My Death Battle Attempts

by LittleZbot

In which I take two fictional characters and pit them against each other in a duel to the death. Rules in the first chapter. NEXT EPISODE: Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender) VS Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson & the Olympians)

26. Green Lantern VS Silver Surfer

A/N: Keep a lookout for numbers like these: [1], [2], [3]. When you find one, feel free to scroll down to the "Special Notes" section of that particular analysis (just below "Weaknesses") to find out what more there is to be said about the topic that was just mentioned!

Episode 22: Green Lantern (DC Comics) VS Silver Surfer (Marvel)

LZ: There is a saying as old as… 1962. With great power, there must also come great responsibility.

TWO: And with ultimate power, enough to make the entire rest of your superhero team look like a bunch of jokers, comes ultimate responsibility. The responsibility of saving all the universe, like, every freakin' day, having the most inconsistent power level in your entire franchise, and writers who don't know how your powers work having you lose first thing to the threat of the week. But hey, My Death Battle Attempts is here to give these two color-coded superhero gods with unlimited power the justice they deserve. Hopefully.

LZ: Green Lantern, the emerald light of justice of DC Comics.

TWO: And Silver Surfer, the cosmically powerful Herald of Marvel Comics.

LZ: I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

TWO: Hey, I just realized, if we keep going like this, I'll never get to introdu-

...

Green Lantern

LZ: Emotion is one of the most fundamental aspects of life. Your choices, your worldview, your memories, even your very perception of reality are all colored by how you and everyone around you feels. But what if you could harness these feelings? Control it, use it to your advantage?

TWO: Well, good news! You already can! It just takes a little something you learn about in kindergarten: Willpower.

LZ: The ability to say "no" to cookies might not be the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of the most powerful force in the universe, but perhaps it should be. After all, no emotion, no choice, no power is so great to not bend to the strong-willed. And the Maltusians, the self-appointed Guardians of the Universe, saw this. To control the magicks of emotion and protect all those who cannot protect themselves (and replace an emotionless robot army that was a verrry bad idea), they harnessed the power of Ion, the Green Entity of Willpower. Entities are cosmic beings, fundamental pieces of existence that exemplify the total strength of an aspect of life. Ion was among the most powerful, and with that power the Guardians created an outer-space police force, each member assigned a sector to protect from the most powerful threats in the universe.

TWO: To empower the space cops, Ion and the Guardians made the Central Power Battery, a giant lantern-looking thing that could forge and power Green Lantern Power Rings. Putting one of these bad boys on would give you the power to turn your willpower into space magic! And when they're distributed, they search the universe until they find someone who shows great courage in the face of fear, then slide on their finger and drag them back to home base! Congrats, random squirrel and sentient smallpox, you're now forcibly a policeman!

LZ: Recruits who proved their worth to the Guardians would be granted the ability to use these power rings to fight evil, and would be sworn in-

TWO: With the most badass oath of all time!

In battle against the Entity of Fear, Hal is blasted through several cars and collapses onto the ground. He struggles to get up, only for the eldritch monster to ram into him. Automatically, he creates a forcefield to protect himself, but the Entity wraps itself around the field, forcing him on his knees against the pressure, before speaking in a demonic voice.

"I feel your fear growing. You will be dead soon."

Hal closes his eyes and whispers. "In brightest day-" he grunts in pain, "-in blackest night…"

"And when you are gone, I will destroy everything you have ever loved."

"No evil… shall escape my sight…"

"Your family. Your home. Your planet will be no more."

Hal sets his teeth, his forcefield glowing brighter. "Let those who worship evil's might…"

"The entire human race will be wiped out. Because you, Hal Jordan, were afraid."

Hal slowly turns to look at the Entity, who is shocked to see no fear in his eyes. Only willpower.

"Beware my power… GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT!"

In an instant, the field wraps itself around the essence of all fear, shoving it backwards and causing it to howl in pain.

TWO: Ahhh, the only good part of that movie.

LZ: But the most famous and powerful of the lot… was never meant to join. Hal Jordan was a test pilot and member of the US Air Force. He was big on thrills and bigger on ego, and everyone around him knew it.

TWO: The sort of guy you invite to hang out at a bar 'cuz they're loads of fun, but you'd never leave them alone with your drink.

LZ: Despite his natural talent and prestigious job, he was more or less the last person you'd want getting ahold of any kind of real power. But nonetheless, when Green Lantern Abin Sur was attacked by a bug monster and crashed onto Earth, as he lay dying, he told the ring to search for a worthy Earthling to replace him. Except he specifically asked it to find someone "honest" and "without fear." Not the most exacting of requirements.

TWO: And who should it stumble upon first, but Hal Jordan testing a flightless plane. It zoomed Hal over to dyin' Abin, who made Hal promise to use the ring for the power of good. I mean, props to Hal for being the first guy in the DC universe to not freak out in racism when seeing an alien for the first time.

LZ: After Abin Sur died, Hal put on the ring he'd been given, and our Green Lantern was born.

TWO: You probably think Green Lantern powers are just for creating random objects out of green light, maybe a forcefield here or a laser there. Well, that's how the movies and TV Shows do it, but that's small potatoes compared to what the thing can actually do in the comics.

LZ: Well, sort of. A Lantern Power Ring is charged by the user's willpower. If they have enough courage, can surpass their own limits, and believe hard enough in themselves, they can "turn their thoughts into reality." Effectively, Green Lantern magic takes an imagined reality and supersedes ours with that one, and the more willpower you have, the more you can do. So if you tossed a ring to a random guy on the street, he'd be able to make a gun or maybe fly a bit, but a Green Lantern with enough willpower can do basically anything they can imagine.[1]

TWO: Which is good news, because Hal has the willpower needed to get the most from his cereal-box toy. Those constructs of his can be simple, swords, shovels, airplanes, sure, but his limits go way further. I'm talking creating a machine that sees across all of time and space, remaking the solar system, forging a contained universe, creating duplicates of the Justice League and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps, or a prison that can hold Ultraman, you know, that evil Superman that can merge universes by punching real hard? And unlike what the TV Shows, um, show, these don't have to just be green light construct things. If Hal wants them permanent and real, they'll be that.

LZ: But as we stated, the magic is literally "turning thought into reality." Hal can use the ring to fly, turn invisible and intangible, read and control minds, teleport anything or anyone, track anything across time and space, absorb souls, affect metaphysical concepts as if they were physical, pull higher-dimensional beings into his own dimension, make himself invulnerable to any energy including higher-dimensional and conceptual ones, raise the dead, manipulate matter at the subatomic level, and vastly enhance his strength, speed, and durability.

TWO: X-ray vision, time manipulation, energy shields, energy blasts, a healing factor that instantly regenerates him from a skeleton, a warning for all kinds of attacks, an ask-and-you-shall-recieve understanding of any concept, material, person, force, or history of anything in the multiverse, and also he's immune to all of the above if he wants to be. Basically, if he can think of it, he can do it.

LZ: From entering the minds of others to sealing black holes to recreating the Source Wall to shrinking the Earth down so small that individual atoms are the size of stars, very little is off-limits to a competent Green Lantern.

TWO: I mean, Sinestro once linked the Flash's heartbeat to the magnetic force of the Earth, causing the planet to vibrate at the whim of the Speed Force. Just because he could. And once Hal fought a guy who was immune to Green Lantern energy. So he willed his Green Lantern energy to be super-effective on guys immune to Green Lantern energy. And that, somehow, worked. Like we said, if you can think it, you can do it. It's like the classic playground argument of the infinity+1 sword and the forcefield that eats infinity+1 swords. Except the ring is the sword and the forcefield, and way more.

LZ: He's not joking. Multiple DC characters, from Batman to Superman to outer gods, have called Green Lantern power rings "the most powerful weapon in existence." Even more powerful than objects like the Spear of Destiny, the Staff of Eternity, and the Helmet of Fate. This isn't to say that an average Green Lantern is stronger than these objects, but rather that the ring's full potential is effectively unlimited.

TWO: Well, unlimited power is pretty enticing, but for that, you need unlimited willpower. Which Hal, well, lacked. Surprise, the rando Air Force pilot who thought he was the best thing since buttered toast wasn't the most ideal pick for a space cop superhero.

LZ: Hal would find himself needing to prove his worth multiple times. He was defeated and overwhelmed again and again, partially because the ring itself wanted to teach Hal a lesson: that being a hero wasn't about being powerful, and anything can be done if you have the will to see it through.

TWO: It wasn't easy. Most of the folks close to him died, and he even went insane for a bit and betrayed the Corps. But each time he fell, he eventually got back up stronger. If the ring wanted him to understand what willpower was made of, it did the job a thousand times over. Like when he was stripped of his powers, stuck in the Arctic, and Dr. Polaris was attacking the Earth.

LZ: While blind and suffering from hypothermia, Hal spent days trekking a literal hundred miles through the frozen tundra, fighting through bears, wolves, and snowstorms the whole way.

TWO: Even when he physically couldn't walk anymore, he kept crawling through the ice with his bare hands! All just so he could fight a hopeless battle against the bad guy!

LZ: It's this incomprehensible amount of willpower that has built his status today as the most powerful Green Lantern in history. The barrier broken and a true hero forged, his capabilities with his ring are unfathomable.[2]

TWO: Hal's pulled his body back together when it was separated into five different dimensions, transformed the Justice League into energy waves, broke the shell of a high master, and fought a big battle against Qwa-Man, an evil version of him that's made of antimatter! You know, the stuff in DC that's so powerful, it's what caused that first Crisis? The reason that there's a "Pre-Crisis" and "Post-Crisis" moniker in DC VS Battles? And Hal was taking hits just fine!

LZ: Speaking of, lesser Green Lanterns had their forcefields protect them from that same Crisis event, even though it was powerful enough to destroy, and I quote, "the infinite multiverse." This includes the universe of Earth-S, a cosmic structure over 10 quattrodecillion times larger than DC's prime universe, which is already far larger than ours.[3] Alan Scott's ring even protected him from Extant, who was powerful enough to kill Doctor Fate, a being who has used his magic to sustain the entire multiverse, with a single hit!

TWO: And since he's the best Green Lantern ever, he can totally do anything the others can. Like when Alan Scott had his ring remove "all the evil on Earth." Or when Katma turned an asteroid into a whole living planet. Or when Kilowag absorbed billions of souls at once. Or when Ch'p remade someone who got nullified by the Crisis On Infinite Earths. Or when Arkkis beat a guy who encompassed a whole dimension. Or when Guy Gardner gave some guy all the superpowers of the Atom. Or when John Stewart told Firestorm a story, and the ring made it so that Firestorm could actually feel the same things and even emotions that the guy the story was about felt. Or when-

LZ: YES, WE GET IT. Green Lanterns can do whatever they want, and Hal is better than all of them, et cetera. Which lends itself well to his mindset; Hal is an exceptionally creative fighter who has trained himself to think outside the box in every scenario. He's also skilled with most weapons and, well, most things in general. He once used a building-sized bow and arrow to shoot a sniper from Dimension Zero on the moon, from a random dock on the Earth, passing his shot "through a space-fold" so the sniper couldn't see it coming, all while he was half-blind and drugged out of his mind by higher-dimensional souls. No. I am not kidding. When he says that he can do anything he imagines, he means it.

TWO: Well, Hal struggled a bit with his time powers at first, even once losing his memory because of a machine in the time he traveled to, but it's okay, he's mastered them since. The dude's now able to slow, stop, rewind, and even jump through time, all casually! He stopped time across the universe when he was dying and the ring searched for someone to replace him. But nobody could, what a shock. Oh, yeah, he didn't die. Not yet, anyway. But he did have a giant adventure that lasted forever and a half during about a quarter of a nanosecond. Because slowing down time is fun. And his time-traveling these days is busted, like, casually going to the end of time and even past it, where death itself "stops existing at a conceptual level," and returning no problem, kind of busted.

LZ: It's true. Kyle Rayner even stated that "time-travel is like hopscotch" when it comes to Hal Jordan.[3] And since he wasn't affected by any of DC's many Crisis-es, it's still very much canon that he can do things like blitz Pre-Crisis Superman, who can move "faster than the speed of thought," and one-shot Pre-Crisis Mongul, who was so insanely strong, Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman nearly broke her hand just by punching him.

TWO: And that's saying something, because Pre-Crisis Wondey's pulled off some crazy things. Like moving the sun, cracking the universe, and pushing "immeasurable pressure" against a penny, drawing it out to "infinite length" and then using it to remake the Golden Gate Bridge. What. The.

LZ: Superman himself has told the Justice League that the power Hal holds is "greater than all of ours combined."[4] A statement that Hal has proven by continually defeating or even one-shotting foes that matched or defeated the entire rest of the League. Amazo, Shaggy Man, a supercharged Reverse Flash, all dealt with in seconds once Hal arrived on the scene.

TWO: Oh, and the Omega Titans, who were powerful enough to treat the entire Justice League and Legion of Doom like gnats. Superman, Cyborg, Lex Luthor, nobody could make a mark. Then Hal showed up and killed the one leading them with one shot!

