plethora of senses that can scan an entire planet in minutes... and his part in the last-ditch plan to save the universe? Snatch and grab. And he fails.

That's just sad.


Only one person has ever managed to crack the silver surfer's skin: and that was Morg the Executioner, IIRC, who was specifically given enough power by Galactus to kill SS. SS has since been amped up even higher on the power scale.The Surfer's "indestructible" board, which I'll note is made of the same stuff as his skin, has been destroyed before. Several times, if memory serves. Most recently I think by berserk-Cable, using nothing more than TK (i.e. lots of force). If the myriad things that crushed the board hit the Surfer instead, one could infer that SS would be similarly affected. SS is only as unbreakable as adamantium: until the writer decides it would be cool to break (are you familiar with death's head ii? he's a cyborg from the future, and Wolverine breaks a claw on dh's "augmented molybdenum" weapon/arm. molybdenum! a common, mundane real-life metal!).


Oh and FYI: Cable would be omega level if it weren't for the fact that his powers are constantly keeping the raging technovirus he was infected with at an early age in check, 24/7/365. (Cyclops & phoenix limited series).So by your own admission, he isn't Omega. Even Nate Grey (basically an uninfected Cable) was never classified as Omega, although to be fair, he was dead before this new classification system was introduced.

[ravenkith]

Nate Grey has recently been reclassified as omega. I forget where I read it, I believe it was on one of the many copious pages of the Marvel universe board.

If you actually read what I wrote, you'll see that I gave SS the edge over Ion (current version) because of the difference in experience levels, and Kyle's self-imposed limitations: the spectre of Hal as Parallax causes him to limit himself, which might be enough to let Surfer win. But you're right, he's no longer a GL, so he's irrelevant, except in that he's much more powerful than one.

As for the original version of Ion, Kyle would pants the surfer.

As far as crushing the board: it's a projected automaton. The surfer only invests a portion of his energy into it, therefore it is much easier to damage than he himself is.

Immortality: Surfer was made immortal when granted the power cosmic, last I checked. Galactus doesn't want to have to go make a new herald every 600 years or so if he can help it...it's annoying enough when they go rogue.

Imagination: You can only imagine what your consciousness can wrap itself around, which is based on your experience and knowledge of the universe. For example, Kyle, as human, may know the periodic table from earth, and be able to extrapolate things based on that. The surfer, on the other hand, has been exposed to much more in his lifetime serving galactus, and, as such, his imagination has a more fertile background to draw upon, even when looking at something as simple as a periodic table.

As to the book you are currently reading, I suggest you remember that they are collections of older stories, and may not reflect current comic book realities.

At one time in the past, his power levels were much reduced because of his betrayal of galactus: there was a whole story arc on him regaining his former power levels, and just recently, he was souped up even further.

Also, remember that the surfer is from space & has visited other planets. Just because a sea looks like water, doesn't mean it is. For that matter, if we take a look at our solar system, of all the planets and moons out there in the black, the chemical compound we call 'water' is found on only three, in any great quantity, IIRC.: Earth, Mars, and Europa. If this is indicative of the rest of the universe, water could be a relatively rare substance. <shrug>.

It's not my fault the surfer's got bad writers: in terms of power portfolios, he's got the goods any any normal GL.

The reason why I mention age, is because the surfer has, in the past (again, IIRC) demonstrated the ability to age an object: as such, he should be able to age people as well.

Alan Scott? Not your typical GL. He'd still go down though, and quite easily, if Surfer figures out his powers weakness to wood (I forgive you for forgetting it, most of the writers seem to as well).

Hal Jordan? A solid combatant, but easily distracted. See the latest of his storylines for some evidence of this.

Kyle Rayner. A total noob at using his combined magical/technological powers, and resistant to using them to their full potential....hard to call. Surfer could win if he can capitilize on this, otherwise, Surfer's catchin' a beat down.

So, in summary: Green = win, red = loss, yellow = tie

Silver Surfer vs. Joe Schmo G.L.
Silver Surfer vs. Guy Gardner (GL)
Silver Surfer vs. Hal Jordan (GL)
Silver Surfer vs. Hal Jordan (Parallax)
Silver Surfer vs. Alan Scott
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (GL)
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (Ion v 1.0 Before reincarnation of Guardians)
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (Ion v 2.0 Post Guardians, Pre Jade)
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (Ion v 2.5 Post Jade)
Silver Surfer vs. Mogo

It's not even close: Surfer wins more than he loses, and when he does lose, it's because of some unusual situation with the 'GL' in question. Mogo might be a tough battle, but he's a planet: SS can back off and hit him from range, and dodge incoming strikes all month long.

[Blue Paladin]

Nate Grey has recently been reclassified as omega. I forget where I read it, I believe it was on one of the many copious pages of the Marvel universe board.Given his previous displays of power, I wouldn't be surprised. Having checked with my friend who actually reads Cable&Deadpool, he says Cable hit Omega-levels before becoming a baby (? is that right?) and then de-powered. He also says Cable is back to normal and even more powerful than before (he has no answer to when I ask, "So he's more powerful than omega-level?".


...difference in experience levels...In every GL thread I see, Kyle is almost always dismissed because of his "inexperience"; the guy's been around for over a decade now, and people can't shake their conception of Kyle as "the new kid"... He's been around the block in both the JLA and his own title, and he's spent no small amount of time roaming the spaceways himself.


...Kyle's self-imposed limitations: the spectre of Hal as Parallax causes him to limit himself, which might be enough to let Surfer win.After he gave up his Ion powers the first time, he'd come to grips with that; he specifically didn't want to end up like Parallax, and wanted to stay human. That doesn't mean he can't go all out with his GL powers, just that he doesn't let the god-complex (of being able to do anything he wants) get out of control [which to any of you guys at SM reading this does mean that YES I'm actually going on record as saying Kyle is a better person than Hal. Suck it!].


As far as crushing the board: it's a projected automaton. The surfer only invests a portion of his energy into it, therefore it is much easier to damage than he himself is.? Galactus created the (original) board, and it's specifically the same stuff that Surfer is made of. After it's damaged/destroyed, SS uses his power cosmic to fix/re-create it.


Immortality: Surfer was made immortal when granted the power cosmic, last I checked. Galactus doesn't want to have to go make a new herald every 600 years or so...I agree on the general principle of why he could/should be immortal; I just haven't seen any mention one way or the other.


Imagination: You can only imagine what your consciousness can wrap itself around, which is based on your experience and knowledge of the universe. For example, Kyle, as human, may know the periodic table from earth, and be able to extrapolate things based on that.Kyle, as a mere human, was actually able to understand and survive in five-dimensional space; he lost the contents of his stomach, and didn't go insane from what he saw thanks to initial help from Capt. Marvel's wisdom of Solomon, but in the end he was standing up on his own. He also came up with the solution to the genie war that none of those 5-D, reality-warping beings could even conceive.


The surfer, on the other hand, has been exposed to much more in his lifetime serving galactus, and, as such, his imagination has a more fertile background to draw upon, even when looking at something as simple as a periodic table... As to the book you are currently reading, I suggest you remember that they are collections of older stories, and may not reflect current comic book realities.I have no doubt; it was published in 1997. The hardback version probably the year before that? The thing is, even if it's not the current power level, it shows what the character has done historically, how he acts.

The Surfer is ridiculously narrow-minded, and he's shown nary a hint of any imagination. Which is actually in-character for him. On Zenn-La, the tech was so advanced, they just had to program a change, and it became that way (e.g. garden, weather). The doomsday weapon that failed to stop Galactus was their only weapon; once it failed, they gave up and were looting in the streets. Norrin Radd was a freak who actually liked to go to the museum and touch the artifacts, instead of calling up the info via network. He was a madman who thought of the daring idea of flying out and talking to Galactus.

For a Zenn-Lavian, he was the most forward-thinking, madcap mind in generations. Compared to a human, he's... pretty slow.

It only gets worse once he gets his cosmic powers. Now, despite having scads of powers and enhanced senses and speed, he's also got blinders on: Galactus Hungers. And off he goes to the next planet. Galactus Hungers. Off to the next planet. The monotony wore him down so much, he stopped caring if there was intelligent life on the planet or not. And that's the kind of being (bored-out-of-his-mind with interstellar-ennui) that first shows up in FF.


At one time in the past, his power levels were much reduced because of his betrayal of galactus: there was a whole story arc on him regaining his former power levels, and just recently, he was souped up even further.Which is why it would be trivial to pit a low-powered SS against a high-powered GL; by the same token, a high-powered SS against a low-powered GL is also pointless. Surfer at full strength vs GL at full strength is where the interesting stuff happens.


...water could be a relatively rare substance. <shrug>.Entirely true. However, this is a mark against the whole idea that Surfer has the "fertile background" of the universe to draw from; he doesn't think of anything else that would serve just as easily as water for an endothermic reaction. That, in my opinion, is his greatest weakness. He's just not a quick thinker. At all. Whereas the GLs in general (yes, even John Stewart) have to be creative when facing their foes; after all, everyone and their mothers all know about the yellow weakness (which is why I roll my eyes at the whole Parallax BS; it makes for a better story when they actually have to come up with a plan).


It's not my fault the surfer's got bad writers: in terms of power portfolios, he's got the goods [on] any normal GL.Superman and Martian Manhunter have the (power) goods on a GL too; it's by no means certain who takes it.


The reason why I mention age, is because the surfer has, in the past (again, IIRC) demonstrated the ability to age an object: as such, he should be able to age people as well.True! I'm impressed (and rather pleased) that you remembered this trivia. The Surfer originally had control over time and space. It was retconned away as "lost" when he was imprisoned by Galactus. For practical purposes, it made him "too powerful", the way Superman was too powerful in the 70s and 80s. Instead of pulling a DC and introducing silversurferite, Marvel simply did away with the over-the-top powers and never looked back.


