Rules
- Pre-Flashpoint versions.
- In-Character, determined to win.
- Indestructible Planet.
- Win by KO or Incapacitation.
- Starting distance is 500 Meters.
Battlefield
CaV: Hal Jordan (King-Ragnar) vs Superman (TheKinfing)
Green Lantern, Hal Jordan
Intro/Bio
Here's his entry from the 2004 DC Encyclopedia :
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Strength/Firepower
Now given that both our characters are class 100+, which is large understatement for both of them, it's natural for them that they can perform feats of strength most high tiers/low heralds dream of doing. Clark is widley known for his lifting strength (Thankfully we're not using his post flashpoint version, then this entire section would be useless) and Hal doesn't really fall behind in this category. Firstly, Hal was single handily able to move the moon back to it's proper place after it's misalignment in DC's First: Green Lantern/Green Lantern :
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So, Hal has moon level strength and I'm pretty sure Clark does too, so let's move on to the big boy territory shall we? One of his most notable feats of strength is from JLA : Year One #10, where he held all the 7 continents in place, more accurately the entire world according to Flash. It should also be noted that this instance and the one above it, were performed by a rookie Hal Jordan.
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Hal hasn't only held planets and moved moons. he's also been able to restrain Lobo with his constructs, someone who has gone up against Superman multiple times. It should also be pointed out that both Sinestro, an elite lantern who's arguably on par with Hal and Carol Ferris (who whilst may not be an elite lantern like Thal and Hal) failed to restrain Lobo in the same issue.
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In Regards to firepower, Hal (and power rings in general) pack quite a punch, as they've been more than capable in the past of hurting Clark. In Superman Vol 1 #683, where him, John and Alan Scott were one shotting fodder Kryptonians :
Obviously one shotting fodder kryptonians is not enough or even that impressive, tho on Cyborg Superman, they sure as hell are.
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Now you're definitely going to point out that Hank wasn't really hurt and was fine the next panel and i wouldn't disagree with you, tho it should be pointed out that it was stated on the panel that the blast was as hot as the sun and he blasted through Henshaw the next panel. It should be also noted that he tanked Henshaws heat vision as well, and the latter have seriously hurt Clark in the past.
In another instance against a non fodder opponent (that's an understatement), Hal was able to stalemate Despero in an energy projection battle in JLA#119. It should also be noted that Despero was trying to mind control Hal (Which he eventually did after Bruce punched Hal) whilst they were fighting, so his energy projection here was way weaker than normal, yet he still stalemated Despero.
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Defensive Constructs/Durability
In terms of durability, Hal won't have withstanding all of Clark's attacks, be it blunt force or energy. Now most elite lanterns are known for the quality of their constructs, Hal is probably them best of them. Take this instance in Green Lantern Vol 4#3, where Hals shields protected from a Manhunter detonating himself. It should also be taken into account that this explosion had a 25 Mile blast radius
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Now John Stewart is a top tier Lantern in his own right, but I'm fairly certain that everyone (Including you and me) agrees he's inferior to Hal Jordan. So, naturally his constructs are superior to those of Johns. I'm pretty sure you've heard of this instances and probably have it saved on your computer.
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Now at first glance it looks like Clark easily broke John's construct with one punch, that's not really the case however. Clark states that he hit the construct with everything he has. Meaning standard punches wouldn't have broken the construct, so he had to hit it extremely hard to break it. Now you might argue that this is flawed scaling, that wouldn't be the case however. A lanterns constructs, as I'm sure you know are only as strong as his willpower, given that Hal has proven on more than one occasion to have much stronger willpower than John, there should be no reason to doubt that Hals constructs can contain Clark.
Now in terms of raw durability without any constructs protecting him, Hal is very impressive, be it blunt force or energy (Which are Clarks main offence). In Action Comics #633, he was blasted and was sent flying through an entire planet, a showing of both blunt force durability and energy resistance. Should be taken into account that he effectively no sold it and shrugged it off quickly.
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He's also taken punches from Black Lantern Martian Manhunter and Crybaby Prime :
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- Scans 1 and 2 : Blackest Night #8
- Scan 3 : Infinite Crisis #7
Should be enough for now, as i don't want to throw all my cards on the table just yet.
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Speed
In terms of speed, I think we both agree that both Hal and Clark are mostly even in both Combat and Travel Speed, so I'm not going to heavily focus on this. I'll start off with one of the most common and well known speed showings for Hal, fromGreen Lantern Rebirth #5, where he and Sinestro fought each other from the Moon till Saturn at FTL speeds. Now in any other case, it would take light 36 minutes to travel from Saturn to Jupiter. Now this is just from Saturn to Jupiter, which are right next to each other. On the other side, Hal and Sinestro reached Saturn from an astronomically larger distance than that, in a time that is probably less 5 minutes. In simple terms, this is an FTL+ level feat, in both combat and travel speed.
