Champions battle poll (Week 7: Round 3)

The Question vs Rorschach -- The Question. Dude's actually had training as a fighter, plus he's able to cast illusions. Rorschach won't know what hit him.

Joker vs Red Skull -- Joker does well against a character who doesn't believe in killing, but Skull has no such compunction. If he didn't just shoot Joker dead, he'd just as easily beat him to death. Skull's no joke. :D

Hulk vs Lex Luthor in suit -- LL's suit might let him hang against Hulk but if there's one thing we know about Hulk, it's that it's just a matter of time before his strength reaches the point where LL's suit becomes completely useless.

@ElectricSuperman
You're upset that Hulk is TOO strong? Or you're upset with the fanboys, because nobody here has said the whole infinite rage thing...yet.

Marvel has more than enough power houses, even obscure ones. Just don't use the Hulk anymore. We should change it up anyways. Not sure if your using a round-robin approach Fenix, I noticed you are recording each as a round. I know Marvel wiki has a strength scaling page. There are dozens of characters to choose from. I'm not too sure about the same references on the DC guys. Just a suggestion

Hulk doesn't suck because of the infinite strength thing.He just suffers from what all nigh invulnerable and super strong heroes suffer from lack of good opponents.But being strong enough to lift and/or destroy planets should be a rare strength level. Imagine if every super strong hero and villain could do that guys like Hulk,Thor,and Superman seem that less special.

All I'm saying is, if you guys want me to take Hulk out of these fights for being too powerful. To be fair I'd have to take out Superman, Thor, Silver Surfer, Doomsday, Martian Manhunter, Sentry, Gladiator, etc.

I don't think Hulk should be taken out. True, most opponents whose power sets are all based around physical strength would likely utlimately lose because, like it or not, Hulk's strength IS potentially unlimited. It's his entire raison d'etre and he's been like that since the day he was first introduced. And it's not just his strength which increases, but his durability as well. Even in a calm state he's nearly indestructible, but the stronger he gets, the MORE indestructible he becomes, and it seems like that's what's got people irritated the most. But it's not like this is new; the character has had those traits from his very inception.

But that doesn't mean he can't be beaten. There are opponents who can give him a run for his money who DON'T have to rely solely on strength. I know of at least one instance where he fought Spider-Man, then gave up when he realized he couldn't lay a hand on him. I'd count that as a loss. Dr. Strange avoided fighting him altogether once and simply transported Hulk to another dimension. I'd consider that a loss, too. Doc Samson waited until Hulk calmed down then sucker-punched him and knocked him out cold. Hello -- LOSS.

It's characters who have abilities beyond just physical strength, who can engage him in ways other than a fist-fight, who stand a better chance against him. But pretty much any character you have tackle him head on, fist-to-fist, raw strength vs raw strength, yeah, they're ultimately going to lose. As the dude himself says, Hulk is the strongest one there is. And even if he's not stronger than his opponent at first, it's only a matter of time before he BECOMES stronger than them, and his crazy durability will ensure he can take what they dish out until he reaches that point.

The only thing that's really changed as far as his abilities go since his first appearance is the fact that at first, he only transformed at night. Other than that, all that stuff I mentioned above? Canon.

@LoudLon
Agreed...on everything. I didn't know he only transformed at night, but I have to say about him not changing since his inceptoim: didn't his healing factor kick in a bit later on? I seem to remember hearing that originally he didn't have a healing factor, but I didn't read his comics from the 60's so I can't be sure.

Anyways, I do believe Hulk is physically the strongest hero aside from Silver Surfer because SS can boost his strength but he can do it instantly while Hulk would have to enrage himself and it would take longer.
At base, Hulk is weaker than Superman, Hercules and Martian Manhunter but he can and had reached that level before.

I think in pure strength the only one who can truly overtake him is SS. Supes, Herc or MM would be stronger at first, but Hulk is durable enough to withstand all of their abuse...Now, I'm not necessarily saying Hulk would beat Supes or MMH because Jonn has a variety of other ways he can take out Hulk.

His healing factor came later, yes; for the longest while he was simply plain ol' indestructible, period. IIRC it was Peter David in the 90s who started the "instantaneous healing" thing.

As for strength...if I were to draw comparisons I'd put iconic Superman somewhere around angry Hulk level. Mind you there's a difference between angry Hulk and enraged Hulk; if you go by OHOTMU (mind you this was written in the 80s, when Hulk was at his most iconic, and MUCH tinkering has been done since then) calm Hulk was in the 70 ton range, but once he became angry he'd instantly jump straight up to Class 100. That's not over the course of time, that's bam, zip, straight to Class 100. But enraged Hulk -- and we're talking Wolverine berserker rage-type Hulk -- is far, FAR stronger than that. If you check out Incredible Hulk #300, that featured a fully enraged Hulk, and he was taking out heroes left, right and center in that one. He knocked Luke Cage across the city with one blow, was shrugging off full-strength Mjolnir hits from Thor, he even caught a full chi-powered punch from Iron Fist in his bare hand and it backfired onto Iron Fist himself -- and again, this was all iconic Hulk, years before all that worldbreaker/cracking the earth with a foostep silliness. So iconic version vs iconic version, I don't think Hulk would have much trouble handling Superman.

Silver Surfer, I'm not so sure. While his power is vast and self-regenerating, his is still a finite amount of power, there's still a limit to what he can do. So while he can and has used the Power Cosmic to boost his physical strength to Class 100 level, I'm not entirely sure he could boost it further to surpass, or even just match, fully-enraged Hulk's strength. But that's okay, because he doesn't NEED to fight Hulk physically; he's could just disintegrate Hulk if he wanted to. He never will, because Norrin Radd's far too noble to kill an opponent just for the sake of killing him, but if he were ever to decide to do so, zap, atomized, done.