Alan Scott? Not your typical GL. He'd still go down though, and quite easily, if Surfer figures out his powers weakness to wood (I forgive you for forgetting it, most of the writers seem to as well). Oh I'm quite aware of Scott's weakness to wood. And his power has been officially retconned as being pure magic; the magic of an entire reality condensed into the Starheart. Which is why I'm leery of letting him into the mix, and sticking mostly to the Corps GLs... Magic works a little too well on SS to be truly fair. I mean, one of Dr. Strange's minor villains is able to magically force SS to appear everytime Earth is threatened. Minor!


Hal Jordan? A solid combatant, but easily distracted. See the latest of his storylines for some evidence of this.Still, he's one of the best all around. Not afraid to try different things if the first plan fails, or to shift his perspective as situations develop. A fair imagination to channel his power through, and (as repeated ad nauseam by the Hal-fanboys) willpower second to none.


Kyle Rayner. A total noob at using his combined magical/technological powers, and resistant to using them to their full potential....hard to call. Surfer could win if he can capitilize on this, otherwise, Surfer's catchin' a beat down.A total noob that can raise the dead on the first try? Ion's an easy win, which is why we don't care about that one. More interesting is GL, post-first-Ion, pre-return-of-Hal. He's got unlimited charge on his ring, far more experience than people give him credit for, imagination up the wazoo (he created a Corps, by himself, out of nothing... that they weren't real didn't make them any less powerful)... And after done with his Major Force angsting, some rather considerable willpower.

[This color thing is really cool... and I'm totally going to steal it.]
Silver Surfer vs. Joe Schmo G.L.
True enough. Most GLs exist to be defeated/killed, paving the way for the main character GL to show up and "beat the odds" to win. That said, it's really the "main character" vs "minor character" here, and not a good match. If treated absolutely equally, there are some surprisingly good contenders out there (e.g. Raker Qarrigat).
Silver Surfer vs. Mogo
I don't think SS has the power for this... Even Galactus uses extra machinery to break down a planet for consumption; SS, as cosmic as he is, doesn't have the DBZ-level power to casually blow up planets. I'm sure he could do so over a period of time, but I don't think Mogo would take it lying down.
Silver Surfer vs. Kilowog
I admit to bias in this one: I like Kilowog. He prefers to get physical, but is no slouch with the ring either. I expect this one to start with SS blasting, K shrugging it off. K dashing in and punching SS to no effect. SS backs off, surprised that the big man is so fast; K pauses himself, noting his best punch did nothing. Lots of maneuvering, failed gambits on both sides. K's last trick is super-powering his ringed fist and smashing it into SS. Writer's choice: K manages a clean hit on SS for a KO; or SS maneuvers his board between himself and the blow, breaking both board and ring (Kilowog hasn't had to deal with using a broken ring the way Hal and Kyle have), and as SS creates another board, K's shoulders bow in defeat.
Silver Surfer vs. Guy Gardner (GL)
I didn't really want to consider this, but Guy actually has some serious willpower as well. In the latest round, Hal hints that it's the ring limiting Guy, and not the other way around. In straight power vs power, it could actually be close to even (I'd still give the edge to SS though). After the ring's charge runs out, it's an easy win for the Surfer. But Guy is pretty quick on his feet, and is more than willing to fight dirty; I can see him pulling a fast one somehow. Also, given his ridiculous Vuldarian physiology (damn retcons... let the man be!), he is functionally immortal.
Silver Surfer vs. Hal Jordan (GL)
I can't see it being over that quickly. Unless SS goes against all the nobility he stands for and goes for the quick kill, this fight goes epic. Personally, I give the win to SS, but I can't be sure that's not my anti-Hal bias showing; I feel he should have stayed dead, or stayed the Spectre... Anything besides bringing him back.
Silver Surfer vs. Hal Jordan (Parallax)
Good thing we don't care about this one.
Silver Surfer vs. Alan Scott
The Starheart is -way- uber... I mean look at it this way: smash together Dr. Strange & Clea & Dormammu & Moondragon & whoever else uses magic in the 616, and stuff it into one person. That's Alan Scott.
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (GL, pre Ion)
I agree that noob Rayner doesn't stand a chance.
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (Ion v.1)
Overpowered!
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (GL, post Ion v.1, pre Ion v.2)
Years of experience under his belt, super-ring with no weaknesses and unlimited charge. This is the one I'd want to see most.
Silver Surfer vs. Kyle Rayner (Ion v.2)
Super overpowered!

I've been at this post off and on all day, so please forgive any choppiness in the word flow.

[ravenkith]

Kyle:
Kyle is a better person. He prefers to think his way out of a situation, try to talk things out instead of going in swinging. He also has never engaged in actively destroying a cosmic law-enforcement agency. But he succumbed to the same temptation when he brought his mother back from the dead, so it's a closer-run race than you might think.

His psyche is still human, as such it is quite fragile. His deep-seated fear of becoming a second parallax will limit him. His survival instinct might override it.

I speculate that the battle would have been long, hard, and ended with Kyle surrendering, if given the option, and the stakes weren't too high, rather than run the risk of going mad with power, as he starts losing control of all the power he's channeling, or accidentally destroys a nearby (or not so nearby) moon.

I'm sorry, but Kyle (in DC years) is still kind of noobish: they're deliberately fudgy with timelines in comic books, but we've long known that time in our world flows a lot faster that that of the comic book world.

While it's been ten years for us, I feel I'd be safe saying it's been maybe 2 or 3 for poor old Kyle (when looking at the aging process of the various heroes).

When you think about it, he's gone from lone GL to god like power, to one gl among many, to god like power agaain, in as little as two years elapsed time.

Which is why I rate him relatively low on the experience scale, when compared to Silver Surfer. SS has had the same powers for what, centuries?

Silver Surfer:
Speaking of SS, he doesn't come across bad guys of his power level very often: how maginative to you have to be to blast something and have it fall down?

I strongly feel that while he would initialize any combat with unimaginative moves (hey, go with what's worked 10000 times before, right?), Surfer could get nastily creative if pushed.

As far as the aging is concerned, I knew he'd temporarily lost the capability while on earth, but I was unaware that he hadn't regained it when he finally left earth: I figured he just hadn't used it. (Let's face it, aging someone to death is pretty damn extreme. OTOH, resetting enemies to baby status could be very productive).

With the board, I thought they'd retconned that into being an extension of the surfer himself at one point...<shrug>. I know they've given him mental control over it, and he can use his powers through it.

Kilowog:
I forgot about the trainer of the gls. The one gl they thought was worth saving from the old regime.

He's tough, smart, capable, experienced, and disciplined, with a strong willpower. It'd be a hell of a fight, but ultimately, I think SS would edge it out: Kilowog has been shown in the past to have a trusting nature, and to be somewhat naive...which could be used as a weakness, a point of vulnerability.

A slim margin, I don't hesitate to say, but a margin nonetheless.

Mogo:

They've said before in the books that mogo takes a while to get anywhere because of his mass & the amount of energy it take to move him.

He's big and lumbering, essentially, a stationary target.

He reminds me of an Ent, and gives off an impression of having slow thought process, in comparison to other beings.

Surfer backs off a bit, accellerates a few rocks up to half c, and mogo uses up his energy creating a shield to defend him from the five hundred or so kinetic weapons pouring down on him, concentrating on not missing any.

At this exact instant, the surfers board flashes out of the dark at .9 c from the other direction, spearing through mogo's crust and into his core, where surfer uses his link with the board to superheat the ore, causing it to expand violently, thus exploding Mogo from within.

(Like I said, surfer has bad writers.)

Hal Jordan:
Boxing gloves???

This is the best around?

Magic:

I wasn't aware of the surfer's susceptability to magic. That clearly gives Scott and Ion 2.0 a definite advantage.

Superman and Martian Manhunter:

Superman has superspeed, Martian manhunter has intangibility & invisibility: both of these fights should be foregone conclusions.

Superman moves faster than Kyle can think, crushes his hand (and the ring in it), and then laughs at Kyle for ten minutes while slapping his thigh, stopping only to choke out:

"Dumbass noob..." before flying off.

Martian Manhunter goes invisible and intangible, and sinks into the floor, where kyle can't strike at him, then uses his telepathy to jam Kyle's will, right before floating up behind the poor bugger and stopping his heart by reaching through his ribcage to do it.

The only reason either of them ever loses a direct confrontation is because of bad writing.

[Grod_The_Giant]

smash together Dr. Strange & Clea & Dormammu & Moondragon & whoever else uses magic in the 616, and stuff it into one person. That's Alan Scott.

uh...I read one story arc where the JSA are fighting Modru (if that's how you spell his name). Alan flies in and lands a good blow. And Mordru gets up and literally RIPS THE STARHEART OUT! I'd put Mordru at the Dr. Strange level of magical power.
I do agree with you on the result, though. Magic is kind of weird, but he's still got GL power or more, without limits. And the wood thing...I don't know about this, but I don't think artificially generated wood would work (the explanation was something about a 'green flame of life' or some such bullcrap.

And to ravenkith: Hal Jordan, according to Rebirth, 'Just likes the precision of a good old fashioned boxing glove.' And according to Ollie Queen (Green Arrow), he uses them because they both loved to watch boxing matches. Remember: its the will that counts, not the construct. A boxing glove would be just as powerful as a giant punching robot.

[Blue Paladin]

I'm back from my long weekend! Let's see here...


Kyle:
[Kyle] has never engaged in actively destroying a cosmic law-enforcement agency. But he succumbed to the same temptation when he brought his mother back from the dead, so it's a closer-run race than you might think.The difference is that Hal didn't have the power, and crossed the line to seize the power he needed. Kyle does have the power, and after the act is done can still recognize that it's a mistake, and correct himself. The morals of the situations involved are not even close, IMO.