LZ: Practically unbeatable at this point, Hal Jordan has defeated the combined Guardians of the Universe, knocked out Bizzaro with a bug flick, and his creativity outmatched a cosmic weapon that analyzes any foe and comes up with a fail-proof way to defeat them. And if you're thinking of circumventing his powers by attacking the ring itself, don't bother. Even if you manage to remove the ring, teleport it galaxies away, or drain it of power, Hal's will is tied to it directly, and he retains his powers regardless of where that energy is, even being able to call it back to his hand in an instant. And good luck with any technology manipulation. The ring can resist the influence of Doctor Manhattan, a being who could retcon all of reality with a thought![5]

TWO: He took out Red Lantern Atrocitus with a single blast, and Atrocitus could break the constructs of the previous best Green Lantern even without his ring. Oh, yeah, you didn't think Green was the limit, did you? Nah, there's a whole spectrum of Lanterns, each with their own powers, Entities, and representing different emotions. Hal's actually qualified himself for all their rings, and even the two extras of Life and Death, but somehow always ends up as his classic Green self.

LZ: Probably because with just one Green power ring, he can outmatch anything any other ring can do. Volthoom said as much when he claimed that the willpower Hal had alone surpassed even the Central Power Battery. Which he later proved by reconstructing that same battery with just his own ring.

TWO: All that power is matched by his durability; he's survived attacks from the likes of Dawnbreaker and Kalibak, and in his weaker days, even took a punch from Superboy-Prime, the only Green Lantern in the entire Corps to survive doing so. And this wasn't a throwaway hit or anything; Prime was trying to kill everyone and retcon the universe into being like his old one, and specifically called out Hal as "the worst of the lot." Other Green Lanterns died just by being near the guy, which makes sense, since just one of his punches in the Death Metal event was able to erase two extended multiversal timelines from existence![6]

LZ: Even once when Hal did die, his ring pulled him back from the afterlife because it decided that the universe still needed him.[7] It does take a lot to get to that point, though, as the ring is fully sentient (she's named Pengowirr, say hi, everyone!) and will save Hal's life by any means necessary. When he contained the blast of the U-Bomb (which could compress the universe into a single quark at infinite speeds) around himself, the ring pulled Hal's body inside of itself to protect him from the blast. A blast that it survived, by the way.

TWO: And don't think GL doesn't have the speed to back this up. The dude and his constructs are wicked fast. Like, mind-meltingly fast. Once, he was sent back in time by a dude called Gracchus, and he created a few tiny rocket drones to search the universe, looking for other Green Lanterns. Literally ONE HEARTBEAT LATER, they all returned, having explored every inch of the universe and finding nothing. IN A HEARTBEAT.

LZ: You could argue that it was maybe some sort of ranged scan or signal retrievance, but during the events of Final Crisis in our modern day, Superman pulled off the same feat to destroy extradimensional bombs. And Hal Jordan is frequently stated to be as fast or faster than Superman. When Moniter-13 was brought to DC's Big Bang, it was said to explode and move at speeds of 60 Trillion Light-Years per 0.5 seconds, and when the Anti-Moniter, who you can rest assured knows his stuff, met the original creator of the universe, Perpetua, he claimed the universe was still expanding, even comparing it to the expansion of the Big Bang. Since the DC Universe is 15 Billion years old, this would put Hal and his constructs at *inhale* 272.47 Sesvigintillion times faster than light! Or 272.47*10^81 C, for those of us who like numbers. Or, to put it another way, over a thousand times as many times faster than light as there are molecules in our universe.

TWO: Like I said, mind-melting. But while this sounds silly, it's actually consistent, even low-balled. The Guardians have called the speed of the rings "infinite", Hal's outpaced a wave that was consuming infinity, nearly entered the Speed Force without trying to tap into it, and is one of the few beings that can keep up with the Flashes. Flashes. That's Barry and Wally. You know, the guy who can move faster than the concept of speed, who literally outran death, ran faster than gods could teleport, and beat himself in a race? Hal's caught him, and even followed him for a nice conversation when the rest of the League were too slow! And remember how Hal could defeat an amped-up Reverse Flash? Well, even without being amped, RF here could move at infinite speeds and outspeed a young Wally. Don't get me wrong, neither RF nor GL are as fast as modern Wally… maybe, but even back then, he still had immeasurable speed.

LZ: All this power, speed, and sheer force of will was exactly what was needed when Krona, a former Guardian who had tried to destroy the universe several times over, showed up more powerful than ever to take over. He managed to capture and harness the power of all seven Entities, enslave the entire Green Lantern Corps, and trap the most powerful fighters in the universe in a magic book of infinite dimensions. At the end of it all, he and Hal Jordan fought to determine the fate of everything that ever was. And, in an extreme burst of will, Hal broke his barriers and killed Krona with a mighty blast, proving his own willpower could overcome anything.

TWO: Including the combined willpower of everything else ever, apparently.

LZ: That blast was more powerful than any Hal had ever produced. And it might have stayed that way, except the other Guardians became terrified of that power and stripped Hal of his ring. This eventually led to Hal forging a ring out of his own willpower and slowly transforming into his own embodiment of will.

TWO: Yeah, that didn't work out how the Guardians hoped.

LZ: This new ring allowed Hal to reach the depths of his will, becoming more powerful than he had ever been before.

TWO: Even more powerful than that time he was affected by the Entity of Fear and basically became the big bad of all of DC Comics for a while!

LZ: During that, while going by the name "Parallax," Hal journeyed to the end of time and created the "Entropy Wave," an explosion of energy that would expand to consume all of time and space.[8]

TWO: Justice Leagues, time-travelers, all-powerful gods, and reality-warpers alike tried to stop it, and none of 'em could do a thing.[9]

LZ: And after destroying all of DC's infinite timestream and everything in the comics in general, Parallax proceeded to create a brand new omniverse, with many infinite multiverses and timelines that ensured that everyone, heroes, villains, and regular humans alike, would get their own perfect lives and worlds, all created and determined by him.

TWO: It took the Spectre, God's divine wrath incarnate, to hold Parallax back, and even he was defeated! Twice! Later comics literally say that he was terrified of Parallax!

LZ: And the Spectre is a member of the divine Quintessence, who watch over all of DC Comics, and in other circumstances could battle nigh-omnipotent threats like the Anti-Moniter, Phantom Stranger, and even Mxyzptlk while he was possessed by Erebos.[10] And yet (thanks to some time wizardry) modern Hal Jordan has easily bested his former Parallax self, even making him flee for his life! Which makes sense, because all of this Parallax stuff was with the power of, at maximum, two Entities. And when Hal overpowered Krona, Krona had the power of seven.

TWO: HOLY HECKLES! Why don't we get any of THAT from modern Hal?

LZ: Eh, a few reasons. Mainly writer inconsistencies. But Hal also doesn't like to use his crazy reality or time-bending powers, as it hits a little too close to Parallax-home. Also, after one too many event comics, the DC Omniverse went under watch by the Hands, Outerverse gods that are basically stand-ins for the comic book writers. Any crazy Crisis events or retcons, and they would step in to wipe the slate clean. Until Wonder Woman proved that good ultimately prevails over evil, anyway, and they just gave the omniverse multidimensional infinitism, so anything that happens doesn't necessarily mean the end of everything.

TWO: With that handled, Hal was finally able to relax and retire from the hero life, leaving saving the universe in the capable hands of his fellow superheroes and lanterns. Well, until Pariah absorbed part of the Great Darkness, killed the Justice League, and threatened the end of everything AGAIN. Hey, don't worry, Hal and the Flash were able to resurrect the Leaguers by invading their personal heavens and willing them out of existence. Then they counteracted the power of the new infinite multiverse to escape and take down Pariah. You know, like ya do. THEN Hal was able to finally rest. I give it a week.

LZ: With this level of power, weaknesses are few, far between, and very hard to spot. In fact, most weaknesses Hal once had (such as being unable to affect yellow, the ring needing to recharge, corruption of or contrasting orders from the ring, or not being allowed to kill certain beings) he no longer does. Most of them because, no joke, he just didn't want them to exist anymore, and willed them into not. The only two ways of really getting past him now are breaking the ring or breaking his mind. The ring does need to hear Hal's thoughts in order to activate, after all, so if he can't form a coherent thought, he can't use the ring.

TWO: Well, the ring does come equipped with defenses against psychic attacks, and he doesn't even always need those. He once met a demon that could make you live out a hundred "eternities" of terror in a single femtosecond, but he couldn't do jack to Hal's mind. And he didn't even have the ring on! These days the only ones with even a chance of getting past those kinds of defenses are guys like Starrow after he was enhanced by outside forces, and that's a big deal, 'cuz Starrow's directly stated to be the most powerful psychic in the universe, and his psychic-ness can match the magical embodiment of all knowledge! Not all knowledge in the universe, all knowledge.

LZ: And destroying the ring is no easy feat either. In fact, when Hal punched Sinestro hard enough to break reality (Sinestro was superpowered at the time and threatened even the Quintessence), the resulting energy not only almost ended all of everything and killed Sinestro, but also vaporized Hal. But his ring survived. In case you were wondering about that bit earlier where the ring could bring Hal back from the dead, this is where that came in. So, yeah, no easy feat. However, if you are able to destroy the ring, it will return Hal to his human state.

TWO: But even if you did manage to de-power him, that's still not an auto-win. The dude claims he can keep up with Batman, he's punched out a polar bear, and piloted "the fastest ship in the universe" while having to manually steer around planets and stuff, all with no powers! Also, uh, there was the time he made a paper airplane fly. As in, it was standing still, and he told it to fly… and it flew. No ring or anything, he just… decided it would happen.

LZ: Remember, the magic of the Green Lantern is assuming a reality and replacing ours with that one. Other absurdly powerful magic users in DC are able to do similar things without use of an external tool; so long as they have the willpower, they can do whatever they want. So, while odd, this isn't actually out of place in-lore. In fact, as Hal is now his own construct of willpower, it's questionable whether anyone could ever actually remove his powers. Even if you break the ring, there's no guarantee he couldn't just… will it back.

TWO: So the only thing that can stop him-

LZ: Is inconsistent writing.

TWO: Doesn't seem like much of a weakness.

LZ: Not in Death Battle, no, but in comics, it can be quite frustrating. It's impossible to count how many times Hal has been shown as the most powerful being in the universe, and in the very next arc by a different writer, gets knocked out in one hit by a random character who has no business being anywhere close to his level. Even sometimes in the same issue. Like when he was "killed" by an arrow to the chest right before surviving the big bang, and the comic doesn't notice. Or when he lost to Dawnbreaker offscreen despite kicking his butt in every conceivable way a few pages ago. Or when he overwrote his ring's protections against causing its bearer harm and killed himself with it, just to prove he could. Pretty cool. But then he inexplicably stays dead until the timeline resets, even though the ring could and would absolutely revive him from such a small wound. I swear, Hal Jordan is the most inconsistent-

TWO: Woah, calm your teeth, there! You're supposed to be the coolheaded one!

LZ: Erk… sorry. I just wish comics could be consistent for once.

TWO: Yeah, Hal's pretty cool, but man, it's like 90% of his writers think he can only shoot energy blasts and make some constructs. The guy's lost more fights than he's won, and I don't think it's ever actually been his fault. Maybe Frank Miller's fault. Or solid jj's.

LZ: Hal Jordan also suffers from one more fatal weakness:

TWO: His relationship with Arisi-

LZ: The complete inability for any movie or TV Show about him to make any money.

TWO: Ah. Fair. But still, looks like that ring knew what it was doing after all. It might've taken him a bit, but Hal Jordan really became everything he could ever hope to be.

LZ: So, if you come to make trouble on Earth or beyond, may God help you, for the Green Lantern will be coming to deliver justice for the universe.

TWO: Although, even if God does help you, GL will probably just up and arrest him, so, in fact, there really is nothing to save you now.

LZ: The emerald light of will always burns through evil.

As Krona attacks Hal Jordan with the powers of all seven Entities, he cries out to the Green Lantern.

"Even after all their judgements of you, all their mistakes, you sided with the Guardians?"

The Entities take the form of enormous serpents and coil around Hal, who struggles to free himself.

Krona continues. "The Guardians created the Manhunters! They betrayed the first Lantern! They lied about Parallax! They have never once shed a tear for any life lost!"

All of the Entities wrap themselves into a ball as Hal forces them back. They pressure his field until they can again trap him.

Krona flies up to Hal's face as the beings of infinity wrap around his body and attempt to crush him. "Why do you fight for them? Why do you fight for the Guardians?!"

Under inconceivable pressure, blood rushing to his head and out his ears, Hal stutters out his answer. "I don't f-fight for them. I fight for w-what's right. I fight for the ideals the Corps embodies." He gasps and inhales. "I fight for the potential the Corps has."

Krona sneers. "And in turn the potential YOU have. Because you are as flawed as the Guardians."

Hal sets his teeth. "Everyone is, Krona. Me, you… everyone."

He clenches his hand, and suddenly, green buzzsaws appear all around the two of them. The buzzsaws, in never-before-seen strength, cut the Entities apart, freeing Hal.

Hal continues. "You want to force the universe to feel what you feel. But life is… subjective, Krona. The Guardians' greatest flaw is not realizing that."

Shocked, Krona forms chains of fear to lock down Hal, but he shatters them. As Hal puts on more pressure, Krona collects all of the Entities and uses their power to form a protective barrier.

As Hal blasts it with a beam of energy, Krona screams. "What now? You think you're 'turning the tide'? Ha! I've already defeated HUNDREDS of you! I am all-powerful! I am a Guardian!"

He grins as Hal grimaces. "I AM IMMORTAL!"

"No." Hal replies.

"You're just old."

With a shout that bends the fabric of space, Hal's beam pierces through the barrier and drives through Krona's body, causing all the colors of the emotional spectrum to blast out of him.

