Superman Versus Thor: Who Wins?

[Lyrical]

Ok. It had to be done. Both of these charachters are arguably the most powerful beings on Earth in their respective universes.

The rules are:

1- Both heroes are normalized to the their baseline powers. Otherwise this is going to be retarded, we'd have a time-travelling Superman that could destroy planets with his laser eye beams killing Thor as a baby (while Odin is in his Odinsleep and can't protect baby Thor) versus Rune Power Thor who possesses the ability to rewrite reality on a planetary level with just a thought and has Galactus-level power. That would be a really screwed up argument, and not a fun one to make. We are going to imagine a fight where the writer's returned their powers down to a believable level, and not when they made them a deus-ex machina. There have been numerous times where the writers made both Thor and Superman all-powerful, and then had to nerf them back down to the point where they could be hurt. After all, if you have an omnipotent hero, its pretty boring reading. There's no chance that this omnipotent hero could ever lose or be hurt (and then no one reads that said comic and sales drop for that title).

So if we put Thor to his baseline powers, during this fight, he will have:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Thor is the Norse god of thunder and lightning. Like all Asgardians, Thor is not truly immortal but relies upon periodic consumption of the Golden Apples of Idun to sustain his lifespan, which to date has lasted many millennia. The strongest of the Norse gods, Thor has performed feats such as lifting the World Serpent,[19] hurling the Odinsword, an enormous mystical blade, through a Celestial,[20] and matching other beings of enormous strength, such as the Hulk [21] and Hercules.[22] If pressed in battle, Thor is capable of entering into a state known as the "Warrior's Madness", which will temporarily increase his strength tenfold.[23] He also possesses virtually inexhaustible godly stamina, high resistance to physical injury (eg. rocketfire, falls from orbital heights) [24] and superhuman speed and reflexes.

Thor is a superb hand-to-hand combatant and has mastered a number of weapons such as the war hammer, sword, and mace. He is also very cunning and intuitive in battle, with many centuries of experience. Thor possesses two items that assist him in combat: the Belt of Strength, and his mystical hammer Mjolnir. The former item doubles his strength,[25] while the latter is used for control of his weather abilities; flight; energy projection and absorption; dimensional apertures; matter manipulation, as well as the most powerful of his offensives: the God Blast,[26] and the Anti-Force. [27]

Thor will have no access to the Odinpower or the Runes, so forget that retarded level of power. He also does not have access to Gaea's powers either. He has access to the aboeve powers, which is what we've seen most in the comics.

Superman's powers will also be what we've seen post Infinite Crisis:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

flight, super-strength, invulnerability to non-magical attacks of ordinary force, super-speed, vision powers (including x-ray, heat, telescopic, infra-red, and microscopic vision), super-hearing, and super-breath, which enables him to freeze objects by blowing on them, as well as exert the propulsive force of high-speed winds.[76]

So Superman is not going to possess Super-Telepathy, Super-Time-Travel, Super-Basket-Weaving, or any other lame superpower that the writers could create pre-Infinite Crisis.

2- There will be no outside interference from the asgardian pantheon, the JLA, Avengers, Batman, Emma Watson, or any other outside entities. Its just them.

3- To guarantee that neither of them are holding back, we'll say that some super-powerful cosmic entity will destroy their respective universe if they lose. So the DC universe will be destroyed if Superman loses and the Marvel universe will be destroyed if Thor loses. Furthermore, this cosmic entity is so powerful that Superman and Thor won't try to team up to defeat the entity (so there won't be any team up).

Both Thor and Superman are notorious for holding back in fights, but in this fight, they both go at it 100%. Thor has stated that he usually only uses 1/3 of his power so he doesn't kill villains all the time, and Superman has stated that the only villain he's ever gone 100% against has been Darkseid (because he is also afraid of killing villains).

4- Both heroes are teleported into the same continuous space instantaneously. There is no planning involved on either side (including that pesky Batman).

5- Both heroes are from the main universe in their comics company. So no Ultimates crap. And no overpowered Superman from an alternate reality in the DC universe that can kill 30 Green Lanterns in one hit.

Below is the fight between Thor and Superman had in one of the big-crossover series. While it might lead some to vote for Superman (since Thor lost), Thor didn't use any of his magic powers in this fight.