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In terms of reaction time, Hal is pretty impressive. For starters, power rings operate at nanosecond speed (They're obviously much faster than that, I'm just quoting the panel). Take this instance in Green Lantern Corps Vol 1 #14, where the ring reacted in a nano second to protect it's user :
Now this is was with a rookie lantern, so i'll show some vastly more impressive showings for Hal. Hal was able to create a force field around himself to stop the blitz from Eobard Thawne wearing Barry's costume, even tho he was a couple of feet away from him before Hal even started to create the force field. We don't know how fast Eobard was going but it's still highly impressive.
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Initial Considerations
This isn't going to be an easy fight, for either Hal or Clark, but i believe Hal will eventually come on top due to the following reasons :
- His comparable strength with Superman, as both have Moon-Planet level strength.
- His superior versatility, as Hal can attack with multiple forms. Energy blasts, constructs etc. Whilst Hal can keep his distance and blast Clark, Clark has to engage in CQC.
- Hals constructs can withstand Clark's attacks, due to his sheer will power.
- Neither of them have an advantage over the other in terms of speed, be it combat or travel speed.
- Hals has restrained and fought against people who have given Clark lots of trouble in the past. Cyborg Superman, Lobo etc.
- As I've mentioned before, Hal does have a substantial edge in versatility. His energy blasts are going to put the hurt on Clark as they've done so in the past. It's going to be a long fight, tho they're eventually going to take Clark down.
Superman - The Man of Steel
''Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice becomes the reality we all share -- I'll never stop fighting.'' - Superman during Action Comics #775.
An introduction to Superman
Something has has always baffled me is that despite the fact that Superman is one of the most popular characters on the vine, and one of the most populars period there's a extremely low percentage of users that truly understand how powerful he is, his progression of powers through the years, and how he came to be the Superman that we all know today, so for that i have decided to this small recap on his upgrades through the years, not only to help me explain how some of the feats i will present can be scale to more powerful version of Superman, but to give the vine a better understanding of the characters from battle forum perspective. Essentially after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event the DC universe was rebooted, including most characters mythos and power levels, Superman being one of them. When first introduced back at 1986-87 Pre-Flashpoint Superman was extremely weak, having Mountain levels of strength and being KO'd by nukes for prolonged periods of time, but as time went on and different writers took over he became steadily more powerful, until the Death of Superman event role in, and well, i don't think anyone needs me to explained what happened there, in which Clark was pushed to his absolute limits and managed to remove, to a degree, the mental barriers that he had unknowingly implanted on himself on fear of damaging those he cared and loved about. This was first referenced back at Superman: The Man of Steel #29 and 30 where he outfought Lobo and destroyed and Earth-threatening meteoroid, while mentioning how he has become stronger.
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For reference, Superman funeral took place during issue 20 of the same series, so as you can see this upgrades where being implemented rather fast..
And while Clark was becoming more powerful since 1994, it wasn't until the new millennium when Jeph Loeb took over Superman main solo title and had him undergo training under Mongul II, the latter who taught him how to finally removed his mental blocks and trained him to use all of his powers in conjunction for maximum efficiency.
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Superman vol. 2 #152
Right after his Clark became another beast entirely, not only he become far faster, more durable, stronger and just all around superior, but his fighting style changed dramatically.
And last, but not least was his upgrade during Up, Up, and Away which didn't actually upgrade his physicals, but rather his operational and processing speed.
Superman vol. 1 #653
Essentially after Superman and Kal L last stand against Superboy Prime during the Infinite Crisis the mainstream Superman lost his powers for a bit over a year due to excessive exposure to red sun radiation, until his powers finally returned on the aforementioned story arc, only that with an upgrade to his senses and speed. Now, don't get it twisted, perceiving light speed movements is something that Superman has being doing since 1,988 and that isn't even his average, let alone something that would be considered impressive for him, i simply decided to use his scan since it explains the upgrade in question rather neatly.
General Showings
When it comes to strength i think that Clark and Hal are evenly matched, i can concede to Hal having a slight strength advantage due to his two planetary feats, but Clark by no means fall too short, since you started with a Moon-Level feat i will do you a better, namely where Clark supported the weight of the Moon for hours.
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JLA 80-Page Giant #3
Here Superman alongside Kyle Rayner supported the Moon which the time was falling towards the Earth due to the influence of ancient alchemical engines, initially together and then individually they took turns to prevent it from falling off orbit while fighting against increasingly geometrical force of it as explained by Steel and Batman on the first scan. I will also mention that Superman took the last turn, meaning that he had to support its weight while fighting against a greater force.
Moving on into a more relevant part of the debate we have striking power, and Superman excels in it, this version in particular has some of the best environmental feats of the powerhouse bracket and in my opinion Hal shields simply aren't up to the task of withstanding such blows, while i would regularly opt to start with his lower feats and work my way up i've decided to lay all my cards on the table since i know for a fact that Superman striking vs Hal durability is going to be the most controversial part of this debate.