Krona screams one last time before he dies, his dry husk falling to the ground below.

Green Lantern:

Name: Hal Jordan

Species: Human

Height: 6'2 / 188 cm

Weight: 186 lbs / 84 kg

Age: 15 Billion (Physically 28)

Occupation: Green Lantern 2814.1

One of the five components of the Miracle Machine

Currently hated worldwide for being able to win against a ten-year-old kid

Dated 14-Year-Old Arisia Rrab

~Though her race ages slowly, she's mentally 240, so take that as you will

Abilities:

(via Soul-forged Green Lantern Power Ring)

~Soul-forged Ring outmatched his own willpower channeled through Krona's Gauntlet, which has the power of "a dozen rings"

~Holds the sentient AI Pengowirr, transferred through willpower, who has "all knowledge of everything that ever was", can communicate telepathically and make her own independent decisions, and is referred to as Hal Jordan's "other half"

Energy Blasts

Energy Shields

Physical Energy Constructs (can be anything the wielder desires, from a chainsaw to a universe)

Invisibility of self or others

Portal Creation

Universal Molecular Tracking

Transmogrification of self or others

Transmutation of self or others

Reality Manipulation

Time Manipulation (Time Travel, Time Stop, Time Slow or Speed Up)

Shrinking of self or others

Instantaneous Healing and Regeneration

Dimensional and Universal Travel

Mind Reading

Mind Control

Attacks on all spectrums of reality (can strike intangible or spiritual beings, as well as physically interact with invisible forces, like light, airwaves, and sound)

Molecule Manipulation

Alteration of physical and mental abilities of self or others

Teleportation of self or others

Control over Space and Spatial Alignments

Complete Alteration of Self

Subatomic scanning

Can evolve and de-evolve self and others

Intangibility

Virus, Disease, Toxin, and Magical Effect Purging

Danger Sense

X-Ray Vision

Resurrecting the Dead (including himself)

Soul Absorption and Manipulation

Any and all knowledge he wishes

Protection from reality warping, time manipulation, transmogrification, hacking, mind control, being detected by life energy, and other such hax moves

Endless other powers

Feats:

Defeated Sinestro, Amazo, Cyborg Superman, Lobo, Shaggy Man, Lord Malvolio, Mongul II, the Lost Lanterns, Doctor Light, Myrwheddon, Doctor Polaris, Reverse Flash, Spectre, Parallax, Superman

One-shot Atrocitus, Mongul, Bizarro Superman, Time Trapper, Omega Titan Entropy

Defeated the entire Justice League numerous times

Made his own ring out of his own willpower

Recreated Oa with his ring, including the Central Power Battery

Followed a ship through hyperspace at speeds not even Superman could match

Moved faster than Pre-Crisis Superman could perceive, who can fly "faster than the speed of thought" and "break the bonds of infinity"

Changed the Justice League into immaterial negative energy

Constructs endured the pull of Starbreaker, who one-shot Dhurma, who held the entire universe together

Ring once flew across the universe at speeds so fast that other Green Lanterns could not perceive it, while it was at 0.3% power, just because Hal asked it to

Mind is stated to think at "infinite speeds"

Power Rings protect themselves from every hax, including Controller Mu, the Miracle Machine, and Doctor Manhattan

Removed his weakness to yellow through sheer willpower

Chased and caught Lightray, the New God of Speed

Kept up with both Barry Allen and Wally West, even when other speedsters couldn't

Searched entire universe in a single heartbeat

In a universe without Lanterns, the depowered ring alone charged itself up and one-shot Belzebeth, who is stronger than Mongul and Superman

Created a prison for Ultraman, which took multiversal energy to break

Contained the U-Bomb

Ring shrank the earth to the point where atoms were larger than stars

Effortlessly defeated an enemy that defeated the entire rest of the Corps

Without any powers, mentally caused the laws of physics to break, deadened his mind to be unaffected by a powerful psychic, and completed the Blackstar Gauntlet of Death

Punched Sinestro hard enough to break reality

Patched a hole in the Source Wall

As Blackstar Parallax, was unaffected by Uq Uq Llt's Dolly's mental power, surpassed energy that could destroy the multiverse, and activated the Miracle Machine with willpower alone

Survived a hit from Superboy-Prime

Overpowered Pre-Crisis Superman, who destroyed a "dead universe" with a sneeze

Willpower outmatched attempted control from the Unbound Spectre

Superior to GL Kilowag, whose ring protected him from the anti-matter wave of the Crisis on Infinite Earths

Superior to GL Arkkis Chummuck, who matched a being that encompassed an entire dimension

Superior to GL John Stewart, who matched blows and beams with a White Lantern

Superior to GL Volthoom, who could remake the bonds of reality and hold the universe in his hand

Humiliated Qwa-Man at 2% Ring Power, Qwa-Man was far superior to lower-ranked Anti-verse Qwa-Masters that had multiverse-level reality-warping

Ring explicitly stated his will was greater than Nightwing's, whose willpower allowed him to absorb and control the outerversal power of the Great Darkness

As Parallax, destroyed the "infinite number of souls" of Post-Crisis DC Comics' infinite timelines and created his own omniverse

Defeated Krona when he was empowered by seven Entities

Weaknesses:

Arguably still brash at times

Powers can be removed by destroying the ring

Ring relies on thoughts to work

Special Notes:

[1] Other magic users in DC Comics specifically have their powers determined by their will and belief. Even higher-dimensional beings, such as the Lords of Order, are only as powerful as they are because they and others "believe" that they are this powerful. Imps of the 5th Dimension capable of rewriting the comic itself are stated to be entirely powered by Imagination; so long as they believe they can do something, they can. The Lantern Rings effectively grant a magical tie to ordinary people that allows them to harness this power of belief. Different colors bear different focuses, but all require this sense of belief and the willpower to accomplish it. This is why Green is often called the greatest of the Lanterns; because their focus is on the source of the power itself. While it is visually different, Lantern energy uses the same magic system as the higher gods and even the Hands themselves, and theoretically has no limit except for the willpower of the individual.

[2] Hal Jordan is well-known by the Green Lantern Corps as the greatest Green Lantern to ever exist. That's impressive, but even more so when you consider that some Green Lanterns have peered across all of space and time, and none have ever found a more powerful Green Lantern than Hal. This includes Mogo, who held well over ten thousand Power Rings.

[3] Earth-S's Billy Batson once looked through a telescope that magnified images "a million quintillion hexillion times" and saw the very room he was standing in. Growing to that size via another device revealed this larger world was an exact duplicate of his, but where "every atom is a planet." As the smaller structure was directly comparable to DC's main universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths and returned unchanged in Convergence, the larger structure's size should remain consistent.

[4] In the form of Parallax, Hal's control over time surpassed that of the Time Trapper, who can reset all of time to its origin, make it so any individual "never existed", and created a point in time where "all things have ended… even those that never began." Time Trapper's level of power allowed him to contest The Infinite Man, who is "the sum of all that was and all that will be." Yet lesser Green Lanterns than Hal were able to affect the Time Trapper, and Parallax wiped him from existence with a single blast!

[5] Superman can see souls and look into the individual atomic makeup of living and magical energies, and he himself had studied Hal's ring trying to determine a power limit. His statement carries more weight than one might expect. Wonder Woman's pure magic was capable of destroying one of the four Omega Trees, Flash once ran a race against his protege that threatened to tear apart the multiverse, and Superman himself has taken explosions that have put holes in the Source Wall and one-shotted the Worldforger. Hal should be superior to all of this.

[6] Doctor Manhattan could see and comprehend the "infinite possibilities" of the greater quantum array spanning the highest dimensions of the omniverse. His power is great enough where even Mister Mxyzptlk couldn't comprehend portions of it. During the events of Doomsday Clock, he "re-created the [DC] metaverse" with a literal thought. Previously, the "metaverse" was a phrase used to describe the infinite DC cosmology, suggesting this wasn't a re-creation of just one multiverse, but the larger omniverse. His powers were later temporarily granted to the Justice League, and even later to the Batman Who Laughs, allowing both to defeat Perpetua, one of the Hands. However, even during the height of his power in Doomsday Clock, when Green Lantern Guy Gardner attacked him, he took the ring and attempted to see "what's inside it", but the ring fended off his prying. He also admitted that he found even Guy's Green Lantern energy "difficult to affect."

[7] Superboy-Prime, after some convincing from Wonder Woman, punched hard enough to erase two dark multiverses from reality, including one where Anti-Moniter had become all of existence from the Crisis on Infinite Worlds event. As that particular conflict spanned the infinite multiverse, each universe within also being infinite in quantum timeline scale, this shows that these realities were not just contained universes. These were capable of existing even alongside the regular Omniverse due to harnessing Crisis Energy, and thus being removed from comprehensible time.

[8] This feat was performed with the help of White Lantern Kyle Rayner. However, it's not unreasonable to assume Hal's ring could do it alone if given proper orders. The ring has regenerated Hal's body from just a skeleton, given human bodies to clouds of gas and metaphysical concepts, and multiple other Green Lanterns have raised the dead several times. One Green Lantern even died in battle, but his ring automatically revived him and held him in a "death-stasis" that allowed him to finish the fight and live a full life. As Hal's is far more powerful than any of this, it should be able to accomplish similar, if not greater, feats.

[9] Parallax was able to do this using "Crisis Energy," a powerful energy source left over by events that threaten the DC Omniverse. However, he only used "scraps" of the energy to boost his power, and modern Hal has directly countered entire Crisis events and harmed beings imbued with "endless" Crisis Energy. There is no reason to assume he is incapable of these feats now.

[10] Highfather, whose power comes from the Source, stated that the Entropy Wave would wipe out "all that was, is, and ever shall be." As Highfather's will "travels to every corner of existence," all this would be included in his assessment. He also noted that "Darkseid himself could not make me as fearful as I am today," and Highfather was one of the only beings who knew of True Darkseid's Omega Effect and Fourth-Dimensional self. This implies that the Entropy Wave did not simply consume DC's infinite timelines, but the higher planes Highfather knew of, and possibly the entire DC Omniverse. This is supported when the Spectre later stated that the only being that held as much blood on their hands as Parallax was the Anti-Moniter with his destruction of everything within Pre-Crisis DC Comics continuity.

[11] The Spectre could kill Highfather with a single strike, wipe out the Lords of Order and Chaos, fight extradimensional beings capable of channeling "infinity," and was capable of matching and defeating Zor, a rogue Time Tailor who could control all reality. When Zatanna fought Zor, she described him as "omnipotent" and was only able to win through passing the barrier between comics and the real world and collapsing the DC Omniverse around him. This makes sense (well, in one regard), as Time Tailors are beings who assist in writing and controlling the comic panels.

…

Silver Surfer

LZ: Galactus. The World-Eater. Devourer of Worlds. Eventual Lifebringer.

TWO: Giant LEGO Minifigure. Wearer of Bad Hats. Marvel's Most Inconsistent Character.

LZ: Born from the universe prior to ours, Galactus consumes the energy of worlds to feed himself. All are beneath him. He must exist, even if all else ceases. For when our universe goes cold and all life dies out, he will remain, and bring forth the next universe. But to endure with such unimaginable power, he must feed. One world at a time.

TWO: But when he showed up to the universe's lousiest, snobbiest planet, Zenn-La (geez, even the name sounds pretentious), he found something he'd never seen before: a random dude willing to give up everything to save the most worthless of people. And I mean worthless, these guys literally had a world war that lasted a million years! And they're proud of it! We're still pissed at ourselves for a decade of that. And we're awful!

LZ: Ergh, anyway, this was Norrin Radd, and he was bold enough to make Galactus an offer.

Norrin flies a vessel up to the Worldship and projects his face into Galactus' burgeoning field of view.

"Galactus," he begins, "I am Norrin Radd of the planet Zenn-La, and I am not here to beg or ask for your mercy. Instead, I come to make you an offer."

Galactus stops his consumption for a brief moment.

"I can help you," Norrin declares. "I can give you the one thing that even the great Galactus needs."

Galactus chuckles slowly. With a thought, he repels the hologram and shorts out Norrin's ship. In the same moment, Norrin is taken directly to Galactus, telekinetically held in place, staring down the world-eater.

Galactus speaks. "Your presumptuousness amuses me, Norrin Radd of Zenn-La. You have set yourself a lofty goal. How could one such as you help one such as I? I, who needs nothing. Who desires nothing."

Norrin attempts to back up, but finds himself blocked by an invisible barrier. "Great Galactus, do you not desire to survive?"

Galactus laughs once more. "The tiny mite grows even bolder. Tell me, what is it Galactus needs to survive?"

"Planets," Norrin forges forward, "an endless supply of planets to consume."

His voice grows more confident. "Your constant search depletes you, and that day is coming when you will not find your next meal in time. It need not be so."

At this, Galactus does not laugh. He stares at the humanoid, listening intently.

Norring makes his offer. "Spare Zenn-La, and I will serve you as a net serves a fisherman. Cast me out into the sea of space, and I will find the new worlds you need."

Galactus ponders.

Then, with a thought, the destruction of Zenn-La ceases, the skies brighten, and hope blossoms once more.

Galactus has accepted this covenant.

TWO: Yeah, he really liked that idea. In fact, he liked it so much that he copied Norrin's plan and made himself a bunch more Heralds later. Plus the Fallen One, but nobody talks about him. But Norrin's the first to choose, the favorite, and the most powerful.

