User blog comment:MilitaryBrat/Hal Jordan vs Darth Vader/@comment-1683193-20131028175901/@comment-72.35.96.113-20131101215624

Drayco,

The problem with this line of reasoning

"2.) The durability and "he can hurt X" argument falls apart with super heroes and comic characters quite quickly, as they all exist of a sliding scale. Men like Bane and Deathstroke have also successfully staggered Superman in the past- yet frequently lose to men like Batman in hand to hand combat. Throwing out a statement like "Green Lantern can stagger Superman, Superman can take nukes, Hal Jordan hits like a nuke" would imply the entire DC Universe hits with the force of a nuke. Working with hypothetical statements like that are great, but the 70+ year publication history of these characters have exaggerated and drastically warped their power levels in both ways to points of ridiculousness. Sometimes Hal Jordan is capable of containing an exploding star with nothing but his willpower. Sometimes Hal Jordan's willpower is incapable of holding back a rocket or concentrated small arms fire. This is a unique problem to comic book characters, due to the wide range of authors, eras, tones and characterizations presented over one long period of canonical time, but it makes things like this problematic. One cannot simply cite occasional occurrences of a character at their power's peak and pretend it represents them as a whole."

Is that while true to a degree.

It can be used to write of any feat or ability. Making having these debates some where between pointless and impossible. Basically invalidating every vote not just in this battle, but in all of them and basically the premise of this wiki.

I realise thats not what your suggesting. So what sources or methodology do you suggest using to establish the powers and abilities of characters.

Perhaps you want to take into acount the whole history, feats high and low. In that case how do we decide which to use, high or low?

We could average them or even just use mid line showings. In real averages though out liers are often dropped and picking mid line showing is a bit arbitrary.

I get that you probably want a better rounded representation of the characters, flaws and mistakes and all.

However choosing to use low showing or to average the showing. Is no less of a judgement call then using high showing.

Further trying to guess how a character may respond in given situation and citing that as evidence of why they would loose or struggle is way more problematic/innaccurate then simply citing abilities. It is not always wrong, nor inheritly the wrong method, but you have to be carefull doing it.

Like when you said this

"Hal Jordan's most iconic character flaw is that he lacks originality- while men like Kyle Rayner and John Stewart make intricate mechs, whole sustainable planets and entire armies with their rings, Hal is content to do little other than make punching gloves and brick walls with it."

However he has made all of those things you credited to Kyle and John. To say he wont because he doesn't do it all the time. Seems to be projecting your opinion of the character on to the character. You may be right, maybe against Vader he wouldn't. Maybe he boxing glove and wall it, maybe he would. The problem is the guessing their is no way to do it accuratly.

So maybe it would be better to go off what the characters can do instead of what we think they may do. At least then their is the possiblity a constistency in evidence. A way to refute said evidence and grounds for a valid debate.

Because in some ways what your suggesting ( and others have as well ) is the long form version of "Batman wins 'cause he's cooler ( or the goddamn Batman )" or better yet the classic "Batman always find a way to win". Heck we could easily call winning against all odds one of Batmans defining character traits and use it to give him a win against any opponent.