Essentially they're both repairing the damage their fight is causing within the moments that the fight causes said damage.
All these Surfer feats make me wonder just how lopsided those legendary Surfer vs. Thor fights should have been.
It should have been REEEEEEEAAAAAALLLLY lopsided.
But that's comics.
Classic Thor was very powerful and had a million and one esoteric powers he could whip out on demand. But Surfer has all of that, plus more, and Wally West level speed to boot.
Thing is, Gladiator lost to Cannonball. And GAMBIT. Black Panther arm-barred Silver Surfer. Hal Jordan fell over and hit his head in a yellow bathtub and knocked himself right the f£$k out. Silver Surfer got hit in the head from behind with a brick thrown by a human protester and went nighty night. Deathstroke stabbed the Flash. These things happen in comics because comic authors don't care about whether the feats will play well on our demented (but fun!) little corner of the Internet.
"But... But I want to be a big karate cyborg... ;_;" - Nik Hasta
"Get off my lawn! ...on this forum, that just makes people think of Cyclops." - Sharpandpointies
"...makes me think the Night King just says "Screw the rules, I have magic money" when it comes to physics." -Captain Morgan
Just want to comment that more than half of these are literally single panels, not even whole pages.
A single shot of Namor hitting Thor doesn't really show that he defeated him.
I'm not disputing the power of the P5 in relation to Thor, they've got more than enough other feats for that, but I just wanted to flag this from a standards-of-evidence perspective.
Duly noted about Surfer vs. Thor, and also Alan2099's point about Thor going all out as a warrior vs. Surfer holding back is a factor in how those fights really could've been lopsided non-fights.
The only one of those examples I excuse is Gladiator vs. Cannonball, and only because Gladiator didn't really lose, he was knocked down just once like any other brick. He got right back up ready to rip Cannonball's head off had the rest of the X-Men (Gladiator's own friends) not shown up to calm everyone down in classic Superhero Misunderstanding 101.
Otherwise, the rest of that battle was just curbstomp after curbstomp on poor Sam. "Meet my invulnerable forcefi-AAAAUUUUOOOWWW"
Gladiator saying that Gambit's agility saved him, though, was just pure WTF. Claremont wrote that scene, while his former colleague Byrne wrote one of the quintessential Gladiator speed feats ever (being so naturally fast that he could keep up with Reed's time dilation device).
Last edited by Cyke; 04-03-2020 at 10:42 AM.
I'd say my favorite Gladiator feat, and one of my favorite speed feats period (though it might not be the *fastest*) is the feat where about half the comic happens within the span of a few seconds at MOST; with Gladiator essentially having a conversation with himself about whether or not to let who he's protecting die AFTER the shot's been fired.
Yeah, but if you... man, we're getting into weird analogy territory, like if you disintegrated Superman's arms he wouldn't be able to go "fool! Little did you know that my arms and I are one and can be remade from me!" and will his arms back into being from pure nothingness. - Pendaran
Arx Inosaan
Must've been during War of Kings, as I wager he is talking about Gladiator protecting Vulcan.
It's War of Kings: Gladiator, yes. It was a digital one shot during the crossover.
Last edited by Pendaran; 04-03-2020 at 12:11 PM.