LZ: On that day, Galactus imbued Norrin, remaking him atom by atom, with the power he generated, the energy that would one day breathe life into a dead universe: the Power Cosmic. On that day, Norrin became: the Silver Surfer.

TWO: Okay, now we're talking!

LZ: The Power Cosmic is one of the most potent magicks in fiction. With it, Heralds like the Silver Surfer can harness "the fundamental energies of the universe" and rewrite reality around them. Its power has "infinite potential" and only has the limits of the user's creativity, mental stability, and willpower. So while there are Heralds out there whose power only extends to, say, destroying a planet, in the hands of Norrin, there are very few beings in creation that can compete.

TWO: He can fly, turn invisible, absorb energy, read minds, take control of your body, see through anything, manipulate technology, travel through time, track individual atoms across the universe, make portals to other dimensions, absorb souls, restore dead planets to life, make illusions, heal others, and just remove his opponent's powers. Even to guys like Hulk or Zota, just one touch, and those powers are gone. Or, if he really just can't be bothered, he can just "shift out of existence," making it so he can still see the universe, but nothing can interact with him.

LZ: He can transform and manipulate matter at the atomic level, shrink so far that atoms become "the size of planets [and] then solar systems", and create and manipulate the elements even better than the Herald Firelord, whose fire has matched Binary and threatened to burn down the universe. He can turn matter into energy and back again, whether to instantly kill a foe or to create a fully-furnished house. He can forge energy duplicates of others, including most of the Avengers. He can form both stars and black holes, teleport three billion ships to the other side of the universe, and see all of time as if it were simultaneous. And, naturally, he can create forcefields and shoot energy blasts.

TWO: I mean, really, he's so powerful, he can do pretty much whatever he wants.[1] Like freeing the minds of everyone on a lotus-trap planet, turning his body into play-dough so blunt force doesn't hurt him, or faking his own death so well, even the primal forces of creation fell for it. Not joking there.

LZ: His incredible strength has let him defeat other Heralds like Terrax in one strike, and Terrax could contend with She-Hulk during a point in time where she had been empowered by Celestials and was possibly stronger than Bruce's Worldbreaker Hulk! His silvery exterior is also nigh-impervious to damage. Even a battle inside a black hole won't affect it, and Thor's universe-cracking strength could barely dent it.

TWO: And even if you do break him, Norrin can heal super-fast by getting energy straight from the Power Cosmic itself. Stabs, slices, super-space bullets, all repaired in no time at all. Not even Uni-Lord, a god from a different reality with the power of a universe, could defeat him. Having his body blasted, torn apart, shattered like glass, and clapped into thousands of… balls? Sure. Anyway, none of it mattered. Norrin just… came back a second later, the Power Cosmic instantly pulling him back together. And then he absorbed the billions of souls inside Uni-Lord and knocked him into next week. What a fun day.[2]

LZ: It makes sense that he's so impossible to kill, as even scraps of the Power Cosmic are capable of birthing all life in the Prime Marvel Universe.

TWO: Well, impossible's a bit of a stretch. He kinda has trouble against higher-dimensional, holy, or spiritual weapons. Like Mjolnir, or Ghost Rider's hellfire, or Deathurge's swords. He can definitely still heal from it, it just takes a bit longer, and it could kill him if it, like, tears his head off. Though he was impaled through the chest by a spiritual weapon that was hot enough to melt the Iron Man suit that was standing next to it, and he just shrugged it off.

LZ: Well, if he wishes to defend himself against such things, he's quite lucky that his forcefield is strong enough to withstand the big bang, protect from energy capable of rewriting a universe, and can keep out "Mox-Pox" cells, which are, according to him, "the most contagious entity I have ever encountered."

TWO: Not that he even needs that to be protected, thanks to his best power: the Cosmic Sense.

LZ: The Cosmic Sense alerts Norrin to all that happens in reality. From the shifting of molecules to the death of half the universe at the hands of the Infinity Gauntlet, Norrin can sense any possible disturbance.

TWO: It's kind of like the Force from Star Wars. But on steroids. Silvey gets a warning whenever he's gonna be attacked, and can sense wherever they are, even if they're invisible. Or he can read technology to figure out how it works. Or tell exactly how much life is on a planet without even seeing it. Or see people's fears. Or keep track of every individual ship in a fleet the size of a galaxy.

LZ: When he focuses this sense, much like you do your sight during a visual acuity test, he can sense energies even across time and in other universes, perceive the cultural changes of a planet across the cosmos, and discern the identity of the Masked Raider, a feat that not even the Eye of Agamotto could perform. There is almost nothing the Cosmic Sense cannot make him aware of.

TWO: But if he wants another set of eyes or just to surf cosmic waves, he's got his sweet, sweet Surfboard.

LZ: The Silver Surfboard is an extension of Norrin's will, and, in addition to acting as another set of senses and taking him across the universe in less than two seconds, it can be summoned to his side at any point, fire energy beams, transform into weapons, and scatter into energy that attacks his enemies from the inside. It's gone blow-for-blow against All-Black, the Necrosword,[3] and even if it is destroyed, it comes from Norrin himself, and he can simply make another.[4]

TWO: Speaking of, it's generally a bad idea to try to steal this guy's powers. He used to be vulnerable to it, but nowadays, he can just pull his powers back no matter where they are, and take your soul with it!

LZ: But all this power did not make Norrin's task easier. He found many uninhabited planets for Galactus, yes, but was often forced to feed him planets with millions, even billions of lifeforms. The guilt ate him alive, and, in an act of what he considered mercy, Galactus removed Norrin's emotions, allowing him to serve his purpose without the hurt and doubt that came with the task. And then, one day, Galactus came to Earth.

TWO: The Surfer dropped to the surface, signaled for Galactus- and was promptly punched into another building by the superhero The Thing. Lucky for the Earth, he landed in the apartment of Alicia Masters, a blind girl whose main jobs were making sculptures and setting feminism back about a decade.

LZ: Norrin, without his emotions, could not comprehend why someone who could not see would attempt to create works of beauty. To him, it was wasted energy, but to Alicia, it was representative of life itself. For in her own words, if he could not see that every individual life held the same importance as Galactus, he was as blind as she was.

TWO: And it's said that Norrin's heart grew three sizes that day. Or maybe she was wrong, and he could see, and he saw that she was hot. Either/or. Anyway, Norrin got some of those emotions back, and ordered Galactus not to consume the Earth. Surprisingly, the purple goliath was pretty chill about it. He and Norrin sparred a bit, he got threatened with a superweapon, and he agreed to leave the Earth alone. But because he couldn't have his loyal follower not see consequences for being… not that, he put up a barrier and locked him on Earth for twelve years.

LZ: Norrin experienced life on Earth as a human and a superhero. In time, he would come to regain his emotions, and even call the planet home. He experienced several adventures, and when the barrier was lifted, went into the stars to become an arbiter of justice. Protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

TWO: Well, whenever he's not being a Herald, anyway. He kind of flip-flops constantly at that. Kinda funny, it's Comic Book status quo returning, but this guy has two status quos, and none of the writers can pick which one they want!

LZ: True, but the Surfer would soon find himself with plenty to occupy his time. From arguing morality with higher-dimensional beings like Eternity and the Living Tribunal to reigniting dying stars to helping other cosmic heroes in their battles against the Cancerverse-

TWO: THE CANCERVERSE? WHAT?

LZ: It's, er, an alternate universe where death doesn't exist. Without any disease, evildoer, or even individual cell dying, it filled up with evil zombie superheroes and invaded- wha- why are you laughing?

TWO: DUDE! IT'S THE "CANCERVERSE"! I mean, Marvel's jumped the shark a few times, but that's just hilarious.

LZ: *sigh* Despite all odds, his incredible power has managed to prevail over even the most powerful of foes.

TWO: You think he'd have less trouble when he can just go back in time and undo his mistakes.

LZ: Well, he would, but Norrin's time-travel is… risky. You see, the Marvel multiverse isn't like that of, say, Dragon Ball, Amphibia, or Star Trek, with multiple universes sitting next to each other. Rather, every universe (or, more accurately, conglomerate of the ten realms, pocket dimensions like Hell, and higher-dimensional planes) is filled with infinite possibilities, as determined by the Never-Queen, high goddess of possibility. Every single time a choice is made, a new timeline is formed where its other was made. Thus creating infinite timelines where an infinity of possible events happen, from evil superheroes to a zombie takeover to everyone becoming LEGO. And these timelines are what actually makes up the Marvel Multiverse. Every time someone time-travels, they're going to another universe, and every time someone goes to another universe, they're time-traveling. The thing is, Norrin, like the Time Stone, bypasses this rule. So, unlike the vast majority of time-travel in Marvel, what he does in his time actively affects the future of his timestream.[5]

TWO: I'm not seeing any problems here. Go back in time, snap their neck when they're a baby, you're done, right?

LZ: Well, circumventing a rule more stable than the multiverse itself takes a lot of work on the part of the Power Cosmic… and can go wrong very easily. Take, for example, when Norrin's human wife wished to see her deceased father so she could say goodbye to him, and instead, they ended up stranded before the beginning of the universe, with no way to return. Watching his wife grow old and die, Norrin had to return to the present the normal way. By waiting. All alone, unable to interact with anyone for fear of creating a paradox. For thirteen billion years.

TWO: Um… yikes. Yeah, no thanks. But, on the plus side, that just gave him more time to grow his powers!

LZ: Even in his younger days, Norrin's power was equivalent to that of the Soul Stone, one of the famous Infinity Stones. And as he's lived longer, become more accustomed to his powers, and stretched their limits beyond what even he thought was possible, he achieved even more power. Enough to fight on-par with Mephisto, lord of the underworld, in his own realm.

TWO: Yeah, Satan himself saw that Norrin was so good and pure that he refused to let him live, 'cuz he might make the entire universe turn good, and then, well, no more Hell. Seriously. So he kidnapped Norrin's old girlfriend (yeah, um, this guy gets around) and brought her to Hell. Then the Surfer just… invaded his domain, put him in his place in a flyte, then put him in his place in a fight. They've fought a bunch of times after that, and the Surfer's held his own just fine. Mephisto himself said that Norrin might be his greatest enemy!

LZ: Mephiso's battle power is so incredible that, even when severely weakened, his strength nearly accidentally destroyed three universes at once. Three Marvel universes.

TWO: The Marvel universe is way bigger than ours. It's hard to tell exactly how big, but all the Asgard realms are supposed to be the same size, including Asgard and Midgard (the main universe). Odin once ordered a thorough search of all of Asgard, even reaching to the edge of space one trillion thought-years away! You're probably asking "what's a thought-year?" Well, it's the speed of thought traveling for a year, durr.

LZ: The "speed of thought" is incredibly inconsistent in Marvel, mostly because most writers think of it as being how fast someone can think, rather than the scientific measurement Asgard uses. Luckily, one scientist on Earth actually measured this distance and sent Hulk to see a Watcher at the speed of thought, as he was going to a distance that "light wouldn't reach" before he died. Human life expectancy back then was 73 Years Old, and the Hulk was approximately 43. This was while Bruce was in control and well-before his extended life-expectancy was a thing, don't worry. This took approximately one second, meaning that the average Marvel Universe is, at minimum, 5.57 Decillion Miles in Diameter. Over ten billion times longer than our own universe! Well, volume is wierd, because the Marvel universe is shown in official models as being flatly layered instead of spherical, and there's no actual way to measure that, but it should at least be that much larger than ours in volume.

TWO: And, matching Mephisto, the Surfer is way beyond even that kind of power! No big shock there, since Morg, a Herald without morals whose power was "nearly comparable" to Norrin's, was labeled "more dangerous than any creature in the universe." More than, say, Kang the Conquerer, Thanos, Doctor Doom, Ultron, and all sorts of other Midgard-inhabitants that the Surfer's seen.

LZ: Practically unstoppable at this point, Norrin has taken on the entire Cancerverse by himself. He was shown superior to Nova when Nova had the entire Nova Force absorbed into him, one-shot Wonder Man and Storm even though he had been drained of most of his energy, and survived a hit from a demon who wielded all six Infinity Stones.

TWO: He's caught Ego the Living Planet in a net, broken ships that could survive "the most powerful energy weapons known to the galaxy," and attacked the planet Klyntar with such ferocity, it literally became part of the symbiotes' genetic code that you don't mess with the Silver Surfer!

LZ: On some occasions, Norrin has even taken the fight to Galactus himself, holding back the devourer of worlds and even injuring him. He's even beaten him a few times while Galactus was hungry. And that was before his power upgrades; it's now been suggested that the Surfer might be the only hope a world has against the world-eater.

TWO: Bullcrap, his powers come from Galactus. Who the heck would make a guy more powerful than themselves?

LZ: It wouldn't be anywhere close to the first time something like that happened in Marvel cosmology. In fact, this was actually the Silver Surfer's original purpose.

TWO: …Say what?

LZ: Galactus knew he was needed for universal balance, but he also knew the power he possessed was too great to be stopped in the worst case scenario. Should his hunger grow too potent, or his body taken control of and set against creation, there needed to be some failsafe. So he granted Norrin his request not only because having a Herald would be quite handy, but because Norrin's pure heart and noble spirit meant he would be able to handle the power Galactus would give him. Enough power to kill, or, as shown in two timelines, even replace, the Devourer of Worlds.

TWO: What the heck, this changes everything!