His psyche is still human, as such it is quite fragile. His deep-seated fear of becoming a second parallax will limit him. His survival instinct might override it.Human psyches run the gamut from weak to strong. Kyle's already faced his fears about becoming another Parallax with that first stint as Ion. He'd already surpassed Parallax, by far. The limit wasn't fear; it was a recognition that he was losing touch with what made Kyle Kyle. He chose to not be a god, and chose to give up his power to correct Hal's mistake. Kyle is Faramir (book version) to Hal's Boromir.

There's also zero indication that Surfer's alien psyche is any weaker or stronger than your standard hero. Especially after he had Galactus remove those mental buffers; Norrin was as collapsed with repressed grief and depression over his father's suicide as any human.


I speculate that the battle would have been long, hard, and ended with Kyle surrendering, if given the option, and the stakes weren't too high, rather than run the risk of going mad with power, as he starts losing control of all the power he's channeling, or accidentally destroys a nearby (or not so nearby) moon.And if I replace the name "Kyle" with "Norrin", we have an equally plausible ending. Perhaps more so, as Surfer is superhumanly empathic (he feels what others feel), and is no longer under Galactus' mind-squish. Surfer's compassion was originally blocked to make him a better herald, and more likely to find palatable planets (regardless of sentient life). It's a tribute to just how sensitive and empathic Norrin is, that he responds to Alicia in the first place, even with those blocks in place.


I'm sorry, but Kyle (in DC years) is still kind of noobish: they're deliberately fudgy with timelines in comic books, but we've long known that time in our world flows a lot faster that that of the comic book world.The floating timeline used by both DC and Marvel ensures that any discussion of "experience" cannot be measured by years. It is much more illustrative to track the changes that the character goes through. Kyle makes mistakes, and they're attributed to his noob status. That's fine. But note that he actually learns from his mistakes, and tries to do better next time. That is far more descriptive than a nebulous, never-explored "experience" that hasn't been written yet.


Which is why I rate him relatively low on the experience scale, when compared to Silver Surfer. SS has had the same powers for what, centuries?And yet he still doesn't have a grasp on what he can and can't do with his minor powers (ref. his speed, in the Infinity Gauntlet plan), which is why I rate him relatively low on the effectiveness scale. Really low. Especially compared to Kyle-GL, who has demonstrated using the ring in ways none of the more straitlaced Corps thought of before (eg a containment field that converts the kinetic energy of the target's struggles into sound).


Silver Surfer:
Speaking of SS, he doesn't come across bad guys of his power level very often: how maginative to you have to be to blast something and have it fall down?I agree. And this is probably the greatest strike against him. He's just not used to it. If he really has thought the same way for hundreds of years, do you really expect him to suddenly come up with something new?

Here's a thought exercise. Surfer is pitted against Grand Admiral Thrawn, who throws maneuver after maneuver against the Herald. The most brilliant strategies of a thousand species are executed in what amounts to an extended exercise in futility. Surfer, not even scratched, annihilates each ship with a simple blast. Do you think this really adds anything of merit to Surfer's "experience"? That Surfer can say in a later encounter, "Oh, this is the perfect time to execute that Marg Sabl entrapment that Thrawn tried to use on me..." In D&D terms, SS doesn't gain exp from low CR encounters.


Kilowog:
He's tough, smart, capable, experienced, and disciplined, with a strong willpower. It'd be a hell of a fight, but ultimately, I think SS would edge it out: Kilowog has been shown in the past to have a trusting nature, and to be somewhat naive...which could be used as a weakness, a point of vulnerability.A trait also found in SS; his inner nobility could just as easily be used. Of course, in a K'wog-SS fight, I doubt either would stoop to abusing the other's psychological weakness. They're both too used to toe-to-toe duking it out.


Mogo:They've said before in the books that mogo takes a while to get anywhere because of his mass & the amount of energy it take to move him.

He's big and lumbering, essentially, a stationary target.

[Plan to bombard Mogo with rocks, distracting him from the Surfer's board, used as a bomb to destroy Mogo from within]Why should Mogo spend any energy on shielding? He's a planet. He can take what SS dishes out. Most rocks burn up in the atmosphere. Texas-sized ones that would wipe out all life on Earth a la Armageddon... still don't hurt Mogo. It can change the atmosphere, sure, and probably kills any creatures living on Mogo, but the actual planet itself is fine. It'd be the equivalent of ripping some skin off a human; painful, maybe, but nowhere near life threatening. Especially when you can just use your ring to "heal" again, replenishing your atmosphere and surface conditions to taste.

Surfer has never demonstrated any ability on a planet-busting level anyway. Channeling power into the board while it's inside Mogo is an interesting tactic, but without that DBZ level of power, it's unlikely to do much more than give him gas.


Hal Jordan:
Boxing gloves???

This is the best around?Personally I don't care for him, but I try to keep an open mind. A lot of people hold up Hal as the gold standard. Green standard. In any event, the willpower behind the ring is what matters; the boxing glove has the same power behind it as a straight energy blast. I wouldn't really cast aspersions either, as people ridicule the Surfer for having, well, a surfboard. I know better than to dismiss him because of that.


Superman and Martian Manhunter:

Superman has superspeed, Martian manhunter has intangibility & invisibility: both of these fights should be foregone conclusions.

Superman moves faster than Kyle can think, crushes his hand (and the ring in it), and then laughs at Kyle for ten minutes while slapping his thigh, stopping only to choke out:

"Dumbass noob..." before flying off.And as Kyle uses those shards to turn Superman's uniform into kryptonite..? Kyle's ring has been shattered multiple times, and he knows from experience that he can piece it back together. Not that it matters, since it even works while still crushed. Depending on how late in Kyle's career as GL the encounter takes place, he may or may not be able to focus his will through the pain of having his hand broken. Early on, he doesn't have a chance. Later in his career, he's already done it before (fight against Deathstroke).

For the finish, he can trap Supes in an energy field that doesn't let yellow sun radiation through. There's a reason the Corps were given the duty of imprisoning Superboy-Prime: they can actually do it (also, when the inevitable jailbreak comes, it will automatically establish the guy doing the jailbreak as a cosmic-level threat, as it involves taking out 50 GLs).


Martian Manhunter goes invisible and intangible, and sinks into the floor, where kyle can't strike at him, then uses his telepathy to jam Kyle's will, right before floating up behind the poor bugger and stopping his heart by reaching through his ribcage to do it.Kyle's trained (by J'onn, actually) in basic psychic defense. John Stewart was temporarily immune to martian telepathy after being reconfigured by the Guardians; other GLs could also be. I admit, I'm grasping at straws here, because this is the guy that Superman puts at the top of his ph33r list.

In other straw-grasping bad writing, MM's intangibility has proven less than intangible in the past.


The only reason either of them ever loses a direct confrontation is because of bad writing.This is true of most superheroes. Superman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman for the obvious reasons; Black Bolt, Thor, Beta Ray Bill and Gladiator for the Marvel side. Flash (Wally West version), mostly due to the ridiculous speed manipulation, let alone the actual superspeed; I don't think there's a Marvel equivalent to this one. Green Lantern (any of them, really) for the omnipotent omniutility; similarly, Quasar's quantum bands. All the big time magic guys (Fate, Zatanna, Dr. Strange) for the omnipotent omniutility. Element Lad and Firestorm, and on a grander scale, Franklin Richards and the Phoenix. Given the demonstrated powers of these characters, every confrontation should be a cakewalk.

It has to not be a cakewalk, or else there's no story. Just one of the perils of comic book writing.

[ravenkith]

I'm back from my long weekend! Let's see here...


Welcome Back! Have fun?



The difference is that Hal didn't have the power, and crossed the line to seize the power he needed. Kyle does have the power, and after the act is done can still recognize that it's a mistake, and correct himself. The morals of the situations involved are not even close, IMO.


If Kyle didn't have the power, would he have gone and taken it? I don't know, but he did bring his mom back against all strenuous advice, and only let her go after she, herself insisted on it.

It's the same trouble Hal had: losing the people (and city) he loved, knowing there was a way to change it, and that it was wrong to even try.

Kyles instinctive reaction is to bring her back...and he lost it there for a bit in the process. That's the parallel I'm drawing - his reaction is very similar to hals...what if his home town were to be wiped out?



Human psyches run the gamut from weak to strong. Kyle's already faced his fears about becoming another Parallax with that first stint as Ion. He'd already surpassed Parallax, by far. The limit wasn't fear; it was a recognition that he was losing touch with what made Kyle Kyle. He chose to not be a god, and chose to give up his power to correct Hal's mistake. Kyle is Faramir (book version) to Hal's Boromir.


Kyle knows fear. That's what made him unique as a Lantern. He's afraid of pulling a Parrallax and killing the good guys. I would be too. That fear will always be there.



There's also zero indication that Surfer's alien psyche is any weaker or stronger than your standard hero. Especially after he had Galactus remove those mental buffers; Norrin was as collapsed with repressed grief and depression over his father's suicide as any human.


He had been repressing it for centuries. I'm sure I've read comics that talked about the surfers mental resilience before...but I could be mistaken.

In any case, I can't cite the book number to you.



And if I replace the name "Kyle" with "Norrin", we have an equally plausible ending. Perhaps more so, as Surfer is superhumanly empathic (he feels what others feel), and is no longer under Galactus' mind-squish. Surfer's compassion was originally blocked to make him a better herald, and more likely to find palatable planets (regardless of sentient life). It's a tribute to just how sensitive and empathic Norrin is, that he responds to Alicia in the first place, even with those blocks in place.


