Dr. Doomsday vs Thanos

[The Dork Knight]

I suppose I always thought MM was a more powerful telepath than Brainiac.

Braniac actually outright states he's better than Jonn in the comic

Anyway taking on and beating Kyle and the JLA and the likes of Jonn and Orion in under a minute is pretty up there in terms of physical oomph as is. Doesn't make him immune to Kyle's more esoteric attacks or anything but that combined with the performance against the Impereix probes should give him the sheer physicality to even compete with Thanos, something most folks this side of Silver Age Superman just straight up lack

[Guy Smiley]

1) Almost certainly Thanos, unless Doom's considered to have standard equipment to deal with Thanos' esoterics.

2) Doomprep deals with the esoterics and allows him to make a really good fight of it.

I don't actually know about that. Peak Doomsday basically treated the Morrison era JLA like wet tissue, which is pretty Thanos-y for sheer brickness. He also adapted to counter things like phasing on the fly, so transmutation seems questionable without Sentry level power backing it up. (Thanos may be a Sentry class foe, but I don't think he has that level of transmutation.) Telepathy seems unlikely given Dooms will power. Thanos's go to move when fighting bricks that are strong enough to not be worth the bother is teleportation. I feel pretty confident Doom can himself teleport with everything else he has.

Would Victor's force fields stack with inherent durability like Lantern's does? Or would this basically be a super durable brick padded in a light layer of bubble wrap?

The big issue is I can't think of anything Doctor Doomsday could do to Thanos without prep. He can slug it out with him, but he ain't dropping the Mad Titan with his fists. So unless DDD can figure out how to induce some sort of Drax style anti Thanos power evolution on the fly, I would guess eventually Thanos tears off the armor and tech and then dumps him into a black hole.

So, here's the thing - Doomsday's evolution power is explicitly explained as a biological process being performed by his cells. I'd buy that he could cobble up a transmutation resistance power if he was partially exposed, or was turned into a coatrack and then changed back, but Thanos should be able to completely turn Doomsday into an adamantium statue if he wanted, which would prevent Doomsday from exerting the biological processes required to evolve in the first place. (And yeah, I know, it's comics, where that wouldn't be a guarantee of anything, but to my recollection HPDD doesn't actually have a feat of being transmuted and evolving past it to counteract the argument.) Thanos's offensive transmutation is, IIRC, one of his Eternal molecular control abilities focused offensively in a manner similar to Sersi. He isn't leaving a cell behind like you could argue a beam might.

That said, I don't know if Thanos can do it through Doom's forcefields. He might need to breach them first, which could be trickier if DDD decides to play keep-away instead of closing for melee.

Also in question is whether Thanos can rig up a continuous teleport. One of the ways DD was dealt with was getting put in a form of teleport stasis, where he was shunted into a network of teleport arrays which just continually teleported him, preventing him from evolving by just never giving him any time to do so in. If he was capable of capturing Doom-Doom in a similar trap, it'd prevent Doom from actually activating any way to teleport out, since he wouldn't have time for his neurons to fire or his armor's computers to activate.

Doom's forcefields might be worth something here. They've no-sold stuff like Thor flinging Mjolnir at him before. It's saying something when Sentry tearing through them in a few seconds is considered a relevant feat for Sentry. That said, we usually put Sentry at around Thanos levels of power, so they're probably only buying DDD a few seconds of time in the first fight too. (In fight 2, Doomprep might include finding a few cosmic power sources to link to them, significantly increasing the duration they could put up with that kind of punishment.)

[Captain Morgan]

1) Almost certainly Thanos, unless Doom's considered to have standard equipment to deal with Thanos' esoterics.

2) Doomprep deals with the esoterics and allows him to make a really good fight of it.




So, here's the thing - Doomsday's evolution power is explicitly explained as a biological process being performed by his cells. I'd buy that he could cobble up a transmutation resistance power if he was partially exposed, or was turned into a coatrack and then changed back, but Thanos should be able to completely turn Doomsday into an adamantium statue if he wanted, which would prevent Doomsday from exerting the biological processes required to evolve in the first place. (And yeah, I know, it's comics, where that wouldn't be a guarantee of anything, but to my recollection HPDD doesn't actually have a feat of being transmuted and evolving past it to counteract the argument.) Thanos's offensive transmutation is, IIRC, one of his Eternal molecular control abilities focused offensively in a manner similar to Sersi. He isn't leaving a cell behind like you could argue a beam might.