LZ: Other Heralds were granted a small portion of Galactus' own powers, but Norrin was granted something different: a link to the Power Cosmic itself. This, intentionally, means that, eventually, Norrin could possibly reach even Galactus' level of strength.[6]

TWO: At full power, Galactus can even fight against Celestials, Marvel's reality-warping cosmic powers that are supposed to be literal concepts! How do you scale magic that attacks concepts?!

LZ: Well, not quite. While the Celestial's being is itself conceptual, their armored bodies are on the physical plane and specifically created by the Celestials so that they could interact with lower beings like Galactus. Any time you see a Celestial "destroyed", it's actually just this body of this universe. The real Celestial is a concept in the realms between Megaverses, and makes living constructs of themselves in a similar way to, say, Darkseid.

TWO: Okay, sure, but even taking out one of these armored bodies is crazy. Guys like Apocalypse, the Godbuster MK II and up, and full-powered Sentry can take on the weaker ones, which is already crazy, but for the ones a few notches up on the food chain? Odin, whose power shook "the infinite multiverse" (don't you love comics?) once used an armor set that boosted his power up a whole bunch, then absorbed all the powers of all the gods of Asgard (except Thor, but who needs Thor), and even then, once these higher-ups got serious, he couldn't do a thing! But Galactus took on four, at once, and was winning! The Celebis had to do a big fusion magic thing to win, so Galactus just teamed up with Franklin Richards and whupped them again! At his maximum potential, Galactus could be as strong as the Phoenix, or even a Cosmic Cube, and those guys can easily warp reality across the infinite multiverse, probably even more!

LZ: And these are the monstrous heights that Norrin's full power can reach. The sheer might of the Power Cosmic is far beyond what we humans can comprehend, as shown when All-Father Thor absorbed the entire Power Cosmic to create a bomb capable of killing the Black Winter, a primordial entity that consumes infinite multiverses the same way Galactus consumes planets.[7]

TWO: WHAT. THE. CRAP. Silver Surfer might not have shown that level of power just yet, but he's still held his own against guys like Zota of the Sixth Cosmos (the Herald of the previous, way stronger world-eater), Void (who one-shot killed Nova after he absorbed the entire Cancerverse), and Knull. When Knull showed up on Earth, he solo'd all the Avengers, even All-Father Thor, and made practically everyone in the universe give up hope. And that was when he was way weaker because the Valkyries cut his ties to the Headless Celestial. Norrin fought him when he was at his peak!

LZ: Even when the gods, the energies of the universe, and the narration itself said he could not defeat Knull, he kept fighting. And he won. By expelling and concentrating all of his Power Cosmic at once, he destroyed Knull, temporarily freeing the universe of his terror.

TWO: And, um, killing himself. That blast sent him back to the beginning of the universe (again) and scattered his atoms across the cosmos.

LZ: But even then, the Power Cosmic would not let him die. It took billions of years, but Norrin would eventually reform, now tainted with a streak of darkness that painted him with the colors of the night sky he protects. He was now: the Silver Surfer Black.

TWO: Which got him all existential all over again, but he didn't lose any power, and the coat of paint came with a whole new power: intangibility! Even super strong beings that can shake the universe and punch holes through reality just pass through his body. And he can fight spirits and even possess people like a ghost! He can still be hurt by magic or energy beams even while intangible though, which sucks.[8]

LZ: But the possible heights of Norrin's power remain higher than even this. Heights he could not reach. Until he had no choice.

TWO: So, one day, Thanos showed up at this place called the God Quarry and absorbed all its power. The God Quarry has the powers of all the conceptual gods that died- eh, long story. Point is, he got so powerful, he could casually walk through anywhere he wanted and kill everything. Eventually, he did, murdering every Avenger, the Celestials, Galactus, everything he found that lived, he killed. Except Norrin, who escaped.

LZ: Thanos waited and hunted. But for millions of years, Norrin did not appear. Eventually, the power of the God Quarry ran dry, and, no longer having his instant-win card, Thanos was terrified. He even used the Time Stone to pull his younger self into the future so they would be ready to fight the Surfer.

TWO: And when Norrin revealed himself, it was crazy. He was way more powerful than ever, and had one more thing up his sleeve: Mjolnir, the most legendary weapon in Marvel Comics.

LZ: Mjolnir is an enchanted hammer made of magical Uru. To wield or even move it, one must be considered "worthy," which-

TWO: Is basically measuring how much of a main character you are.

LZ: *ahem* Norrin had achieved worthiness, and with it, all of Mjolnir's powers.

TWO: Mjolnir is the most badass little warhammer around! It can fly, shoot lightning, make cosmic storms, absorb energy, phase through matter, make portals, time-travel, sense energy, tell you if someone's coming for a sneak attack, transmute matter, store memories, and even absorb someone's soul or life force! Kind of… sounds familiar.

LZ: Yeah, Marvel isn't exactly… creative with its all-powerful forces.

TWO: Oh, and you can throw it at anything and have it come right back to your hand. Thor himself said that "nothing in all the realms can stop Mjolnir from returning to my hand." This includes things, like, say, his enemy's skull. And don't forget, Silver Surfer was way stronger himself even without the hammer.

LZ: In this state, Norrin could hold his own against both of these Thanoses. He stopped the rampaging Hulk with a single hand, and when the Hulk tried to punch him into budging, his hands started breaking and bleeding against Norrin's body!

TWO: He killed the Cosmic Ghost Rider, a Herald who also had demon powers, with a single hit. And not even Thanos was sure if he could perma-kill that guy!

LZ: The Cosmic Ghost Rider is monstrously impressive. He can destroy the Annihilus Horde with a single strike, move faster than the Chitauri's computers can track, and survive shots from a Breathing Gun, one of Hell's strongest weapons. At one point, he was targeted for death by an alternate-universe Cable, who brought armies of superheroes from many timelines to defeat him. Juggernaut, The Thing, Wolverine, Hulk, Vision, Storm, Beta Ray Bill, just some of the many superheroes that the Cosmic Ghost Rider fought and killed. Most with only one hit. In fact, when he fought the modern Avengers, Cosmic Ghost Rider claimed that he had "blown out the brains" of a Celestial. But wielding Mjolnir, Norrin could end him before he could blink.

TWO: Yeah, because Mjolnir is stupid fast! Thor once threw it to Earth, but, just for kicks, had it move across all ten realms first! Well, 8.5, 'cuz the Bifrost is at the edge of one and Marvel Earth is in the center of Midgard, but still, that's just nuts!

LZ: Using our previous estimations for this size and noting that Mjolnir returned to Thor's hand about seven seconds after being recalled, that would put the hammer's speed at 36.28 Octillion times the Speed of Light![9] Not to mention how it could clash with beings that could destroy the universe a bunch of times over.

TWO: But, spoilers, that's not the full limit of Mjolnir's power. Not even close.

LZ: The might of Mjolnir is determined by the willpower and "worthiness" of the individual using it. Thor might be its most iconic wielder, but he's also a limiter for the storm's true power. However, in the hands of someone who spent millions of years becoming as worthy as possible, with an unlimited supply of cosmic magic at his beck and call, the hammer's power could grow beyond comprehension.

TWO: When Mjolnir's full spirit was unlocked, it became the "God of Hammers" (a ridiculous reference to the MCU, but whatever), and it was crazy! We're talking a killing spree that destroyed the forge that made it, most of the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and even crushed All-Father Thor's arm![10]

LZ: It was capable of setting all ten realms ablaze, reacting to the Bifrost, and defeating the combined forces of Asgard and the Avengers in seconds. It even overpowered Thor's temporary Gaia magic, with which he could create a maelstrom that, according to Reed Richards, "no force on Earth could break through." This would include weapons such the Stellar Rod, which can control matter on a molecular level, and the Staff of One, which has enough power to make even Dormammu wary.

TWO: Even just reacting to that Bifrost is crazy. She noticed it when it was about to hit her, and almost got out of the way in time! And the Bifrost moves at the "edge of speed," so fast that not even super-gods can react. If we're thinking that edge of speed means planck time, the God of Hammers almost dodged something moving at 277 Duovigintillion times the Speed of Light!

LZ: It's less unreasonable than it may first appear, as Mjolnir was capable of returning from her teleported destination in less than a minute. That destination being "beyond the farthest point in known existence."[11]

TWO: Why didn't she just make a portal back?

LZ: Well, maybe she did; we don't see how she returns. But probably not, for one simple reason: writers kind of forgot about all of Mjolnir's powers except the MCU ones after the 1990s. That's why Thor didn't just absorb powers or transmute matter to kill Gorr or the Serpent, and why Norrin, while wielding Mjolnir, didn't phase through the Thanoses' attacks, sense their surprise attacks, decompose their weapons, or send one to another dimension. And, arguably because of that, he lost, having his arm cut off and Mjolnir's handle driven through his head.

TWO: Ah, writer inconsistencies. A tale as old as time. So… is Norrin dead?

LZ: No, past-self Thanos went back via Time Stone and made sure this timeline never happened. But it is canon, and it is proof that against someone he otherwise considers undefeatable, Norrin will take the years his control over time gives him and achieve anything. Mjolnir included.

TWO: Which is great to know, because remember that Knull guy? Well, when he fought the Avengers, Captain Universe showed up to save the day. Which he did by fusing Mjolnir and the Silver Surfboard into one crazy battle-axe, which killed Knull in, like, three hits! And when he was done, Norrin and Thor undid the fusion by themselves, so, yeah, if he's using both, he could probably have this axe for himself.

LZ: At this point, without the inconsistencies, you have to wonder if it's possible to defeat Norrin at all. And it is, but it's quite difficult.

TWO: Obviously he can be killed by those spirit weapons and stuff, if you can somehow get through all his power and defenses first. He's also been written out of reality his fair share of times, but only by dudes with Megaverse-level reality warping or higher. Anybody on his level, your only shot is to either destroy the Power Cosmic (which you aren't doing) or messing with his head.

LZ: Both the Surfboard and the Power Cosmic respond directly to Norrin's thoughts. If he can't manage to form these thoughts, they will not serve him in any capacity. Luckily, he is normally well-defended against psychic attacks, even from the likes of the Cosmic Egg. The Egg wasn't at full power, but was still strong enough to reach out and "touch the souls of hundreds of billions of beings." So, quite impressive. But enough psychic energy can breach these barriers and render him useless.

TWO: Yeah, like when one guy used an Infinity Stone to put Norrin under the mental attack of all the souls of all the people he'd ever helped Galactus kill. Talk about a hangover.

LZ: Norrin once visited a planet comprised of survivors of worlds Galactus had consumed: one inhabitant per consumed world. That planet had a population of six billion. As Loki once said that the Earth had an "average" level of population, we can take these two numbers together, which means that the Surfer was under the effects of over 47 Quintillion minds attacking his own.

TWO: Wha- this is the section where we talk weaknesses! Forget psychic power, the fact that he SURVIVED that is insane! This guy really can do anything! Even if you do somehow cut him off from the Power Cosmic, Norrin can temporarily substitute it with, and I quote, "the energies of the universe," or even his own life force!

LZ: Well, he still has yet to overcome his greatest weakness.

TWO: Right, he still feels all guilty and stuff about murdering quintillions of people.

LZ: No.

TWO: Oh. Then, what?

LZ: Writer inconsistency. Virtually every time some big bad shows up that the Surfer should be able to defeat with a wave of his hand, it starts off the day by taking down either him or Galactus. Surfer has been "defeated" by bullets, injured by a brick thrown by a regular human rioter, and has fought Thor (regular, not All-Father) seven times, but only won once.

TWO: What?! But Thor's fodder compared to what we've seen Norrin pull off!

LZ: Tell that to every new Marvel writer who wants to prove themselves.

TWO: Well, he ain't going down like that today! It doesn't matter if you're a space whale or a mad god, if you get in the way of universal balance, expect your head to be served to the Avengers on a Silver platter.

Tyrant unleashes the full power of the Reality Stone on the Silver Surfer, who struggles to continually reform reality around him back to its original state.

Tyrant grunts. "You struggle your way back to the here and now, Surfer. Admirable." He clenches his fist. "But futile when all reality is merely a bauble in my hands." Waves of cosmic energy rapidly expand outwards from him.

Norrin kneels on his board and puts his hands out, the Power Cosmic keeping the magic at bay. "There is no reality in which you triumph." The energy in his hands rapidly expands and, as the power of the Stone is pushed back, his eyes begin to leak cosmic energy. "So says the Silver Surfer!"

The two battle further, and with a heave and a clenched fist, an omnidirectional burst of reality energy explodes out of Tyrant. "I am forevermore a god here!"

"You confuse power with purpose, and it will be your downfall!" Norrin keeps the blast at bay with a focused energy beam.

"I am ancient beyond your understanding!" Tyrant shouts to the heavens. "The creation of Galactus himself. But he feared me, and in his fear, he banished me."

An enormous light suddenly envelops the entire arena. Reality crumbles in different ways in different areas, universes begin to bleed into each other, and Tyrant grows ten times larger.

With a mad grin, he goes on. "Now I am returned and I am ascendant. I will not be the equal of Galactus. I will be his master." Light pours out of his clenched fist and he laughs. "The master of all that is!"

Norrin rights himself on his Surfboard and rams forward, fending off the orange light of the Stone the whole way.

"I have served the world-eater," he replies dauntlessly. "And I have stood against him. I have brought about his defeat…"

His eyes burst with the full might of the Power Cosmic and reality reshapes itself behind him as he flies his board at full speed towards Tyrant.

"JUST AS I WILL YOURS!"

