Thor VS Nefaria/Superman according to John Byrne

Immovable Blob · 11-14-2008, 05:23 PM

Thor vs Superman has been much debated so I thought John Byrne's thoughts on it were interesting, albeit in the context of a Thor vs Nefaria thread.

Nefaria was supposed to be a "realistic" Superman -- ie, when he lifts a building by one corner, the building starts to crumble --and at pre-MoS levels,Superman could have stopped Thor's hammer, as shown, .with relative ease, if the "magic" element were not invoked

unlike Superman, Nefaria had no special vulnerability to magic. So we have the Silver Age Superman, with his nearly infinite power, versus the Marvel version of Thor, who, despite being a "god" is considerably short
of infinite power.

Superman is vulnerable to magic, tho my referring to it as a "special" vulnerability may be confusing. He has the same vulnerability as anyone else, but in Superman's case this has a dramatic impact on how his powers work. Since magic effectively negates his powers, hitting Superman with Thor's hammer would be like one very strong guy hitting another very
strong guy with a sledgehammer. Since Nefaria's powers are not negated by Thor's "magic", we go back to infintely-powerful vs less-than-infinitely
powerful.

Thing about the gods of Greece and Rome, and those of the Norsemen, is that they were not infinitely powerful as the Christian God is represented to
be. Odin is the most powerful of the Norse gods, and a whole lot more powerful than most of the super powered mortals of the Marvel Universe -- but, again, Nefaria had been raised to the level of the Silver Age Superman, whose power level would be greater even than Odin's.

Tetragrammaton · 11-14-2008, 06:13 PM

Huh?

ALPH4T34M · 11-14-2008, 07:00 PM

**wktf** · 11-14-2008, 07:07 PM

Does anyone really care about John Byrne's opinion about anything? His slamming of Gene Colan's style, among other nonsensical things he's said, creates the impression he's too filled with his own sense of self importance. His recent JLA artwork was pretty awful. The man needs something else to do and think about.

moon_knight1971 · 11-14-2008, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tetragrammaton

Huh?

LOL

moon_knight1971 · 11-14-2008, 07:24 PM

Nefaria has greater strength but Thor has a whole lot more of fighting experience. Thor frequently defeats foes stronger than he is so I go Thor.

Argonus · 11-15-2008, 10:27 PM

Saying someone's "infinitely-powerful" is a bit much... about as uh... awkward.. as tossing the "power levels" of the Christian God in with other gods that, while they do have believers on our real Earth, also have physical representation in comic books. In Marvel and DC's universes, such is not the case.. as far as I know (Spectre doesn't count).

Thor's font when he speaks is cooler than most other fonts... Thor clearly is the victor, here.

John Byrne and Jeph Loeb clearly are shuffleboard partners.

patrickwm68 · 11-15-2008, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moon_knight1971

Nefaria has greater strength but Thor has a whole lot more of fighting experience. Thor frequently defeats foes stronger than he is so I go Thor.

Except for Zombie Vikings.

moon_knight1971 · 11-16-2008, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrickwm68

Except for Zombie Vikings.

Superhero lore means squat to Garth Ennis lol.....

Babytoxie · 11-17-2008, 12:28 PM

I've heard the Nefaria/Superman comparison for years - when did it start? I don't buy it. Even if Count Nefaria were truly meant to be a more "realistic" version of Supes, then he would be a dominant figure in the MU, yet he gets his butt kicked on a regular basis.

And like wktf said, I don't give anything John Byrne says these days much credence.