That said, I don't know if Thanos can do it through Doom's forcefields. He might need to breach them first, which could be trickier if DDD decides to play keep-away instead of closing for melee.

Also in question is whether Thanos can rig up a continuous teleport. One of the ways DD was dealt with was getting put in a form of teleport stasis, where he was shunted into a network of teleport arrays which just continually teleported him, preventing him from evolving by just never giving him any time to do so in. If he was capable of capturing Doom-Doom in a similar trap, it'd prevent Doom from actually activating any way to teleport out, since he wouldn't have time for his neurons to fire or his armor's computers to activate.

Doom's forcefields might be worth something here. They've no-sold stuff like Thor flinging Mjolnir at him before. It's saying something when Sentry tearing through them in a few seconds is considered a relevant feat for Sentry. That said, we usually put Sentry at around Thanos levels of power, so they're probably only buying DDD a few seconds of time in the first fight too. (In fight 2, Doomprep might include finding a few cosmic power sources to link to them, significantly increasing the duration they could put up with that kind of punishment.)

You're probably right about Thanos's transmutation working on Doomsday. I'm skeptical that it would work on Doctor Doomsday though, given Victor's level of esoterics and magic. Transmutation is a common enough power to where I'd be a little flabbergasted if he didn't have a counter-measure built in by now.

[Pendaran]

Anyway taking on and beating Kyle and the JLA and the likes of Jonn and Orion in under a minute is pretty up there in terms of physical oomph as is. Doesn't make him immune to Kyle's more esoteric attacks or anything but that combined with the performance against the Impereix probes should give him the sheer physicality to even compete with Thanos, something most folks this side of Silver Age Superman just straight up lack

I'm not inclined to put a lot of stock in anything that happened in OWAW for anything, given stuff like Superman outperforming the entire JLA combined even before a sundip.

[The Arbiter]

I'm not inclined to put a lot of stock in anything that happened in OWAW for anything, given stuff like Superman outperforming the entire JLA combined even before a sundip.

Ill agree that OWAW was a meh comic. I think that Dork Knight was probably just suggesting that DD's presentation as a nigh unstoppable brick was upheld nicely.

Nor does OWAW invalidate any of DD's other showings

[The Arbiter]

Actually, I am curious; where do we draw the line in regards to throwing out feats or performances for characters in a comic we feel was sub par?

Like, do we really ignore everyone's feats and such in OWAW simply because supes (and later Kyle) were over-performing? We don't throw out other peoples feats when their supporting characters underperformed (looks at Flash).

I'm not even trying to be confrontational. Just genuinely curious. Mind you there may be more that happened in OWAW that I am not remembering.

[Pendaran]

It certainly puts at the very least a question mark on the entire sequence when it seems to come down to having existed for no other reason that to service a couple of characters at best at the mind boggling expense of their usual peers.

[The Arbiter]

It certainly puts at the very least a question mark on the entire sequence when it seems to come down to having existed for no other reason that to service a couple of characters at best at the mind boggling expense of their usual peers.

I don't even disagree with this. Well, not exactly anyways.

It did seem like it was an excuse to hype supes, but at the time of OWAW weren't they actually acknowledging that in-comic? Like Mongul Jr. was intentionally training supes and he was stating "I can feel my powers surging!" and such? If anything it's almost frustrating that later authors decided to ignore what seemed to be an intentional power up.

[Pendaran]

I'm pretty cool with later authors ignoring one dude's endless obsession with proclaiming that Superman could beat up the entire JLA put together like nothing if he really wanted to. I don't much find "he wanted it harder" his supposed "mental blocks" or "dynamic strength" as particularly grand excuses. It's more frustrating that they tried to slide that in in the first place.

[The Arbiter]

So how big of a question mark do we slap on other characters performances in OWAW simply because Supes was over performing due to a plot acknowledged attempt at a power up?

Do we throw them out?

[Alan2099]

So how big of a question mark do we slap on other characters performances in OWAW simply because Supes was over performing due to a plot acknowledged attempt at a power up?

Do we throw them out?

There's no set rule. It's really a case by case thing, and even then people will disagree on it.

Now typically you try to ignore the one or two ridiculous feats that puts a character way over what their power limit or skill set is supposed to be, but it's a very hard one to enforce in practice.

[Pendaran]

So how big of a question mark do we slap on other characters performances in OWAW simply because Supes was over performing due to a plot acknowledged attempt at a power up?