Tyrant desperately manages to knock him off his board with a bolt of energy, but it doesn't matter. As soon as the Surfboard collides with his body, it impales him straight through, causing him to fall, lifeless, and drop the Reality Stone to the ground.

Silver Surfer:

Name: Norrin Radd

Species: Zenn-Lavian, reconstructed as a physical form of the Power Cosmic

Height: 6'4 / 193 cm (variable)

Weight: 225 lbs / 102 kg (variable)

Age: 27.4 Billion ("give or take a few million")

Occupation: Herald of Galactus, Sentinel of the Spaceways, Uni-Lord

Aliases: Noble Nomad, Silveraldo, Chrome Dome, Skyrider, First Light, Fallen One, Mr. Clean

Excellent Super-Spore Ball Player

Notable Love Interests: Shalla Bal, Alicia Masters, Mantis, Nova, Dawn Greenwood

~Eventually married Dawn Greenwood

~Whom he watched grow up by going back in time, take that as you will

Abilities:

(via Power Cosmic)

~Can "Silver Down" to experience life as a mortal, albeit unaging and indestructible

~As Silver Surfer Black, remains intangible to even reality-breaking strength

Cosmic Sense

Energy Blasts

Energy Shields

Unlimited Regeneration

Healing of others

Temporary Energy Constructs

Invisibility of self or others

Portal Creation

Transmogrification of self or others

Transmutation of self or others

Reality Manipulation

Time-Travel

Healing and Regeneration

Dimensional and Universal Travel

Mind Reading

Molecule Manipulation

Teleportation of anything he can touch

Complete alteration of own body

X-Ray Vision

Technology Manipulation

Soul Absorption and Manipulation

Astral Projection

Can attack on the spiritual level

Possession

Protection from reality warping, transmogrification, molecular manipulation, mind control, being detected by life energy, and other such hax moves

Endless other powers

Arsenal:

Silver Surfboard

~Created from Norrin's own cosmic energy

~Responds to Norrin's thoughts

~Shoots beams of energy, breaks into atoms that can also be controlled

~Flies across the universe at incredible speed

~Transforms into a variety of weapons

Mjolnir

~Small forgehammer made of enchanted Uru housing the God Tempest

~Enchantment: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."

~Powers: Flight, telekinesis, weather creation/manipulation, energy absorption and manipulation, portal creation, quantum multiverse theory-based time-travel, invisibility, intangibility, matter manipulation, memory storage, limited precognition, soul manipulation, Allspeak

~Spiritual Weapon capable of killing immortal beings

~Sentient and limited in power by wielder, at full power can react to the Bifrost, destroy all ten realms, and overpower all magical forces on Earth

Holoprojectors

~Scans souls and creates exact hologram duplicates

~Said duplicates are physically interactable, fully sentient, and a complete twin of the original, morality, choices, and all

~No, I'm not kidding

Feats:

Defeated Thor, Uni-Lord, Deathurge, Champion, Zed, Red Shift, Terrax, Warrior Zero, Zota, Tyrant, Annilhus, Thanos, Mephisto, Knull, Galactus

Had his power compared to an Infinity Stone

Shrank to the size where atoms became as large as solar systems

Created evil duplicates of the Avengers (accidentally, of course)

Cosmic Sense sensed the identity of Masked Raider when Eye of Agamotto couldn't

Shot blasts of Power Cosmic that exactly matched with Galactus'

Teleported three billion ships to another star sector

Freed himself from mind-control that affected powerful psychics and "hundreds of billions of souls"

Forcefield blocked reality-warping that could "adjust a universe"

Surfboard equalled All-Black in a duel

Surfboard blocked hits from Power Stone-empowered Warrior Madness Thor

Survived a blast from all six Infinity Stones two different times

Outsped the Hell Charger

Crossed the universe in "mere moments"

Broke the symbiote barrier around Earth so Captain Universe could enter

Temporarily powered the Impericon, which previously required "infinitely large" energy from "the power of every possibility"

Held back four versions of himself from previous timelines at once

Defeated Captain Atlas and Doctor Minerva simultaneously, claiming they were literally incapable of harming him, both are equal to Captain Marvel

One-shot Wonder Man and Storm while severely weakened

Resisited reality warping from the Reality Stone

Killed Cosmic Ghost Rider with a single blow

Is the first person Thanos goes to whenever reality is in danger

His soul is so pure and good that when Mephisto transformed him into a thought in his head, it nearly killed the demon

Created the birth of all life using his last scraps of the Power Cosmic

Imbued Baby Galactus with the "knowledge of the reality to come"

Magical power is among "the strongest known magic," potentially scaling to Odin and the Phoenix

Became Worthy of Mjolnir, potentially scaling to the God of Hammers

Both Eternity and the Never-Queen follow his adventures like they're watching an anime

Regenerated his body from scattered atoms across billions of years

Outsurfed "the end of everything" when the Beyonders destroyed the Seventh Cosmos

Superior to Terrax, who could trade blows with a Hulk stronger than Worldbreaker

Superior to Firelord, who could "burn away the universe"

Superior to Jack of Hearts, who could power the Forever Gate

Defeated multiple characters that could compete with Galactus

Was forgiven by all the people on planets Galactus killed, both their souls and their survivors

Survived drinking Doctor Strange's tea

Weaknesses:

Low Emotional Stability, suffers constantly from "self-doubt, and fear of judgment for wrongs done"

Power can be completely expended if Norrin does not have time to replenish it or if he is cut off from the Power Cosmic

Lack of control over time-travel

Power Cosmic relies on thoughts to work

Special Notes:

[1] The magic of characters like Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer has been stated to work by "rewriting the words of the universe" with specific visual allusion to the comic narration. While certain Marvel characters who can actually rewrite the comic book (such as Gwenpool) have proven far above these two, this does lend support to the "unlimited potential" of Silver Surfer's cosmic magic.

[2] While he can absorb billions of souls himself, Norrin's own soul is exceptionally difficult to affect. It has resisted the likes of Mephisto, who can erase spirits from existence, and even the Soul Stone when it was acting alone.

[3] All-Black's power was severely reduced during the King in Black story arc as a result of its tie to the Headless Celestial being severed by the Valkyries. When Norrin fought Knull, however, this tie was still strong, so he should scale to all of All-Black's feats, including when it used Gorr to become one with one of Marvel's alternate universes. To stop it required the complete destruction of that universe on a fundamental level!

[4] When the Surfboard interacted with Dawn Greenwood, it gained a form of sentience and could act on its own. In this state it was given the name "Toomie" and regularly assisted the Surfer as a partner, rather than a tool. However, this sentience vanished when Dawn Greenwood died, and has not been seen since.

[5] The Never-Queen eventually removed the Surfer from the flow of possibilities, making him completely free of fate. This does not affect his life or battles normally, but does allow certain actions that otherwise "could not be" and prevents his future from being set. Even when he was caught in a time loop without being aware of it, he broke the loop by simply making a different choice than his previous loop.

[6] The Silver Surfer's power has been compared to Galactus on many occasions, and has even defeated a fed Galactus in some alternate universes/What If stories. Norrin has also fought foes who could stand up to Galactus, such as Mephisto, Tyrant, and an empowered Thanos. While Galactus only fought the Phoenix when it was not at full power and lost, he himself was also not at full power, and was able to trade blows with it for some time. He has also been stated to wield more power than a Cosmic Cube, likely referring to the full Power Cosmic that he is linked to. The full power of a Cosmic Cube varies, but thirty working together were able to potentially affect the entire Marvel Omniverse after an extensive ritual. This supports the scaling of the Power Cosmic to the Black Winter. Note that the comment a Cosmic Cube made about being "infinitely less powerful" than a Celestial was in regards to its true conceptual form, not the physical ones that Galactus fought, and may not be entirely accurate as shown in later event comics.

[7] All-Father Thor also decimated Galactus when he was "more powerful than I [Galactus] have ever been." However, this was due to his having been made a Herald with the specific goal of killing the Black Winter, and thus was far more powerful than his normal self. Mjolnir was also siphoning the Power Cosmic from Galactus during the fight, increasing his strength while depleting Galactus. As Thor expended the entirety of the Power Cosmic to destroy the Black Winter and never gained it back, neither Knull nor Norrin would scale to this.

[8] While this intangibility was originally a constant effect that Norrin could not control, his battle as Silver Surfer Black in the Thanos Wins storyline implies that he gains control over this ability at some point in the future. As Death Battle uses these characters at their strongest, this will be recognized.

[9] Maps of the connections between realms vary, with modern interpretations understanding Yggdrasil as an energy field that binds the edges of realms together. This leads to the understanding that to move through these realms without magical means would equate to moving across the diameter of each.

[10] While Mangog's essence corrupted the spirit of Tempest within Mjolnir, it did not increase its power. The God of Hammers is stated in and out of universe to be simply the full, unrestrained power of Mjolnir without a wielder to hold it back. All of her feats should be possible for a wielder who has unlocked the hammer's full potential.

[11] Jane Foster once "scoured the ten realms and every point in-between" in "the blink of an eye." Assuming she used speed alone would put her at 611 Duovigintillion times faster than light. However, it's quite likely that she did so by using her Valkyrie powers to instantaneously teleport across all the realms, as the comic itself notes that she accomplished this "with the powers bestowed upon her as last of the Valkyries." This same ability has been compared to the movement of the Bifrost, meaning this can act to somewhat support the scaling of the highest possible levels of Asguardian reaction and tech.

…

All right, the combatants are set, and we've run the data through all possibilities. It's time for a…

Death Battle!

…

The Silver Surfer lowered his hand, and the ashen husk of a world once teeming with vibrant plant life gently descended back into its natural orbit. But within moments, the world began to collapse upon itself, life's essence merging into the silvery form hovering high above.

The Surfer held his Surfboard in one arm, absentmindedly caressing it as if it were a cherished companion. Often, he reminisced about when the board held life and would communicate with him, albeit in its unique way. He found himself missing it more than he had anticipated. Not for the sake of efficiency or the egotism of conversing with a fraction of his own soul, but because it had been so long since he had someone to turn to, someone who would truly understand his actions, and, most importantly, someone who would never abandon him.

Everyone left. Eventually.

"Norrin Radd."

He heard the voice behind him, and his Cosmic Sense immediately revealed the speaker's identity. Ordinarily, he would have been startled that someone had approached him undetected, but once he recognized the name the voice belonged to, he acknowledged it as an inevitability. Even the most potent senses in the universe had their limitations.

Norrin turned around. "Hal Jordan. Green Lantern of Sector 2814. You have journeyed quite a distance to converse with me."

The man before him had styled brown hair, an emerald skintight spacesuit adorned with the iconic emblem of the Green Lantern Corps on his chest, and a subtle eye mask that gave his eyes an otherworldly luminescence. In other words, the archetypal space guardian.

"By protocol, I'm supposed to tell you that you're under arrest, and to come quietly with me back to Oa for a 'fair' trial." Hal announced. "But I'd rather just talk, if that's fine with you."

"Nothing would bring me more satisfaction," Norrin responded coolly. He lowered his board, allowing it to hover at his feet, poised for immediate flight. His Cosmic Sense assured him that Hal had not missed his subtle cue.

Hal descended to eye level with the radiant energy construct. "Look, they don't call me out here much anymore. Most of the time, only if Kyle's busy and some multiverse-ending big bad is on the way. So, what've you been doing to get that high on Santa's naughty list?"

"I believe we share the same knowledge," Norrin stated. "I have been doing only what is necessary.."

"Yuh-huh." Hal adjusted his mask slightly. "I hear you've been snacking on planets. Uninhabited ones, so far."

"And so long as I can."

"Right. Here's the thing." Hal clapped his hands together. "You've got everyone up and worried. No offense, I know you've changed and all, but there are still a lot of Lanterns who aren't your biggest fans. The last thing they need is to think they have another Galactus on their hands."

Norrin rested one hand on his chin, contemplating the situation. "And what if they do?"

Hal stopped. He ran the speech by his ring once, checking to make sure there had been no mistranslation. "Come again?"

"Do you have any idea what happened to cosmic order when your White Lantern slayed Galactus?"

Hal narrowed his eyes. "Actually, yes. We're still patching holes. But it's worth it to know that none of those planets out there, not Rann, not Zenn-La, and not Earth, ever have to worry about suddenly not existing because a space grimace got a little snacky."

"You meant well. I have the power to know that for certain." Norrin turned away, as if to hide his face. "And it is with no small guilt that I tell you what must happen in response."

Hal put one hand to his forehead and sighed, almost sounded exasperated. "It's you. You're going to take his place."

"I do not expect you to understand. None on Earth did. Neither did any on my home planet. Or Inkandessa. But it was the last request of my former master. I am… the only one who can."

"You know, you're right. I don't get it." Hal shrugged and tossed his weight backwards, one hand behind his head as he floated dismissively through the ocean of heaven. "I thought we might've seen some pushback from the big guy's cronies. I've got half a dozen on my old squad who were waiting to take a crack at Terrax. But you?" Hal spun his body upside down, still facing Norrin. "You've always been first in line to stop him from gnoshing on innocent lives. And you're definitely not one for revenge. So why…" he spun right-side up again, and switched hands. "Why are you the one here? Not even to mourn Boo Berry. You want to replace him."

As though he were trying to counteract Hal's relaxed stance, Norrin turned back and faced the Lantern. He crossed his arms and stood firm, one foot on his Surfboard. "It is not a matter of want. I must replace him. There must be a world-eater."