Actually, Norrin has a super developed sense of guilt. He's gone through his hundreds of years of life dooming planets (sometimes inhabited ones) to certain destruction at the hands of Galactus.

After eradicating several billion alien lifeforms (trillion?), I'd imagine I'd be a little hesitant to off a culture that showed itself capable of acts of great selflessness and creating beauty.



The floating timeline used by both DC and Marvel ensures that any discussion of "experience" cannot be measured by years. It is much more illustrative to track the changes that the character goes through. Kyle makes mistakes, and they're attributed to his noob status. That's fine. But note that he actually learns from his mistakes, and tries to do better next time. That is far more descriptive than a nebulous, never-explored "experience" that hasn't been written yet.


Nice try. Surfer has clearly been around for hundreds of years, Kyle hasn't. The exact number doesn't matter. What's important is that Surfer has had more time to learn. Even if he learned things only once a month, he'd still be WAY ahead of Rayner.



And yet he still doesn't have a grasp on what he can and can't do with his minor powers (ref. his speed, in the Infinity Gauntlet plan), which is why I rate him relatively low on the effectiveness scale. Really low. Especially compared to Kyle-GL, who has demonstrated using the ring in ways none of the more straitlaced Corps thought of before (eg a containment field that converts the kinetic energy of the target's struggles into sound).


Surfer was following someone else plan, and the person at the time was wearing the INFINITY GAUNTLET.

Y'know, the one capable of utterly rewriting the entire universe in a heartbeat?

Pausing time?

Amplifying the capabilities of the wearing a thousand fold?

I've also come to the conclusion that nothing gan destory/disassemble the gauntlet but the gauntlet itself, hence why the surfer didn't just disintegrate it.



I agree. And this is probably the greatest strike against him. He's just not used to it. If he really has thought the same way for hundreds of years, do you really expect him to suddenly come up with something new?


Just because his initial response is to blast it (and thus, not have to screw with the make-up of the universe to remove an obstacle), doesn't mean he can't go: "Oh, well, that didn't work. I'd better try that thing from 400 years ago."



Here's a thought exercise. Surfer is pitted against Grand Admiral Thrawn, who throws maneuver after maneuver against the Herald. The most brilliant strategies of a thousand species are executed in what amounts to an extended exercise in futility. Surfer, not even scratched, annihilates each ship with a simple blast. Do you think this really adds anything of merit to Surfer's "experience"? That Surfer can say in a later encounter, "Oh, this is the perfect time to execute that Marg Sabl entrapment that Thrawn tried to use on me..." In D&D terms, SS doesn't gain exp from low CR encounters.


Granted...but he does tend to end up in a lot of high CR encounters on a regular basis.

I'm almost certain he learned not to try to outrace thanos when he's wearing the infinity gauntlet.



A trait also found in SS; his inner nobility could just as easily be used. Of course, in a K'wog-SS fight, I doubt either would stoop to abusing the other's psychological weakness. They're both too used to toe-to-toe duking it out.


You are right: in a slugging match, though, that's where the surfer's longevity would come into play, I think. Kilowog has to stop to recharge, and the surfer just wouldn't give him that time.



Why should Mogo spend any energy on shielding? He's a planet. He can take what SS dishes out. Most rocks burn up in the atmosphere. Texas-sized ones that would wipe out all life on Earth a la Armageddon... still don't hurt Mogo. It can change the atmosphere, sure, and probably kills any creatures living on Mogo, but the actual planet itself is fine. It'd be the equivalent of ripping some skin off a human; painful, maybe, but nowhere near life threatening. Especially when you can just use your ring to "heal" again, replenishing your atmosphere and surface conditions to taste.

Surfer has never demonstrated any ability on a planet-busting level anyway. Channeling power into the board while it's inside Mogo is an interesting tactic, but without that DBZ level of power, it's unlikely to do much more than give him gas.


V=ma. Mogo has to shield himself, or even the smaller peppbles traveling at those kinds of speeds would punch right through him. They'd hit with the force of a thousand atomic bombs each. Now imagine Surfer just grabbed 100 or so pebbles took them with him up to half c, and then let them go while stopping himself, headed in the direction of mogo.

Yeah, better raise shields, or mogos drt.

As to the surfboard/interior of planet plan, it's based on another scientific principle: p1v1/t1 = p2v2/t2. (where p = pressure, v = volume and t = temperature).

All planets have a liquid core of molten metal, unless they are 'dead' worlds, with no atmosphere. This metal is at a tremendous temperature, and contained in a specific volume (the sphere that is the volume of the mantle). As a result, it has a very high pressure, as is demonstrated on earth by volcanoes and lava flows: these are the 'pressure release systems' that keep the entire earth from exploding.

If the surfboard went into the heart of mogo and even temporarily created the heat of a star within the great planet, it would result in a number of things:
1. because of the temperature, all the liquid metal would turn into gas, attempting to expand outwards, as per the rules of solid-liquid-gas state conversion.
2. due to the expanding gas, the pressure would increase dramatically and suddenly.
3. Due to the increase in pressure and temperature, and the inability to increase in volume (planets have a relatively fixed shape, as mantles are solid, and thus, fracturable) the planet would most likely explode.

Basic science.



Personally I don't care for him, but I try to keep an open mind. A lot of people hold up Hal as the gold standard. Green standard. In any event, the willpower behind the ring is what matters; the boxing glove has the same power behind it as a straight energy blast. I wouldn't really cast aspersions either, as people ridicule the Surfer for having, well, a surfboard. I know better than to dismiss him because of that.


The ring creates constructs of green energy. It can produce other colors, or at least it has been shown to do so in the past, but essentially, what it does, is create constructs and grant teleekinesis. It is limited not only by willpower, but what you understand of how things work.

Willpower is important, but so is mental knowledge of the workings of the universe, so you can construct things that are truly dangerous.

This is why guy is so dangerous, as I recently though out: he can occasionally tap into the genetic memory of the vuldarian race secreted in his DNA. Never underestimate this GL, as he has the high tech background of a master warlike race that he occasionally is capable of drawing upon.

[/quote]
And as Kyle uses those shards to turn Superman's uniform into kryptonite..?
[/quote]

I can't find anything on the GL ring being able to turn matter into other matter.



Kyle's ring has been shattered multiple times, and he knows from experience that he can piece it back together. Not that it matters, since it even works while still crushed.


Guh? I know he had it crushed once, and couldn't get it to work: maybe because of the pain, though. Nonetheless, the ring is nothing more than powder, and the hand is a bloody pulp. Kyle is bleeding out rapidly, and probably in shock.



Depending on how late in Kyle's career as GL the encounter takes place, he may or may not be able to focus his will through the pain of having his hand broken.


No. I can't imagine any human being able to do much when his hand has just been pulped, not even Kyle Rayner, or for that matter, Hal Jordan (supreme will master that he is).



Early on, he doesn't have a chance. Later in his career, he's already done it before (fight against Deathstroke).


I don't think I've seen that one. Nonetheless, one hit would not take out superman. One hit is all kyle would get before his head was pulped.



For the finish, he can trap Supes in an energy field that doesn't let yellow sun radiation through.


Only if he's fast enough.



There's a reason the Corps were given the duty of imprisoning Superboy-Prime: they can actually do it (also, when the inevitable jailbreak comes, it will automatically establish the guy doing the jailbreak as a cosmic-level threat, as it involves taking out 50 GLs).


But they couldn't beat him in the first place: it took a flash to do that, because only a fully-powered, mainlining speed force flash is fast enough to trump superman's superspeed.



Kyle's trained (by J'onn, actually) in basic psychic defense. John Stewart was temporarily immune to martian telepathy after being reconfigured by the Guardians; other GLs could also be. I admit, I'm grasping at straws here, because this is the guy that Superman puts at the top of his ph33r list.


The bad news is, Kyle in particular has been shown to have been vulnerable to will jamming (Prometheus, neural chaff, anyone?).



In other straw-grasping bad writing, MM's intangibility has proven less than intangible in the past.


Ah, bad writing, is there anything it can't fix?



This is true of most superheroes. Superman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman for the obvious reasons; Black Bolt, Thor, Beta Ray Bill and Gladiator for the Marvel side. Flash (Wally West version), mostly due to the ridiculous speed manipulation, let alone the actual superspeed; I don't think there's a Marvel equivalent to this one. Green Lantern (any of them, really) for the omnipotent omniutility; similarly, Quasar's quantum bands. All the big time magic guys (Fate, Zatanna, Dr. Strange) for the omnipotent omniutility. Element Lad and Firestorm, and on a grander scale, Franklin Richards and the Phoenix. Given the demonstrated powers of these characters, every confrontation should be a cakewalk.


All heroes have vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Superman has Kryptonite. Fate has the helmet. Zatanna has to speak. Dr. Strange has incantations. Flash has to slow down to interact, and has a public ID (or did, in the past), he also has to eat MASSIVE quantities of food to feed his metabolism, and rarely stops to check if anything is poisoned. Gladiator's powers work on his self-belief: damage his ego and you've got him. Beta ray bill depends on his mystic mallet, and a lot of Thor's power comes from his, and the belt he wears. Martian manhunter has (had?) fire.

Franklin Richards has had his powers suppressed...by his dad.

Phoenix is a force of nature, neither hero nor villain. If it's the hero version, her loved ones are her weakness. If it's the villain, her hero side is the only chink in the armor.

There are things that good writers can use.

The biggest problem any superhero has is having too much power.

It makes it hard to care about reading the books, because there's no struggle, no risk. Superman is the perfect example of this.

Personally, I like the idea of Lex Luthor staging a series of robberies around the world, gathering up all the pieces of kryptonite he can get has hands on, replicating some more, and then grinding the resultant rocks into an extremely fine dust, which he then uses as a payload in a set high altitude bombs.