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Scan 1: Hitted Konvikt with enough force to shatter planetoids. (Trinity vol. 1 #5)
Scan 2: One-shotted Wonder Woman from the Sun to the Earth at dozens of time the speed of light. (Wonder Woman vol. 2 #219)
Scan 3-5: The shockwave of his punch against the Black Racer cracked half the surface of the Moon. (Superman: the Man of Steel #116)
There isn't much to say here, blows on this level will wreck Hal stuff, and while it may take a minute or two to connect a clean blow waiting shouldn't be a problem based on the upcoming sections...
When it comes to durability Clark is a tank all around, whether it be energy, piercing, or blunt force he has more than enough feats under his belt for me to say that he can withstand whatever Hal throws at him and come back for more, seeing as how you haven’t touched on the last two and that Hal main way of inflicting damage is through energy-based attacks i will focus exclusively on that for now..
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Scan 1-3: Superman: The Man of Steel #131
Scan 4: Superman: The Man of Steel #12
Scan 5-6: Action Comics #775
In the first four scans Kal, in every sense of the word, ignored island and country level attacks, despite the fact that he was either weakened by kryptonite or it was before he removed his mental blocks, regarding the last two scans, that has a bit if context that needs to be explained so you and the voters can gauge just how good the feat is...
During that issue Clark decided to confront The Elite, which where a group of superhuman vigilantes with rather extremes views on how justice should be imparted, Superman agreed to fight them with the condition of the battle taking place outside of the Earth, specifically on Io, one of Jupiter moons which happens to be slightly bigger than ours. When the conflict begins Manchester Black started to troll Clark into submission with his TK, affecting his capillaries, basically giving him a stroke, while unable to fight back Coldcast grabbed Clark by the head and unleashed a huge blast directly on it, which resulted on a country-sized part of Io surface to be scorched.
To add to the impressiveness of that just a couple of pages later Black asked Coldcast if he could blister Io, something that Coldcast himself agreed, and that would make sense given that the damage made to Io surface was the side effect of the blast itself.
And while that doesn't necessarily means that the blast that Clark took was Moon level, it does speak volumes of Coldcast raw power, and makes the feat all the more impressive especially since he was drained after just one attack.
In terms of speed i will just present two feats, both of them to contrast with one you posted; you presented Stel's ring allowing him to operate during a nanosecond, and that's fine and dandy but hardly out of Kal paygrade seeing as how he has already replicated something objectively superior during Adventures of Superman #603 where he moved Brainiac's anti-matter baby from the center of Metropolis to a couple of city blocks during the span of a nanosecond.
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So now that i have established that nanosecond speed isn't giving you any advantages that leaves us with the controversial feat from Rebirth, and there's a good reason why it's so controversial, mainly because it falls apart as soon as you inspect it, but i'm not quite yet on the counters so for now i will just provide something that's at the very least as good, and probably better than what you believe the Sinestro fight to be:
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JLA #63
Here Clark straight up blitzed a ship that was confirmed to be moving at FTL speeds, while Kyle Rayner, a character who has speed feats such as catching photons (JLA #19), creating a construct that was explicitly stated to be moving at FTL speeds (Green Lantern: New Corps #1) and viewing an asteroid that was travelling from Mars to the Earth at thousands of miles per second as it wasn't even moving (JLA: A League of One) was utterly incapable of doing anything, he analyzed the ship, made sure there where no living beings inside it, and attacked anything that looked like an engine. Now that is what a true FTL+ combat speed looks like.
Not only does this feat showcases an absurd amount of raw speed but also highlights the difference between Superman and the lanterns when it comes to speed, the way i see it lanterns aren’t actually fast characters, but rather not slow, in the sense that while they can react and travel at high levels of speed that doesn’t mean they can perform complex tasks while moving at said speeds.
Counters
In Superman Vol 1 #683, where him, John and Alan Scott were one shotting fodder Kryptonians
Being perfectly honest i think this showing hurts your case if anything, first of all one-shotting fodder while impressive to a degree isn't something that would do more than hurt Superman seeing how he's canonically superior to the likes of Supergirl and Powergirl, who i would wager are comparable to your average Kandorian at worst.
Second of all and perhaps more relevant to this discussions is that on the next issue of the story arc (New Krypton) Superman one-shotted Commander Gor, who had just broken the shields of both Hal and John on the previous page.
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Action Comics vol. 1 #873
By no means i'm implying that Hal would go down that fast, but i do find it odd that you brought up this showing so early on. Now i know what your counter is going to be, Gor surprised them, and while that isn't false you must remember that Kandor was essentially a war zone at that point, and that there was zero reason for either Hal or John to have their shields up giving the context of the issue.
Now you're definitely going to point out that Hank wasn't really hurt and was fine the next panel and i wouldn't disagree with you, tho it should be pointed out that it was stated on the panel that the blast was as hot as the sun and he blasted through Henshaw the next panel.
A blast as hot as the sun would do absolutely nothing unfortunately seeing as how nuclear weapons are actually hotter than the core of stars and i've already showcased how Clark threats those, blasting a hole through Hank is better but he himself lacks any good energy durability feats and for the most part he's portrayed as someone who recovers from damage rather than outright tank it, which is to be expected given the quality of his ''healing factor''.
