Superman vs. Wonder Woman and Power Girl

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
Do you have any explanation for why Superman would be so much more powerful than Power Girl or Supergirl at times? Logically, should not their relative power levels, whatever they truly are, remain essentially the same? If Superman can access dynamic power, shouldn't they be able to as well?
And if Superman is truly, when all the gloves have been dropped, that much more powerful than Peege or Supergirl, do you have an explanation for why? In the case of Supergirl, Superman hasn't even been exposed to more sunlight, right? She was supercharged during her entire voyage to Earth, if I recall.

At least Byrne version was.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
It could be. But I'm curious if there have been any attempts, in comics or by outside (by writers, editors, etc.) to explain this.

I was half-joking, but anyways Superman's dynamic factor has largely been explained as him holding back to the point of suppressing his powers, because he grew up always fearing to hurt someone. Loeb, who definitely went this route, had explained that Kara initially came off as superior to him because she didn't have the control over his powers that he did. Really, none of the other Kryptonians would have that. They just started developing their powers and weren't raised like Clark was.

Also, while Kara was exposed to solar energy via those panels, it never really was clear how much she took in, as she seemed to still be developing her powers when she came to Earth, like Clark noting surprise she had X-Ray vision.

Originally posted by abhilegend
Superman is perfect kryptonian. He is essentially captain america of kryptonians.

At least Byrne version was.

Another writer alluded something similar with Eradicator saying "Kal-El's perfect Kryptonian form" or something like that.

All possible and interesting hypotheses. Thanks. It should be noted that some writers have gone further along the dynamic powers route, suggesting Superman somehow absorbs more sunlight when he gets emotional. One would think that all Kryptonians can do that.
Loeb took the "holding back aspect" and added in the mentally regulated powers angle, with maybe a touch of Byrne's psionic take (though not referenced as such). But whatever the concoction, it was potently dynamic.
With Loeb, there was holding back. But it didn't necessarily seem that there was some kind of realizable upper limit that he'd hit if he just stopped all holding back. He had an element of mystery there--of Superman potentially having nearly unlimited power. But never explained that part.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
All possible and interesting hypotheses. Thanks. It should be noted that some writers have gone further along the dynamic powers route, suggesting Superman somehow absorbs more sunlight when he gets emotional. One would think that all Kryptonians can do that.

UP, UP AND AWAY by Busiek and Johns actually basically covered this, although it wasn't explicitly said.

When Superman was powerless for a year, his body, despite still being Kryptonian, simply wasn't absorbing sunlight.

When Clark was being chased by a couple villains sent by Intergang, he was on the run. Possibly running faster than he normally could without powers.

He gets hit by Neutron's blast, but thinks he's mistaken, as his arm should have been blown off if he was hit.

Gets to the train station, falls down, and can't get up and out of the way in time.

OH NO!! Oh, wait.

He's fine, and left a hand shaped dent where the train ran into it.

What else? When Lois found out, he goes over there wasn't anything you'd expect to bring his powers back, no experiments to restore them, no solar flares, ect. He says he thinks they were starting to come back, and he thinks he let them come back.

Talks about his powers are only partially back.

Again, talking about his powers only partially being back, and what he knows he can do. He still can't fly. That's important.

And note that he's getting hurt by those bullets. Nothing major, but they are causing injury. This will be important later.

Anyways, he faces a group of his villains sent by Intergang.

Here, he notes he can fly again, but it's shaky. And he needs something else to push his powers up again.

Annnnnnnnnd--

--Jimmy being in danger did it!!

He continues fighting Intergang.

Remember when I said to note earlier that bullets were hurting him? Yep, Bloodsport noted it too. Brought up those bullets hurt him, so the more powerful rounds he's going to use "--ought to punch your heart clean out!!" What do they do?

Nothing. But note Superman's head feels strange. Well, suddenly.....

....yeah, his mind is upgraded. His senses seem to be too, as he notes he should have been braced for Silver Banshee but was distracted by "turbulence in Akron." And he gets tactical.

Anyways, I would assume as he started with his body not absorbing solar energy, and his powers just come back partially, and keep jumping up as needed, I would guess his absorption of solar energy takes a jump as well.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
Loeb took the "holding back aspect" and added in the mentally regulated powers angle, with maybe a touch of Byrne's psionic take (though not referenced as such). But whatever the concoction, it was potently dynamic.
With Loeb, there was holding back. But it didn't necessarily seem that there was some kind of realizable upper limit that he'd hit if he just stopped all holding back. He had an element of mystery there--of Superman potentially having nearly unlimited power. But never explained that part.

