Why is it that DC supervillains, on average, seem to be less powerful/capable than DC superheroes? I mean, I get there's guys like Despero and The Anti-Monitor and whatever, but it feels like there's a major discrepancy between the power/capability levels of any given DC supervillain, and the power/capability levels of any given DC superhero.
Is it just me, Sup Forums?
Holy shit
Dubs and quads
Marvel Comics are underdog stories. The villains are usually more powerful than the heroes, because the whole point of their stories is that the world constantly shits on their heroes.
DC Comics are more like classical mythology. The villains are usually less powerful than the heroes, because the villains represent arrogant mortals who are envious of the gods.
What are you talking about? Just in that pic is Black Adam, who is just as strong as Billy, Sinestro who is just as powerful as Green Lantern, and Lex Luthor is who is as smart as Superman is strong.
Not to mention the whole point of Justice is seeing the Legion of Doom actually succeed for once, at least for a while.
Exactly! For once!
And then all of them get stomped after an inrush of armored superheroes.
Welcome to superhero comics, senpai. The bad guys always lose.
As much as superheroes ARE about action, they aren't about fights to determine "who's stronger?".
Villains are there to be gain something, not to just fight the hero. That means they have to have plans and accomplices and outsmart the hero.
The action comes from the hero using his powers in clever ways to do the impossible by subverting the villain's plans, not by being stronger than him.
Part of DC is godly heroes trying to control their powers so they don't destroy the shit contantly. Hence why the Flash doesn't just drain the speed from every single villain and then have Supes toss them in the Phantom Zone.
It's sometimes fun to watch gods fight (hence Doomsday, Darkseid, Anti-Monitor) but that would get boring constantly so weaker or more varied villains exist for different stories and conflicts
Also present:
Bizarro- equal in power to Superman
Solomon Grundy- basically undead Hulk
Metallo- super strong android with Kryptonite heart
Giganta- capable of fighting Wonder Woman
Parasite- can steal the powers of multiple people
Brainiac- who can be a planetary threat
Grodd- telepathy can fuck up a lot of people
Captain Cold- master of absolute zero
Black Manta- the man with the biggest hateboner of all time.
They're all pretty powerful and dangerous.
Very true.
Western stories are more about the hero using his tools creatively to win. Like Hercules saying "fuck it" when punching failed so he chopped off the Hydra's heads and cauterized them. Or Theseus using his shield to see Medusa and later using her chopped off head to turn the Kraken to stone.
The hype lies in the "oh shit, the clever bastard!"
Has Black Manta's suit ever given him any increased strength/durability to give him an edge against Aquaman?
Because Aquaman's general strength seemed to fluctuate a LOT in Justice.
Is Solomon Grundy physically on par with Superman as far as strength and durability go?
doubtful but he's a Batman villain
That's fair.
Though I just continuously kind of find it odd that DC villains can tend to be more like "dude what uses a weird gun to rob banks" and DC heroes can tend to be more like "dude what can rearrange matter and turn anything into anything", you dig?
His power goes up and down, explained by the fact that he's constantly dying and reincarnating.
He's enough of a threat to push Superman and Alan Scott around, who are some of the most powerful heroes on the planet, but I've never seen him do anything cosmic in scale.
But you also have times like in Starman where he's getting his ass handed to him by normal people and he's depicted as just a brutish zombie.
The majority of the time he's strong enough to take hits from the JLA without flinching, though.
No, he's not. He's a villain of Green Lantern/Justice Society that went on to fight the JLA.
Because most people are just looking at the Legion of Doom, who rarely display their full range of abilities and come off across as total losers.
It might, but it would be fairly minor. Manta is well aware that Aquaman is far stronger than he could ever be. This doesn't seem to worry him, it only reinforces the fact that Aquaman isn't human.
>He's enough of a threat to push Superman and Alan Scott around, who are some of the most powerful heroes on the planet
Isn't the reason Alan Scott had such a hard time against Solomon Grundy because the chlorophyl in Grundy's body could absorb Scott's constructs?
Marvel has plenty of "low power" villains, tho.
Kingpin is just an enormously fat mobster, he doesn't even have Lex Luther's genius.
I could have sworn Kingpin was also actually very physically fit, in the same way a Sumo Wrestler is. (Having a great deal of muscle, but eating such a calorie heavy diet that they still develop a good deal of fat as well) in addition to being an expert in sumo, wrestling Judo, and presumably other grappling styles where being so large would provide greater leverage and other similar benefits.
Yes, this is exactly correct.
That doesn't put him on par with someone who has superpowers.
I inferred from OP that he was saying the average Marvel villain is like Apocalypse or Loki, and the average DC villain is like the Joker or Lex Luther.
Other posters had already pointed out DC powerhouses, so I was adding the other side of Marvel "mere mortals."
Sure, Kingpin or Bullseye could kick my ass, but so could most gangsters and hitmen, and that's why I post on Sup Forums instead of fighting crime.
In the Civil War II Kingpin tie-in he takes multiple bullets at close range in the back without serious injury. Bendis', or maybe Brubaker's, Daredevil run had him shove a guy's head through a wall with enough force to break the water pipes inside of it. Much like Punisher, he's one of those non-powered types who keeps constant pulling off realistically possible actions in unrealistic ways.
Not an edge but they've fought on equal footing where a man without the suit would have been pummeled.