Was Spiderman defeating Firelord controversial?

[HypnoHustler]

When’s the last time Firelord played a prominent role in any Marvel story? Granted I don’t read cosmic characters like Silver Surfer (for that matter, when’s the last time HE had an ongoing?), but I don’t recall hearing about Firelord doing anything since at least the 90s..

[Alan2099]

When’s the last time Firelord played a prominent role in any Marvel story? Granted I don’t read cosmic characters like Silver Surfer (for that matter, when’s the last time HE had an ongoing?), but I don’t recall hearing about Firelord doing anything since at least the 90s..

I think the last time Firelord did anything important was in the Annihilation event and that was more than ten years ago, around the same time the first Civil War was going on.

Surfer's last ongoing was from 2016 to 2017 and (appropriately for this forum) it was written by Dan Slott.

[ENTRYS]

Yes and no.

Yes, because the power level gap between a herald and a meta character like Spider-Man is too big. Not all cosmic characters have high physical stats, but Firelord is pretty high up there in terms of strength and durability. That's like Spider-Man defeating the Silver Surfer with punches.

No, because it does happen over and over again. The power level gap between Spider-Man, a meta character and Captain America, a peak human character is also too vast for Cap to do any real damage. But he can hurt Spider-Man. Same with Thor, who can hurt abstract level beings like the Chaos King with his lightning. Or how Hulk can tank a blast from Galactus. So you have a track record of characters punching way above their weight. Similar to the stories of mothers lifting cars to save their baby. The human body has way more strength than we all know. But the mind limits the strength we can access to save the muscle from tearing. But in a life and death situation, when all the adrenaline kicks in, you are able to outperform yourself. And in the gym your mind always quits before your body, when it comes to doing that last rep.

I wouldn't have wrote the scene the way they did it. But I'm not all too upset about it either. It's a great feat for Spider-Man, but nothing that takes away too much from Firelord when you put him up against other heralds. Silver Surfer has been knocked out by a guy with a crowbar.

[Huntsman Spider]

I think the last time Firelord did anything important was in the Annihilation event and that was more than ten years ago, around the same time the first Civil War was going on.

Surfer's last ongoing was from 2016 to 2017 and (appropriately for this forum) it was written by Dan Slott.

And more recently, he had a miniseries by Donny Cates that set up his role in King in Black, also written by Cates and the culmination of his Venom run, as well as a "Rebirth" miniseries by Ron Marz. As for Annihilation vs. Civil War in that same era, it's still a real shame that Annihilation was outshone in the public comics discourse by Civil War.

Yes and no.

Yes, because the power level gap between a herald and a meta character like Spider-Man is too big. Not all cosmic characters have high physical stats, but Firelord is pretty high up there in terms of strength and durability. That's like Spider-Man defeating the Silver Surfer with punches.

No, because it does happen over and over again. The power level gap between Spider-Man, a meta character and Captain America, a peak human character is also too vast for Cap to do any real damage. But he can hurt Spider-Man. Same with Thor, who can hurt abstract level beings like the Chaos King with his lightning. Or how Hulk can tank a blast from Galactus. So you have a track record of characters punching way above their weight. Similar to the stories of mothers lifting cars to save their baby. The human body has way more strength than we all know. But the mind limits the strength we can access to save the muscle from tearing. But in a life and death situation, when all the adrenaline kicks in, you are able to outperform yourself. And in the gym your mind always quits before your body, when it comes to doing that last rep.

I wouldn't have wrote the scene the way they did it. But I'm not all too upset about it either. It's a great feat for Spider-Man, but nothing that takes away too much from Firelord when you put him up against other heralds. Silver Surfer has been knocked out by a guy with a crowbar.

Good point there.

[wleakr]

Poor Spidey.

The only hero that gets flak coming and going.

If he kicks too much butt, it's unbelievable. If he doesn't kick butt enough, also unbelievable.

He just can't win. And that's why we love him!

[Lukmendes]

Poor Spidey.

The only hero that gets flak coming and going.

If he kicks too much butt, it's unbelievable. If he doesn't kick butt enough, also unbelievable.

He just can't win. And that's why we love him!

Huh? Everyone gets complaints like that lol.

Batman once in a while has it pointed out how it's completely ridiculous for him to be able to casually take down the entire Justice League because he has apparently a billion plans, but then he struggles to take down Joker after he makes a slightly different version of Joker venom.

It's just a thing people may discuss, how characters shouldn't just defeat other characters, specially if some so casually.

[Huntsman Spider]

Poor Spidey.

The only hero that gets flak coming and going.

If he kicks too much butt, it's unbelievable. If he doesn't kick butt enough, also unbelievable.

He just can't win. And that's why we love him!

Pretty much.

Huh? Everyone gets complaints like that lol.

Batman once in a while has it pointed out how it's completely ridiculous for him to be able to casually take down the entire Justice League because he has apparently a billion plans, but then he struggles to take down Joker after he makes a slightly different version of Joker venom.