Byrne did intend it and write it as at least partially telekinetic in nature, but he wasn't allowed to directly show it, as he said on his own website(can't remember if it was the FAQ, his message board, or both). But yeah, most writers(if any) didn't actually follow it being TK based, but there certainly were ones who kept the dynamic angle in tact. His mind effecting his absorption/regulation of solar energy is as much an explanation as any.

As for limit, Byrne on his own site said he had Superman be "as strong as he believes he is!!" and, I think it was Byrne(was the era, but it might have been whoever else was a Superman writer at the time) had a narration implying his strength was limited only by his will. Not that I'm going to use the No Limits Fallacy, just pointing-out that's Byrne's take on Superman, and it shows Superman's power being dynamic were from the beginning of Post-CRISIS era.

Of course, all the haters will totally disregard all direct evidence, implications and writer statements just to cling to their precious preconceived notions of Superman and justify saying, "No all heroes are as strong as they need to be, Superman is nothing special." 🙄

To be fair, the scans of powerless and semi-powerless Superman only show the "mentally regulated" aspect of his power. One could argue that they just mean he can suppress his powers below his normal limit, but don't indicate he can exceed his "limits", i.e. that he can absorb more sunlight than normal. There are, however, other scenes that do show or imply just that.
People who say Superman is just like other heroes when it comes to the dynamism of his power levels are idiots. On the other hand, one doesn't want to go too far and join the idiot crowd by proclaiming that there is some hard consensus on Superman's dynamism, or how it works. There isn't. One needs to be careful and moderate here, sticking to the evidence.
The real underlying truth is that there is a fundamental conflict at the heart of Superman's mythos. On the one hand, a core element of the Superman mythos is the real burden Superman carries on account of his unique power levels. The world depends on him--he is the last line of defense. He has a unique responsibility. And more importantly, the world depends on him showing restraint. If he loses his way morally, or were to be controlled somehow, stopping him would be a huge problem. (His mythos has some strange similarities to the Hulk's when looked at in certain ways.) And part of what makes Superman so good is the temptation he must resist--and thankfully does resist--to simply impose his own will.
This aspect of Superman's mythos worked best when he was the only Superhero. And this is why Kryptonite and his other weaknesses exist. And why people like Batman were given some Green K.
But one can see the obvious problem with integrating this aspect of Superman's mythos into a shared universe, with other top-tier heroes, while preserving some semblance of realistic logic and consistency. None of the above aspects of Superman's mythos really work, or even make sense, when he has peers (or even near-peers) in power. Why do you need Green K to stop him? Just call Wonder Woman. Or if you make Superman consistently and clearly the top dog (but only by a small margin), then just call Wonder Woman, Shazam, the Martian Manhunter, Orion, Black Adam, and everyone else to work together, either put Superman down or save the world when Superman can't.
You can solve the above problem by simply granting Superman a consistently huge power advantage over all other heroes. But this can make him unwieldy for writers. And difficult to add to teams. Still, you could probably write around that, if you wanted. But the truth is that writers don't always want to do that. There are many Superman stories they want to tell that work best when he is at best first among equals.
So comics being comics, writers have for a long time simply ignored the logical contradictions and written the Superman that they want and need for the story at hand. Most Superman stories feature the first-among-equals Superman. But a smaller subset--though a consistently recurring one--of Superman stories features the superhero-to-other-superheroes Superman.
Sometimes, like in the King of the World arc, the clear inconsistency between these two types of Superman portrayals is not explained. However, over the years some writers, likely worried that readers can only suspend disbelief so far, tried to explain the above inconsistency--tried to create a mechanism that allows them to have their cake and eat it to; that allows them to use both types of Superman without there being a logical inconsistency. And that is the root cause of Superman's uniquely fluctuating power levels. At the end of the day, panels in comics are precious and not to be wasted. Words even more so. Writers just want to get on with it, and write the story they want, with the Superman they need. Moreover, no one wants to write themselves into a box, limiting future stories. As a result, the exact nature of Superman's dynamism is rarely spelled out with complete specificity. It's vague by design. And there is no real consensus on even the admittedly vague specifics.
But when all is said and done, there's no denying the fact of what has happened. Sure, other heroes also have their crazy moments where they seem to jump a weight class or two. But these happen far less frequently than with Superman. And with few, if any, attempts to explain and codify the reasons or dynamic. Superman's mythos has relatively unique requirements in this respect, and as a result, --whatever the in-comics explanation (or lack of explanation)--Superman ultimately has a fairly unique track record with respect to wildly varying power levels. That's simply been the case, and I imagine will continue to be the case. There's no denying it, though I realize that this makes for a problematic phenomenon for battleboarders to account for. But nobody ever said writers write to make our lives easy.

TL;DR.

But what I did read, the fact that he started out not just powerless, but his body failing to absorb solar energy, then he suddenly has partial powers, and then later, goes from partial powers, to flight partially back, to back to normal, to his mind upgraded, all individual jumps in the course of a fight, indicates a jump in solar absorption.

