Sent to Earth as an infant from the dying planet Krypton, Kal-El was adopted by the loving Kent family and raised in America's heartland as Clark Kent. Using his immense solar-fueled powers, he became Superman to defend mankind against all manner of threats while championing truth, justice, and the American way!
This is my very first post, so sorry if I haven't quite grasped how the forum operates.
My question is this, are Rebirth Superman's powers still fluctuating as revealed in "Superman: Lois and Clark"? Pretty much everyone knows at this point that Rebirth Supes, who is the same as the one from Lois and Clark, has been struggling where he shouldn't, and I'm wondering if it can be attributed to his powers diminishing like in Lois and Clark, or have I missed something, was that plot thread ever resolved?
@darkhoudini: I asked Jurgens this question on Twitter a while back and he told me Rebirth Superman was no longer depowered due to Vandal Savage's meteor no longer being present. It affected Pre Flashpoint Superman's powers too even though Savage didn't know about him. As for what happened lately, these Godslayer guys must have tech or magic that can weaken Superman's powers.
In my opinion his ''depowerement'' has been blown out of proportions, apart from having probelms with the temperatures of the core of the Earth(Which is a very low-showing) he hasn't been shown to be weaker than usual, hell, in his fight with Doomsday he showed one of the best combat-speed feats that I had seen in months.
@squalleon: Wasn't Vandal Savage's plan solely for Post-Flashpoint Superman? The one I'm referring to is the Pre-Flashpoint/Post-Crisis one. But I admit I haven't read Truth in its entirety, could you shed some light on Vandal's plan?
@ready_4_madness: Don't you think he should have won that fight though? He was fighting for the safety of his family and he should know by now how to deal with Doomsday. Also didn't New 52 Supes rip his DD in half? And it's not like New 52 Doomsday was weak either, he broke both of Diana's arms with a single strike, comparatively she fared much better against Pre-Flashpoint DD. He just doesn't emanate the gravitas that would be expected from the "most powerful man on the planet", to me at least.
And what's up with Jon saving him half the time? I don't want my Superman saved by a kid, even if it's a super-kid. Don't get me wrong, I like the books and I'm happy Superman is selling so well, I just expected him to be handled a bit better power wise.
@darkhoudini: You're correct, Savage's plan was only for Post-Flashpoint Superman, Savage doesn't even knows that they are other versions of Superman to my knowledge, also his plan pretty much consisted of stealing most of Superman energies/power, which he did in 2 instances, and then with said powers steal the powers from different Meta-humans/aliens that resided on Earth, mostly members from the JL and such organizations. Then after that he planned on redirecting the the Dionesium meteor(which is what gave Savage his abilities in the first place) and absorbing all of its power, he did that by increasing the mass of Jupiter(I think it was Jupiter) which resulted in its Moons colliding with it or something among those lines.
Thank you though; also, if you don't mind answering, what do you think was up when Supe's power was reduced in Lois and Clark, IIRC Clark admitted his power was fluctuating and regularly was lower than usual. Has that ever been addressed, or was it just swept under the rug?
@nerevarine_11: He was in Lois and Clark, which basically details the events that happened to Post-Crisis (Pre-Flashpoint) Kal and his family before the New 52 heroes were aware of his existence. He said it himself that he was weaker and Lois noted his power fluctuations.
@darkhoudini: naa I was fine with how the fight went down, it kept Doomsday as a legitimate threat while not downplaying Superman. Yeah the new 52 version was powerful but it's only a mere shadow of the pre-52 version.
What makes you think so? New 52 Doomsday broke Diana's arms easily. Rebirth DD couldn't do that to her [I agree she was losing though]. Either current DD is weaker or Diana got a power boost.
@mightykalel: See above for Jurgens telling me Rebirth Superman is at full power again. And current DD>New 52 DD, it was too much physically for both Superman and Wonder Woman to handle. New 52 DD could be BFRed off Earth whereas current DD resisted being BFRed off the ground.
Seeing as you are the Superman expert around these parts, would you mind giving us your opinion on Jon saving his dad so often? He did it with Doomsday, he did it twice with the Godslayer guys, I'm not sure, but I think he helped in the Eradicator fight. I get the fact that he is his son and a big part of his life, but as I said, I don't want my Supes saved by a kid; what about you?
