From: Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: Outlandish but exceedingly fun. Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 22:34:58 -0600
I (and others) would argue that, depending on the circumstances, "most powerful" does not necessarily mean "able to exert the greatest number of newtons of force of raw strength." (Although apparently that seems to be an interpretation of the question which started this thread.) And though holding up a mountain range (in one of the issues of _Secret Wars_) does indeed require a lot of raw strength, on at least one occasion (Superboy Vol. 1 #58 (July 1957): "The 100 New Feats of Superboy" ¹) the Silver Age Superboy moved the entire Earth a small distance (then moved it back) and the pre-reboot Mon-El has moved a (smaller?) body a greater distance in order to hide it from space pirates of some sort inside a dark nebula (an issue of LSH sometime in the mid-80s, IIRC).
Ah! That's not the basis of the Hulks seemingly infinite capacity to grow ever more powerful. Though a big part of his power is in fact based on strength, there is more to it than that. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and assume that you are aware of the Hulk "shifting" or as many like to call it, changing colors. Each shift represents new levels of possible power; similar to Super Saiyans in the DBZ Universe. The Hulk has a "healing factor", plus a certain level of invulnerability which increases with his anger level (which is the main component in his Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde transformation), as well as with whatever color he is at the time. That being said, lets take a look at Superman. He is one of the toughest sob's in the comic world. Certainly one of the most powerful. However he has limits. Yes, he is extremely strong/intelligent/fast/invulnerable (and lets not forget those wonderful lasers of his) but the Hulk at his primary level is more than a match for Mr. Kent. Not saying that Superman couldn't defeat the Hulk, but he'd have his hands full with the big green goon. Besides. the Hulk can just keep on shifting, theoretically..........."to infinity and beyond".
As for Superboy and his accomplishments, I shall disregard them due to the time during which they were released. It's very similar to Star Trek TOS compared to Next Gen. Nearly every alien species encountered were these mysterious, uber-advanced, malevolent beings. It's quite simply shows us the mentality of that time, which was more in tune with the imagination of people who were subsequently thinking a certain way due to the society of the time. STTNG however, was based more on hard science, and is/was a reflection of the world view of "today".
Of course, since I grew up during the Sixties, the Silver Age comics and TOS were the first versions I was introduced to, so I naturally consider those versions canonical and later versions which conflict with them revisionist. ;-)
-- Ronn! :)
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