And a number of people argue Superman's "just like any other hero who overcomes the odds," most of which pretend to be knowledgeable about Superman, but prove not to be.

It's no longer than the aggregate length of maybe the last three posts you have made, all of which are still on this page. So tl;dr??
Fair enough, but that pretty much limits our discussion. Perhaps I'll simply divide such posts into separate posts in the future. *shrug*

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
It's no longer than the aggregate length of maybe the last three posts you have made, all of which are still on this page. So tl;dr??
Fair enough, but that pretty much limits our discussion. Perhaps I'll simply divide such posts into separate posts in the future. *shrug*

It's not that long, it's just the formatting makes it look like a big wall of text.

Fair enough. It's formatted like a book, but maybe in forums a clear space between paragraphs is de rigeur.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
Fair enough. It's formatted like a book, but maybe in forums a clear space between paragraphs is de rigeur.

Generally so. It's just easier on the eye. Doesn't bother me however a post is formatted but that's the general reason people will say TL;DR.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
It's no longer than the aggregate length of maybe the last three posts you have made, all of which are still on this page. So tl;dr??
Fair enough, but that pretty much limits our discussion. Perhaps I'll simply divide such posts into separate posts in the future. *shrug*

Well, I had to make it 3 posts because of the limits on how many images you can put. I really didn't write that much for what I did. Most(not all) images/groups of images took one or two moderate to long sentences, and then a few moderate paragraphs at the end replying to you.

You on the other hand wrote multiple large, very dense paragraphs. Maybe I would've read it if it was better broken up. But to be honest, we've gone over this before. The basis of what you want to do serves its purpose, but the degree you take it to is way too far for me, sucks out all the fun, and honestly this generally isn't the place for it.

You seem like a nice guy and sometimes what you have to say I think is fairly relevant to whatever the topic, so I won't put you on ignore or just completely skip by everything you post(although I'll likely just skim unless it catches my attention), but, and this isn't meant with any offense, don't expect me to engage you too long in what you'd rather do than debate.

Originally posted by Delta1938
The basis of what you want to do serves its purpose, but the degree you take it to is way too far for me, sucks out all the fun, and honestly this generally isn't the place for it.

That makes sense. And I've been trying to adapt. I thought that at this point the debate had stopped, particularly about the OP, and now we were having more of a discussion about dynamic power.
But re-reading, I see that the debate never stops! And your phrase "sucks out all the fun" is quite telling. I've intuited this before, and even expressed it. But now I see it more clearly. Debate and scoring points--and I don't mean this pejoratively--is always what this place is about. It's not really about getting as close to the truth as we can, because that's really hard with comics, and why work that hard about something that doesn't really matter. It's more about the give and take, and the fun to be had in scoring points. Makes sense.

Originally posted by Pillow Biter
That makes sense. And I've been trying to adapt. I thought that at this point the debate had stopped, particularly about the OP, and now we were having more of a discussion about dynamic power.
But re-reading, I see that the debate never stops! And your phrase "sucks out all the fun" is quite telling. I've intuited this before, and even expressed it. But now I see it more clearly. Debate and scoring points--and I don't mean this pejoratively--is always what this place is about. It's not really about getting as close to the truth as we can, because that's really hard with comics, and why work that hard about something that doesn't really matter. It's more about the give and take, and the fun to be had in scoring points. Makes sense.

Maybe I'll give it another try when I'm on my computer again later(definitely not on my phone; everything seems longer on there, weird). But really, writers will write whatever they want/need/both so, while there certainly are exceptions, going over things to that degree is generally unnecessary at best as compared to just using the evidence.

And this place IS called "Comic Book VERSUS Forum" for a reason. 😄

All good, Delta. I get you now, and no sweat. I disagree with the blanket characterization of comics as things that writers will write any way they want, at any time. This may be true, at the end of the day. But there are patterns in what they will do, and more importantly, in how they will do it. It's not random chaos. And in these patterns and trends lie the real truth, or as close to it as we can get.
At any rate, I get you--and I had gotten you already. I thought that this here was something different. But it wasn't. My mistake. Carry on. My bad.

Every character shows strength above what they've previously shown though. It depends on the writer and the plot. Wolverine, Spidermanx Thor, Thing, etc...has shown the ability to go beyond their previous self. It's called not holding back any longer which means you will exceed what was shown during the time you did hold back.

The difference is, they don't have mental dampeners to block them from ever using their full strength.?

Superman holds back too. His mechanism of doing it is different than everyone.

That's a retcon btw 🙂

Originally posted by quanchi112
The girls do whip his ass. They simply overwhelm him.

This doesn't fit with the godlike status Supes seems to be granted here.