Superman stronger than Black Adam in Rebirth (JLA #59)

[charliehustle415]

Don't worry, that puts you one even ground with most the writers DC hires to handle Superman.

I do think that if we ever get a future Superman movie and if we had a magical villain (a la Black Adam) it would be pretty awesome to ungodify him a bit (especially after Snyder Cut)

[scribbleMind]

I don't know why this is surprising. This version of Black Adam has never shown feats that match the crazy things this version of Superman has done.

[DCfan10]

I don't know why this is surprising. This version of Black Adam has never shown feats that match the crazy things this version of Superman has done.

I'm aware of that, but it's usually the case that characters often don't have feats beforehand when they match or beat another character who does have feats. That's how scaling works.

They've often been portrayed peers in pre crisis and post crisis continuity. There's a reason why so many people want to see Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam fight Cavill's Superman, its because the concept of the matchup itself is both plausible and cool. I doubt his Adam would have the same level of feats beforehand if they do end up fighting.

Anyway, I'm hoping that we do see a fight between them in the next issue. I can see them having a reason to fight given that conflict has been teased. And it would be cool to see them duke it out. I'm a bit tired of Superman having superiority over every other character.

[SuperX]

But superman IS superior to every other dc character.

I always see superman a Lil more physically powerful than Billy and Diana,and even more than Jonn, but Billy has magic, diana has skill and weapons, and Jonn has all his non superman powers for them to give him a run for his $.

[DCfan10]

But superman IS superior to every other dc character.

I always see superman a Lil more physically powerful than Billy and Diana,and even more than Jonn, but Billy has magic, diana has skill and weapons, and Jonn has all his non superman powers for them to give him a run for his $.

As I said, I don't particularly mind Superman being slightly stronger, but a lot stronger is lame and doesn't align with previous depictions. In their pre crisis and post crisis fights, they were pretty much in the same ballpark strength wise, although yeah Supes was stronger. Just not by a huge amount as what SEEMS to be the case here.

Tho tbf Hawkgirl also hurt Brutus more than Adam. Given that hes being hyped up as a League busting threat I imagine he will come back for more.

[Knightmare]

The problem I find with this argument always come down to Black Adam and Shazam's ill defined abilities vs. Superman's overexposure of abilities.

I mean how strong is Black Adam really? We'll never really know, the only thing we know for certain is that if a character has similar abilities to Superman, Superman's will always be superior!

[Ascended]

We can use Billy as a metric for Adam's powers. We know that, as far as physical ability and power goes, those two are essentially identical. So if Billy can punch Clark hard enough to give him a bloody nose, so can Adam. If Billy can channel magic through that punch and bypass Clark's durability, so can Adam.

And Adam is infinitely more ruthless and, I've always thought, a more skilled fighter (not to mention a ton more experienced) than either Billy or Clark.

And if we're in a situation like this, where neither Billy nor Adam have been showcased enough for us to really know where their power level currently is....I tend to look at Diana. She's powered by the Greek pantheon, just like Billy, with a very similar powerset, and I tend to figure that Billy and Diana are probably on roughly equal footing as far as strength, speed, and durability goes. It's good enough to ballpark, yknow?

So it seems to me that, right now, Clark's probably noticeably stronger than Adam, but not by such a wide margin that Adam can't hold his own. And with the benefits of magic, experience, and bloodlust, Adam's still a serious threat to Superman, even if Superman can benchpress a larger asteroid.

[Vakanai]

Someone should let the AT&T and WB execs know before Dwayne Johnson gets that Black Adam Beats Superman: The Movie he's been pushing for.

[Knightmare]

We can use Billy as a metric for Adam's powers. We know that, as far as physical ability and power goes, those two are essentially identical. So if Billy can punch Clark hard enough to give him a bloody nose, so can Adam. If Billy can channel magic through that punch and bypass Clark's durability, so can Adam.

And Adam is infinitely more ruthless and, I've always thought, a more skilled fighter (not to mention a ton more experienced) than either Billy or Clark.

And if we're in a situation like this, where neither Billy nor Adam have been showcased enough for us to really know where their power level currently is....I tend to look at Diana. She's powered by the Greek pantheon, just like Billy, with a very similar powerset, and I tend to figure that Billy and Diana are probably on roughly equal footing as far as strength, speed, and durability goes. It's good enough to ballpark, yknow?

So it seems to me that, right now, Clark's probably noticeably stronger than Adam, but not by such a wide margin that Adam can't hold his own. And with the benefits of magic, experience, and bloodlust, Adam's still a serious threat to Superman, even if Superman can benchpress a larger asteroid.