[Lyrical]

Final screenshot

[Arbitrary]

Thor can't handle skrulls with guns. Zombie Thor also is nothing to write home about.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Thor can't handle skrulls with guns. Zombie Thor also is nothing to write home about.

No Ultimates crap, see bullet point #5. If you look at canon, Thor has defeated armies of Skrulls by himself.

[Gryeyes]

Thors main weapon is magical and would by default fuck superman up. While thor would be resistant to supermans. Thor wins.

[CabbitCabbit]

I voted for superman initially, but as much as I like the man of steel, aren't Thor's power's magical in nature including Mjolnir?

[Arbitrary]

Marvel has a multiverse, deal with it. If you only want to talk about Thor on Earth 616 than too bad.

[Twobit Whore]

Superman destroys him based simply on turning it up to eleven.

And how is it even a contest? Didn't all that visual evidence you posted just show Superman beating him?

[Szlia]

This poll lacks the "I don't care and neither should you" option.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by CabbitCabbit

I voted for superman initially, but as much as I like the man of steel, aren't Thor's power's magical in nature including Mjolnir?

Yes. His hammer is magic and unbreakable, and he has the ability to summon magic storms, and fire magic blasts and lightning. When Marvel and DC got together to do this crossover, I don't know what they were thinking. Thor's powers are magic-based, and against magic attacks, Superman is vulnerable. But Thor didn't use that many magic attacks in the above fight. I think its the only fight that Marvel and DC ever had between Thor and Superman.

I think that Thor would beat Superman if he used his magic attacks, so I voted Thor.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Magic > Superman; Thor = Magic .: Thor > Superman

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Marvel has a multiverse, deal with it. If you only want to talk about Thor on Earth 616 than too bad.

I am not going to deal with Ultimates. I just ignore that universe altogether. I have 50 years of comic books in my comic collection. There's no need to retcon them.

Ultimates is nothing but a unverse-wide retcon aimed at increasing sales among prepubescent teens. It has nothing to do with canon.

Not only that, but throwing in Ultimates is nothing but an attempt at a thread derail.

[Vvoid]

I voted for Superman partially due to the fact that the "magical" vulnerability of Superman has always been there (in my mind) simply as a way to sometimes make it seem as if he is in "peril" without having to resort to Kryptonite yet again. In other words, someone will take over his mind, or temporarily restrain him or something. I'm sure someone will correct me, and it has been years since I've read any comics let alone a Superman one, but I don't really remember any times when someone was nuking the shit out of Superman with magic and hurting him. It was always sort of like if Professor X fought Superman, not Juggernaut (after all, Juggs is powered by magic right?).

In my opinion (which is highly subjective), the "magic" of Thor is more of an augmentation sort of thing, granting him all of his powers and strength and such, not an EQ sort of thing where Superman has low resists to magic so Thor's magic-based attack gets through. Thor's attacks are, to me, simply augmented physical attacks for the most part. Mjolnir is a physical object striking him with massive force, but still just a physical object, despite it being a magical artifact. If you don't make that sort of assumption, Thor would win instantly, as would Juggernaut, simply because there is no way Superman could withstand a punch from Juggs or a blow from Mjolnir, etc. Same with the lightning, because if you say it is magical lightning Superman gets instantly fried and the fight is over.

To me the "magic" vulnerability is not meant to mean anything magical instantly fucks him up (like Kryptonite would). It just provided another avenue from which to present some sort of danger to Superman once in awhile. And based on those assumptions I made, I feel that Superman would win in the end.

As a total aside, I'd like to point out that back when I was reading (when he had his 4 issue mini-series), the Jack of Hearts would have fucked up all of those "lesser" heroes without even trying. He was too powerful to stay near the fucking planet with the love of his life, for Christ's sake. I guess something happened recently to lower his power or something.

[Lefazz]

Well, the question is if the magic Thor is using is summoning physical phenomenon ("normal" lightning, for an example, would have little affect on Superman unlike Captain Marvel's (DC)).

[Gryeyes]

Summon effects or not magical weapons DO hurt superman as if he was a normal person. They make him bleed and fuck him up even when wielded by beings without superhuman strength.