It's just a thing people may discuss, how characters shouldn't just defeat other characters, specially if some so casually.

Also a good point there.

[The Negative Zone]

Does anyone remember how Spider-Man brags about this in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 game?

[Lukmendes]

Does anyone remember how Spider-Man brags about this in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 game?

He does yeah, I think he only says it in the final levels? Or at least, I mostly remember him saying it there.

Game was nice, and unlike the previous games it had actually fun combat, but man it's annoying there isn't a way to do a New Game with everyone unlocked without cheats (And if you use cheats, saves are disabled), was silly how there were power ups locked behind doing specific conversation choices too when generally you can find better ones just by playing, specially if you're playing on the hardest mode, and it's annoying how playing on New Game locks you out of some characters for a big part of the game, and I find Songbird to be one of the most fun characters to play, so her being Registration exclusive was kinda eh.

But those downsides aside, the combat is fun, and the fusion stuff made some interesting team compositions, in particular I like to have Spidey/Sue/Wolverine and some other fourth character I randomly decide to pick, Spidey/Sue's fusion is good for killing bosses.

If I feel like breaking the game a bit I replace Sue with Jean once Jean is available, since Jean and Sue have the same playstyle but Jean is much better at it, and I can basically turn off my brain with her until the endgame even on the hardest mode, after a while I started to pick Thor for that too.

So yeah, game has some silly issues, but it's fun ****.

[DanMad1977]

All I remember back in the day is, I cheered for Spidey when he beat up Firelord, and was perfectly happy with it. I was a boy at the time, so that does not count, but I read it over and over.

[David Walton]

I honestly don't know if it was controversial, I was a kid and we didn't have social media. I'm sure it was to some extent but I never had any problem with it. I buy into the idea that Firelord was caught offguard by just how determined Spidey was.

[boots]

i think there's a tendency (especially in marvel and dc) to view everything as a pure power scaling. that's probably as much a fault of the media as anything else (collectable cards with stats etc)

but fights irl and in fiction are often won through circumstances; terrain, state of mind, element of surprise, weapons, emotion, interference through third parties etc

in a ring with clearly set boundaries a champion boxer is going to put anyone on this board flat on their arse. out in public, with the right circumstances stacked in your favour? you could be the last one standing. or at least last longer than 10 seconds.

often writers look at the outcome of a fight as what would be the most interesting result here, thematically rather than rock, paper, scissors

[Lukmendes]

I honestly don't know if it was controversial, I was a kid and we didn't have social media. I'm sure it was to some extent but I never had any problem with it.

Probably not many, Firelord isn't that popular.

I buy into the idea that Firelord was caught offguard by just how determined Spidey was.

I mean, even if that's the case, he still shouldn't have been hurt that bad by Spidey lol.

i think there's a tendency (especially in marvel and dc) to view everything as a pure power scaling. that's probably as much a fault of the media as anything else (collectable cards with stats etc)

but fights irl and in fiction are often won through circumstances; terrain, state of mind, element of surprise, weapons, emotion, interference through third parties etc

in a ring with clearly set boundaries a champion boxer is going to put anyone on this board flat on their arse. out in public, with the right circumstances stacked in your favour? you could be the last one standing. or at least last longer than 10 seconds.

often writers look at the outcome of a fight as what would be the most interesting result here, thematically rather than rock, paper, scissors

The problem is that the fight showed how badly Spidey was outclassed, and despite dropping a building on him and blowing a gas station on him, Firelord wasn't scratched, and Spidey won by hitting Firelord really hard at the end.

So yeah, this is basically the equivalent of a human baby managing to defeat a gorilla.

[boots]

So yeah, this is basically the equivalent of a human baby managing to defeat a gorilla.

the thematic take is spidey's indomitable perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. in classic defalco style, the point wasn't particularly subtle.

could it have been written better? maybe but page count is a thing. i'd still rather see what we got than a realist take.

[Lukmendes]

the thematic take is spidey's indomitable perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds. in classic defalco style, the point wasn't particularly subtle.

The problem is that there are odds that you can't beat just because you're 1% more determined than everyone else, specially in such a half assed way.

I see the appeal of such things, but it reaches bad writing territory a lot just because "Muh underdog beat impossible odds", and it's ridiculous for something like that to happen against someone who outclasses Spidey as badly as Firelord does.

could it have been written better? maybe but page count is a thing.

He had two bronze age issues to do it, that is a lot of pages he could've used, instead of the one page beatdown that got Spidey the win, so that ain't a good excuse.

i'd still rather see what we got than a realist take.

I mean, Spidey has defeated Juggernaut (ASM#229 and #230) and Thunderball (ASM#247 and #248), characters who completely outclass him in power, in ways that are more satisfying while the story makes sure to show that they're powerful and way above his weight class (And I'm pretty sure you can make a case about Thunderball being nerfed anyways, but at least he needed a big way to be defeated), by comparison with those, his victory over Firelord is poorly written and really, really lazy.

Also this made me find out that the fight against Thunderball was written by Stern too, figures lol.