Goku Vs. Superman 2

[Dispenser Of Truth]

This raises a question about the rules of death battle: are the characters fighting at win-at-all-costs? Already fighting to the death is largely out of character for Superman, so if you talked about having the characters stay within character, Superman's at a disadvantage in a battle to the death because you could argue that there's only like a 2.794% chance he would willingly kill the other guy.

Willing to kill is explicitly the only difference, any other personality traits like Superman's general kindness and Goku's competitive spirit/need to play fair are in place.

[DochaDocha]

Willing to kill is explicitly the only difference, any other personality traits like Superman's general kindness and Goku's competitive spirit/need to play fair are in place.

Kind of makes for a weird death battle if that has to come into play.

I think it makes the conversation more interesting if you do consider stuff like that, but at the same time, it then detracts from the question that people are really asking, which is whose power set is greather? It's like saying Thanos would eventually lose to Darkseid because Thanos subconsciously will foil his own plans. That's interesting to discuss the character, but doggone it, we want to know if Thanos has the power and the scheming ability to take on Darkseid.

However, I will also add that the Goku/Superman I (I'm half expecting a third battle, so I'm giving their fights Roman numerals) animation was more entertaining because Goku elected to destroy the Kryptonite.

[Kuwagaton]

In that moment Superman realizes that Goku is a danger to the Universe. A guy who likes to fight and destroy planets just to prove his strength is a threat that must be erradicated. Then he goes through the red sun while fighting Goku, who dies incinerated while Superman continue his journey til he find a yellow/blue sun.

Uh, hm. Google "Cell Saga"

This raises a question about the rules of death battle: are the characters fighting at win-at-all-costs? Already fighting to the death is largely out of character for Superman, so if you talked about having the characters stay within character, Superman's at a disadvantage in a battle to the death because you could argue that there's only like a 2.794% chance he would willingly kill the other guy.

Neither would kill. I could only imagine a fight like this coming up if Goku somehow talked Superman into sparring hard.

If it were really a death battle, I would imagine needing to draw out full power would put Goku at a massive disadvantage.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Uh, hm. Google "Cell Saga"

What in the Cell Saga refutes that? I don't agree with the original statement myself, but I don't recall anything in there specifically to go against that (honestly, what goes down at the tournament there might even be the best argument in favor of it).

[CowGirl]

I know my first statement was a bit over the top. What I tried to emphasize was that Goku has systematically prioritized his own thrill to fight over the safe of his friends, allies and/or the planet itself (Vegeta Saga and Cell Saga are the best example of this). Given this, the only way that a real fight between Superman and Goku happens is because the latter forced it. At this point, Superman will do what he is supposed to, the impossible to defeat Goku.

[Kuwagaton]

What in the Cell Saga refutes that? I don't agree with the original statement myself, but I don't recall anything in there specifically to go against that (honestly, what goes down at the tournament there might even be the best argument in favor of it).

In that moment Superman realizes that Goku is a danger to the Universe.

Goku defeats every great evil power on Earth, the greatest evil in the galaxy with Freeza, and the arguably the greatest evil in history with Boo. He then offers to teach a resurrected Boo how to use his powers after seeing his good nature. So no.

A guy who likes to fight and destroy planets just to prove his strength is a threat that must be erradicated.

Freeza unexpectedly destroys Namek with the sole intention of killing Goku. The Nameks themselves are virtually extinct at this point from Freeza's reign, but even then he is reluctant to kill the tyrant. after the battle, the Nameks killed by Freeza are resurrected and given a new planet.

Versus Cell, not only does he sacrifice his own life, but elects to not be resurrected, so as not to bring about the evil that seems to follow him, such as the Red Ribbon army or Freeza. Both returned for the sake of revenge on him.

Then he goes through the red sun while fighting Goku, who dies incinerated while Superman continue his journey til he find a yellow/blue sun.

Unless they are brainwashed, Goku would never attempt to use a red sun, and Kal would never just let Goku die.