It should be also noted that he tanked Henshaws heat vision as well, and the latter have seriously hurt Clark in the past.
I'm assuming you're referring to their fight on Superman vol. 2 #108 where Hank one-shotted Superman.
While Hank did indeed one-shotted Clark here you conveniently forgot to mention that this was Pre-Mongul training Superman, ergo much weaker version of him, which essentially debunks your attempt to scale Hal durability above that of Clark based on this instance.
In another instance against a non fodder opponent (that's an understatement), Hal was able to stalemate Despero in an energy projection battle in JLA#119.
Despero lacks any good energy projection feats to suggest this is impressive, he has always been portrayed as a team buster on virtue of his telepathy and damage soak, not energy projection.
A lanterns constructs, as I'm sure you know are only as strong as his willpower, given that Hal has proven on more than one occasion to have much stronger willpower than John, there should be no reason to doubt that Hals constructs can contain Clark.
Yeah, you won't find many if any instances to support the consistency of Hal, let alone lanterns inferior to him tanking attacks from an all out Superman, especially given that i've already uploaded and instance of Hal and John getting their personals shields smashed by a character that was forwardly one-shotted by Superman literally on the next page. But just to prove this point further take Green Lantern vol. 4 #55 where Lobo, a character you have openly admitted is comparable to Superman, and i would argue he's actually inferior, managed to break Sinestro constructs and give him a bloody nose.
He's also taken punches from Black Lantern Martian Manhunter and Crybaby Prime
I don't see what's impressive about this, J'ohn has always been portrayed as below Clark in the physical department, and i have six different showings to prove this if needed. Regarding Prime, while i obviously believe him to be above regular Superman by a wide margin, tanking a single punch from doesn't translate to tanking a barrage of punches from Superman, especially since Prime blatantly broke his arm on the same panel which makes scaling from him dubious, to put it mildly.
In terms of speed, I think we both agree that both Hal and Clark are mostly even in both Combat and Travel Speed, so I'm not going to heavily focus on this. I'll start off with one of the most common and well known speed showings for Hal, fromGreen Lantern Rebirth #5, where he and Sinestro fought each other from the Moon till Saturn at FTL speeds. Now in any other case, it would take light 36 minutes to travel from Saturn to Jupiter. Now this is just from Saturn to Jupiter, which are right next to each other. On the other side, Hal and Sinestro reached Saturn from an astronomically larger distance than that, in a time that is probably less 5 minutes. In simple terms, this is an FTL+ level feat, in both combat and travel speed.
I feel you didn't put nearly enough though into this feat before posting it, and i can guarantee you it isn't as clear cut as your making it out to be, first of all let's start with the distance between Earth and Saturn (I'm aware that they fought from the Moon which is closer, but the distance is so small that it doesn't really matter) that being of 1.2 Billion km to 1.67 Billion km, depending on the day.
Source - Universetoday.com
Now for the sake of not lowballing i will take the highest possible distance, and while i was initially going to use your time estimate, i decided to take it a step further and assume that they reached Saturn on 4 minutes, that gives use a speed of 25,050,000,000 Km/h which translates to roughly 23 times the speed of light.
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Sources - Omnicalculator.com & Kyleconverter.com
So, this feat is extremely impressive, no? Not quite, if we take a closer look you can see that they weren't really fighting for the most part, to explain this i made a brief analysis page by page.
Page 1: Pretty much they are just ramming into each other for a couple of panels before they start brawling.
Page 2: Hal blasts Sinestro what appears to be a sizeable distance, and then proceeds to catch up.
Page 3: Sinestro throws a barrage of darts to Hal, which he proceeds to remove, then while Hal is occupied Sinestro punches him in the face.
Page 4: While blatantly flying close to each other, not fighting, they reach Saturn belt, they exchange a couple of blasts which appear to have missed rather than they be evaded, and that's where the conflict ends.
That said i think it's obvious that this feat isn't anywhere as good as you're hyping it up to be, while the distance they travelled was immense that doesn't mean that they travelled all of it while fighting, as far as i can tell fighting was ironically the least they did, and for the most part they either just rammed at each other, travelled, or fought while being stationary. Don't get me wrong, this is indeed a good feat and i do think it showcases FTL perceptions and travel speed for Hal, but nothing more.
Now this is was with a rookie lantern, so i'll show some vastly more impressive showings for Hal. Hal was able to create a force field around himself to stop the blitz from Eobard Thawne wearing Barry's costume, even tho he was a couple of feet away from him before Hal even started to create the force field. We don't know how fast Eobard was going but it's still highly impressive.
You essentially debunked your feat with the underlined sentence, if we don't know how fast he was moving then why we should assume it's impressive, i mean, i do agree it's impressive to a degree but i think that the scaling from Stel was a lot better seeing as how with that we at least know the time frame, here you're simply speculating, to make matters worse your scaling falls apart when you realized that Hal (and Clark aswell, to be fair) has already been blitzed to hell and back by Eobard during Time Master: Vanishing Point
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This scans come from the last two issues of the series, and well, i think they are self explanatory.
