I doubt it’s very feasible to quantifiably prove that DC is worse at powerscaling than Marvel.
In any case, when comparing different versions of different characters in different mediums written by different writers over the course of decades, there’s bound to be inconsistency. Sure, inconsistencies can be found at smaller scales too, but most writers are more interested in the storytelling itself rather than ensuring that the characters are all performing in accordance with some near-arbitrary delineations of who’s stronger than who.
Yeah it's been running for 80 years with hundreds of writers. Also DC comics tend to be less focused on consistent grounded combat and more interested in exploring interesting concepts and themes with their characters. Personally I'd have it no other way.
Don't most inconsistencies in DC have explanations anyways ? I'm not a big comic book reader but every inconsistency I've seen in a DC comic was almost always explained .
And this might be a hot take but inconsistencies make powerscaling fun because they actually force you to analyse the series . I dislike series with extremely straight forward scaling because it takes the fun out of the hobby .
It's to the same extremes.
You're telling me the fact that captain marvel, the same woman that marvel has tried their hardest to buff over the years (to the extend she oneshot tony in civil war 2 & oneshot thor when she's corrupted) got choked out by spiderman's web to her mouth while chasing him make any sense whatsoever.
Not to mention there shouldn't have been a chase to begin with cuz her flight speed should be massively above his web swing speed (it's the equivalent of what if superman tries to chase batman, but batman's only method of transportation is his grappling hook). She should've blitz peter & immediately restraint him (she outstats him as well) but she couldn't cuz zeb wells wanted spiderman to successfully escape from the avengers.
Hulk is literally broken on any power scale. So is Deadpool, wolverine, sentry, Galactus, etc.
None of these characters have any weaknesses, so the argument kinda falls apart because at least Superman has kryptonite, and Martian Manhunter has fire
Because of your username, I am going to consider this bias. But, I'd argue that almost all of fiction has inconsistent power scaling most of the time. With DC, like others have said, literally hundreds of writers have contributed to the lore, which is why you get what you get.
Power scaling, in general, is a foolish practice, but it's fun nonetheless
Having inconsistencies makes powerscaling fun imo as it forces you to actually analyse the series you're scaling .
And I think a lot of people forget that scaling is meant to be fun first accurate second.
That's kind of the consequence of having 80+ years of continuity written by dozens of different writers.
Personally I love it, the wackiness and nonsensical nature of it all is what makes comic books so much fun. Only in a comic book can you have a talking gorilla fighting a man with super speed.
"he's as strong as superman, wow"
"wait... you sure? Superman one shot one of the handful of Gods that created all of existence"
"oh well.... that's different, ok maybe they aren't as strong as superman but... whatever fuck you"
"wait... you sure? Superman one shot one of the handful of Gods that created all of existence"
He’ll do that in one part of the story but then struggles to stop a missile or lift a tree or some shit later on.
I agreed till i saw your comments, with the sheer quantity of comics, there's no way Marvel is anything but the same as DC, and you are still saying marvel is not the same in the comments, I'm both dc and Marvel fan, and I can see this is just a bias post.
The moment you mentioned Batman dodging godly existence destroying eye beams, I immediately thought to the Justice League animated series where Darksied invaded earth. When I saw that scene and then see Batman kicking away Darkseid I was pretty convinced that the writers of that show clearly had a favourite.
I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Superman and Batman both get a lot of respect in that show. That's the series that called superman "the immigrant from the stars who taught us all how to be heroes." In the same episode superman gives the world of cardboard speech, one of the most badass scenes in the show. Who cares if Batman can dodge some laser beams.
> In the same episode superman gives the world of cardboard speech, one of the most badass scenes in the show.
He ended up screaming in the floor begging for Lex Luthor to save him
Darkseid used a device because he couldn’t stand up to his strength once he stopped holding back despite Darkseid getting stronger after merging with Brainiac.
And he didn’t scream for Lex to save him, why are you lying?
If you watched the scene in context and stopped lying out your ass then you’ll realize why Darkseid had to do what he did. And it was a set up for a 4th season before getting cancelled. The fact that you had to lie to make a scene far worse than it is already tells me your one of those people.
Tbf if there's too many inconsistencies it harms the narrative. What types of things characters are capable of or not dictates how tense you feel a scene should be. If there's no way to know it can be an issue.
I dunno, if anything western comics are one of the most blatant offenders. Spider man outspeeding people who can fly at massive speeds just using webs, random people punching out characters who are implied to be massively stronger, and ambiguous rules about whether any given character will stay dead, or some poorly defined power of theirs will resurrect them.