[jimishim12]

As far as I'm concerned, you can't compare the two as far as individual iconic values can take, and can see how a fight to the death between them would make sense. Superman is just goodness and justice based on an American perspective of what to do when people need a champion against any evil in the world as well become a ideal, and this is symbolized by Superman being a god who is incredibly refined in mannerisms, conduct and progress to react to a threat rather than seek it out and dish out a sense of self satisfaction of victory.

Goku is every exaggeration of Asian warrior cultures and motives to fight for oneself and for the sake of everything, Goku is also a symbolism of youth which is far rooted in the principle of indulgence and inwardness. Goku thinks of himself being pleased, he loves to fight and measures the value of what is morally acceptable by his own personal beliefs of a fighter. Incredibly stupid and dense because he's a young allegory for being a inner aspect of power that kids like to invasion themselves as instead of being a inner aspect of being an adult and showing maturity. Shonen heroes focus on the heart of heroes more than the ideals, and the innocence that kids in real life have are natural foundations of the fictional avatars the heroes are about to kids, they also have a deep culture rooted in warrior idealism and act accordingly depending on the concept. Some are hot blooded heroes who love to fight like samurai, some have pacifistic virtuous self refinement like buddist monks or Japanese monks.

Goku is everything combined into a super Asian compilation of martial arts, Japanese customs, and superhuman fantasy rolled into one idiot hero. Superman is everything combined into a super American compilation of the Laws of America, Freedom of rights, mythological stature, and sci fi fantasy rolled into one farm boy. THese two if they ever meet would confuse each other and with their ways, but they would agree on being saviors of the planents they live on. I think death battle nailed it when these two were in character and Superman constantly asserted himself as the voice of reason, Goku is a child trapped in a mans body like Billy, so I'm kinda glad he died to the true "superman".

[sunofdarkchild]

The difference in strength doesn't matter when Supes can just do a pinpoint lobotomy.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

So for fun, let's do one more calculation (this is what I do for fun, for the love of god someone help me): the outermost, crazy-ass limits. What if Goku's capabilities increased precisely proportionately to his stated power level, and could Superman's largest extremes short of infinite demonstrated by the comics still overcome it?

First, let's admit this premise isn't the case. Goku's power level is 90,000 when he fights Ginyu, and he can lift 6 tons. He's 3,000,000 when he fights Frieza, so by rights, if that's really a 33 1/3 times increase, he should be able to lift 200 tons with just his base strength. But at the start of Buu, he can't lift 40 tons. Power levels, as Screw Attack said, are bull$#!%.

Also, Frieza's power level in Resurrection 'F', the barometer for how strong Goku is, of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a joke, and not just because it was presented by his voice actor as a pun in the Japanese language. Let's, for more fun still (please, I'm serious, I clearly have a disease), see why this doesn't work. Beerus says before he and Goku fight for the first time that Goku in base form couldn't beat the old Frieza, who had a max power level of 120,000,000. Gohan, who’s about as strong as SS3 Goku (not really given the context, but that’s a whole other thing, and we’re being generous here), could therefore at most have a power level of 48,000,000,000. Frieza in his first form takes him out in one clearly serious punch, so let’s say he’s three times stronger at 144,000,000,000. Since there’s no reason to assume the difference between his base and final forms aren’t proportionately the same as they used to be (530,000 to 120,000,000 that is), his final form’s power would be about 32,600,000,000,000.