Conclusion & Initial Thoughts
The main issue i have with your overall argument is the overdependence of scaling, while i personally don't have a problem in using scaling to support your argument or to prove the consistency of a certain aspect, using it as your main argument seems extremely questionable, given that we are debating comic characters which are de facto inconsistent by the nature of the medium, which is to be expected considering that the characters have gone through dozens upon dozens of writers, all of which have a different idea of what a character can or can't do. On top of that you posted a good amount of feats without explaining the context, for instance in your durability section you presented Hal tanking attacks from Martian Manhunter and Superboy Prime, yet you didn't explained why those feats are impressive, or how those two stack to Superman and characters on this tier, i obviously know where to rank them but since this is a CaV i believe it's your duty to tell the voters why tanking a single punch from Manhunter or Prime would allow his shields to withstands Clarks attacks. On your damage output section you didn't expanded on why stalemating Despero or blasting through the Cyborg Superman would allow him to damage Clark, and on your speed section you didn't explained why tagging Professor Zoom is a good feat, but to be fair on this last one speedsters are almost always way faster than kryptonians so i can cut you some slack there. As i was reading your post it seems you basically assumed that every voter is a DC fan that has read decades worth of solo series, one-shots, team books, and events and while leaving something not said is a good thing every now and then, when your entire argument is pretty much he hurted X, or floored Y, tagged Z, or tanked a blow from F then we have a problem since well, comics might as well be written by monkeys when it comes to consistency.
The best quantifiable feat you presented was Hal tanking getting hit through a planet, which is no doubt very impressive but by no means would that feat by itself allow Hal to just ''withstand all of Clark attacks'' as you said, especially when Hal and characters on par with him such as Sinestro have had their shields broken by characters on Superman tier and below on several occasions, something you neglected to acknowledge while focusing your case nearly exclusively on scaling based from John Stewart.
Now when it comes to the fight i see Hal as having the edge on strength, versatility, and energy projection, the gap in strength isn't nearly big enough to be applicable and Clark energy projection and versatility is bordering in non existent compared to characters in this tier, so i don't see them as game changers, on the other hand Superman has demonstrated more than enough striking power to break Hal constructs, enough durability to take his blasts, and as far as i can tell he has the speed edge, by high end and average feats as well as in application.
Counters : Round 1
Unlike usual counter posts, i won't be putting them into categories (Unless to address certain points) as i can see that you haven't done either, hope it doesn't cause any confusion.
Here Superman alongside Kyle Rayner supported the Moon which the time was falling towards the Earth due to the influence of ancient alchemical engines, initially together and then individually they took turns to prevent it from falling off orbit while fighting against increasingly geometrical force of it as explained by Steel and Batman on the first scan. I will also mention that Superman took the last turn, meaning that he had to support its weight while fighting against a greater force.
Impressive, tho Hal and Clark have a shared feat that I'm certain you know of, where they return the Earth back to it's orbital position in Justice League Of America Vol. 3 #29 :
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Now given you and i both agree that the two are more or less even in lifting strength, i'd rather move on to what you described as the most hotly debated aspect of this debate. Hal's Constructs vs Clark's striking. To get this clear, i don't believe Hals construct will be able to withstand dozens of Clark's punches, nor do i believe any Lantern is capable of doing so. However, I'm fairly certain Clark won't be one shotting them either. Every time Clark destroys a construct (Which isn't easy as it sounds like), Hal recreates it and the cycle goes on. For example, they've withstood hits from Kalibak with no visible damage (Green Lantern Vol 3 #102) :
Now Kalibak isn't as strong as Clark nor does he hit as hard as he does, but i don't think Clark is always going to dish out Planetoid/Moon busting attacks with his punches, making it much more difficult for him to break the constructs. They've also restrained Steppenwolf without much effort (Flash : Fastest Man Alive #9) :
He's also restrained Lex Luthor warsuits that were stated to be capable of destroying mountains without much effort as well
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Scan 1: Hitted Konvikt with enough force to shatter planetoids. (Trinity vol. 1 #5)
Hal has pretty much tanked a similar attack In Ion #4, where he tanked a bullrush from Alexander Nero whilst the latter was amped by the Ion entity.
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Scan 2: One-shotted Wonder Woman from the Sun to the Earth at dozens of time the speed of light. (Wonder Woman vol. 2 #219)
This kind of debunks itself. Clark was near the sun, which undoubtedly gave him an amp.
can 3-5: The shockwave of his punch against the Black Racer cracked half the surface of the Moon. (Superman: the Man of Steel #116)
Cracking the shell of something =/= destroying. To be clear I'm not saying Clark isn't moon level in striking power as he most certainty is, just referring to this instance.