"Pretty sure the purple crayon's died more than enough times to prove that little hypothesis false."

Norrin tapped his foot once, sending a ripple through the Surfboard. Across its surface, the entire history of Galactus played out in songform, a method only those with the true cosmic sense could understand. "It is those very instances that should prove what I say. For as much as he falls, Galactus has always returned, in one form or another. The spaceways that you patrol, the fabric that makes up all that is, it must have Galactus. For if he was no more, so, too, would be this reality's future. It is inevitable."

The Green Lantern straightened himself a little, cocking one eye at the nomad. "I don't believe in the inevitable."

"Then you are naive, Hal Jordan. I have seen this existence from beginning to end many times. I lived through all of it twice. Never do the Green Lanterns remain. Never are the humans found at the end of all things. Even the gods and titans themselves eventually fade. But the world-eater persists. He ends this existence, and begins the next. He is eternal. In other words-" Norrin tapped the Surfboard again, and the shifted song of the Lifebringer began. "Inevitable."

Hal floated down, resting his own foot upon the Surfboard. "Maybe," he acknowledged, "you have a point. One day, the last bonds of reality will break." He tapped his ring with a finger. "The last emotion will be had." He nodded at the board. "The last song will be sung."

"You… hear it," Norrin acknowledged. It was not a question, but a statement.

Hal did not stutter. "And a new universe, multiverse, celestial sphere, whatever you want to call it, will be born. Into a new, dark world, full of history it'll never know, and making choices without knowing the consequences. A fresh start."

"I do not understand," Norrin declared, the extremely rare statement leaving his mouth with no shame. "You comprehend this as well."

Hal shrugged. "Yeah, well, having an all-knowing superweapon and years alone in space can lead to some heavy stuff."

Norrin understood that sentiment far too well.

"But," Norrin continued, "you comprehend, and still you oppose me? There must be a remnant. A bridge between this reality and the next."

"Yep. There probably should be. One for when the new kid shows up." Hal folded his arms. "And so, I intend to be there. Waiting for them."

Norrin started. "How arro-"

"Along with every human, god, thanagarian, symbiote, and everyone in-between who wants to wait with me."

Norrin stayed his hand, for fear of conducting an action he would regret. "You intend for all to continue? To reach the next existence? How would you accomplish such a task?"

Hal raised an eyebrow. "You don't understand. I'm not doing anything. When people fall, it's my job to catch them. Outside of that, I'm just a regular guy. They'll be there because they'll refuse to not be there."

"They will not have a choice." Norrin reflected, his tone devoid of malice or anger, simply a factual statement. "If they were to continue, the new beginning would not be unblemished."

"There's no such thing as an unblemished beginning," Hal replied, keeping in step to the Surfer's philosophy at every moment. "You were remade many times, physically and mentally. But you aren't those people. You're the combination of everyone you were before, plus who you choose to be now. It's the same for everyone. And for every future."

"But the pillars would be rebuilt anew. This is an opportunity for all life to coexist as one, peacefully, without knowledge of death or hatred. Do you believe in that? If so, would you watch it vanish?"

Hal clicked his tongue and turned away uneasily. "I do believe in that. But I learned the hard way. A perfect world can't be built on blood. If you're planning on killing countless people just for the sake of a perfect future…" he turned back and his ring began to lightly glow, "then I will stop you."

"It is paramount to madness," the Surfer replied calmly, not revealing an iota of personal sentiment. "It has never been done before. Six times reality has been refreshed, and six world-eaters have ensured its survival. Even if one mortal were to persist, they would not be able to function within the new framework of existence. It is impossible."

"Herald," Hal stated firmly. "You're speaking to a member of the Green Lantern Intergalactic Police Patrol." He took a step forward, both feet now landing on the board. Subtle emerald lines began to emanate from where he stood, intertwining with the silver of the board. "If there's only one thing in all my life that I've learned, it's that nothing's impossible as long as you have enough willpower."

Norrin shook his head. The emerald light seeping into his board slowly retreated. "No."

Hal lifted off the Surfer's board. "So be it." He clenched his right hand, and his ring began to shine.

"No," Norrin repeated. "Not Herald."

The light dimmed, and Hal blinked in confusion. "What?"

"Not Herald." The Silver Surfer raised his arms toward the heavens.

"World-Eater."

At this, the fabric of space bent and ripped. Four surrounding planets were consumed in an instant, and as the Surfboard began to play the song of the noble nomad, a piercing green light blasted through the waves the cosmos created around the Surfer and struck him in the chest.

-FIGHT!-

The light struck the consuming Surfer in the chest, halting his absorption and skipping him backwards as a stone across the cosmic waves. He righted himself, shook his head, and with a thought his body changed, discolored into darkened hues and lightly-hewn swirls of energy. As the Silver Surfer Black, he shifted out of existence, vanishing in front of the Green Lantern's eyes. The cosmos bent once again, leasing their energy into the incorporeal world-eater.

Hal mentally jumped. "Where'd he go?"

The ring immediately relayed his exact position in both time and space.

"I want to see him."

Hal's eyes were adjusted, and immediately, the Surfer was as visible as he had ever been. Hal narrowed his sight in antagonistic force, and shot another green beam at Norrin. The beam stuttered as it entered the sentinel, but passed harmlessly through his body. Hal forged a construct of a large moon and swung it at Norrin, but it, too, passed harmlessly through him. A light blinked out in the far background; a star had been eaten.

"Right," Hal muttered. "I want every attack of mine from now on to strike on every dimensional plane."

The ring glowed for a moment, and Hal sensed that his request had been completed. He shot a new laser, this one a slightly darker green, and this time, Norrin's body was slammed out of its consumption. He careened upwards, but the Surfboard moved to block his ascent and caught him upon itself.

Norrin stood. "Very well. I shall show you the infinite strength of the Power Cosmic."

He raised a hand and a bolt of blue and silver energy erupted towards the pilot. Hal raised a green barrier to block the blast, and while he was successful, the sheer power of the attack forced him back a half-dozen light-years.

Atop his board, Norrin caught up to him in a mere moment. "You must surrender." He lifted his right hand, and the Surfboard leapt into it, changing shape until it was a large longsword. "My weapon can pierce any defense." A translucent sphere encompassed his body. "My defense cannot be pierced by any weapon."

"Funny." Hal waved his right hand, and an iridescent jade rapier formed in it. "I was going to say the same thing." He swung the blade at the transformed Surfboard, which clashed with it. The impact of the two unmatchable blades shifted reality itself, darkening a lighthouse in the eternal void and causing the trapper at the end of time to take note of a shifting wind. But one blade was more unmatchable than the other, and the Green Lantern's construct smashed to pieces under the pressure of the silver sword.

Norrin readied another swing. "I did warn you."

Hal grimaced; one of the shards had struck his own body. His ring healed it and blocked his pain but he had taken the first true wound in this fight. "That's fine. I know someone who's a lot better at swordfighting than me."

The ring glowed, and in front of Norrin, there existed an amazonian demigod clad in stars, wielding bracelets and a blade that could sever atoms. Norrin's Cosmic Sense alerted him: this was Wonder Woman, one of the strongest beings in all the realms. And she was as real as he was.

"In fact…" he heard the emerald officer's voice continue.

Then, in a blink, all of them were there; the man of steel, the caped crusader, the scarlet speedster, the manhunter from mars, the world's mightiest mortal, and forty-seven additional beings of great renown, all those Hal Jordan fought alongside.

"It seems unfair," Norrin stated, no worry in his voice, "to pit all of the world's finest against a lone sentinel."

"Give up," Hal offered, "and I'll let you file a complaint."

Norrin chuckled. Cosmic energy gathered in his hands. "I do not think so. They are powerful, but they are not Earth's mightiest heroes."

In a blue flash, in front of the Surfer stood the captain of liberty, the armored avenger, the god of thunder, the incredible worldbreaker, the golden guardian, and more warriors, equal to those the Lantern had brought to light.

Hal raised an eyebrow. "Your army won't survive."

"Neither will yours. And while your ring must consistently maintain their forms, my power is endless and ever-replenishing. This is your final chance."

"All that proves is that you really don't know who you're dealing with." Hal clenched his ring-bound hand. "Justice League, advance!"

"Avengers, assemble!" A similar voice called from the other side. The two armies of superheroes moved forward, seemingly unbothered by the vacuum of space or lack of ground beneath their feet. When they clashed, there was instant chaos and constant destruction. Chaos that the Surfer took advantage of by racing through the energy and swinging his silver sword at Hal.

Hal took the hit, cutting through his outfit and drawing a line of blood. It healed almost as quickly as it appeared, and Hal blasted a beam of energy at the nomad. Norrin cut it with his blade, but as he sought to swing again, his board-forged sword vibrated rapidly and fell into atoms.

Hal chuckled. "That attack wasn't for you."

Norrin jetted cosmic energy from his feet and flew many times higher than Hal. He spread out his arms, and from them came a forged sun, of purple and black, holding endlessly more power than any other star in the universe. It fell towards the Green Lantern, seeking to absorb his mass completely, but the emerald warrior held no fear. He raised his ring, and the star tripled in speed, colliding with the lawman, only to have its energy transformed in a green light, collapsing in on itself until it had formed a black hole smaller than the palm of a hand. Hal spun the black hole and launched it to Norrin, who caught the infinite darkness in his hand and crushed it as though it were straw.

Hal spared a glance at the two armies and saw that, in less than a minute, both had dwindled down to single digits. The kryptonian super-being was matching blows with a golden hero of light, the hammer-wielding asgardian was matching lightning with the magician of eternity, and the robotic air elemental was deflecting a beam from a scarlet android. Most of the other fighters had vanished, fallen to an enemy.

Hal turned back to Norrin and dodged an unexpected blast of Power Cosmic. He raised both his hands.

With a flash of light, endless emerald weaponry was formed in the space surrounding the darkened surfer. From typical armaments to legendary weapons whispered about on the farthest planets, if one scanned the night sky, they would see it all. The sword that sealed the darkness, the pale lance of dreams, a shapeshifting blade that once blotted out the universe, the greatsword that shone of the moon itself, dual blades used by a blue spirit, two halves of a weapon that rends life itself, a rather large spoon, a bronze sword with a troubled history and god-slaying might, two firearms made to kill that which cannot die, and even a large cube that could shift itself to craft any dream. Just some of the artillery aimed at the sentinel of the spaceways. With a mere thought, all fell, seeking to end the nomad's life.

And, with a thought of equal power, all were repelled. As even the mightiest forced themselves upon Norrin's barrier, they lost their luster, and simply cascaded down and vanished from the universe.

"I told you, ringbearer. No weapon can pierce my defenses."

"Had to test that theory," Hal noted. "How about one more?" Immediately a green shine illuminated the surrounding area, but no visible change was made.

What-

Then he sensed it. An infinite ocean of dark matter, attacking at the subatomic level. Such a level that even his forcefield required additional cosmic energy to repel. He did not have time for that. So Norrin responded with his own burst of light, striking the dark matter and guarding it backwards, causing it to disappear.

"A creative attack," Norrin mused. "You meant to shift my gluons, to rend my body at the subatomic level."

Hal clenched his ringless hand. "Looks like that Cosmic Sense isn't just for boasting. I'm curious; would it've worked?"

Norrin contemplated this; running trillions of possible outcomes, along with his entire history of exposure to the darker forces of nature and magic, and how quickly he had reformed from each instance. This took a mere microsecond. He nodded. "Possibly."

"Good to know."

The pain was faster than thought could perceive it. Norrin doubled over like a man who had been shot. He felt no wound, sensed no trouble, yet he was being unbound completely. Did the dark matter get in? No. My Cosmic Sense would have seen that. How- UGH! The destabilization reached where his brain would have been. He felt pieces of his outer shell fall and fade like paper mache.

He looked up at the lawman, clutching his chest. "How… did you-"

"What, you thought dark matter would stop existing just because you blew it a few feet away?"

Norrin felt his legs unravel. "How long… have I-"

Hal frowned. "Since this battle started. Those four planets you ate."

Norrin blinked his darkened eyes. "You-"

"I sent the dark matter back in time and spread it across those planets. You can't defend yourself from something you've already done."

The Surfer cried out as he attempted to fly towards Hal. But his atoms broke. He twisted. And, before he had moved even a meter, he exploded in a mass of energy. The supernova-like burst coated the entire star system, instantly disintegrating the few remaining superheroes, blotting out the nearby sun, and causing all to go dark. All except a transparent sphere of green, protecting one earthling.

Hal lowered his forcefield once the energy dissipated. He raised his hand, and from it birthed a new star, one to light the darkness and eventually create life in this small portion of the universe.

He turned to leave. "Well, that's that."

"I would not be so arrogant."

Hal turned in surprise. There, behind him, the Surfer remained, Surfboard under his left arm, all traces of darkness gone from his body.

"Okay, I'll admit it: I have no idea how you survived."

"Reforming myself did take a few million years." Norrin held his right arm to his side, as if inspecting it. "But you will find that I also bear some manner of control over time." He lowered the arm and turned to face Hal. "I reformed by the will of the Power Cosmic. I am energy. You will find that such tricks no longer work on me."

"Power Cosmic, huh? Thanks for the tip." Hal tapped his ring and spoke as if he were ordering pizza. "Hey, ring, buddy, I want a big ol' forcefield. A few kilometers. Let's make this one unbreakable. Oh, and, uh, no Power Cosmic inside. Thanks."