Goku’s stronger than him, but when they both power up further to Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan and Golden Frieza, Frieza wins. Goku’s SSGSS form is maybe a 1.5x increase, because as a Super Saiyan God, which for all intents and purposes becomes his base form, he’s at 60% of Beerus’ power, while his max power as SSGSS still isn’t as strong as Beerus, because it’s been said Golden Frieza couldn’t beat him and Goku’s maybe 90% as strong as him (I picked this number specifically to simplify things later). If Frieza was himself maybe 82% as strong as base Goku in his final form, which seems about right, a 2x increase would still put him over SSGSS Goku’s 1.5x increase, while still being weaker than Beerus (Frieza =0.82 base Goku power x2 = 1.64, Goku = Base Goku power x1.5 = 1.5, Beerus= 1.66x more than base Goku power = 1.66). The point of all that vaguely freeform gibberish is that being incredibly generous, Frieza has maybe a max power level of 65,200,000,000,000, with Goku being about 58,680,000,000,000. Frieza isn’t conceivably a thousandth of a percent of what they’re talking about.

(Incidentally, going by all that lunacy, that would put Super Saiyan God’s power level at 39,120,000,000,000, an approximately 81x increase from the max potential he might have at SS3. Now we know?)

But that’s beside the point! We’re going by if this DID all make sense, and if Goku was 90% of Golden Frieza’s ‘100 quintillion’, he’d be 90,000,000,000,000,000,000. This works out nicely, since we know what he could do at just over 8,000 when he fought Vegeta, which we’ll round off to 9,000, and we know what he could do then from my first calculations at the start of the thread. So let’s get this done!

Goku (Power Level 9,000)
Strength: 68.3 Sextillion tons
Speed: 35,714 km/hr
Durability/Power: 164 Sextillion tons

So if he really was 10 quadrillion times more powerful than he was back then, he’d be at about:

Goku (Power Level 90,000,000,000,000,000,000)
Strength: 683 Undecillion tons
Speed: 357 Quintillion km/hr
Durability/Power: 1.64 Duocecillion tons

To wit, that’s over 330 billion times the speed of light, and the unrelenting goddamned destructive force of 68,300 detonating stars. So yeah, in these impossible circumstances, Superman seems straight dicked.

Except.

If we’re not playing fair with Goku, we’re not playing fair with Superman either.

First, let’s talk about speed. Having read the issue of Countdown that Screw Attack mentions, while they go for 10 minutes, it seems in-story more like 15 seconds, so 40 times their speed at 1.422 Quadrillion km/hr (they miscalculated it as 1.28, and I got it wrong in the first post listing him at quintillion) would be 56.88 Quadrillion km/hr. Considerably slower than Goku, but even that’s a low estimation (he didn’t seem particularly harried when he got back to Earth, so presumably he wasn’t really going as fast as he could), and while Goku indeed seemed faster in their fight in the video by a pretty long shot, Superman not only backed him into a corner where speed was pretty much irrelevant but won through pure strength. So what’s that strength?

Superman survives the equivalent of 50 supernovas to the face while weakened by red sunlight in Action #847. How weakened? Well, he moves a tiny bit slower than the speed of light – let’s say at that speed period for the sake of expediency - and luckily, that means we have a standard of comparison (this took place before the Countdown incident, but he explicitly moves multiple light-years in mere seconds in this issue, so we can assume he’s on a comparable level). He can move at about 1,079,252,850 km/hr while weakened there, so he’s about 52,629,000 times weaker than usual due to the red sunlight. Which means normally, he’s got a durability equivalent to 26.43 Tredecillion tons, or over 16,000 times more than everything Goku’s got. Going by the previous 2.4 division formula to figure out his strength, Superman can hit with a force of at least 11.01 Tredecillion tons, the pure cosmically annihilating destructive capacity of ONE BILLION, ONE HUNDRED MILLION EXPLODING SUNS, and yeah, Sentry can go straight to his little corner of shame where he belongs. “One million exploding suns, look at me everybody, aren’t I special!” Get out of here with that noise child, grown-ups that could annihilate the galaxy with less than a hundred punches are talking here. Superman can lift more tons than the lower estimations for the number of possible moves in chess (10 to the 43rd, or the "Shannon number". I'm not an expert there by any means, so please correct me if I'm misunderstanding the meaning of that).