There isn't much to say here, blows on this level will wreck Hal stuff,
They'd wreck any lantern, not Hal tho. As I've mentioned earlier i don't believe Hal's constructs are going to withstand all of Clark's hits, i'd be delusional if i believed so. However it's not going to be easy for Clark. The instances you've shown are 3 of his best striking feats, but it's not like Clark is going to be dishing those out through the entire fight. It took him time to wind up his punch in order to break free of John's constructs, which he won't in this scenario. He'll certainly need more than one punch to break out of Hal's constructs, and as I've said before by the time he does break, Hal can simply create a new one.
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When it comes to durability Clark is a tank all around, whether it be energy, piercing, or blunt force he has more than enough feats under his belt for me to say that he can withstand whatever Hal throws at him and come back for more, seeing as how you haven’t touched on the last two and that Hal main way of inflicting damage is through energy-based attacks i will focus exclusively on that for now..
I did showcase one or two showings, as i did not want to put all my cards on the table just yet.
In the first four scans Kal, in every sense of the word, ignored island and country level attacks, despite the fact that he was either weakened by kryptonite or it was before he removed his mental blocks, regarding the last two scans, that has a bit if context that needs to be explained so you and the voters can gauge just how good the feat is...
That's impressive, doesn't change the fact that Clark has been significantly hurt by power rings in the past, specifically Hal's energy blasts. You can clearly see the ring was hurting Clark, and this was Hal's energy blasts. If one of Hal's energy blasts managed to put the hurt on Clark, you can imagine what dozens of them will do.
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Which he further elaborated by stating this :
When the conflict begins Manchester Black started to troll Clark into submission with his TK, affecting his capillaries, basically giving him a stroke, while unable to fight back Coldcast grabbed Clark by the head and unleashed a huge blast directly on it, which resulted on a country-sized part of Io surface to be scorched.
By country size what do you exactly mean? A country the size of Russia or the size of Belgium? Because it doesn't seem that large.
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In terms of speed i will just present two feats, both of them to contrast with one you posted; you presented Stel's ring allowing him to operate during a nanosecond, and that's fine and dandy but hardly out of Kal paygrade
I wasn't really trying to make it seem impressive or anything, it was an introduction to power rings reaction time. Obviously they're much more impressive than nanoseconds.
So now that i have established that nanosecond speed isn't giving you any advantages
I agree that Nanosecond isn't going to give me any advantages, tho you're forgetting that I've shown Hal reacting to Reverse Flash, which will certainly give me an advantage.
that leaves us with the controversial feat from Rebirth, and there's a good reason why it's so controversial, mainly because it falls apart as soon as you inspect it, but i'm not quite yet on the counters
I don't see how it's controversial, more so how it falls apart. You can clearly see that they were on the moon when the fight began and by the end of it reached Saturn's rings. According to Nasa, the closest Saturn has come to earth was 1.215 billion kilometers and at their farthest they are 1.685 billion kilometers away. Even with subtracting the distance between the earth and the moon, which is roughly 385 thousand kilometers, it's still FTL. Don't see how it's questionable in anyway.
while Kyle Rayner, a character who has speed feats such as catching photons (JLA #19), creating a construct that was explicitly stated to be moving at FTL speeds (Green Lantern: New Corps #1) and viewing an asteroid that was travelling from Mars to the Earth at thousands of miles per second as it wasn't even moving (JLA: A League of One) was utterly incapable of doing anything
Erm...? Kyle wasn't "utterly incapable" of doing anything, in fact Kyle said he was going to engage it.
The reason why Clark instantly blitzed the ship is because he had already scanned the ship and found no signs of life on it, Kyle didn't. In any other scenario i fail to see why Kyle can't do the exact same thing Clark did.
Not only does this feat showcases an absurd amount of raw speed but also highlights the difference between Superman and the lanterns when it comes to speed
The feat you've shown doesn't even show a speed gap. Kyle was waiting for the ship to get close enough to engage it, Clark just instantly headed for it. There is no "absurd" difference in terms of speed between Clark and Lanterns, if anything there's evidence to suggest the opposite. Clark has straight up failed to react to a bullrush from Hal in Superman/Batman #29.
he way i see it lanterns aren’t actually fast characters, but rather not slow, in the sense that while they can react and travel at high levels of speed that doesn’t mean they can perform complex tasks while moving at said speeds.
Sinestro and Hal did the complete opposite of what you're saying.
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In Response to your Counters
Being perfectly honest i think this showing hurts your case if anything, first of all one-shotting fodder while impressive to a degree isn't something that would do more than hurt Superman seeing how he's canonically superior to the likes of Supergirl and Powergirl, who i would wager are comparable to your average Kandorian at worst.
Hence why i posted a much more impressive showing after it, because i know one shotting fodder Kryptonians isn't impressive.
Second of all and perhaps more relevant to this discussions is that on the next issue of the story arc (New Krypton) Superman one-shotted Commander Gor, who had just broken the shields of both Hal and John on the previous page.
He didn't break their constructs, he just flew between them and broke their auto shields. Besides that, it probably means Gor just has bad blunt force durability.
