Originally posted by leonidas
yeah, you could be right. mandy is a tough guy to go against. maybe it's just that he never really seems to use the rings in the best possible ways. i've always liked him for his potential, and when the rings went sentient i thought maybe we'd finally see their powers unleashed. and we did, sorta. but mandy never seems to make full use. if he did, he's kick a$$. i think it's because i find him a bit underwhelming that i give AM the majority, though by rights i think you're right, mandy should be able to take him. he just needs some decent wins maybe.
I think Mandarin kind of suffers from the same problem as Thor, in that his weapon competes with his personal abilities for story-space.
Thor has plenty of showings where his weather-control looks far less impressive than Storm's, but his strength is clearly Hulk-class.
Thor has a handful of showings where his weather-control is insanely cosmic, but you wouldn't guess his strength was any higher than Thing's based on what is shown.
The Mandarin has kind of a similar problem in that his superhuman chi-channeling martial arts abilities, his rings, and his prep all compete for story-space.
In the Knaufs's story, you wouldn't know the rings were a big deal at all, because both his superhuman martial arts abilities and his prep are played up.
In the Byrne story, you wouldn't know he is good at prep or possesses superhuman martial arts abilities at all, because the rings are really played up as cosmically powerful.
In the Busiek story, you would never guess that his rings were powerful at all, or that he had superhuman martial arts abilities, because the story is completely about his prep, i.e. the Dragon of Heaven.
It's almost impossible to write a coherent story that gives all three major aspects of his character full credit. So something always gets toned down.