Quote Originally Posted by Pendaran View Post
His fight with Gladiator is non continuity, to note.
Ok then, so that's what I thought. Thank you.

Anyway, here is the problem with the Surfer and strength showings. Like, say, Thanos, for the most part all we really have are fights to go with trying to figure something out from. He's presented as being powerful and crap with some degree of strength as part of that package.

Where you go from there is thorny.
But I mean, the guy, right out of the box, dusts off the original Drax, who later rips a star in half along with destroying a planet in the same issue (CM as I recall). To me, everything thereafter fits nicely and makes total sense. Thor and the Thing at the same time? No sweat. Thor with the power gem? Sure thing. Tyrant? Why not! At least that's my take.

The bigger problem compared to Thanos is that the Surfer has shown up so many more times in comics and done stuff to the point that not having what to work with outside of fights is almost kind of infuriating and baffling.
Honestly, as much as I like uber powerful beings shaking up the planet with punches and what not, I rather prefer the Surfer zipping in like an F-22 and zapping everything around him. Aside from that aesthetic note, personally? I don't have a problem with "doesn't have a lot of showings to go off of strength wise" because he has so many other powers to use, and in fact, mostly does other stuff. I'm cool with it just based on that.

Here are the clearest strength feats I can think of for the Surfer, and one of them is kinda not that clear:

He did a one handed overpower of the Rhino, grabbing him by the horn casually.
Yeah, that was pretty cool too,

I suppose where I might have a question is, "what exactly is his baseline" that someone already touched on. Early on, like I say, he seemed fairly pedestrian by today's standard of super strong characters. But like, the showing you mention in SS 54, he straight up no sells Rhino, like effortlessly.....who as I recall is headed toward class 100 town, but decidedly, not in that category. And Norrin's doing the glowy hand thing as CaptainMorgan called it, with Rhino. I suppose what I mean is, writers seem to differ as to when the Surfer needs to amp himself to equal or surpass a given opponent in strength. I will say, the fact that the writer had him do it against Bill, makes it seem more legit to me, since the Surfer had not physically outdone a planet busting class 100 prior to this showing.

He sort of.. embedded his board into a moon, and then got on the moon, and then surfed said moon into Galactus. It was weird honestly. When weakened, he threw Galactus' incubator ship across interstellar distances.
He also did this

Defenders 3.1, vol. 4 - Surfer redirects huge ship.jpg

and

Defenders 3.2, vol. 4 - Surfer carries ship to Saturn then throws it.jpg

So, seems to line up pretty well?

So, is the Surfer in some kind of place of class 100 strength? Sure. Where in that place?

Bleahgh. Good luck.
I don't have a problem with his higher end showings and calling him, "stronger than a planet buster when he chooses to be". Aside from "what's his baseline? when does he actually need to amp?" He's a pretty strong guy when he chooses to be that.

I mean, to me it's kinda like Black Adam. It seems a lot of his stuff strength and speed wise is done off scaling. And not a ton of feats either. But, it lines up pretty well with, "he's super strong and super fast is the guy's power set". I guess I mean, we accept certain things about certain characters as a reasonable thereabouts based on what appear to be fewer showings. Martian Manhunter is another we do scaling with for strength and speed feats. He seems pretty well into post crisis Superman camp (as is Adam), and largely these things are scaled. I don't have a problem calling Surfer high end strength wise based off pretty much the same. Scaling.