By no means i'm implying that Hal would go down that fast, but i do find it odd that you brought up this showing so early on. Now i know what your counter is going to be, Gor surprised them, and while that isn't false you must remember that Kandor was essentially a war zone at that point, and that there was zero reason for either Hal or John to have their shields up giving the context of the issue.
Not sure why you're focusing on this feat. I never intended to use it as baseline to prove that Hal can one shot Clark. I don't need to considering he already has significantly hurt Clark in the past with his energy blasts.
A blast as hot as the sun would do absolutely nothing unfortunately seeing as how nuclear weapons are actually hotter than the core of stars and i've already showcased how Clark threats those, blasting a hole through Hank is better but he himself lacks any good energy durability feats and for the most part he's portrayed as someone who recovers from damage rather than outright tank it, which is to be expected given the quality of his ''healing factor''.
Not really considering that Hanshaw was tanking blasts from both Kyle Rayner and John Stewart :
While Hank did indeed one-shotted Clark here you conveniently forgot to mention that this was Pre-Mongul training Superman, ergo much weaker version of him, which essentially debunks your attempt to scale Hal durability above that of Clark based on this instance.
Judging by your explanation, all the Mongul training did was help Clark remove his mental blocks. Besides that, that was from an issue that was not so long before Sinestro Corps War, where as I'm sure you know Henshaw pretty much stomped Clark.
Despero lacks any good energy projection feats to suggest this is impressive, he has always been portrayed as a team buster on virtue of his telepathy and damage soak, not energy projection.
Not really considering that he one shotted Guy Gardner with his energy blasts.
Yeah, you won't find many if any instances to support the consistency of Hal, let alone lanterns inferior to him tanking attacks from an all out Superman
Posted two earlier in my post. Besides that, there's no reason why I can't scale Hal off John considering the fact that he's outperformed him multiple times.
especially given that i've already uploaded and instance of Hal and John getting their personals shields smashed by a character that was forwardly one-shotted by Superman literally on the next page
I mean, if we want to go down that road, i can just post scans of Hal pinning him down with his constructs with not much difficulty. I'm pretty sure i don't need to remind you how many times Mongul has given Clark trouble
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I can also post Hal casually ragdolling and KOing General Eiling in JSA #77 with a humanoid construct.
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General Eiling is a JLA teambuster, he's tanked onslaughts from the League and blows from Clark himself, both of which are instances from JLA #26 and #37. I won't post them as i'd rather not scan dump, but you can check the issues if you want. Keep in mind Hal did this with pretty much no effort and with one construct.
But just to prove this point further take Green Lantern vol. 4 #55 where Lobo, a character you have openly admitted is comparable to Superman, and i would argue he's actually inferior
I didn't really say that, i said he's gone toe to toe with Clark on multiple occasions.
managed to break Sinestro constructs and give him a bloody nose.
Not sure what you're trying to prove here considering that Hal is already > Sinestro and restrained Lobo in the very same issue that i posted in my opener.
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I don't see what's impressive about this, J'ohn has always been portrayed as below Clark in the physical department, and i have six different showings to prove this if needed.
That's standard J'onn, not Black Lantern.
Regarding Prime, while i obviously believe him to be above regular Superman by a wide margin, tanking a single punch from doesn't translate to tanking a barrage of punches from Superman, especially since Prime blatantly broke his arm on the same panel which makes scaling from him dubious, to put it mildly.
Taking a punch from Prime and managing to stay conscious is more than enough to prove that Hal can take Clarks Punches.
I feel you didn't put nearly enough though into this feat before posting it, and i can guarantee you it isn't as clear cut as your making it out to be
Doesn't really take much effort to know that it's clear cut my friend.
So, this feat is extremely impressive, no? Not quite, if we take a closer look you can see that they weren't really fighting for the most part, to explain this i made a brief analysis page by page.
Page 1: Pretty much they are just ramming into each other for a couple of panels before they start brawling.
Page 2: Hal blasts Sinestro what appears to be a sizeable distance, and then proceeds to catch up.
Page 3: Sinestro throws a barrage of darts to Hal, which he proceeds to remove, then while Hal is occupied Sinestro punches him in the face.
You've taken 4 pages out an 8 page fight mate, you're not really looking close enough considering that you've missed the first two pages of the fight where they launched and were clearly fighting at insane speeds.
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Moving on :
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Page 4: While blatantly flying close to each other, not fighting, they reach Saturn belt, they exchange a couple of blasts which appear to have missed rather than they be evaded, and that's where the conflict ends.
They stop briefly to fight each other and the very next page they're at Satrun's belt.
That said i think it's obvious that this feat isn't anywhere as good as you're hyping it up to be
I could say the same about the showing you posted with Kyle supposedly being "incapable of reacting" to a ship.
, while the distance they travelled was immense that doesn't mean that they travelled all of it while fighting, as far as i can tell fighting was ironically the least they did
Never said they spent the entire time fighting, but you can clearly see that they were fighting for the vast majority of the fight. You can't see it because it was never really seen in the comic in instances such as these :
It's pretty obvious that they were fighting.
