Captain America vs Kraven the Hunter

[Shellhead]

Eh, they didn't create the concept of "class 100" until they made the first Handbook, IIRC. Thor's very early "feats" included fighting off galaxy-busters and stuff.

And yeah, comic writers are really bad with speeds and weights. Who can forget the Flash moving at "almost lightspeed" when he empties a city of a half million people as a nuclear bomb is exploding. Uh huh, lightspeed, huh?

I think this was the first strength chart from Marvel:

[big_adventure]

I love the odd specificity of the twelve men. I mean it’s ridiculously inaccurate (he’s about Class 50), but it’s so oddly specific as to be charming.

Were they, I dunno, angry men? It's not far from the right era...

[Powerboy]

Eh, they didn't create the concept of "class 100" until they made the first Handbook, IIRC. Thor's very early "feats" included fighting off galaxy-busters and stuff.

And yeah, comic writers are really bad with speeds and weights. Who can forget the Flash moving at "almost lightspeed" when he empties a city of a half million people as a nuclear bomb is exploding. Uh huh, lightspeed, huh?

I was saying that I thought I remembered, in an early handbook, that they said what some characters once were at the beginning of Marvel.

As you said, hardly matters. "95 tons" Thor was shattering planetoids (which I take to be about equivalent to a moon) and stalemating a low energy level Galactus. If anything, Thor got less powerful later, relative to someone like Galactus, once they started getting a handle on the power scale. In the earliest days, I think they didn't want to go so far as to say anyone was utterly beyond the gods.

[Powerboy]

I love the odd specificity of the twelve men. I mean it’s ridiculously inaccurate (he’s about Class 50), but it’s so oddly specific as to be charming.

In the very next story after those claims (both by Hyde and the narrator) that Hyde has the strength of twelve men, Thor gets his powers cut by 50%. This means a guy who shatters moons with his hammer suddenly can only chip a few bricks and cannot even smash through a brick wall.

[big_adventure]

I was saying that I thought I remembered, in an early handbook, that they said what some characters once were at the beginning of Marvel.

As you said, hardly matters. "95 tons" Thor was shattering planetoids (which I take to be about equivalent to a moon) and stalemating a low energy level Galactus. If anything, Thor got less powerful later, relative to someone like Galactus, once they started getting a handle on the power scale. In the earliest days, I think they didn't want to go so far as to say anyone was utterly beyond the gods.

Also, Stan Lee specifically and explicitly created Thor to be better and stronger in every way than Superman. He chose mythology, and therefore a "god" because, in his words: "what's more powerful than a SuperMAN? A god."