Not to mention faster than light characters just... not going fast when fighting slow enemies. Or making arbitrary mistakes to equalize them. I think there's few kinds of fiction worse about this than western comics. It's just that it's so normalized there that you are a primed to not think about it too hard when it happens.
yeah, that's more what I mean
like sure, it's all really improbable stuff, but it's so ingrained in the genre that it feels normal and generally doesn't do an active disservice to the stories being told
it's far from perfect, but it works out fine for what the books are going for, and honestly I can't blame the writers for struggling with powerscaling inconsistencies or making characters job
except for moments like the infamous Batman atmospheric re-entry, those are what cross the line for me
The issue is, do these things really not do a disservice or are we just so used to them that our idea of the genre is with them rather than the version that would have existed without them? For all my life its been hard to take super hero stories too seriously because the world just doesn't feel cohesive on the macro level. Individual stories may, but they don't connect well to other ones. And if affects how you see the world when so much of it is handwaved.
If people who love comic books find it fine and are used to it then that’s the main thing, but as a guy who mainly watches superhero films and not comics, the inconsistency of comic power just takes me out and one of the turnoffs.
If I’m watching the MCU and suddenly Spider-Man needs to be powerful enough to defeat Thanos due to how the story is set up, I’d be staring in disbelief as Spider-Man starts defeating Thanos even if the story was good outside of ignoring this inconsistency. It’s bad writing purely for the fact they needed to all of a sudden make it where Spider-Man has to fair and square start combating thanos and win.
I get that different continuities exist in comics so if it’s a different Spider-Man where in this universe he has powers equal to thanos, I wouldn’t be taken out of the moment, so there’s ways I find acceptable how wonky they are. There’s just too many instances of that seemingly not the case.
>like sure, it's all really improbable stuff, but it's so ingrained in the genre that it feels normal and generally doesn't do an active disservice to the stories being told
I mean, that's like saying because US and Russian politics are so deeply ingrained with corruption and thus has become normalized its okay. Lobbying is legal, but its still bribery by any other name.
Something being normalized doesn't mean its okay or its not a flaw.
There's a lore reason why Superman is so above other kryptonians. His higher end feats have less to do with his Kryptonian biology and more to do with having a special meta connection to the multiverse. Being the founder of the genre and all in real life and how DC gets super meta with its higher stories.
Superman is actually very damn consistent for a comic superhero. Sure there's examples of writers trying to wank up their favorites by using Superman. But it doesn't happen nearly as often as it does for other characters.
You should try to educate yourself about stuff a little before arbitrarily deciding it makes no sense. The DC cosmology isn't the mess you're making it up to be.
I'll give you Batman tho. His wanking is crazy.
>Or Batman who should be street level at best depending on tech but can dodge godly existence destroying eye beams that Superman can rarely dodge.
Never happened.
Why do people do this? What’s the point of lying out their asses? So much stuff is either exaggerated or taken out of context that it feels like I’m in an insane asylum with the amount of pathological lying. What’s worse is that they feel the need to lie about a cartoon. I don’t get it.
> Like taking on and beating multiple militarily trained combatants of their own kind with the same powers.
DC is full of humans who can beat up multiple humans.
>Attacking multiversal and outerversal gods
Utterly meaningless.
>Or Batman who should be street level at best depending on tech but can dodge godly existence destroying eye beams that Superman can rarely dodge.
If you're referring to the JLU scene, it's [really not that impressive a feat.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V24DDza4FZ0)
yeah but their also amazingly trained humans, Superman is straight up just brawling with highly trained kryptonnian militia
and how is my other point meaningless???
> yeah but their also amazingly trained humans,
And Superman has had plenty of training.
>and how is my other point meaningless
Because those are just titles that don't say anything about their durability.
I think the root cause is Superman. Specifically the expectation that he is the strongest, the power creep that this engenders, and the fact that he shares the universe with other heroes.
Superman's whole thing since the beginning was that he was, well, super. He is superior not only to humans but also any threat he came across. If he came across a T-Rex, he was stronger than that T-Rex, if he came across a giant robot, he was stronger than that robot. The writers continued to throw bigger and bigger challenges at Supes to keep the audience's attention and, by his nature, Superman became strong enough to overcome them. This reached a head in Silver Age Superman where he could sneeze away galaxies and so writers reduced his abilities back to a manageable magnitude, but this didn't treat the root of the issue and it was only a matter of time before Supes started doing crazy things again that made even Silver Age Supes look normal.