You essentially debunked your feat with the underlined sentence, if we don't know how fast he was moving then why we should assume it's impressive, i mean, i do agree it's impressive to a degree but i think that the scaling from Stel was a lot better seeing as how with that we at least know the time frame, here you're simply speculating,
Not really considering that Hal does have another instance against Thawne. The reason why I'm mentioning this instance is because we know exactly how fast Thawne was running. He was moving fast enough to blitz two speedsters, Johnny Quick and Max Mercury, but Hal was able to react to him Flash Vol. 2 #79
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to make matters worse your scaling falls apart when you realized that Hal (and Clark aswell, to be fair) has already been blitzed to hell and back by Eobard during Time Master: Vanishing Point
Except Hal (And Lanterns in general) has a better track record against Speedsters than Clark. On another instance Hal was able to make construct to catch Barry who was running around the Empathistar and move him away from the radius of it's blast before it hit him Flash and Green Lantern: Brave and the Bold #5 :
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Just like the instance before this we also know how fast Barry was going. Whilst i do concur that Speedsters are undoubtedly faster than both Hal and Clark, as i mentioned earlier, Hal has a better track record with them then Clark.
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In Response to your conclusion :
The main issue i have with your overall argument is the overdependence of scaling, while i personally don't have a problem in using scaling to support your argument or to prove the consistency of a certain aspect, using it as your main argument seems extremely questionable,
Objectively speaking, you can't make an argument without scaling. The only characters you can make an argument for without scaling are Superman and Speedsters (Excluding Zolomon). In fact, some characters rely entirely on scaling from other characters (Hunter Zolomon, Black Adam). I can guarantee you, you will not find a single debate on CV that did not include scaling.
given that we are debating comic characters which are de facto inconsistent by the nature of the medium, which is to be expected considering that the characters have gone through dozens upon dozens of writers, all of which have a different idea of what a character can or can't do.
Can't that argument work both ways? I mean, certain writers such as Jurgens consider Darkseid a Superman level being, others consider Lanterns > Kryptonians etc. This argument could be used in virtually any debate.
On top of that you posted a good amount of feats without explaining the context, for instance in your durability section you presented Hal tanking attacks from Martian Manhunter and Superboy Prime, yet you didn't explained why those feats are impressive, or how those two stack to Superman and characters on this tier, i obviously know where to rank them but since this is a CaV
Punches coming from two Superman level characters (In Case of Prime, he's > Superman as we both know) are pretty self explanatory. Not sure what else i could've done to explain it either than scan dump, which i prefer to avoid.
i believe it's your duty to tell the voters why tanking a single punch from Manhunter or Prime would allow his shields to withstands Clarks attacks.
I didn't post them to prove that Hal's shields can withstand Clark's punches and attacks, in fact it was in my raw durability section :
Now in terms of raw durability without any constructs protecting him, Hal is very impressive, be it blunt force or energy (Which are Clarks main offence).
Never posted them to argue the point you mentioned.
On your damage output section you didn't expanded on why stalemating Despero
Erm....? I did?
so his energy projection here was way weaker than normal, yet he still stalemated Despero.
As i mentioned earlier I'm not sure how i am supposed to further elaborate on this besides scan dump.
or blasting through the Cyborg Superman would allow him to damage Clark, and on your speed section you didn't explained why tagging Professor Zoom is a good feat,
Yes, hence why i explained here and post two other showings.
As i was reading your post it seems you basically assumed that every voter is a DC fan that has read decades worth of solo series, one-shots, team books, and events and while leaving something not said is a good thing every now and then, when your entire argument is pretty much he hurted X, or floored Y, tagged Z, or tanked a blow from F then we have a problem since well, comics might as well be written by monkeys when it comes to consistency.
No, that would be ABC logic (, which if i was doing i would've argued that Hal > Thawne in regards to speed as he reacted to him. Or argue that one shotting Kryptonians would automatically mean Hal one shots Clark because he's a Kryptonian.
The best quantifiable feat you presented was Hal tanking getting hit through a planet, which is no doubt very impressive but by no means would that feat by itself allow Hal to just ''withstand all of Clark attacks'' as you said,
Probably an exaggeration on my behalf. I will admit, Hal's quantifiable blunt force durability feat are lacking in regards to quantity (although their quality is immense), but we can easily scale him to average Green Lanterns. In the Green Lantern Corps #218, a group of Green Lanterns (mostly average) took a planetary explosion with no visible damage whatsoever.
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something you neglected to acknowledge while focusing your case nearly exclusively on scaling based from John Stewart.
I don't see the problem with me scaling off of John or other Lanterns. Lanterns differ in willpower, which is something I'm sure you're aware of, so there's no reason to believe a superior or better Lantern can outperform other lanterns. Besides that, my case doesn't "entirely" rely on John's showing versus Clarks, it was an opening post, didn't want to put all my cards on the table. As i already mentioned, there is no fault in scaling off of other lanterns, as each lantern differs in power from the other.
As for my conclusion, I'll reserve that to my final post.
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