Originally posted by leonidas
correct. full capacity doesn't include blatant outliers. and yes, even for Batman, beating up the jla in cqc IS an outlier. so is moving ftl. the whole discussion has been a microcosm of every argument in the history of kmc lol he can fight at full capacity! what's his/her full capacity? it's this! no it isn't that's pis! rinse repeat for every thread. ever. it really does feel like a lot of very obvious things have needed to be said in this thread. :/
Outliers =/= PIS, though. I think you are getting the two mixed up.
Outliers are showings that are still possible, even though they're not seen in every showing, to me. Superman benching the earth for 5 days, Wally outracing Death, WBH breaking planets, that kinda thing.
PIS is just that, PIS.
You seem - and again, I am obviously very slow these past few days - to be saying Batman's feats are NOT PIS, but they ARE outliers, and you personally don't use outliers.
Originally posted by DarkSaint85I should have added that this is the same reasoning for Pr saying Deathstroke doesn't count.
And this is what I am referring to this entire time. I take his point and understand it - WW isn't suddenly human street level because of Batman - but this is because Batman is Batman.A special case.
If you were right about how this worked, then the same would apply to him. And it makes sense, after all, since he has similar showings against Wonder Woman and Green Lantern as the ones you're citing for Batman. And Batman has his showings against Heat vision and hiding from Supes; but then, Slade has tagged Wally multiple times.
Pr has said that neither of them "count" for looking at a herald's full capacity. Are you really going to say that it means that none of those feats are PIS?
Originally posted by Smurph
I should have added that this is the same reasoning for Pr saying Deathstroke doesn't count.If you were right about how this worked, then the same would apply to him. And it makes sense, after all, since he has similar showings against Wonder Woman and Green Lantern as the ones you're citing for Batman. And Batman has his showings against Heat vision and hiding from Supes; but then, Slade has tagged Wally multiple times.
Pr has said that neither of them "count" for looking at a herald's full capacity. Are you really going to say that it means that none of those feats are PIS?
Except you missed out the direct questions where Alberto asked if Batman's showings against heralds was PIS, in athread specifically created to ask that question:
Originally posted by AlbertoJohnAvil
Showings like these doesn't sound PIS to you guys?Grundy, Wonder Woman, Aquaman etc
Originally posted by -Pr-
No. There's a small group of Streets and Low Metas that, due to popularity, routinely punch above their weight.It's just one of those suspension of disbelief things we have to deal with in comics.
Thankfully on the forum we don't have to do the same.
Unless I am misreading it, and he's saying it IS plot driven, but at the same time saying it isn't PIS.
Originally posted by DarkSaint85You seem - and again, I am obviously very slow these past few days - to be saying Batman's feats are NOT PIS, but they ARE outliers, and you personally don't use outliers.
I think that's a pretty fair assessment. pis to me indicates the writers have done something so egregious that it makes no sense in any way when viewing a character and his/her history. Batman moving ftl isn't an outlier. it's pis. outliers need to be looked at on an individual basis and of course personal interpretation comes into play. one person's outlier will be another's pis. when dealing with Batman, he has many many outlier feats and in general i'm willing to extend his range out outliers beyond what I normally might. like I would for Logan. and cap. and spiderman. but of course that doesn't preclude any of them from obvious cases of pis. arguing full capacity vs outlier vs pis has been the crux of every extended thread in history lol
Re: Pr, I think he's saying "look, we have a sophisticated understanding of the comics and we know this happens with certain street levelers, too often to ignore as part of their character" but (per the last sentence of his post "thankfully on the forum we don't have to [bend to the force of character popularity]"
It's the Leo approach of, "I'm not saying it's all PIS but also, that's not how it would go on the forum".
As I said, when it comes to certain discrete things like dodging HV, there's little distinction between strictly inadmissible and so noncredible that it gets zero weight.
And (in an attempt to head off the circularity in the discussion) if the next question is "well where's the line?", what Leo and I have been advocating forever (and I think Pr says this is one of the fundamental rules) is that we go with established character. And that's not always easy to figure out -- we can certainly have a debate, for instance, about whether bullet timing falls within Elektra's -- but sometimes it is very simple.
Which is why I was dickish to Abhi for this comment:
Originally posted by abhilegend
This forum refused to accept Superman's FTL feats for over a decade, you think it would accept Batman's?
Like, is this sincere? Of course the forum refuses to accept Batman's FTL feats... because Batman isn't FTL. Be serious.
This is thankfully not a hard one to figure out. FTL? So far beyond Batman's established character that it's non credible. Or inadmissible - idrc.
Originally posted by SmurphI apologize in advance since I have so little time to post and have a discussion, that I'm essentially behind by quite a few pages, so the point that what we're talking about might be irrelevant. I'll try to stay a bit here today to talk, otherwise I'm just prolonging an 1800s letter-by-pigeon type of discussion which is just awful and I can't engage in anymore, lol.
I don't have an answer to that question because it seems impossible to answer in a vacuum. Like I said, I think each feat should be assessed in its own context.Is there an on-the-line feat for a character like Bats that you're thinking of? I don't think moving at the speed of HV (or close to) is anywhere remotely near "the line".