@squalleon: Wasn't Vandal Savage's plan solely for Post-Flashpoint Superman? The one I'm referring to is the Pre-Flashpoint/Post-Crisis one. But I admit I haven't read Truth in its entirety, could you shed some light on Vandal's plan?
No it affected every Kryptonian,n52 Superman,Supergirl and Superdad.
@darkhoudini: Jon did help twice during the Godslayer fight and once against Doomsday but I'm not sure he explicitly helped out in the Eradicator fight. I understand your problem with Superman getting saved by a kid, it's not exactly desirable but ultimately Jon is a big part of Superman now so he is going to be showing up. Hopefully writers use him less to save Superman now.
@darkhoudini: naa I was fine with how the fight went down, it kept Doomsday as a legitimate threat while not downplaying Superman. Yeah the new 52 version was powerful but it's only a mere shadow of the pre-52 version.
Maybe in terms of the quality of the books,even if it is too soon to tell, but for sure new-52 superman is as powerful as his older version. Pre-52 Clark has the edge in both striking power and durability while the new-52 version is physically far stronger than him,for the rest they are equal.
@mightykalel: See above for Jurgens telling me Rebirth Superman is at full power again. And current DD>New 52 DD, it was too much physically for both Superman and Wonder Woman to handle. New 52 DD could be BFRed off Earth whereas current DD resisted being BFRed off the ground.
I understand that. The reason why I thought new 52 DD > Rebirth one is that the former easily broke Diana's arms. Rebirth one couldn't do that to her. It could be like what Ready_4_Madness said, Diana might be stroger now than her new 52 self.
Again,this isn't ture. It doesn't matter the number of the feats,obviously pre-flashpoint supes has more of them since he has been around for decades, what does matter is their quality and their consistency. That's why they are equally powerful.
@mightykalel What i believe is that there is a considerable difference between those 2 doomsdays. Pre-52 DD was purely an engine of destruction, a fast,strong and extremely durable beast which can adapt at almost everything; New-52 dd was entirely another thing: it was a life-force sucking virus which had the goal of finding a stronger host.
If we skip the fact that any character power tend to vary with each new writher we could say that pre-52 dd is far more durable and faster than his new-52 version,that's why Superman couldn't push him into space, while new-52 dd is physically stronger,that's why he could easily defeat ww despite not being yet in his final form
It's not like you have given me any back up to your statement either.
However new-52 Superman can fly massively faster than light to reach other star system in moments, he can move faster and react to laser beams and has a genius level intellect....just as the current version. New-52 Clark had also a faster operational capability than the pre-52 one since his brain could work much faster than a super-computer putting him even above the nanosecond reaction time. You can easily find those feats online or even on the respect threads here on Comicvine, you can compare the feats of these 2 version of Superman and see it for yourself if you don't believe me.
@zandalf: Proof the Supercomputer feat is better than nanosecond reaction time? Or Pre 52 Supes speeding up his senses to match Barry Allen's speed? New 52 Superman's best measurable reflex showing was in the millisecond range, he didn't demonstrate nanosecond or lightspeed reaction times like Pre Flashpoint Superman did.
"A supercomputer is a computer with a high-level computational capacity compared to a general-purpose computer. Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). As of 2015, there are supercomputers which can perform up to quadrillions of FLOPS.[2]
In computing, FLOPS or flops (an acronym for FLoating-point Operations Per Second) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations. For such cases it is a more accurate measure than the generic instructions per second.
Although the final S stands for "second", singular "flop" is often used, either as a back formation or an abbreviation for "floating-point operation"; e.g. a flop count is a count of these operations carried out by a given algorithm or computer program.
