Joe Casey’s Ultimate Superman Vs. WWH
RC: OK, like you said, depending on whom you are writing at the moment, either Superman or Mr. Majestic is more powerful than the other. What if you wrote BOTH in a fight—who wins, who's stronger?JOE CASEY: If I were to write a Superman/Mr. Majestic story where they meet, I certainly wouldn't have them fight. How many times can we endure *that* kind of superhero misunderstanding?!
RC: Could your Superman re-arrange his own Solar System, and tear a star apart, as Majestic did?
JOE CASEY: Absolutely. Where do you think Mr. Majestic got the idea in the first place...?
RC: Are Superman's powers more related to mental state than solar energy absorption?
Joe Casey: I'd say both.
RC: What was your guiding philosophy for working with Superman as a character of The Adventures of Superman?
JOE CASEY: I've always seen Superman as this completely over-the-top, fantastic character who has *no* limits whatsoever. He's an icon, an idea, a concept... and I didn't want to spend time adhering to Handbook-style stats when it came to his abilities.
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Pardon? Superman has no limits whatsoever? Yeah, right. And he’s "millions of times stronger than Thor," too. I learned my lesson the last time: Pros can be just like fans … in love with their favorite characters and prone to demonstrating that love by speaking in poetic, larger-than-life terms about the objects of their affection. It’s happy, harmless hyperbole—there’s nothing odious about it, it’s endearing, actually. But it’s not to be taken literally, right? I’m mean, sure, Casey did tell me that, when it comes to Superman, "Let's just say Superman gets one helluva power upgrade when *I'm* writing his adventures," but there’s still gotta be a limit, yeah?
I mean, come on … with no limits, Superman would be unbeatable, but that can’t be what Casey meant, can it? I mean, even Casey’s most powerful incarnation of Superman—the one who went mentally AWOL in ADVENTURES 594 and then tore through an army of previously-unbeatable foes "with little resistance"—even that Superman has his limits, right?
So, I started thinking up names—names of characters who, according to this guy or that gal or the hermie over there, could certainly give even that Superman a defeat (even if I, personally, didn’t think so). And then I asked Casey point blank:
"Who can beat Superman when he goes into that unconscious ‘Probe-busting mode’ as he did in ADVENTURES 594?"
And then I threw out the names, and assumed he’d think I was just being silly:
RC: Juggernaut? Doomsday? Galactus? No one short of Imperiex himself?
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And then he laid down the law, simple as that.
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JOE CASEY: At that point, Superman is unbeatable. Had he not snapped out of it when Doomsday got fried, he might’ve been able to stop Imperiex right then and there.
VS
MZ: Since Thor has the Odinforce and is more powerful than his father, is he stronger than the Green Scar?GP: All I can say is that if I were Thor, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the Sentry’s place during the climactic battle in “World War Hulk” #5.
😖hifty: