Originally posted by pr1983
Ok, i'm bumping this for a good reason (well at least i think it is), because after reading back over IC i spotted something...i'm just going to explain why i think Prime is at best, a slightly more powerful superman... and with his suit, pretty much a more powerful (but not to a huge extent) sundipped superman...
here goes:
In IC #6, just after Prime Returns, he has the following conversation with Alex:
and we learn that Prime had been imprisoned under a red sun for several years...
Now: How do we know that all that exposure to Red Sun didnt permanently change/reduce his powers? if he was so powerful why did he keep the suit after his return? Imo he needed the suit, as he wasn't as powerful as he'd been before... still powerful, yes, but easily lining planets up powerful? no...
and wasnt it just rann?
Let's look at what he did after he got back:
he fought Black Adam, and while he seemed to stand up well to Adam's punches, so have people like Superman and Marvel... he does punch Adam a decent distance, but he isn't the only one, for example Atom Smasher (JSA #27) did it, so its not a huge feat imo, given that Adam was only out of the fight because he'd been knocked too far away, and he was conscious in the next panel. we also see prime is resistant to magic, but thats earth one's magic, he could very well be vulnerable to his old earth's magic...
Then prime fought J'onn, and J'onn in the few panels it showed had as much of the fight as Prime had, and we only actually see j'onn go down on a screen behind batman in a later page...
then he fights superboy, and in the course of the fight superboy hits prime pretty hard, because he gives him a pretty bloody mouth, showing that kon-el was able to at least hurt prime... and conner is the one who rams prime into the tower...
then after a short fight with bart, prime heads to oa...
as we know, on his way he meets the GL corps led by guy, and he proceeds to kill several of them...
Now: how many of the GL's he killed were Hal or kyle level? very few by the looks of it, and let me ask this question:
A sundipped Superman (earth 1, kal-el) without holding back couldnt do the same?
hal destroys part of the armour, so its not invincible (as we later see)
so then the two superman grab him and drag him to krypton's old site (entirely unaware that prime's abilities may have been altered), and after going through rao (i think its called) they crash on a kryptonite covered mogo... with prime's armour destroyed, and the red sun draining his powers (as it does with the other two supermen), he proceeds to kill earth 2 superman, and then fights earth 1 superman, who beats him...
long story short, i believe prime as he is, without the suit is just a slightly more powerful superman... with the suit, he's pretty much permanently sundipped...
thats why i think if you put current Prime against the group i named (and not even all of them), prime would go down...
Superman-prime owned everyone in the sinestro corps war. He was actually NEVER beaten in that war. He was bfred.
He killed a guardian... how many people other than parallax or the am have done that?
Also, when he fought monarch, he was loosing power, and still managed to match monarch in power. This team will be decimated by Superman-prime. He is like superman without limits. As close to precrisis as dc will allow right now. Thats why no one has been able to match him (except monarch).