On June 10, 2013, China's Tianhe-2 was ranked the world's fastest with 33.86 petaFLOPS.[31]
On June 20, 2016, China's Sunway TaihuLight was ranked the world's fastest with 93 petaFLOPS on the LINPACK benchmark (out of 125 peak petaFLOPS). The system, which is almost exclusively based on technology developed in China, is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, and represents more performance than the next five most powerful systems on the TOP500 list combined.[32]""
A petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed and can be expressed as a quadrillion (thousand trillion) floating point operations per second, so new-52 Superman has a brain capable of operating on a femptosecond scale, and we just have the notion that Superman can do what a super-computer could do with years of time in mere moments. I am talking about this feat from Action Comics # 14:
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Pre-52 Superman best reaction time feats are talking and moving freely into a fraction of nanosecond, evading dozen kryptonite laser beams whilst weakened plus other ones ,always related with him avoiding some energy blasts, but those feats aren't as impressive as this one, then even new-52 Superman can react and move faster than a laser beam and he was able to shield ww with his cape during,and inside, a nuclear explosion before she could take enough damage which required insane reflexes.
Now i don't think that n52 clark is thousand times faster than the current one as much i don't think that pre52 supes can lifty the infinity but those guys are definitively close,very close in terms of power and each of them brings to the table some slight advantages that are these ones:
Pre-52 Superman is more durable,more skilled in combat (when the writers remind so) and has a greater striking force. Plus he can phase if he wants to ,always if the writer remember this.
New-52 Superman is physically far stronger ,i'd say about 3 times stronger than him, and he has got a better operational capability, a more powerful freeze breath and the solar flare as last resort.
@zandalf: I would actually say that Post-Flashpoint Superman is much stronger than just 3 times than his Pre-Flashpoint counterpart, even while depowered he has showed the ability to casually move objects that would give Pre-Flashpoint Superman problems, as for operational capability, I would say that they are pretty damn close, but I would give the edge in that category to New 52 Superman mainly because of the Supercomputer and ''every medical text'' feats.
@mightykalel: See above for Jurgens telling me Rebirth Superman is at full power again. And current DD>New 52 DD, it was too much physically for both Superman and Wonder Woman to handle. New 52 DD could be BFRed off Earth whereas current DD resisted being BFRed off the ground.
Could it be that New 52 Superman actually has superior Travel Speed? Because I honestly believe that that might be the cause, atleast to my knowledge Pre-Flashpoint all-time best Travel Speed is the Vega feat, but that is outclassed by Post-Flashpoint Superman travelling across the Universe within 2 months, and even by consistent showings I think that New 52 Superman has PF Clark beaten.
@thekinfing: Given they are technically the same beings just from different points in the timeline, I guess they should be equal in all regards, in theory at least. As far as travel-speed goes Pre-Flashpoint's "taking Superboy Prime through Rao along with Earth-2 Superman" in Infinite Crisis #7 is pretty damn near equal to Post-Flshpoint's feat of flying from the edge of the universe in 2 months. Rao in the Pre-Flashpoint continuity was revealed to be in the Andromeda Galaxy and flying Superboy there took less than 5 minutes; if you work out the numbers I believe its something around 270+ billion times faster than light, pretty close to New-52's 279 billion times. Also Pre New-52 has this insane feat of flying from Apokolips to Earth in moments, keep in mind Apokolips isn't even in our universe! But I admit I've only seen scans, I haven't found the issue number to get some context. Meaybe @lvenger can help us with that.
@zandalf: Even assuming that Wikipedia quote is all knowingly correct, I think New 52 Superman's supercomputer feat is more of an intelligence feat Secondly, Pre Flashpoint Superman has operated advanced Kryptonian technology at superspeed. He was multitasking with multiple computers in the Fortress in Action Comics #775 and traced the lightspeed signals of Dru-Zod's Kryptonian battleship in Superman 653 so that's easily equal to New 52 Superman's sketchy supercomputer showing.
The last and biggest problem with your argument and opinion that New 52 Superman is faster than Pre 52 Superman's reaction time based on the supercomputer feat is that the supercomputer feat is a non combat applicable one. It did not happen in the heat of combat and therefore that makes it susceptible to New 52 Superman often brawled or bullrushed enemies with his more brash and aggressive personality compared to Pre Flashpoint Superman's more experienced tactical approach. So even if the supercomputer feat is applicable, it does not prove New 52 Superman can use it in combat since he would have avoided much more than what he has been tagged by.
New 52 Superman reacting to lasers and shielding Wonder Woman is vastly less impressive than Superman dodging red sun energy lasers from a sun eater whilst weakened and catching bullets whilst severely weakened by gold Kryptonite.