Perhaps Superman gets clued in, late in the game, and prevents Lex from stealing all the kryptonite...busts in and shuts down the factory...

Nonetheless, some of the bombs detonate in the jetstream, and within three days, the entire world has minute fragments of kryptonite scattered across it, not enough to kill superman, but enough to reduce his powers significantly.

Which puts him back into the realm of struggling against the odds, reincarnating interest in the character, as he struggles to fill the shoes he made for himself with half the powers.

<shrug>.

It'd be more interesting to me, for him to experience pain in a battle, and have to deal with it, over coming the fear that comes with his new, relative fragility. It'd be more compelling to see him risk himself to save people...



It has to not be a cakewalk, or else there's no story. Just one of the perils of comic book writing.

There are only two ways to go: bring the power level of your heroes down, or else take the power level of your villains up (inevitably resulting in the escalation of the problem).

Most writers op for the second of the two, not caring bout future consequences, because they usually have short 'runs' on any given title anyways.

[JonathanC]

Silver Surfer:
Speaking of SS, he doesn't come across bad guys of his power level very often: how maginative to you have to be to blast something and have it fall down?


Silver Surfer doesn't...? Have you READ any Silver Surfer comics lately? Did you just sleep through Annihilation?

Silver Surfer routinely faces people of his own power level or above. Thanos, Terrax, Galactus, and most recently, a bunch of herald-alikes from the Negative Zone. Oh, and let's not forget him soloing TWO members of the Cosmic Consonance, who are basically the equals of Galactus.

The guy blew up a freaking planet effortlessly, just to prove that he could (yes, it was uninhabited). Silver Surfer will absolutely slaughter Green Lantern. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and yes, even Kyle Rayner with that ridiculous goo made from his girlfriend's body on his face. He's used the Power Cosmic to drain the powers of superheroes before, and at the beginning of the Annihilation series, Galactus remade him more powerful than before (that's why he can bust planets just for bragging rights now). He is currently the most powerful of Galactus' current/former heralds, and that's a pretty exclusive club. Terrax also destroyed a planet recently, just because he was pissed off with the people living there (and while he was standing on it).

While it's true that DC's earthbound heroes tend to be higher powered than their Marvel counterparts, once you hit the cosmics, that tends to reverse itself. Even Nova is ridiculous now. He just reached into Annihilus and pulled him inside out. I'd like to see Kyle Rayner try and do that.

[ravenkith]

Silver Surfer doesn't...? Have you READ any Silver Surfer comics lately? Did you just sleep through Annihilation?


I haven't read a surfer book in roughly ten years (jack of hearts storyline, to be precise. Sounds like I have missed a lot.



Silver Surfer routinely faces people of his own power level or above. Thanos, Terrax, Galactus, and most recently, a bunch of herald-alikes from the Negative Zone. Oh, and let's not forget him soloing TWO members of the Cosmic Consonance, who are basically the equals of Galactus.


He didn't when I read the book: usually he was going up against people he should have been able to take out wih a wave of his hand, but didn't, mainly because of bad writing (captain nebula, anyone?)



The guy blew up a freaking planet effortlessly, just to prove that he could (yes, it was uninhabited).


Yay, planet destruction. Mogo? Hey, anyone seen mogo? Where'd he go?



Silver Surfer will absolutely slaughter Green Lantern. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and yes, even Kyle Rayner with that ridiculous goo made from his girlfriend's body on his face. He's used the Power Cosmic to drain the powers of superheroes before, and at the beginning of the Annihilation series, Galactus remade him more powerful than before (that's why he can bust planets just for bragging rights now). He is currently the most powerful of Galactus' current/former heralds, and that's a pretty exclusive club. Terrax also destroyed a planet recently, just because he was pissed off with the people living there (and while he was standing on it).


What about his prior susceptability to magic? Any new info on that? If not, Kyle has an edge.

Busting planets for bragging rights does not sound tru to the character of the surfer. :(



While it's true that DC's earthbound heroes tend to be higher powered than their Marvel counterparts, once you hit the cosmics, that tends to reverse itself. Even Nova is ridiculous now. He just reached into Annihilus and pulled him inside out. I'd like to see Kyle Rayner try and do that.
[/quote]

Kyle could probably do it. He has two power sources now, and he's basically god-like in the current continuity as Ion.

Most green lanterns probably could, to tell the truth. Annilhus is only dangerous to the Fantastic Four, and when he has an army at his back. The FF tends to have to get in close, while a GL could do the job from orbit.

[Blue Paladin]

Surfer was following someone else planYes, it is a plan someone else thought of. But if he truly had all this experience to draw from, couldn't Surfer have come up with a plan of his own? Something better than purse-snatching?


and the person at the time was wearing the INFINITY GAUNTLET.

Y'know, the one capable of utterly rewriting the entire universe in a heartbeat?

Pausing time?

Amplifying the capabilities of the wearing a thousand fold?All true, but none of which applies because Thanos was caught totally flatfooted. No time stop, no reality rewrite, no amplified super-Thanos-dodge; Surfer just plain misses. It's only when Thanos fully exercises his omnipotence that Surfer no longer has any chance.


[T]hat's where the surfer's longevity would come into play, I think. Kilowog has to stop to recharge, and the surfer just wouldn't give him that time.I also shade the fight towards Surfer, despite how much I like Kilowog myself. I think it's a dead heat right to the end though.


[E]ven the smaller peppbles traveling at those kinds of speeds would punch right through him. They'd hit with the force of a thousand atomic bombs each.That assumes they hit the ground. Mogo has an atmosphere (as shown by the de-powered Lanterns that visit him); meteorites burn up in Earth's atmosphere all the time. A faster moving pebble hitting that atmosphere just reaches its boiling point faster (i.e. it hits the same number of air particles as any other meteorite of its size/mass and vaporizes; because of the speed at which it travels, the amount of time it takes to vaporize is tens of thousands of times less than it takes a "normal speed" meteorite, which is fractions of a second anyway). The only thing hitting Mogo is heated air.


[H]igh pressure, as is demonstrated on earth by volcanoes and lava flows: these are the 'pressure release systems' that keep the entire earth from explodingErr. Volcanism is a side effect of plate tectonics, of geological movements smashing into each other; it has nothing to do with releasing pressure from the earth. The thing that keeps the earth from exploding is mainly gravity, which is what formed it in the first place. <--- this is based on nebular hypothesis, which is, to my mind, the most likely explanation for planetary formation.


1. because of the temperature, all the liquid metal would turn into gas, attempting to expand outwards, as per the rules of solid-liquid-gas state conversion.Not really... The metal is already liquid because it's past the critical point, and increasing pressure or temperature has no effect on the properties of the material; it's already a "supercritical fluid" and remains so. This science is not so basic, but it's there.

2. due to the expanding gas, the pressure would increase dramatically and suddenly.Actually the pressure increase is a direct consequence of the temperature increase, not because of any phase change. PV=nRT.

3. Due to the increase in pressure and temperature, and the inability to increase in volume (planets have a relatively fixed shape, as mantles are solid, and thus, fracturable) the planet would most likely explode.R and n are both constants. T is increasing due to the board. P is increasing at the same rate. It's a stable system; the more T is added, the greater P becomes. That's about it. Hence, the "giving Mogo gas" comment.

And now I just had a mental image of Mogo farting fire to relieve heartburn. Now I am laughing as I imagine him using this as a weapon.


I can't find anything on the GL ring being able to turn matter into other matter.He can create matter out of nothing (ref. GL/Flash team-up with GL/Flash, where the antagonists are revealed to be each GL; Alan Scott messes with Hal by creating a yellow planet, and Hal messes with Scott by creating wooden bees that get through his defenses); given how some people like to believe in conservation of energy, I prefer conversion to creation.


I know he had it crushed once, and couldn't get it to work: maybe because of the pain, though. Nonetheless, the ring is nothing more than powder, and the hand is a bloody pulp. Kyle is bleeding out rapidly, and probably in shock.The following issue, when he got past the pain, he was able to get a faint response from the ring fragments anyway. Once he believed the power was still there, he made the ring whole again, through sheer will. Powder or not, it's still Kyle's ring and will still work (he made it that way, when he was Ion the first time). The hand is pulp, and Kyle is bleeding, but the ring can fix both.


[O]nly a fully-powered, mainlining speed force flash is fast enough to trump superman's superspeed.Under normal circumstances, I'd agree. But you gave me ten minutes where Supes was doing nothing but standing and laughing :) That's plenty of time for Kyle to regroup and strike back.


Beta ray bill depends on his mystic mallet...Actually even before he got Mjolnir and Stormbreaker, he fought evenly against Thor. That's some solid muscle there. It's a shame they use him so badly in his stories...


There are only two ways to go: bring the power level of your heroes down, or else take the power level of your villains up (inevitably resulting in the escalation of the problem).Agreed. And it just gets more and more ridiculous each time.


Silver Surfer routinely faces people of his own power level or above. Thanos, Terrax, Galactus, and most recently, a bunch of herald-alikes from the Negative Zone. Oh, and let's not forget him soloing TWO members of the Cosmic Consonance, who are basically the equals of Galactus.Thanos I'll grant you as Surfer's power level. Terrax? "Guy who failed to defeat Dazzler" Terrax? I don't care how overpowered or cool they try to make him, I take him about as seriously as G'Nort. Surfer faces Galactus all the time; only when Galactus is weak to the point of starvation does SS have any hope of actually winning against him. I'll also note that Galactus (by himself) defeated both Tenebrous and Aegis, and sealed them away in the first place. Each one is obviously not Galactus' equal; both together were required to take on the Devourer. I will further note that SS "soloing" both of them was an attempt at delaying, not defeating them.


[Dragon Ball stuff]And people complain about DC power creep...