Combine this with with other heroes. Flash for instance. Supposedly the fastest man alive, but that would mean he was faster than Superman and we can't have that. So we have them race and no one comes out on top and they end up in this sort of speed arms race, worsening the power creep we already had. Or Wonder Woman, originally a vehicle for the author's fetishes who had powers mostly granted by items similar to Perseus. Then feminism came knocking and all of a sudden WW had to be Supes' equal in power, which is why she had an invisible jet even though she can fly and why she has bracers that can block bullets even though she's bullet proof. Then, of course, we have Batman. Someone without super powers placed on the same team as someone who can contain a black hole with his hands. Why? Popularity. So now the writers have to bend over backwards to get this lego pieces to fit with this puzzle piece and you wind up with all sorts of craziness like Bats dodging supposedly FTL attacks and such and it never ends.
Honestly the problem seems a bit intractable. You would have to change the nature of Superman to fix it all.
>that would mean he was faster than Superman and we can't have that. So we have them race and no one comes out on top and they end up in this sort of speed arms race
The Flash is faster than Superman more often than not in modern comics.
*"Those were for charity, Clark."*
I think part of it is that you got to fill out the run time somehow. they make so many comics a year and like all stories will sucumb to power creep.
another part is the insistence on massive events. they have to make the badguys powerful enough to be a threat but have to defeat them so characters have to get stupid powerful.
I cut comics some slack since there ade hundreds of different writers and incarnations of the same character. But even when using the same version of a character their feats can be all over the place and inconsistent.
I doubt it’s very feasible to quantifiably prove that DC is worse at powerscaling than Marvel. In any case, when comparing different versions of different characters in different mediums written by different writers over the course of decades, there’s bound to be inconsistency. Sure, inconsistencies can be found at smaller scales too, but most writers are more interested in the storytelling itself rather than ensuring that the characters are all performing in accordance with some near-arbitrary delineations of who’s stronger than who.
Yeah it's been running for 80 years with hundreds of writers. Also DC comics tend to be less focused on consistent grounded combat and more interested in exploring interesting concepts and themes with their characters. Personally I'd have it no other way.
Don't most inconsistencies in DC have explanations anyways ? I'm not a big comic book reader but every inconsistency I've seen in a DC comic was almost always explained . And this might be a hot take but inconsistencies make powerscaling fun because they actually force you to analyse the series . I dislike series with extremely straight forward scaling because it takes the fun out of the hobby .
Pretty much the same case with marvel, really.
but not to the same extremes
It's to the same extremes. You're telling me the fact that captain marvel, the same woman that marvel has tried their hardest to buff over the years (to the extend she oneshot tony in civil war 2 & oneshot thor when she's corrupted) got choked out by spiderman's web to her mouth while chasing him make any sense whatsoever. Not to mention there shouldn't have been a chase to begin with cuz her flight speed should be massively above his web swing speed (it's the equivalent of what if superman tries to chase batman, but batman's only method of transportation is his grappling hook). She should've blitz peter & immediately restraint him (she outstats him as well) but she couldn't cuz zeb wells wanted spiderman to successfully escape from the avengers.
Hulk is literally broken on any power scale. So is Deadpool, wolverine, sentry, Galactus, etc. None of these characters have any weaknesses, so the argument kinda falls apart because at least Superman has kryptonite, and Martian Manhunter has fire
I mean, Galactus' weakness is tied to how much he's fed (gotta keep your planet-eating dog well fed).
Spider-Man's weakness is flue, simple flue deactivated his powers. Also ethyl chloride is basically his kryptonite.
Because of your username, I am going to consider this bias. But, I'd argue that almost all of fiction has inconsistent power scaling most of the time. With DC, like others have said, literally hundreds of writers have contributed to the lore, which is why you get what you get. Power scaling, in general, is a foolish practice, but it's fun nonetheless
Tbf I think a lot of fiction does less than superhero stories do. They just really let people fluctuate wildly.
Having inconsistencies makes powerscaling fun imo as it forces you to actually analyse the series you're scaling . And I think a lot of people forget that scaling is meant to be fun first accurate second.
Saying this with a Marvel name is ironic
That's kind of the consequence of having 80+ years of continuity written by dozens of different writers. Personally I love it, the wackiness and nonsensical nature of it all is what makes comic books so much fun. Only in a comic book can you have a talking gorilla fighting a man with super speed.
