Samurai Jack vs Benedict of Amber

[Shellhead]

Samurai Jack versus Benedict of Amber. Usual Khazan defaults.

[Sharpandpointies]

Jack murders Benedict. He's vastly stronger and, more importantly, easily fast enough to blitz Benedict.

Put another way, while Benedict does kill his way through armies (eventually), he doesn't do what Ashi does to them (basically bulldozes the entire army like it's grass and she's a mower), and Ashi is not on the same level as Jack.

[Muadib]

Thats a good analysis Sharp.

It's a real pity, because this is another case IMO of the feats not matching the presentation. In their multiverse, the Blood of Amber are the most powerful beings that exist. No matter what Shadow they are in, they are superior to the locals inside the Shadow. Benedict is the best warrior, soldier and general in their entire multiverse. Dropping him into Samurai Jack's shadow should be a fair fight as Benedict's Amber nature asserts itself, alas, the great Zelazny never wrote his characters with anime esque feats in mind.

[Sharpandpointies]

Zelazny did a better job of 'postulate infinity and anything is possible' in Creatures. Certainly the Amberites weren't written in a way that gives the idea that somewhere in their infinity there are comic book/anime-level beings.

I suppose Roger was fine writing that kind of thing in Creatures, Lord of Light, and some of his short stories, and wanted to keep things more sane in the Amber Chronicles (partly due to Corwin being essentially an author-insert...in an infinite multiverse where there is already, in-canon, a Roger Zelazny).

[Captain Smith]

The Lord of Light characters really weren't cosmics. They were the crew of a starship that used tech to enhance themselves with tech and self-modifications. They took on the aspects of subcontinent deities to control their population. They had resurrection tech to aid in their 'immortality'. That being said, they did have powers that could mess you up - Yama's death stare was unpleasant it seems and Sam's electro-gravitational control wasn't trivial. However, they wouldn't last long in a real cosmic environment.

That being said - Lord of Light, IMHO, is Roger's best book.

[Sharpandpointies]

Absolutely. It was all space-opera tech. They were certainly more comic book level, especially with their special equipment atop their modifications/psychic powers, but not cosmic, and far less powerful than the characters in Creatures.

However, in personal, one-on-one confrontations, they were also certainly far more powerful than the Amber characters, even as of the Merlin cycle. Agni, Sam with his belt, Shiva, etc, these characters had absolutely solid feats that would allow them to simply obliterate the Princes of Amber in an arena battle, even against sorcerers using lynchpins (but not against Spikard-users who actually have an idea how to use them).

I would place Lord of Light quite high for me on my list of 'favorite Zelazny books'. Not quite number one, but I understand why it might be for others. ^_^

[big_adventure]

Lord of Light holds a special place for me: it was the first Zelazny book I read, ages ago, and sent me down the path of reading many, many more of them.

And yes, the god-ish characters in that book would do just fine in a lot of comic situations. They mostly lack for speed, though, as Zelazny never really wrote speed into his characters, outside of the absolutely wonderful, fantastic nonsense that is Temporal Fugue.

[Sharpandpointies]

They'd be 'power users' rather than hand-to-hand fighters, and speed would be less of a problem.

When properly kitted out, Sam generates force fields, flies, and uses his lance and belt to call down a lightning storm across a wide area. Agni is capable of scouring the moon's surface with his wand and tearing things apart at a molecular level with its heat (which he can also use as a defense), as I recall, and can see things thousands of Km away. Shiva's trident basically disintegrates stuff, over large areas. Etc.

Even Yama would be more of a Doctor Doom kind of character - he actually MADE most of their tech-weaponry, and made countermeasures to said weapons as well (he kills Agni by using his cloak to reflect the wand's fire, again as I recall). Sure, he's also a premier hand-to-hand combatant (if lacking speed feats) with a Death Gaze, but it's his tech ability that would make him dangerous in any kind of scenario. In a comic situation, I would have zero issues with him coming up with super-science armor that did all kinds of amazing stuff.

[Captain Smith]

I love the Steel General. I wonder how far he would go in our usual rumbles. In the Amber series, I always got a kick of out getting rifles to work in an alternate dimension by using jeweler's rouge for gunpowder, IIRC.

Steel General vs. Iron Man, Steel, Dr. Doom, Colossus - any other metal dudes?

[Sharpandpointies]

I love the Steel General. I wonder how far he would go in our usual rumbles. In the Amber series, I always got a kick of out getting rifles to work in an alternate dimension by using jeweler's rouge for gunpowder, IIRC.