Busting planets for bragging rights does not sound tru[e] to the character of the surfer. :(Quite so. That hardly sounds noble at all.


While it's true that DC's earthbound heroes tend to be higher powered than their Marvel counterparts, once you hit the cosmics, that tends to reverse itself. Even Nova is ridiculous now. He just reached into Annihilus and pulled him inside out. I'd like to see Kyle Rayner try and do that.Annihilus has historically been a cakewalk. Surfer should have wiped the floor with Annihilus all by himself. The fact that Annihilus took out Quasar is the first indication of total power creep. Quasar's quantum bands are able to seriously occupy Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet for a short time. I repeat: the Infinity Gauntlet.

Nova currently has the full power of the Nova Force. However many members of the Nova Corps there were, his powers were multiplied by that amount (eg if there were 3600 Centurions, Richard Rider's current powers are 3600 times greater than before). Since the Nova Force is not a fundamental part of the Marvel existence the way Oa's Battery is for DC, I feel justified in thinking of Nova as Ion Lite (the first Ion). So, no, I'm not surprised at all that super-Nova could take out Annihilus (even the ridiculously amped-up version that could writer's fiat win against the quantum bands).

[Lord of the Helms]

Flash (Wally West version), mostly due to the ridiculous speed manipulation, let alone the actual superspeed; I don't think there's a Marvel equivalent to this one.

As far as the actual superspeed is concerned, supposedly Northstar could go up to almost lightspeed, but doesn't because it would cause horrible damage to himself and others (see what happened to Mimic when he rammed himself into Hyperion in extremely durable organic steel form while going up to "half of lightspeed" using Northstar's power)

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Wally West is broken quick, though. Runs so fast he breaks time and space. In Marvel, it takes a significantly powerful god to do that, and even then they're limited a lot more then Wally. Plus, when he starts really running, he can deck people as strong as Superman and seriously harm them. It's effectually the same as getting slugged by class 100 super strength. SS's best bet for fighting West would be to just never land on the same planet. Blowing it up is a poor tactic for dealing with the speedster, since he can hop dimensions/rewind time the moment it looks like that's the Surfer's plan.

[ravenkith]

Yes, it is a plan someone else thought of. But if he truly had all this experience to draw from, couldn't Surfer have come up with a plan of his own? Something better than purse-snatching?


<Shrug>. I'm sure he could have: but then, the person writing infinity gauntlet probably wasn't that familiar with the character, and saw 'guy on surfboard flying through space, blasts,' and thought 'meh, he's dogmeat'.

Bad writing. Again.



All true, but none of which applies because Thanos was caught totally flatfooted. No time stop, no reality rewrite, no amplified super-Thanos-dodge; Surfer just plain misses. It's only when Thanos fully exercises his omnipotence that Surfer no longer has any chance.


Ah, sorry, witht the inifnity gauntlet, getting caught flatfooted doesn't happen.

Remember, this is the weapon that gives you complete control over the universe, omnipotence and omniscience all in one, and just one part of it is the time gem.

Precog and post cog is easy with the infinity gauntlet. Whose to say that thanos didn't see it coming? Warlock and the rest thought he wouldn't: maybe they underestimated how quickly thanos could adapt to the gauntlet? I dunno, straws here: mostly bad writing though, in that the writers had too many characters to work with to be familiar with them all.



I also shade the fight towards Surfer, despite how much I like Kilowog myself. I think it's a dead heat right to the end though.


Absolutely, dead heat, right up until 'wog runs out of juice. Glad we settled that.



That assumes they hit the ground. Mogo has an atmosphere (as shown by the de-powered Lanterns that visit him); meteorites burn up in Earth's atmosphere all the time. A faster moving pebble hitting that atmosphere just reaches its boiling point faster (i.e. it hits the same number of air particles as any other meteorite of its size/mass and vaporizes; because of the speed at which it travels, the amount of time it takes to vaporize is tens of thousands of times less than it takes a "normal speed" meteorite, which is fractions of a second anyway). The only thing hitting Mogo is heated air.


No. While the resistance would be increased, the speed with which the meteorite is traveling would render the effect of that increase negligible.

The 'breaking up' of meteorites that you speak of is a work of friction, and friction takes time to work, something that simply wouldn't be there.

The rock & metal would cross the atmosphere in an amount of time we don't even have language to measure, because it's so damn small.

No time for the friction of the atmosphere to do it's thing.

As to the impact...well, traveling at near light speed, even one of those rocks is a planet-killer.



Err. Volcanism is a side effect of plate tectonics, of geological movements smashing into each other; it has nothing to do with releasing pressure from the earth. The thing that keeps the earth from exploding is mainly gravity, which is what formed it in the first place. <--- this is based on nebular hypothesis, which is, to my mind, the most likely explanation for planetary formation.


Plate techtonics is a result of subterranean lavaflow and eddies, the interaction of the liquid metal beneath the mantle, as it undergoes heating and cooling.

The hotter metal rises closer to the surface, the cooler metal sinks back into the core to be heated again. This all occurs while the earth is spinning on it's axis, and as it is spinning around the sun.

The interaction of the different metals of the core (mostly ferrous metals, however), is what gives the earth it's magnetic field, which, along with gravity, allows it to hold on to an atmosphere, which creates a radiation shield, allowing life to thrive.

As the metal cools and sinks, and other metal heats and rises, this is where the 'eddies' come from that cause plate techtonics. the plates grind up against each other, and one usually slides under the other, which increases the pressure on the core at that point, which then seeps out, relieving the said pressure.

My understanding could be faulty: while I enjoyed and paid attention during my one college level geology class, I have had only one such class, and haven't made any in-depth study on my own time.



Not really... The metal is already liquid because it's past the critical point, and increasing pressure or temperature has no effect on the properties of the material; it's already a "supercritical fluid" and remains so. This science is not so basic, but it's there.


As I understand it, you heat something enough it becomes a gas...?

Google on supercritical fluids....

Ahhhh.....yes, that is not basic science.

Hrm, I actually learned something from an internet debate...doesn't that defy all known laws of the universe?

You are absolutely right. Heating the interior of mogo would have little or no effeect.

OTOH, couldn't he simply turn part or all of the core into something else? Say, explosive material, like hydrogen?



He can create matter out of nothing (ref. GL/Flash team-up with GL/Flash, where the antagonists are revealed to be each GL; Alan Scott messes with Hal by creating a yellow planet, and Hal messes with Scott by creating wooden bees that get through his defenses); given how some people like to believe in conservation of energy, I prefer conversion to creation.
[quote]

I think I read that, but forgot. I'll grant it canon status, as it really affects very little, because of the conservation of energy thing: you make something the energy to do it has to come from somewhere: in the case of the GLs, it's their rings, which have a clearly established finite capacity (exception of kyle).

[quote]
The following issue, when he got past the pain, he was able to get a faint response from the ring fragments anyway. Once he believed the power was still there, he made the ring whole again, through sheer will. Powder or not, it's still Kyle's ring and will still work (he made it that way, when he was Ion the first time). The hand is pulp, and Kyle is bleeding, but the ring can fix both.

Under normal circumstances, I'd agree. But you gave me ten minutes where Supes was doing nothing but standing and laughing :) That's plenty of time for Kyle to regroup and strike back.


No one punch is going to take out Superman. Not even magic.

If Kyle goes for the kryptonite cage right off the bat, he wins.

But then, he only gets that shot if Superman sits and laughs....

So, in the conditions I set up, yes, Kyle could win.

If Superman really wanted him dead, Kyle would be a corpse. (head pop).



Actually even before he got Mjolnir and Stormbreaker, he fought evenly against Thor. That's some solid muscle there. It's a shame they use him so badly in his stories...


Not all that familiar with Beta Ray. I was under the understanding that he beat Thor because he possessed Thor's belt at the time (where a large chunk of the asgardian's physical might comes from).



Agreed. And it just gets more and more ridiculous each time.


Yeah. It makes no sense to me, when all you have to do is engage in some creative thinking before sitting down and writing a story.



Nova currently has the full power of the Nova Force. However many members of the Nova Corps there were, his powers were multiplied by that amount (eg if there were 3600 Centurions, Richard Rider's current powers are 3600 times greater than before). Since the Nova Force is not a fundamental part of the Marvel existence the way Oa's Battery is for DC, I feel justified in thinking of Nova as Ion Lite (the first Ion). So, no, I'm not surprised at all that super-Nova could take out Annihilus (even the ridiculously amped-up version that could writer's fiat win against the quantum bands).

I think he means Nova, the herald of Galactus, not Nova, of the New Warriors.

They are definitely NOT the same. (One is female, for starters).

[Blue Paladin]

Wasn't able to post this yesterday before the boards went down. I finished up in Notepad while waiting for the boards to come back, and here it is:

I'm back and I'm armed with a discussion I had with my astrophysicist friend. I made sure to ask all the science questions first, before giving the specifics behind the discussion, to keep his own bias out of it (he was a GL fan "before it got stupid"; he also laughed a bit much when he read Galactus getting eaten by the Marvel Zombies).

So the first thing I asked about was the supercritical fluid aspect. He believes that while the pressure in the core is more than enough to pass the critical pressure level, the temperature is not great enough. In his words, "planets are cold; well, relatively speaking" on a cosmic scale. So my argument regarding supercritical fluid and its attendant non-phase-change is null (at least until we get to the heat adding part).

The next thing I asked about was what would happen to a planet if an outside source of heat/energy were introduced to the core. He thought about this for a while, and the eventual answer was "not very much". Heat introduced into the system would pass through the core instantly (degenerate gases are near-perfect conductors of heat and do not obey normal gas laws), and be brought to the surface by convection currents in the mantle, and released from the surface (in the form of vulcanism and radiation). Net change to the planet: none. I asked if there could be enough heat to melt the surface of the planet. He replied there would have to be a lot of heat for that to happen; I didn't elaborate on the source of the energy yet, as I had more questions for which I wanted unbiased answers.