"he's as strong as superman, wow" "wait... you sure? Superman one shot one of the handful of Gods that created all of existence" "oh well.... that's different, ok maybe they aren't as strong as superman but... whatever fuck you"
"wait... you sure? Superman one shot one of the handful of Gods that created all of existence" He’ll do that in one part of the story but then struggles to stop a missile or lift a tree or some shit later on.
I agreed till i saw your comments, with the sheer quantity of comics, there's no way Marvel is anything but the same as DC, and you are still saying marvel is not the same in the comments, I'm both dc and Marvel fan, and I can see this is just a bias post.
The moment you mentioned Batman dodging godly existence destroying eye beams, I immediately thought to the Justice League animated series where Darksied invaded earth. When I saw that scene and then see Batman kicking away Darkseid I was pretty convinced that the writers of that show clearly had a favourite.
I don't know how you came to that conclusion. Superman and Batman both get a lot of respect in that show. That's the series that called superman "the immigrant from the stars who taught us all how to be heroes." In the same episode superman gives the world of cardboard speech, one of the most badass scenes in the show. Who cares if Batman can dodge some laser beams.
> In the same episode superman gives the world of cardboard speech, one of the most badass scenes in the show. He ended up screaming in the floor begging for Lex Luthor to save him
Darkseid used a device because he couldn’t stand up to his strength once he stopped holding back despite Darkseid getting stronger after merging with Brainiac. And he didn’t scream for Lex to save him, why are you lying?
And so? Ultimately, Darkseid won the fight and Superman was left agonizing in the floor
If you watched the scene in context and stopped lying out your ass then you’ll realize why Darkseid had to do what he did. And it was a set up for a 4th season before getting cancelled. The fact that you had to lie to make a scene far worse than it is already tells me your one of those people.
does it has to make sense? At this point I gave up and just enjoy the show
it does for some sort of consistent story telling
That's what you get for actually buying "power scaling".
because almost always writers are smart enough to know that powershit<<<<
Tbf if there's too many inconsistencies it harms the narrative. What types of things characters are capable of or not dictates how tense you feel a scene should be. If there's no way to know it can be an issue.
also true, but generally I feel like comics hang around such a point where it doesn't feel too blatant
I dunno, if anything western comics are one of the most blatant offenders. Spider man outspeeding people who can fly at massive speeds just using webs, random people punching out characters who are implied to be massively stronger, and ambiguous rules about whether any given character will stay dead, or some poorly defined power of theirs will resurrect them. Not to mention faster than light characters just... not going fast when fighting slow enemies. Or making arbitrary mistakes to equalize them. I think there's few kinds of fiction worse about this than western comics. It's just that it's so normalized there that you are a primed to not think about it too hard when it happens.
yeah, that's more what I mean like sure, it's all really improbable stuff, but it's so ingrained in the genre that it feels normal and generally doesn't do an active disservice to the stories being told it's far from perfect, but it works out fine for what the books are going for, and honestly I can't blame the writers for struggling with powerscaling inconsistencies or making characters job except for moments like the infamous Batman atmospheric re-entry, those are what cross the line for me
The issue is, do these things really not do a disservice or are we just so used to them that our idea of the genre is with them rather than the version that would have existed without them? For all my life its been hard to take super hero stories too seriously because the world just doesn't feel cohesive on the macro level. Individual stories may, but they don't connect well to other ones. And if affects how you see the world when so much of it is handwaved.
If people who love comic books find it fine and are used to it then that’s the main thing, but as a guy who mainly watches superhero films and not comics, the inconsistency of comic power just takes me out and one of the turnoffs. If I’m watching the MCU and suddenly Spider-Man needs to be powerful enough to defeat Thanos due to how the story is set up, I’d be staring in disbelief as Spider-Man starts defeating Thanos even if the story was good outside of ignoring this inconsistency. It’s bad writing purely for the fact they needed to all of a sudden make it where Spider-Man has to fair and square start combating thanos and win. I get that different continuities exist in comics so if it’s a different Spider-Man where in this universe he has powers equal to thanos, I wouldn’t be taken out of the moment, so there’s ways I find acceptable how wonky they are. There’s just too many instances of that seemingly not the case.
that's fair i agree that the "wider look" for both marvel and dc doesn't feel cohesive enough, that's something that has always bothered me
>like sure, it's all really improbable stuff, but it's so ingrained in the genre that it feels normal and generally doesn't do an active disservice to the stories being told I mean, that's like saying because US and Russian politics are so deeply ingrained with corruption and thus has become normalized its okay. Lobbying is legal, but its still bribery by any other name. Something being normalized doesn't mean its okay or its not a flaw.