Superman
Strength: > 11.01 Tredecillion tons
Speed: > 56.88 Quadrillion km/hr
Durability: > 26.43 Tredecillion tons

And that's me being nice. I could have used the time he absorbed the energy from Mageddon, which was about to unleash enough energy to destroy the galaxy, putting him in yet another range altogether. And again, he's almost certainly way faster than that, and even if he's not, he's so much stronger it essentially doesn't matter (Goku, if nothing else, would want to slow down enough to go properly blow-to-blow with Superman). Superman still wins, even in this most idiotic of circumstances.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Bonus numbers! I should probably look into heavy-duty therapy at this point.

Goku (Vaguely actual Power level 58,680,000,000,000, with the ridiculous proportion law in effect)
Strength: 445.316 Nonillion tons
Speed: 232.764 Trillion km/hr
Durability/Power: 1.069 Decillion tons

Superman (Shown capable of absorbing the power of Mageddon, who was going to vaporize half the galaxy)
Strength: > 833 Tredecillion tons (durability/2.4, see durability)
Speed: > 1.7 Sextillion km/hr (Given that from the point of view of the edge of the solar system, the sun wasn't the size of Mageddon's face 12 light years out, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess Mageddon is a million light years long, and Superman traveled from its brain to its heart in something like 10 seconds - and since it seems to approximate human biology, like the rest of the New Gods and their related artifacts, let's say about the length of its body or 500,000ish light years from its top with its brain to its center with its heart. He was motivated. And of course, he's gotten a lot more powerful since then in-universe.)
Durability: > 2 Quattuordecillion tons (the destructive force of the 200 billion stars that make up half the galaxy in some estimates collectively going supernova, which Mageddon was going to wipe out in one shot)

Silver Age Superman
Strength: > 2.5 Quattuordecillion tons (He infamously towed a galaxies' worth of planets to another galaxy as Superboy - and while logically this would only be the small fragment of planets that could support life, author's intent was clearly that he was towing the equivalent of a galaxy, plus Silver Age, so I'm sticking with that - so I did the estimated weight of the Milky Way, times two to account for his growing from skinny kid into muscular man, and times one million because the entire situation, taking trillions upon quadrillions of lives to "the other end of the universe" is so entirely beneath his notice that he gets distracted by a random comet passing by, this task also being taken care of in a very limited time, which leads right into speed.)
Speed: > 1.9 Septillion km/hr (He takes the galaxy 'to the other end of the universe'. The farthest known galaxy from us, from what I've seen, is 13.3 billion light years away, so let's lowball it and go with that. Assuming these planets were each in the 'Goldilocks Zone' for their respective zones, then their suns were maybe a little over 8 light-minutes away, so he'd want to get everyone to their new galaxy before side-effects could set in more than necessary, and eight minutes seems like a good amount of time to take care of a menial chore like this for an industrious young man such as Superboy. And again, the resultant speed doubled to account for him becoming an adult.)
Durability: ∞ (Tried to avoid infinity as a measurement as much as possible, even though Superman could really lift infinite weight and flew so fast he nearly broke through from corporeal reality to Heaven once, but Silver Age Kryptonians were pointedly 100% invulnerable regardless of circumstance to literally any force in the universe unless Kryptonite, red sun radiation or magic were involved.)

Semi-Final Ranking, From Least to Most Powerful
Goku SS4 (Screw Attack Measurement)
Superman (Screw Attack Initial Measurement)
Goku SS4 (My Measurement)
Superman (My Initial Measurement)
Goku SSGSS (Going by what the likely actual power level would suggest, if power levels were actually proportional instead of totally useless)
Goku SSGSS (My Measurement x 10000 to more than make up for any previous undershooting)
Superman (Screw Attack Effective Second Measurement)
Goku SSGSS (Power level of 90 Quintillion based on joke, again if power levels really mattered)
Superman (My next measurement, showing where he was at just before the reboot)
Superman (Arguably biggest Post-Crisis feat, defeating Mageddon)
Superman (Silver Age)

The guy at the top is a terrifying titan who could quite possibly wipe out entire solar systems. The...thing at the bottom could tear apart galaxies with barely a thought.