I further postulated there being a star's worth of energy coming out of that source, and he thought about that. He said it would effectively be a star at that point. Intrigued, I asked if the energy would trigger fusion. He said no, that's not what he meant. He said the only difference between a planet and a star is mass. He pointed out how Jupiter reached equilibrium as a planet because it didn't have the mass to reach equilibrium as a star. Fusion is the star's way of reacting to the crushing forces of its own gravity; a planet's crushing forces aren't as great because it doesn't have the same mass. Since we started with a planet, and the mass doesn't change, it will remain a planet (this was an important distinction for me, because if Mogo the Living Planet changed to Mogo the Living Star, I would consider that a loss by forfeit). However, it would radiate heat as a stellar body, and possibly even some radiation as a star, depending on what energy is being added at the core in the first place. It would look "really weird" to faraway observers, who would see a planet sized body with the heat of a star; this is usually the footprint of a neutron star (a hot, planet-sized body). However, the mass readings would be way off: it still has only the mass of a planet.

I brought up the critical temperature again, as we were now discussing a star's amount of heat. He worked the figures for a little bit. We started with the hypothesis that it's an earth-sized planet, with similar core-mantle composition. His end result was that even if the temperature change was great enough that all of the crust sublimated to gas/supercritical fluid, the pressure already present is so great, any surface change (matter outside the core that is not-super-compressed does obey normal gas laws; at least, they do if they don't reach the super-critical fluid phase) from thermal pressure is negligible. The mass doesn't change, so there is no chance of collapse towards any type of compact star. The state of matter ultimately ends up not mattering. He talked about how an increase in mass leads to a decrease in size, but I was already over my head, so I missed most of the reasoning (I only remember that much because it struck me as particularly weird).

At this point I gave him the particulars of the discussion, the Surfer's board being the source of energy at Mogo's core. He repeated that no matter how much energy he puts into the core, there's no way he can destroy the planet. The Surfer would just end up creating a temporary star; whatever the Surfer puts into the core, Mogo radiates away. When he stops putting energy into the board, Mogo stops radiating. At no point is the planet going to be threatened. I pointed out that the surface would be screwed. He shrugged and said it's a planet. Planet surfaces change all the time. On a human there are skin rashes, scars, tattoos... none of which are life-threatening. In the course of the conversation we came up with the following: a planet covered in volcanoes is like a human breaking out in zits. Lava is like blood, but a planet "bleeding" doesn't matter because all of the blood is reclaimed (melted down and recycled in the mantle or the core).

At this point we went into a discussion of what it means for a planet's life to be threatened anyway, leading to a discussion of what it takes for a planet to be alive in the first place, which went back to Marvel Zombies turning Ego into a zombie planet. If Mogo has total control over its mass the same way Ego does, even shattering the planet into a kazillion pieces wouldn't matter. Surfer would do better by taking the planet apart in pieces, converting each into energy and radiating it away. Which led to the question of whether Mogo would then retain total control over its energy. Which led to an energy-based form for Mogo (like energy-based Superman, only planet-sized). Which led to my friend reiterating that he wants to run a Mutants & Masterminds game. Which led me to plan a character: planet with a spitcurl.

Yeah, our conversations are, uh... interesting.

[Blue Paladin]

Ah, sorry, witht the inifnity gauntlet, getting caught flatfooted doesn't happen.

Remember, this is the weapon that gives you complete control over the universe, omnipotence and omniscience all in one, and just one part of it is the time gem.It was established that Thanos was not using the full power of the Gauntlet. He subconsciously "wanted" to have a challenge, hence not blinking everyone who could be a threat out of existence (as opposed to the nebulous "half of the universe"). So yes, even though pre-cog and post-cog are trivial (Mind & Time) to the bearer of the Gauntlet, it doesn't help if you don't use it. The equivalent would be having X-Ray vision and keeping your eyes closed. That's what Thanos did to himself.

After he embraced the full power of the Gauntlet, and then got defeated, there is your full-on bad writing.


No. While the resistance would be increased, the speed with which the meteorite is traveling would render the effect of that increase negligible.

The 'breaking up' of meteorites that you speak of is a work of friction, and friction takes time to work, something that simply wouldn't be there.The energy translated to heat from friction is a function of the original force, the coordinate along which it travels, and the coefficient of kinetic friction. The last one is fixed, the second one is predetermined, and the first is determined by the Surfer. If the object moves faster, it burns up faster. If the object moves slower, it burns up slower. The problem is that you're going up to light speed with the rocks; that's a tremendous amount of force. That makes the friction force a ridiculous, opposing amount as well. Drag (which is basically friction in air/fluid) is 0.5 x density (for Earth-like, that's 1.293 kg/m^3) x velocity squared x drag coefficient x cross-sectional area, as applied in a negative vector. The faster you go, the more force is applied to the rock; and no rock is going to survive that kind of force. Maybe adamantium.


[Plate tectonics]As the metal cools and sinks, and other metal heats and rises, this is where the 'eddies' come from that cause plate techtonics. the plates grind up against each other, and one usually slides under the other, which increases the pressure on the core at that point, which then seeps out, relieving the said pressure.Close, but not quite. The pressure on the core is due (pretty much entirely) to gravity. The term "release of pressure" may have been from describing earthquakes. The plates float around on the mantle, and when two rub up against each other, their opposing forces can lead to a bit of a stand-off. That potential energy builds and builds until they slip past each other in a violent release (earthquake). Or it could be volcanoes; convection forces in the mantle churn the hot liquid up to the surface to cool. If it reaches a stubborn point on the crust, that hot liquid "builds up", until there is a release (volcanic eruption). They're both pretty cataclysmic from a human perspective, but for a planet, that's just burping.


Google on supercritical fluids.... Ahhhh.....yes, that is not basic science.

Hrm, I actually learned something from an internet debate...doesn't that defy all known laws of the universe?Hehe. And as it turns out, I was wrong, and the supercritical fliud angle doesn't even enter the debate at hand. So I guess that's okay, learning something that actually had nothing to do with an internet debate :)


OTOH, couldn't he simply turn part or all of the core into something else? Say, explosive material, like hydrogen?Now that could be interesting... I wonder if the planetary pressure would be enough to trigger stellar fusion at that point? Probably not, as it's still only a planetary mass. All the protons and electrons of the nickel and iron get re-ordered into hydrogen, but that's not enough to kick a planet's mass up to star level. Still, gravity should still be strong enough that the core behaves similarly under the same pressure.

Sounds like I need to talk to my friend the astrophysicist again :)


No one punch is going to take out Superman. Not even magic.Actually it's already happened... In the "Crisis Times Five" JLA/JSA crossover (part of the Justice For All TPB), Captain Marvel knew that Supes was going to try to enter the Fifth Dimension to negotiate, and Marvel had a better chance with his magic (and his wisdom of Solomon) than Supes (who would have essentially nothing). Cap charged his fist with "all of his magic" and blindsided Supes, KOing him in one shot.


Not all that familiar with Beta Ray. I was under the understanding that he beat Thor because he possessed Thor's belt at the time (where a large chunk of the asgardian's physical might comes from).Apparently they duelled (no hammer, no enchantments) to a double KO. I think Thor did not have his belt at the time, and I'm pretty sure the only advantage Bill had was the location of the duel; his physiology healed faster in warmer areas.

[ravenkith]

It was established that Thanos was not using the full power of the Gauntlet. He subconsciously "wanted" to have a challenge, hence not blinking everyone who could be a threat out of existence (as opposed to the nebulous "half of the universe"). So yes, even though pre-cog and post-cog are trivial (Mind & Time) to the bearer of the Gauntlet, it doesn't help if you don't use it. The equivalent would be having X-Ray vision and keeping your eyes closed. That's what Thanos did to himself.


Meh. If SS was traveling at full speed and Thanos caught him, Thanos was using the IG to do it.

He himself just isn't that fast, as I recall, because he doesn't have to be.



After he embraced the full power of the Gauntlet, and then got defeated, there is your full-on bad writing.


Agreed.



The energy translated to heat from friction is a function of the original force, the coordinate along which it travels, and the coefficient of kinetic friction. The last one is fixed, the second one is predetermined, and the first is determined by the Surfer. If the object moves faster, it burns up faster. If the object moves slower, it burns up slower. The problem is that you're going up to light speed with the rocks; that's a tremendous amount of force. That makes the friction force a ridiculous, opposing amount as well. Drag (which is basically friction in air/fluid) is 0.5 x density (for Earth-like, that's 1.293 kg/m^3) x velocity squared x drag coefficient x cross-sectional area, as applied in a negative vector. The faster you go, the more force is applied to the rock; and no rock is going to survive that kind of force. Maybe adamantium.


The resistance to the rock is actually determined by the density and depth of the object the rock is trying to pass through, the surface area of the rock for that resistance to act on, and the speed with which the two objects are traveling.

As such, there comes a point where the velocity is too great for the resistance to even be a factor.

Think: Medieval weaponry. Chain mail.

Longsword: big, heavy, no cutting edge to speak of, can break bones with the force of an impact, but will not cut the chainmail in most cases.

Poniard: Thin, lightweight, correctly applied (quickly & accurately), can pierce the chainmail and be used to damage the organs the armor is meant to protect.

Same principle.



Close, but not quite. The pressure on the core is due (pretty much entirely) to gravity. The term "release of pressure" may have been from describing earthquakes. The plates float around on the mantle, and when two rub up against each other, their opposing forces can lead to a bit of a stand-off. That potential energy builds and builds until they slip past each other in a violent release (earthquake). Or it could be volcanoes; convection forces in the mantle churn the hot liquid up to the surface to cool. If it reaches a stubborn point on the crust, that hot liquid "builds up", until there is a release (volcanic eruption). They're both pretty cataclysmic from a human perspective, but for a planet, that's just burping.