Do we throw them out?

The only real power up he was given was a sundip honestly. Everything else was just, to put it one way, "these are the things that Loeb and Casey actually believe", flashing at the bottom of the screen.

I like* how you keep throwing in stuff like how the real frustration is that Superman was not then acknowledged from now on as more powerful than the entire JLA put together and "plot acknowledged attempt at a power up", like we should be viewing this as super legit. As though something like 99% of Superman's career is basically then him jobbing to every single other person in the DCU that isn't some kind of cosmic or magical godbeing.

*I don't actually like it. If you enjoyed OWAW, that's certainly your right. I don't myself care for the idea that Superman can more or less render his fellow heroes, peers even, basically pointless but for small roles as his sidekick helpers, and being shown as so powerful for that to be the case doesn't really stick in well with the dude's overall ouvre. It felt like the only reason that story existed in the end was to smack people across the face with that idea as hard as possible.

To make this more thread relevant, when the idea is that Doomsday and Superman fighting side by side are the only peers on their level of power, again, compared to, the entire JLA put together, I'm pretty okay with disregarding the whole thing.

Beyond that? While Kyle Rayner does a lot of fun stuff, given how powerful Imperiex was supposed to be, that was a bit of a bridge too far.

And with those three aside (and it's mostly Doomsday and Superman's show, Kyle really just got the one good moment), who really came off that well in OWAW?

[Cronus]

Braniac actually outright states he's better than Jonn in the comic

Hmm, that's interesting. Are there versions of Brainiac that have exhibited greater telepathic prowess than the Martian? I've always thought of Jonn as a high end telepath.

Anyway taking on and beating Kyle and the JLA and the likes of Jonn and Orion in under a minute is pretty up there in terms of physical oomph as is.

Yeah, I suppose. I mean, he took out Kyle, who strung together several planets in with supreme will, Orion who has the astro force and Jonn who uses his phasing just fine during combat. Not saying HP isn't a boss, but translating it to rumbles could be tricky I think.

Doesn't make him immune to Kyle's more esoteric attacks or anything but that combined with the performance against the Impereix probes should give him the sheer physicality to even compete with Thanos, something most folks this side of Silver Age Superman just straight up lack

Well, it's HP Doomsday, so he can't be far away from even the mad Titan in durability I suppose.

Should we dump feats of neural scrambling by Doom given Thanos' resistance to high end telepathy, or is that even relevant?

[The Arbiter]

Please don't paint me as an OWAW lover. :/ I literally described it as "meh" in my earlier posts. I even agreed with you that they overhyped supes.

Was it not a plot acknowledged power up? This wording seems to have really triggered you. How should I have described it? I rarely read comics in a linear fashion, and rarer still do I pay attention to the authors, so if superman wanking is a tendency of Loeb, I was unaware of his biased history. That changes things in a grander scope for me. Stuff like that does go over my head a bit.

Also, I certainly didn't enjoy the power up (the training, not the sundip). Well, on the one hand I kinda did because suddenly supes was fighting like how we describe him on this site (scanning for weaknesses with xray vision, blitzing, using heat vision and arctic breath in tandem and so on). That was kind of fun seeing on panel. On the other hand, subsequent showings of him were just him being tougher and stronger which was dumb. I remember slapping my face when he could suddenly perform on par with HP Doomsday. I liked the idea of him being more efficient, not just randomly boosted lol.

[Pendaran]

Was it not a plot acknowledged power up?

It was in fact much the opposite, it was more a suggestion that actually no, no, Superman was always this powerful. And "training", is not really a particular justification for that, when we saw the sort of training that happened. Not like he was learning super karate.

so if superman wanking is a tendency of Loeb, I was unaware of his biased history.

In an arc where he had Superman go evil, he broke Wonder Woman's bracelets that have otherwise taken pretty hilarious force and strangled her with her own lasso, if I recall the image correctly.

How should I have described it? I rarely read comics in a linear fashion, and rarer still do I pay attention to the authors, so if superman wanking is a tendency of Loeb, I was unaware of his biased history. That changes things in a grander scope for me. Stuff like that does go over my head a bit.

It comes off as that "no, no, I totally didn't like it" is basically a thin veneer when you keep pairing it with "but it was totally legit and we should acknowledge it, right? the entire rest of comics not acting like Superman was vastly more powerful than everything was the real problem."