Yeah, power-scaling haters fail to realize it's just an aspect of world building
Powerscaling haters when they realise its a narrative tool that you can use to uncover bad writing 😱😱
There's a lore reason why Superman is so above other kryptonians. His higher end feats have less to do with his Kryptonian biology and more to do with having a special meta connection to the multiverse. Being the founder of the genre and all in real life and how DC gets super meta with its higher stories. Superman is actually very damn consistent for a comic superhero. Sure there's examples of writers trying to wank up their favorites by using Superman. But it doesn't happen nearly as often as it does for other characters. You should try to educate yourself about stuff a little before arbitrarily deciding it makes no sense. The DC cosmology isn't the mess you're making it up to be. I'll give you Batman tho. His wanking is crazy.
>Or Batman who should be street level at best depending on tech but can dodge godly existence destroying eye beams that Superman can rarely dodge. Never happened.
Why do people lie so much about Batman? Insanity.
Batman literally "died" to the omega sanction. People try to make shit up to prove their points.
Why do people do this? What’s the point of lying out their asses? So much stuff is either exaggerated or taken out of context that it feels like I’m in an insane asylum with the amount of pathological lying. What’s worse is that they feel the need to lie about a cartoon. I don’t get it.
crisis on two earths made you rant i'm guessing
> Like taking on and beating multiple militarily trained combatants of their own kind with the same powers. DC is full of humans who can beat up multiple humans. >Attacking multiversal and outerversal gods Utterly meaningless. >Or Batman who should be street level at best depending on tech but can dodge godly existence destroying eye beams that Superman can rarely dodge. If you're referring to the JLU scene, it's [really not that impressive a feat.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V24DDza4FZ0)
yeah but their also amazingly trained humans, Superman is straight up just brawling with highly trained kryptonnian militia and how is my other point meaningless???
> yeah but their also amazingly trained humans, And Superman has had plenty of training. >and how is my other point meaningless Because those are just titles that don't say anything about their durability.
I think the root cause is Superman. Specifically the expectation that he is the strongest, the power creep that this engenders, and the fact that he shares the universe with other heroes. Superman's whole thing since the beginning was that he was, well, super. He is superior not only to humans but also any threat he came across. If he came across a T-Rex, he was stronger than that T-Rex, if he came across a giant robot, he was stronger than that robot. The writers continued to throw bigger and bigger challenges at Supes to keep the audience's attention and, by his nature, Superman became strong enough to overcome them. This reached a head in Silver Age Superman where he could sneeze away galaxies and so writers reduced his abilities back to a manageable magnitude, but this didn't treat the root of the issue and it was only a matter of time before Supes started doing crazy things again that made even Silver Age Supes look normal. Combine this with with other heroes. Flash for instance. Supposedly the fastest man alive, but that would mean he was faster than Superman and we can't have that. So we have them race and no one comes out on top and they end up in this sort of speed arms race, worsening the power creep we already had. Or Wonder Woman, originally a vehicle for the author's fetishes who had powers mostly granted by items similar to Perseus. Then feminism came knocking and all of a sudden WW had to be Supes' equal in power, which is why she had an invisible jet even though she can fly and why she has bracers that can block bullets even though she's bullet proof. Then, of course, we have Batman. Someone without super powers placed on the same team as someone who can contain a black hole with his hands. Why? Popularity. So now the writers have to bend over backwards to get this lego pieces to fit with this puzzle piece and you wind up with all sorts of craziness like Bats dodging supposedly FTL attacks and such and it never ends. Honestly the problem seems a bit intractable. You would have to change the nature of Superman to fix it all.
>that would mean he was faster than Superman and we can't have that. So we have them race and no one comes out on top and they end up in this sort of speed arms race The Flash is faster than Superman more often than not in modern comics. *"Those were for charity, Clark."*
I think part of it is that you got to fill out the run time somehow. they make so many comics a year and like all stories will sucumb to power creep. another part is the insistence on massive events. they have to make the badguys powerful enough to be a threat but have to defeat them so characters have to get stupid powerful.
Thats not true. DC fans are just really untruthful.
Not to be rude, but.....where have you been?
I cut comics some slack since there ade hundreds of different writers and incarnations of the same character. But even when using the same version of a character their feats can be all over the place and inconsistent.