I will admit the gap is closer than I first believed between New 52 and Pre 52 Superman, but New 52 Superman only has superior physical strength and possibly travel speed at best. Pre 52 Superman hits harder, is more durable, has the superior reflex/operational capacity, has more tactical and combat experience and more versatility in using his powers. The solar flare is hardly an advantage, more pitiful since it only destroys everything in a quarter mile radius. Both Supermen have better heat vision feats than that.
@lvenger: Hm...I'm gonna do some calculations on their more standard travel feats and see which is is superior on average, also how comes the Solarflare is hardly an advantage? I know its range isn't good by any standards, but it did managed to overload Ulysses, who IIRC took Clark's regular HV like it was nothing, also during Superman#39 or so Clark outright states to Jimmy that his Solarflare is hundreds of time more powerful than his HV.
@zandalf: Even assuming that Wikipedia quote is all knowingly correct, I think New 52 Superman's supercomputer feat is more of an intelligence feat Secondly, Pre Flashpoint Superman has operated advanced Kryptonian technology at superspeed. He was multitasking with multiple computers in the Fortress in Action Comics #775 and traced the lightspeed signals of Dru-Zod's Kryptonian battleship in Superman 653 so that's easily equal to New 52 Superman's sketchy supercomputer showing.
The last and biggest problem with your argument and opinion that New 52 Superman is faster than Pre 52 Superman's reaction time based on the supercomputer feat is that the supercomputer feat is a non combat applicable one. It did not happen in the heat of combat and therefore that makes it susceptible to New 52 Superman often brawled or bullrushed enemies with his more brash and aggressive personality compared to Pre Flashpoint Superman's more experienced tactical approach. So even if the supercomputer feat is applicable, it does not prove New 52 Superman can use it in combat since he would have avoided much more than what he has been tagged by.
New 52 Superman reacting to lasers and shielding Wonder Woman is vastly less impressive than Superman dodging red sun energy lasers from a sun eater whilst weakened and catching bullets whilst severely weakened by gold Kryptonite.
I will admit the gap is closer than I first believed between New 52 and Pre 52 Superman, but New 52 Superman only has superior physical strength and possibly travel speed at best. Pre 52 Superman hits harder, is more durable, has the superior reflex/operational capacity, has more tactical and combat experience and more versatility in using his powers. The solar flare is hardly an advantage, more pitiful since it only destroys everything in a quarter mile radius. Both Supermen have better heat vision feats than that.
Now i get that pre52 Supes is more loved than his younger and dead version,but we should be objective here and give to new52 Supes what it's due. If you don't believe in what i've copied and pasted from Wikipedia you can find every info you desire about what a super-computer can do on every other site, but this fact remains: a modern super computer can operate in multiple petaflops which are thousand of trillion floating point operations per second every second and new-52 Superman is still million times faster than those computers so he has shown us to be able to work easily on a femtosecond level. Pre-52 Superman has nothing similar under his belt; being able to track and follow multiple light speed signals inside the kryptonian warship is really an impressive feat but in order to be able to follow something at the speed of light you "just" have be fast into the nanosecond range and a nanosecond is an unit of time 1.000.000 times bigger than a femtosecond.
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Pre52 Superman has still an insane operational capability since as you say he was casually working at insane speeds with his fortress's ailen computers but such a feat is not quantifiable, it has the potential to be as impressive as the new52 one but we really can't tell. We can't say that he is working on a femtosecond scale since his best feats put him into the nanosecond category.
