I say "should" because it seems it's never written consistently. I'm looking for more of what we think makes sense.
This thought came to me while reading Vol3 & late-Vol2 of Wonder Woman. Often her gods (the Greek pantheon) are portrayed as how I think they should be - not quite omnipotent creators (like "the presence", which is more of a judeo-christian, one-above-all type god), but still having enough power & magic to seem that way to even the super-heroes like Superman or Wonder Woman (they can create life, manipulate reality to an extent, etc). However, once & a while I noticed they were written as not much different than the top heroes, that WW could battle them & it wouldn't be total over-kill (ie: in Vol3 she puts an ax in Ares' skull & while he doesn't die in the conventional sense, she basically kills him).
The New Gods I've always thought should be like gods compared to normal people/species (since they're all essentially super-heroes to some degree & have some of the universe's best technology). But other than that they aren't really reality manipulators or "creators" in the like of the Greek gods (& the other classic earth god pantheons). (Withing themselves, their power has also fluctuated, sometimes being so strong the top heroes are no match (in Superman Confidential, Orion seemed to be able to easily handle Superman) but other-times Superman could stand a chance against even the best of them).
The real trouble here comes when these 2 groups meet, when prior to Final Crisis the NG of Apokolips "conquered" the Greek Gods (WW's book mentions this specifically a lot). This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially that most of Darkseid's cronies are much weaker than he is (Superman has rarely had trouble with any of them).
Was Morrison (et all) wrong to make the New Gods this "powerful"? Or should the Greek-gods (& other earth gods) have been weaker? (that they were only written as they were to fit in with WW's Greek mythos, when in fact they are just super-powered being who seemed like gods to normal people - just as in Marvel, Thor is just of a species that is very powerful, he's not a creator or reality manipulator or w/e - and there are other "normal" super heroes who can still hang with him in a fight (ie: Superman, WW & the like should be able to fight a lot of the earth "gods")).
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