With that the hardest thing I have a problem getting my head around is how much of the gods power to Billy and Adam actually wield? In the case of Billy's strength, it seems pretty comparable to Hercules's, but on the other hand you would never say that he wields all of Mercury's speed, otherwise he'd be faster than the flash.

I guess both characters just need more feats that showcase all their abilities.

[kilderkin]

Sure but Billy is never depicted as wise, especially after the New 52

Sure, but he really should be, it's one of his principal powers

At least it is for cm, and I think nowadays it's forgotten that cm and Billy arnt quite the same thing

[SuperX]

Well Imo superman is above Hercules and mercury,not by much, but enough to win a arm wrestling contest or race with them.

The Marvel's are the only folks that are close to superman or kryptonians Imo physically. Wonder woman isnt in his league, she can kick his ass in a straight up fight, but his powers dwarf hers Imo. Martian manhunter is a threat cause his powers are to flexible and can't be dealt with easily.

[Knightmare]

Well Imo superman is above Hercules and mercury,not by much, but enough to win a arm wrestling contest or race with them.

The Marvel's are the only folks that are close to superman or kryptonians Imo physically. Wonder woman isnt in his league, she can kick his ass in a straight up fight, but his powers dwarf hers Imo. Martian manhunter is a threat cause his powers are to flexible and can't be dealt with easily.

I've been doing some research on this and I think based on the following that you can say that Superman can both someone powered by gods(Shazam/BA), but not be able to beat the gods themselves.

Is anyone familiar with the term Godhead? This is the idea that there is really only one god and that each universe in the multiverse has an aspect of each god. Basically each god creates an avatar for each universe.

[Final Crisis]


The reason Superman man may be able to beat or contend with a god is that he's not really fighting the true god but their avatar. This extends to Shazam/BA who may be powered by the avatar of the true god, rather than the godhead itself.

[Infinite Frontier #0]


If Shazam/BA got their powers from the godheads rather than the avatars they'd be infinitely more powerful imo.

[Adekis]

You can be forgiven for that because a lot of modern writers get it wrong. The classic interpretation was simply he's got no natural defense to it like he does blunt force trauma-- magic hits Superman the same as it does you. He had three weaknesses and each was slightly different.

Kryptonite poisoned him and took his powers. Red sunlight drained him like your phone losing juice to a greedy app, leaving him physically exhausted and vulnerable. Magic slapped him around the same as anyone else, and unlike Kryptonite he couldn't see it coming.

Green K was most effective/lethal. Red sunlight was effective but on its own wouldn't kill him, just make him relatively human. Magic was the light switch but he could fight back at full strength.

Now they're all just Kryptonite. It's more generic and I refuse to see it as anything other than lazy writing. It's goddamn dumb to think that all Kryptonians are especially biologically susceptible to getting wrecked by magic. The concept of the Homo-Magi makes enough sense in that they're more attuned to magic because it's case-by-case per person instead of Kryptonians who apparently fall to pieces if you can hide a couple rabbits in a top hat.

Again, going to video games/tabletop as an example, if Clark's hitting solid 10/10 punches but Shazam is hitting 9/10 with an enchantment, it's going to surpass Clark's defenses more than his raw power would get through to Shazam or Black Adam. It's a pretty good handwave for why Clark is the one they all turn to in Crisis events when you need raw strength but Billy/Adam can slap him around sometimes. Remember, Clark gets electrocuted by Livewire in that continuity and it's mostly a stun to him. The magic component is what actually makes it hurt Clark, but he doesn't get whammied by it anymore than any other flying brick would.

Yeah exactly, you got it.

Superman is vulnerable to magic, but he's not more vulnerable to magic than Batman is, for example. Rather, he's exactly as vulnerable to magic as Batman is. He just has no natural defense against it the way a mage like Zatanna or Constantine would.

I don't think Black Adam is actually magically strong, he's just strong, fueled by magic. I don't know if he's stronger than Superman (Captain Marvel once claimed to be stronger than Superman in the pre-Crisis days) but if he wasn't "Zeus Boosting" his fists with that magic lightning shtick I think Superman is probably a pretty good balance. Superman and Cap once arm wrestled literally for hours and only called it off when they had to leave to go deal with crises, so I think they're at least comparable in strength.

[OopsIdiditagain]

If Superman can't use magic, there's no reason he should be able to defend against it. I see magic as a skill set and Superman doesn't have it.

[NaVi]

If superman is vulnerable to magic for not being a magical being, ww, shazam etc, they should be vulnerable to cosmic energy because they are not cosmic beings. Superman's weakness to magic is not because he is not a magical being, if that were the case, flash, green lantern and many others would suffer the same treatment when talking about magic, superman is weak because he is superman.