Hehe. And as it turns out, I was wrong, and the supercritical fliud angle doesn't even enter the debate at hand. So I guess that's okay, learning something that actually had nothing to do with an internet debate :)


There's pressure involved. The concept I was using was that the earth contains liquid and solid state metals in it's core.

A gas is made up of the same substance as a liquid, but occupies more space.

You turn a liquid into a gas, and it attempts to increase the volume it occupies, but can't, due to the relatively fixed shape of the mantle of a planet.

Keeping in mind that this is pretty instantaneous, pressure increases until breaking point, crust explodes.

Flaw: gravity of material keeps crust from flying off into space.

Correction: gas escapes into atmosphere.

New problem: Plantary core reduced to next to nothing, thanks to gassification of liquid metal: planetary crust collapses towards remainder of core?

<shrug>.



Now that could be interesting... I wonder if the planetary pressure would be enough to trigger stellar fusion at that point? Probably not, as it's still only a planetary mass. All the protons and electrons of the nickel and iron get re-ordered into hydrogen, but that's not enough to kick a planet's mass up to star level. Still, gravity should still be strong enough that the core behaves similarly under the same pressure.


Hydrogen + heat = boom. Planet explodes, neh?



Actually it's already happened... In the "Crisis Times Five" JLA/JSA crossover (part of the Justice For All TPB), Captain Marvel knew that Supes was going to try to enter the Fifth Dimension to negotiate, and Marvel had a better chance with his magic (and his wisdom of Solomon) than Supes (who would have essentially nothing). Cap charged his fist with "all of his magic" and blindsided Supes, KOing him in one shot.


Wait, what? Is that even canon?

When has marvel ever put all his magic into his fist?

Guh. Talk about bad writing. :yuk:



Apparently they duelled (no hammer, no enchantments) to a double KO. I think Thor did not have his belt at the time, and I'm pretty sure the only advantage Bill had was the location of the duel; his physiology healed faster in warmer areas.

Hm. I think I remember that fight, and I swear I thought bill had thors belt on, but I could be mistaken.

Nonetheless, if you're right, that'd make for one hell of a powerful alien race of allies...or agressors.

...as well as one very underused character.

[Beleriphon]

Hm. I think I remember that fight, and I swear I thought bill had thors belt on, but I could be mistaken.

Nonetheless, if you're right, that'd make for one hell of a powerful alien race of allies...or agressors.

...as well as one very underused character.

You're thinking backwards. Beta Ray Bill got Mjolnir and Thor fought Bill for the hammer. Odin intervenes, they duke it out without any gear knock each other stupid, and Odin makes Stormbreaker for Bill.

[Blue Paladin]

The resistance to the rock is actually determined by the density and depth of the object the rock is trying to pass through, the surface area of the rock for that resistance to act on, and the speed with which the two objects are traveling.That's exactly what the drag equation I quoted earlier is. The 1.2something is the density of the atmosphere (the object the rock is trying to pass through). The depth is a constant (however far it gets into the atmosphere). It's cross-sectional instead of surface area, because there's basically half the rock that doesn't come into contact with the atmosphere, and therefore doesn't generate drag (the rest generates resistance, but along vectors that don't oppose the movement of the rock, and which generally sum to zero anyway). And the speed of travel is velocity of the rock squared if we use Mogo as the frame of reference.


As such, there comes a point where the velocity is too great for the resistance to even be a factor.It's the exact opposite here... Here's a thought exercise: a rock traveling at a hypothetical speed of 10 generates resistance of 1 (numbers chosen for ease of math). Pump that rock's velocity up a factor of 1000, and the resulting resistance is

ResistSlow = 1
ResistSlow = (a bunch of constants) (VelocitySlow)^2
1 = (a bunch of constants) (10)^2
1/100 = (a bunch of constants)

ResistFast = (a bunch of constants) (VelocityFast)^2
ResistFast = (1/100) (10,000)^2
ResistFast = 1,000,000

an increase by a factor of a million (1000 squared). Try it with any other factor; you'll get a corresponding increase in resistance equal to the square of the velocity change.

Now you're kicking up the speed several orders of magnitude (to the fractions of c level). The resistance becomes (several orders of magnitude) squared. This is what's applied to the incoming rock; just a fraction of what you intend to do to the planet, but applied to the rock instead. That rock is history long before it gets to the planet.

The solution then is to go the opposite way; throw slow-moving, high-mass chunks that can survive atmospheric entry.


Think: Medieval weaponry. Chain mail.

Longsword: big, heavy, no cutting edge to speak of, can break bones with the force of an impact, but will not cut the chainmail in most cases.

Poniard: Thin, lightweight, correctly applied (quickly & accurately), can pierce the chainmail and be used to damage the organs the armor is meant to protect.

Same principle.Based off a flawed assumption; atmospheres are not at all like chainmail: the atmosphere covers all over the planet, with no "gaps" to let a poniard through. Cover a target in a sphere of plate mail; now try to get a poniard through that. I think you're better off trying to bash with the longsword.


There's pressure involved. The concept I was using was that the earth contains liquid and solid state metals in it's core.Yes, but the reason those metals act as liquid/solid have terribly little to do with temperature. You know how hot it gets the deeper into a planet you go; the temperature increases linearly. As a basic concept, you add heat, a solid melts into a liquid; add more heat, and the liquid evaporates into a gas. But then why does the hotter core have properties of a solid instead of a gas? Isn't it even hotter than the surrounding "liquid"?

The answer is because of the pressure, which increases exponentially the deeper you go. Even though the temperature in the core is very hot, the pressure is so great that the molecules/atoms are pressed mind-bogglingly close, so much so that they exhibit the traits of a solid. It's already so dense and hot that adding heat can't "melt" it in the traditional sense. Even the mantle is solid due to pressure. But just because it's solid doesn't mean it's not viscous (after a bit of research I guess "plastic" is the current term for it, and the actual deformation is technically merely "viscous-like"), and can have convection currents like any liquid.


You turn a liquid into a gas, and it attempts to increase the volume it occupies, but can't, due to the relatively fixed shape of the mantle of a planet.Another false assumption. Despite being solid, the mantle can (and does) deform. The slight differences throughout the mantle are what cause tectonic plate movement at the surface; a "sudden" change in temperature at the upper core just shoots up the mantle to the crust, along the same convection curves as before. It reaches the crust in a fabulous volcano, dissipating whatever pressure/temperature you like.


New problem: Plantary core reduced to next to nothing, thanks to gassification of liquid metal: planetary crust collapses towards remainder of core?Physically can't happen. That's already essentially gaseous metal, compressed by planetary pressure down to liquid (and down to solid in the inner core). Simple heat isn't going to evaporate something which is only liquid because we haven't invented a proper term for it yet; the outer core exhibits most of the traits of a liquid, so we call it liquid. The inner core exhibits most of the traits of a solid, so we call it solid. But their actual traits are very different from what we experience at the surface.


Hydrogen + heat = boom. Planet explodes, neh?Actually the whole equation is Hydrogen (gas) + Oxygen (gas) + catalyst (e.g. flame/spark) = Water (liquid) + energy. It's the basis of the whole hydrogen-as-fuel-alternative movement. If all it took was heat to explode some hydrogen, that'd be the end of that idea, right quick. I'm pretty sure simple heat isn't enough to catalyze the reaction; and even if it is, we're still operating at the planet's core. That hydrogen (and oxygen, assuming SS transmutes that too) isn't going to be in the proper state for that particular reaction; they're both going to be liquified (if not solidified) by the pressure. I honestly don't know what would happen at these pressures and temperatures.

I myself only took four astronomy courses (just for fun; it wasn't in my major) at university, and this is bringing back some good memories of old astro debates. Our TA's encouraged a lot of our far-ranging discussions, so we had a bunch of concepts most of the class never touched on (and I'm sure we misunderstood quite a lot of what they were talking about :) ).


Nonetheless, if you're right, that'd make for one hell of a powerful alien race of allies...or agressors.

...as well as one very underused character.He's the only one though; Beta Ray Bill was the only survivor of the graft process where they stuffed his mind inside the living-weapon-creature the Korbinites created. And I think Alpha Ray (who was created by a totally different process) was destroyed a while back. But yes, I think he's one of the most underused and underrated Thor-level beings (before Stormbreaker!) who has a lot of story potential. It looks like their tapping him now for Omega Flight; I'll withhold judgement on that until I get a few more issues in.

[Ras Sha'Akhamen]

He's the Silver Mutha****in' Surfer. Pretty much his whole power is that he can abuse the laws of physics as we (mis)understand them on a whim.

[Mr. Mud]

Okay, now GL is one of the most powerful members of the DC Pantheon, capable of insane levels of power... whereas Silver is arguably the toughest hero in all of Marvel. Cosmic energy vs. GL power? hm... this seems like a tough one...

Surfer

Slow time

Heal himslef and others

Blasts cosmic junk at people

SuPa fast

Green Lantern

Power ring thing

Can communicate telepathically with other lanterns

Near limitless power


I Dont know maybe either a stalemate OR the universe Expoldes... But i like green lantern more :smallsmile:

[Lobsopdoy]

Longsword: big, heavy, no cutting edge to speak of, can break bones with the force of an impact, but will not cut the chainmail in most cases.

Sorry to be pedantic, but it's sort of a pet peeve of mine.

A Longsword is not that heavy, and it's pretty damn sharp. A normal medieval longsword would weigh in the neighbourhood of 3 pounds, and would be more then up to the task of cutting an arm off.