Then ,yes, in terms of purely combat speed feats Pre52 Clark has shown that he is not only able to perceive and avoid or stop multiple laser beams but to be able of doing that even if weakened however even the younger Superman isn't far behind at all since he too can avoid or block laser beams, he did block a beam while weakened and as i've already told he could shield Diana from the nuke while they were inside the explosion. A nuclear chain reaction lasts around 50-100 shakes. So that comes out to 500 nanoseconds to 1 microsecond. How long it lasts it is explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_(unit) and here : http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq2.html . New-52 Superman could act just in a fraction of that time frame,since Diana hans't taken the full burts, despite being half dead and despite the obvious difficulty into having to move into those conditions while inside an atomic explosion. That makes me think he could perform much better under normal conditions,as he has already done. Then the younger Superman could also easily tag multiple spaceships that were moving massively faster than light in Batman/Superman # 29:
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In that comic Superman could travel in few minutes to another star system so he had to be thousands and thousands times faster than light. In those scans it is stated that he is flying as fast as he could but he could still easily damage the engines of all the ships that were chasing him: not only he didn't destroy them but he went just for their engines despite they were both moving MFTL. Now this feat may be dubious since Superman was exposed to a super-sun but even with that the power boost wasn't mentioned until the next issue when Clark had to completely recharge his lost powers in front of the super-star; but let's pretend that he did get a boost during this feat, how much did that star increase his powers? When new52 supes is really amped up he glows yellow and he wasn't at that moment, but let's say he was 10 times stronger than usual or 100 or 1000, those ships were moving thousandS times faster than light so this feat is still huge even despite the supposed boost and he being able to tag those ships thanks to his femtosecond reaction time and a supposed power-up makes sense at least to me.
So again New-52 Superman at the very least has the same reflexes than Pre-52 Superman if not better ones and for sure he has a greater operational capability. There isn't much to discuss here and i don't even have to use his medical feat.
However with all of that i am not saying that he can win against the current Superman most of the times, the contrary is still slightly more probable thanks to the considerable difference in experience,duarability,striking power and his ability to phase. Now with Superman annual n. 1 we even know that current Superman is able to absorb more sun light than the previous one even if such a statement needs to be supported by some solid feat. I'll also concede that the solar flare is totally and completely useless against the current Man of steel but this diffused idea that new52 Superman is just a shadow in comparision to the Preflashpoint version is just false and it needs to stop: despite the hate he gets he was still a hero and a beast power-wise,he was a real planet mover with genius level intellect and a brain faster than a super-computer, a guy who could cross the universe and survive inside black holes and he wasn't anyone's shadow.
@thekinfing: I'd be interested to see what calculations you come up with, I can't do them myself. I find it hard to believe the solar flare is a hundred times more powerful than his heat vision when the same Superman fired a massive heat vision beam from the sun to the Earth. Plus in Superman Unchained #9, Lex said his solar serum would supercharge Superman's cells to cause an explosion with a force of nearly 200 megatons.
That's twice as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear tested weapon and would be a much powerful force for the solar flare.
@thekinfing: I'd be interested to see what calculations you come up with, I can't do them myself.
I will start making the calculations when I finish the New 52 Superman RT, wanna make sure I get as many feats for either of the Supermen to see who got the best Travel Speed on average.
I find it hard to believe the solar flare is a hundred times more powerful than his heat vision when the same Superman fired a massive heat vision beam from the sun to the Earth.
Can't recall this instance, when did it happened?
Plus in Superman Unchained #9, Lex said his solar serum would supercharge Superman's cells to cause an explosion with a force of nearly 200 megatons.
That's twice as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear tested weapon and would be a much powerful force for the solar flare.
@thekinfing: You should be able to find the scans on Toptom's New 52 Superman respect thread. It's from Action Comics #34, the same issue where he lifts Brainiac's Mother Ship with MMH.
@lvenger: Clark was close to the sun when he did that, though. Also, to my knowledge that's Post-Flashpoint Superman All-Time best HV feat. I don't think it fair we should scale him from that.
Rebirth Superman has yet to prove to me that he's anything close to what he used to be. Those God Slayer guys can tank Superman's punches but when a Truck is headed their way they get run over? Seriously?
@thekinfing: True, but it's far more impressive than the average solar flare.
@itouchedtheboat The Godslayers had tech that was weakening Superman either through magic or alien origins. It sucks but that's why Superman struggled against them.
@lvenger: he was only weakened after he was stabbed, before that there was no indication (from his own thoughts/narratives or otherwise) that showed him to be weaker. Even if there was a single statement I'd believe it, but nah.
@itouchedtheboat: No, he was weakened before stabbing. Zade was the one who weakened Clark. Clark had difficulty using his x-ray vision. Zade said "that is what happens when I have done my thing" after shrugging off Superman's heat vision. Clearly indicates he had done something to Superman.
@itouchedtheboat: I was just about to post something similar to what @mightykalel said but he beat me to it. That panel does show Superman weakening from before the other Godslayer stabbed him with a knife.
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