Let me hasten to point out* that it must be impossible to sucker-punch Superman -- f'r chrissakes, he can hear or smell you coming from around the world!

*If someone else has already made this point, I apologize for my redundancy, but, my Ghod, this thread is four freakin' pages long --oh, I've just lengthened it, haven't I?

Hey, JB -- what happens in a fight between Juggernaut and the Blob?

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If JB answered this with all the detail we'd all love him to, I bet his ideas would be stolen in a heartbeat.

> It's not Superman's strength levels that are at issue, here. Superman could be the weakest fish in the bowl, but he'd still be invulnerable. That's a whole different thing from his super strength.

But if Superman can  knock himself out -- i.e., KO a character with his same level of invulnerability, but those other guys cannot do that to him, wouldn't that necesarily make Superman a lot stronger?  If Superman was no stronger than those other dudes, he'd never be able to KO someone in his invulnerability range, it would seem to me.

_FR

>Is superman truly invulnerable to injury?

Nope.  No one is.  It's all relative.  But if Superman is too invulnerable to be knocked out by the likes of Wonderman and Doc Samson, but not too invulnerable to be knocked out by himself ... then wouldn't he have to be much stronger than those guys?  Wouldn't Doomsday, too?

_FR

Who, in the same range, has Superman "KOed"?

Fun discussion.

 I certainly agree that Doc Samson should  be in the 50-70 ton lifting range, rather than the lower level they put him in with the Deluxe Edition, even though lifting 25 tons is nothing to shake a stick at. Even at that level, it is concievable that he could knock out the Hulk with such a perfectly placed sucker-punch. I also loved that pic, definately one of the best, and shocking punch scenes of all time; great work JB!

As far as the DC vs. Marvel power levels go, I always like to think that they are similar, even though many, many things within DC constantly prove them to be stronger. But in my little world, Superman would be in the class 100 strength category, and roughly the same as guys like Hulk and Thor. As far as invulnerability goes, the only thing that I think could match up with Superman from the Marvel Universe would be the Juggernaut. And on that subject, I absolutely hated that one-punch defeat of Juggernaut by Superman in that amalgam crap comic. I think that this would be one hell of a fight, with Superman just edging Juggernaut out, but taking some serious lumps from the big guy.

No way does Blob stand a chance against Juggernaut.

Guess I missed that one --- in the same way whoever wrote it apparently missed that Juggernaut's powers are magical!

> Who, in the same range, has Superman "KOed"?

I put Doomsday, Russian Zod, Cyborg Superman and  Bizarro in that range: Doomsday killed Superman, Zod broke Superman's jaw in one hit and KOed him in space, Cyborg has all the powers that Superman had pre-resurrection, and Bizarro has always been said to be Superman's equal, his "imperfection" nothwithstanding.  And Superman has knocked them out -- some of them easily.  In addition, the Probes of Imperiex were actually more powerful than Superman until he channeled more of his inner strength than he knew was possible ... once he did, he ripped those things to shreds, whereas, before, he could barely stand against one of them even with Mongul's planning, training and assistance.

So, if he could knock those guys out, wouldn't that make him significantly stronger than beings who couldn't knock out people "in Superman's range"?   And that doesn't even take into consideration the sort of raw strength that Superman typically demonstrates in his books.  I rarely, if ever, see Marvel characters achieve feats of strength equal in magnitude to what Superman does.  I'd have to dig back 40 or so years to find more than a handful of examples of, say, Thor lifting over 100 tons -- or completely overstate the significance of some modern out-of-left-field feat above that mark.  With Superman?   I see stuff like that all the time: Lifting mountains, benching skyscrapers, etc.

Heck, in my opinion, even if you transitively applied all the 100 tons plus feats of the entire Marvel universe to, say, Thor, they still wouldn't amount to more than the smallest percentage of the power demonstrations in his continuity.  And, personally, that's how I judge a character's powers -- by what's most common in his continuity.  By trends and such. 

_FR

But in my little world, Superman would be in the class 100 strength category

Superman is simply a light year beyond class 100. In book 1 of All Star Superman he is told after a recent exposure to the sun his strength had tripled and he was able to lift in advance of 200 Quintillion Tons. Now i have no idea what that is or what a third of this would be (normal strength) but it is thousands of tons.