Zelazny does come up with some great ideas, and having Corwin figure out that jeweler's rouge from Shadow Earth was combustible in Amber - due to him polishing a bracelet for Dierdre and tossing the rag in the fire, apparently it came as quite a shock - was another of those fun things.

Steel General vs. Iron Man, Steel, Dr. Doom, Colossus - any other metal dudes?

Steel General is kind of awesome.

He's tough enough to beat 'Wakim' - sometimes - who has some measure of superhuman strength. But the real issue with him would be Temporal Fugue. Out of everyone in the entire book, other than possibly the Prince Who Was A Thousand, the Steel General is the only character who can match Wakim's skill at Temporal Fugue.

Okay, I feel he should win if he gets his 'standard equipment'. Which includes Bronze.

Without Bronze, things get tougher. None of these people - not Iron Man, not Steel, not Dr. Doom, and not Colossus - can hit the Steel General unless he lets them, and he can effectively hit any of them at will. And, if he so desires, manifest a literal army of dudes equal and the same as himself to fight them. The question becomes 'is he strong enough to harm them?'

If he's not, 1000 x 0 is still 0.

If he is, he wins. Temporal Fugue is pretty hard to deal with.

And again, we run into a problem with the Steel General not having feats, except for 'fights semi-evenly with Wakim when Wakim isn't at full power' (there are like...maybe four, five 'beings' in all of Creatures who have actual feats for comparative purposes, and this dude is not one of them). Now, Wakim has a FEW feats of his own...so for the purpose of this discussion I'm going to try to use those to figure out where everyone's favourite cyborg rebel sits.

Wakim:

- Casually overpowers someone noted as having the strength of twenty men (I think? Maybe it was ten);
- Wrestles with gigantic monsters and kills them with his bare hands;
- Rips his hand out of tech shackles made to contain him after getting as hurt as worse we see him hurt in the book during a fight (maaaan, Anubis and his 'I made those especially for you!' ****, he's as bad as Tony Stark making Buster Armors).

Someone inferior to Wakim kicks giant gates on castles and makes them ring like bells, notes that if someone doesn't open the gate he's going to kick it down, and casually shatters a gigantic block of stone with a swing of his arm. And he's considered to basically be garbage compared to Wakim, who the Steel General can kind-of/sort-of fight.

...also this same guy who turns giant gates into bells by kicking them has fought against the Steel General in the past and supposedly killed him after a tough fight (like, a lot of people think they've killed the Steel General, but the dude always comes back).

So these are pretty vague feats, but it pegs the Steel General somewhere in the 'grossly superhuman but not nearly class 100 range', to me.

I would be...somewhat iffy on him beating Colossus, who has pretty solid durability on the level of 'can take hits from Class 100's and not immediately faceplant'. Colossus also doesn't tire. I think the General could eventually rip Tony's armor apart - maybe? - and possibly Steel, I'm not sure where their current durability sits, respectively, and it's also possible they can both just tank everything he hits them with. Doom can put up a pretty strong force field and use magic on top of that, and his armor can withstand hits from Ben Grimm, so...probably not.

Most of these fights end in a draw if the Steel General can't hurt the other fighter, Doom being the only one I feel who stands a chance of actually winning.

That's without standard equipment.

With Standard Equipment, the Steel General Temporal Fugue-mobs the other fighter long enough for Bronze to rear and slam his hooves into the ground...I don't know, twenty times? And that's all she wrote, because everything in the arena that isn't a time-travelling martial artist likely dies after that. Edit, if not after that, ten more times...twenty more times...Khazan Arena's 'indestructibility' is getting sorely tested...thirty more times...everything in the arena is getting hit by shockwaves on a level I don't want to really consider...etc.

[Captain Smith]

Excellent analysis. My copy of Creatures fell apart years ago.

[Captain Morgan]

Side note, I'd recommend Zelazny fans check out the Broken Earth trilogy. It reads like Zelazny as a woke black woman instead of a 1960s chauvinist. (Don't get me wrong, love his work, but he was a product of his era.)

The super powered character would potentially make good rumble additions as well.

[Sharpandpointies]

Excellent analysis. My copy of Creatures fell apart years ago.

Thanks.

*smugly* I have two: the old, black cover (from when they were doing all of Roger's books that way - I have the Amber set in that as well) and a more modern, cheesy cover with Wakim and his artificial limbs. I read the second one and keep the first safe. ^_^

Side note, I'd recommend Zelazny fans check out the Broken Earth trilogy. It reads like Zelazny as a woke black woman instead of a 1960s chauvinist. (Don't get me wrong, love his work, but he was a product of his era.)


The super powered character would potentially make good rumble additions as well.

I do believe I will put this on the list, thank you. ^_^