[Kuwagaton]

Power levels are random nonsense, which is why they were initially discarded around a million. Lifting strength also is dodgy in describing goku, which is why the fight comes down to superman's exponentially higher strength level. But for the example you used, he managed to shadow box without trouble at superhuman speed with 40 tons of weight, at SS1 right before Boo.

Also, I don't remember that from Action 647. But I realize that was only to lowball superman. I give you credit on bothering with the math, but you still used infinity. I think you will have to reckon that with vartox, Mongul, Spectre, Brainiac, or the ass beating he took in Crisis.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Power levels are random nonsense, which is why they were initially discarded around a million. Lifting strength also is dodgy in describing goku, which is why the fight comes down to superman's exponentially higher strength level. But for the example you used, he managed to shadow box without trouble at superhuman speed with 40 tons of weight, at SS1 right before Boo.

I thought I accounted for all that (I was using my measure of strength for Goku around the Saiyan Saga that accounted for ki, rather than just lifting capabilities)? I'm not sure what you mean. For this newest thing, I just meant to demonstrate that even if it did matter it wouldn't be enough to put Goku over Superman.

Also, I don't remember that from Action 647. But I realize that was only to lowball superman. I give you credit on bothering with the math, but you still used infinity. I think you will have to reckon that with vartox, Mongul, Spectre, Brainiac, or the ass beating he took in Crisis.

Damn, I meant 847, I'll fix that. As for your mentions, before the Bronze Age lowered him just a little bit (or at least introduced more villains either on his level or able to circumvent his invulnerability) it was made clear on a regular basis in the Silver Age that nothing but nothing in the universe, including other Kryptonians, could pierce the invulnerability of another Kryptonian, only knocking them back without harm at most. Vartox and Brainiac I'm not sure enough to comment on, but Mongul is within the same degree of infinite strength but physically bigger and a more experienced fighter, Spectre is supernatural, and Anti-Monitor can draw on the power of multiple universes worth of energy.

[Kuwagaton]

I was basically agreeing with the first part actually. But I do think that if you're trying to account for ki, you can consider "out of shape " roshi catching machine gun fire, or vegeta using a planet busting attack in his first appearance, as examples. However short dbz falls of Superman, it's still far beyond typical DC heroes who can coexist with him. I sometimes see it argued to be an up to 11 situation but I disagree

The main thing about Brainiac is that while superman was absolutely impossible to hurt at the time, those force fields were enough to make him retreat from direct combat. So I have trouble giving him a "degree" of infinity. Vartox was stronger than him at base, but that was bronze age, for what that is worth.

And it's funny because superman 647 also included weakening, but I thought that was a strange takeaway.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

I was basically agreeing with the first part actually. But I do think that if you're trying to account for ki, you can consider "out of shape " roshi catching machine gun fire, or vegeta using a planet busting attack in his first appearance, as examples. However short dbz falls of Superman, it's still far beyond typical DC heroes who can coexist with him. I sometimes see it argued to be an up to 11 situation but I disagree

The main thing about Brainiac is that while superman was absolutely impossible to hurt at the time, those force fields were enough to make him retreat from direct combat. So I have trouble giving him a "degree" of infinity. Vartox was stronger than him at base, but that was bronze age, for what that is worth.

And it's funny because superman 647 also included weakening, but I thought that was a strange takeaway.

I guess Brainiac was invulnerable in a way that made his strength irrelevant; how that worked I don't know. Durability I'm willing to give him infinite given the established context, but with strength he remains off-the-charts even if we're keeping him finite.

Heck of a coincidence. But yeah, this is the scene in question where he's dealing with a Sun-Eater, with Superman mentioning he flew a few light-years away from his dad to do it, which took minutes if not seconds:

[Potanical Pardon]

Whelp...looks like SSJG can officially destroy a universe in 2.5/3-hits now.