It's not a vacuum, the context would be that it's Batman and there should be a hypotetical upper limit of movement speed that you would consider non-PIS, where he would be faster than Elektra. What would that speed be defined as? Would he reacting to Flash moving at around low-machs be enough? In the end, just to know where I'm coming from - it's also hard for me to gauge a PIS standard/boundary that is ill-defined besides "Elektra is not PIS" because, for me, both of the feats are on the aforementioned absurdity scale - so from my perspective both of these are in the same category, it just so happens that Batman's are simply better [or more absurd].
Bullet-timing, while understandably a "cool moment, Neo is the one" type of stuff, is just [and I know this word is overused] arbitrary line drawn. We can say that bullets are too fast so it has to be PIS, arrows are closer to acceptable. We can say no, bullets are too low, mach-5 is where it's at. Perhaps we can even say that all feats are usable, so let's see how many "PIS feats" does Elektra have to compare - and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps we can say that, while reacting and moving against various lightspeed (+) attacks like heat vision, Omega Sanction, GL blasts and the like are not useful for a "hard number", dismissing them entirely instead of informing us "writers are portraying him fast as shit, you don't see many characters doing this" might be another way to go. I'm not even saying that I have an opinion on how the best way to tackle this is [in fact, our opinion on Batman/Elektra is probably within the the margin of error], but I don't think "let's discuss bullet timings" is quite the way to really see who is portrayed as faster. And it's not because Batman doesn't have them, he's dodged bullets after they're fired just by sensing them from behind:
Also without even seeing the trigger being pulled:
Looking at them come:
Has randomly punched bullets:
And then again, he's a dude in full body armor, dressed to fight Justice League villains, not a sexy ninja [...and I'm talking about Matt, not Elektra] whose primary weapon against bullets is a Sai.
That’s kind of the thing. Batman is an A lister leader figure among the most powerful heros in the multiverse, and all the heros recognize it/respect it and all the villains largely respect/fear him. He just plays another level among the broader universe compared to nearly any other street leveler, even while the Gotham stories do tend to be a bit more grounded typically.
No worries about needing time for all the things more important than this.
Your question was:
how high do you think a feat from Batman could go, before you consider it PIS?
I think the best answer I can give is that the line is crossed when it goes inconceivably beyond the core of his established character.
And I know that might sound like a weasel lawyer answer (sorry). I don't have a mph or other specific speed to offer--but that's because comic book characters are like living documents, constantly changing. It would be backwards to say "a feat beyond this number would be impossible for Batman" because if Batman performed a feat at that number and, in all the context etc it passed the smell test, then the core of Batman's character would meaningfully shift, however marginally, and the number would be wrong. If he can deflect a handgun bullet, why not a machine gun bullet? A high powered sniper? It's not all about bullets, they're just a useful tangible example with a spectrum of speed.
Comic books are like shifting sands so I don't think the line in the sand should dictate the character; rather, the character shifts the line.
That said, I don't put stock in feats that skew the core of Batman beyond all credulity. And I mean that based on an understanding of what Batman can do, not an h1- like approach of substituting real human capabilities into the equation.
The "beyond all credulity" part includes looking at the facts and context of the feat, not just the magnitude of it. So, for example, the feat DS has been posting about Batman dodging Hal's beam isn't PIS solely because Batman simply isn't that fast (or remotely near that fast). That would probably be enough on its own, but also, Batman: Confidential is an anthology series comparatively removed from editorial constraints and the fight itself should give a new reader the impression that the JLA are severely intellectually disabled.
Conversely, I love the feat of Batman surviving the fall from space. I don't know enough of the science to independently evaluate exactly how outrageous the feat is (and maybe learning that would change my view) but at least the writing is much stronger, which helps with the "smell test" notion. Maybe I just really like Zdarsky. But anyways, the day before I read that comic I could have told you that Batman couldn't do that feat, so that's what I mean when I say it's a mistake to name a specific line in the sand when the sands shift by their nature.
And in an effort to close with something more definitive:
--I don't think the "core of Batman's character" precludes the possibility of feats that make him faster than Elektra. The "line" is not defined by Elektra.
--I don't think it's all about bullet feats, they're just useful.
--I think three of the feats you posted are more impressive than any of the other Bat speed feats posted so far in this thread. I'd seen the Freeze sniper one before but forgot about it. I don't think I've seen the bullet punch (that's why I asked Juntai what he was referring to) or the third feat.
There's also the showing with multiple bullets:
Though less impressive in terms of fancy visuals, him being in a group setting I think also helps.
And this is a bit arguable - but from counting the 'BLAM's, it looks like the first three hit the wall behind him, then he grabbed the tray and blocked two shots AFTER the second group of bullets was fired:
Originally posted by SmurphFair enough, at this point we're into subjective values and how much value we put/don't put on certain feats. 👆
And in an effort to close with something more definitive:--I don't think the "core of Batman's character" precludes the possibility of feats that make him faster than Elektra. The "line" is not defined by Elektra.
--I don't think it's all about bullet feats, they're just useful.
--I think three of the feats you posted are more impressive than any of the other Bat speed feats posted so far in this thread. I'd seen the Freeze sniper one before but forgot about it. I don't think I've seen the bullet punch (that's why I asked Juntai what he was referring to) or the third feat.