In an instant, his will was made reality. The green field entrapped both Hal and Norrin together, and when Norrin tried to pull on the Power Cosmic, he found he could not do so.

"Ready to give up yet?"

"The energies of the universe will sustain me long enough. All I have to do is defeat you."

Hal grinned. "And I thought I was the arrogant one."

Without warning, Norrin was pierced from the back by a holy sword with a royal sigil. It broke through his skin and erupted out the other side. Norrin gasped in pain before the sword faded, no longer able to sustain existence within exposure to the Power Cosmic. "What was-"

"A few million years, and you didn't even learn from your mistakes," Hal tsked. "Those weapons didn't break, did they? What do you think happened to them?"

Norrin remembered the endless weapons, and how they had faded against his forcefield.

"I didn't remove them. Just sent them a few minutes into the future with some orders."

A pale lance appeared in front of Norrin, who barely blocked it with his board. "Another fascinating idea that is, ultimately, useless."

Norrin leaned his head back and focused his senses. His silvered eyes glowed with power, and, for a brief moment, he saw all of time as though it were simultaneous. He saw every one of the weapons that surrounded him in time pockets, waiting to strike. And with a wave of his hand, they all found themselves shackled to time itself, destined to flow down the river until coming to the end of all things.

But, he saw that in the present, Hal had not given up. A green dragon of light was flying towards him. So he let go of time and spiritually floated back into this reality. The dragon caught him and snapped him up in his jaws, but the jaw broke upon his body. With a shot of energy, the rest of the dragon followed suit.

"Not bad," Hal acknowledged. "But you're draining energy. Cutting off your food line is hurting a lot more than you're letting on."

He wasn't wrong; Norrin still had teeth marks from the dragon, ones that hadn't healed. But he remained undeterred. He lifted his right hand, stretched, palm open, into the cosmos. "The Power Cosmic chose me. If I must make do without it, then all it is would be a test of my worthiness."

"And what, exactly, makes you think you're so worthy?"

The vacuum of space whistled.

The Power Cosmic-blocking forcefield shattered.

And Mjolnir flew into the Silver Surfer's hand.

Hal nodded. "Right. I can see why that'd be a compelling argument."

Norrin swung the hammer, and a thunderbolt with the power of a billion storms struck Hal, who managed to only get his own forcefield up an instant before it wracked his body. That single instant gave Norrin all the time he needed, however. His body renewed with the Power Cosmic, he swung his board and hammer together, and in a ritual that lit up the universe and made the Never-Queen turn to see what impossibility had been made manifest, the Battle-Axe of Captain Universe was reforged.

From behind his shield, Hal created a blade that matched the size of the solar system, and telekinetically swung it at Norrin.

Norrin caught it in his finger.

"No more. No more swords. No more dragons." Norrin clenched his hand, and the construct broke. "Just you. And me."

Hal had no time to react as the axe struck the shield in the moments between time, shattering the forcefield and taking off Hal's left arm. Hal shouted in shock and pain, then teleported a light-year away, the ring remaking his arm as he appeared. "Where is he?"

"Here."

Norrin swung the axe again, and Hal only managed to dodge by slowing down time. The axe cut through the barrier of time, and Hal tried to forge his own construct to match the weapon of eternity. Hal swung his own axe, but it simply crumbled in his hands as it approached the otherworldly armament. Norrin jabbed forward with the axe's spike, shallowly impaling Hal in the chest, and then changed the axe's inertia, causing it to spring forward with the power of a million exploding suns and pierce the green guardian's torso completely.

Hal screamed in pain even as the ring regenerated his chest. He took a swing at Norrin, but he was no longer there. Hal turned and put up the strongest barrier he could manage, the same one that had guarded against the U-Bomb. He was smart to do so, as the axe struck it even as it was forging itself. An emblem of a lantern imbued itself over the barrier, but another swing from the axe cracked the symbol of will. The cracks spread down; somehow, Hal knew that this was something on a scale he had never had to defend against before.

He screwed his eyes shut. There was only one way out of this. To save himself. And the infinite lives of this reality. He had to believe.

"In brightest day…"

Norrin swung again, and the top level of the barrier fell to glass.

"In blackest night…"

Another swing, and the next crevice pierced every layer. It reached down to Hal, splitting his right glove.

"No evil shall escape my sight…"

The next swing collapsed all but the last layer of the barrier, less than a centimeter thick. And even this layer was so fractured you could not see what was below it.

"Let those who worship evil's might…"

Norrin held back a moment. "Hal Jordan. We have fought both against and for one another. You understand my mission. You understand that I have no choice. You understand that you cannot defeat me. There is no power greater than mine. Leave me be, and you may walk away unharmed."

"Beware my power…" Hal whispered. His ring began to shine.

Seeing only the glow, Norrin resigned himself. "You have brought this upon yourself." He lifted the axe.

"GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT!"

The shout rattled the heavens. As the axe fell, the barrier suddenly regained every layer, and the impact of the axe caused the Surfer to lose his grip on the weapon.

The barrier vanished, and the Green Lantern was holding a trident. He threw the trident as a thunderbolt from Zeus, and it struck the Surfer, impaling him and sending him farther from his weapon.

Hal pointed his ring at the battle-axe and streamed energy at it. Upon being struck, the weapon was reversed through time, and re-entered its original forms: a Silver Surfboard and a Hammer of the Gods, two unconnected devices floating through space.

"To me, my board!" Norrin shouted, and the board complied, turning and racing to the wounded nomad. In the moments it took for it to reach Norrin and to fly back, Hal was able to strike Mjolnir with another beam of green energy. When it faded, the hammer was no longer there.

Norrin pulled out the trident. "You did not destroy it. I can still sense it."

"I just figured it'd feel better after a timeout on the other side of creation," Hal replied sardonically.

Norrin stretched out his hand. "Did no one tell you? There is nothing in all the realms that can prevent Mjolnir from returning to its owner's hand."

Immediately, the hammer's trademark whistle was heard. To return from such a distance so briefly was hardly fathomable, but the hammer's power was equally so. And so it flew, past stars, past galaxies, past the ruins of a previous battle, and past the Silver Surfer's outstretched hand… and into Hal's open one.

Hal winked. "Unless you change the enchantment while it's somewhere the Odinforce can't reach."

With the legendary hammer so near, Norrin immediately saw the change. It was so simple. One word. Instead of "worthy," the enchantment now responded to if the wielder was "courageous."

But that one word had tipped the scales of this fight drastically.

"Now, if I recall correctly," Hal imbued the hammer with willpower, "this weapon is capable of siphoning energy. Including, according to what my ring says, yours." He lifted Mjolnir chest-high and it began spinning. "So, I'll be taking that now."

Norrin clutched his chest. It was true, the hammer could handle nearly any level of energy, even the full might of the Power Cosmic. And it was beginning to pull some of that out of him, now.

That was a mistake.

"You have made many errors in judgment in your time, Lantern," Norrin stated harshly. "But I think you will find tethering your soul to my power source is your greatest one yet."

Then Norrin reached out and grabbed the siphoning energy as though it were physical and pulled back on it.

Hal screamed as he felt immeasurable pressure on his soul. Only his ring was saving him, and not for much longer. He poured more power through Mjolnir, hoping to absorb the Power Cosmic before he could be overtaken, but that seemed to only make the pressure greater.

His hold over souls… it's even stronger than the Spectre's. I need… to… think of something-

Hal gasped, a light green mist emanating from him. Some of his hairs turned white. He had to do something. Now.

Hal clenched his fist. His ring glowed.

And everything went dark.

…

When Norrin opened his eyes. Many thoughts ran through his mind. The first of which being surprise that he had real eyes.

Why was that a surprise?

His head felt fuzzy. Where was he? He scanned the horizon. He was on a Type-3 planet, capable of sustaining much life. There was grass under his feet, trees to his left, a bright blue sky, and, directly in front of him, a large lake. It almost felt like Earth. But while there were similarities, he could instinctively sense that this atmosphere was less filtered, this society was far more advanced, and nowhere on the planet was a single murder being committed.

Definitely not Earth.

How did he get here? For that matter, what was he doing before he got here? He felt as though it were something important, but the last few hours seemed so far away. Not just the last few hours. Norrin frowned as he realized the last few years were difficult to recall. Had he truly-

"Radd?"

As if that one word were the trigger of a gun, Norrin felt all his worry and difficulty thinking slip away. He remembered everything now; he was Norrin Radd, formerly the Silver Surfer. He had fought Galactus, and won. He had spoken to the Living Tribunal, and Eternity had rebuilt itself so a world-eater would never be needed. The cost of which being his own power; one he gladly gave up once he was given the option and where and when on the timeline he wished to live.

"Radd, man, you doin' okay?" The voice repeated.

Norrin smiled and turned to his left. "Perfectly well, Zephyx. Just thinking about how I ended up here."

The blue creature known as Zephyx shrugged. He was holding two wooden fishing rods in one hand and a wooden chest of supplies in the other. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to save those kinda thoughts for when we're on the water." He nodded to his left, where Norrin spotted a wooden canoe beached uphill. "Speakin' of, wanna give me a hand here?"

Norrin nodded eagerly. "Of course."

It was nightfall before the two returned home. Their catch had been acceptable, but the enjoyment of the day was astronomical. A gorgeous sunset, a peaceful lake, and much musing on the universe had made for a day Norrin personally considered quite productive. Zephyx had taken two of the fish home, and left the rest to Norrin to distribute among the local village how he saw fit. Which wouldn't be hard to determine, as he saw a roaring fire already going in the town square.

"Herald!" He heard someone call out. He flinched; he understood the name, but had wished to be long rid of it. He turned and politely faced the dark creature that had called out.

"Krattaka. May I help you?"

"Wild beasts prowl along the north," their hunter stated. Whenever she spoke of such things, it was as if she became one herself; every word foamed and every motion held ferocity. "Bermaws. I've spent today setting traps while you went for a canoe ride." She showed her teeth, though Norrin believed it to be pride, not anger. "I drive them away tomorrow. I require a second."

Norrin put one hand to his chin. "I have duties with the Founder tomorrow. If the village will survive, I might join a hunt a day later than that."

Krattaka spat on the ground. "You put this village in danger by not accepting the threat. But, very well. We hunt two hence." She noted the basket he carried. "Today's catch?"

"Is the fire still available?"

Krattaka smiled, a generally horrifying sight. "For this, yes. Join us as we feast!"

Norrin was tempted to say yes, in part because he knew nobody else in the village was as… intense as Krattaka. But whatever it was that had happened earlier today had tired him. He needed to rest. The sensation still felt new.

"Tomorrow, before we hunt. I'll join then."

"A respectable practice." Krattaka ground her teeth in appreciation and took the fish to the bonfire.

Yes. This was perfect. The planet of Euphoria, among his found family, with two-way transportation back to Earth thanks to some last portal technology of a race long-since devoured by Galactus, during one of the last periods of time where he was truly happy. It wasn't perfect, but he did not wish it to be. If he had to struggle a little to find peace, that was ideal.

He entered his own house, then, careful not to rouse the sleeping figure in the hammock next to his. He removed his shoes and slipped into the hanging bed.

The figure in the other hammock moved anyway. "Hey."

Norrin turned to face his wife. "Hello, Dawn."

"How was your day?"

And, just like that, everything fell apart.

Why was the canoe uphill? It isn't logical. Why wouldn't I keep it closer to the water? It never storms here.

Why were Zephyx and I the only ones fishing? What were the others doing?

Why would bermaws approach this village when there is plenty to eat on this planet, and we produce the chemicals that keep it away?

Why would I put small business with the Founder above keeping the village safe?

Why did Zephyx not join the bonfire with the rest of the village?

Why is Dawn sleeping when it is barely past sunset?

If we have a line to Earth, why aren't Dawn's family here?

What are the chances of one of those who lived here having a connection to our home planet exclusively?

Why would the Living Tribunal accept a world that can never be renewed?

Norrin sat straight up. "None of this is real."

"What?" his wife's voice came from his side. "Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?"

Norrin turned to face her. And when he saw her eyes, he knew.

"I can predict every path every atom in the universe will take. But never could I predict what Dawn would say."

Dawn's image sat up with him. "Do you remember?"

He did, now. His failures. Her death. His battle against the Lantern. Hal Jordan must have sought a way to pacify him. An endless dream. A perfect world. A perfect victory against one you did not wish harm.

"I do."

"I just wanted you to be happy." There was no emotion behind the voice. Norrin knew, instinctively, that it was not Hal who said it, but whatever he had created to keep him within this dream. He knew it, because he sensed it. In fact, now that he saw the truth, he could sense everything. Including what invisible force was doing this to him.

He raised a hand. It was silver.

"I know. Thank you."

And so, Norrin snatched the plant-like construct attached to his body and tore it off. It crumbled in his hand as he awoke.

…

But when he opened his eyes, Norrin almost wished he had stayed in his dream.

"To be honest, I was hoping that'd keep you busy a little longer," the voice of Hal Jordan met his ears.

But Norrin was not comprehending him. He had fully intended on verbally unleashing on the Lantern for such a cruel trick, well-intentioned as it may have been. But he could not. He was, instead, comprehending the endless darkness of space. A darkness that should have been perforated with stars, life, and cosmic energy. All of that, he still sensed, but now falling. Falling into an infinite subspace vortex of a Green Lantern ring.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Hal clenched his teeth, a droplet of blood seeping out the side of his mouth. This absorption of the universe was tolling on his physical body. "Just… taking a page… out of your book." A tooth chipped, and was instantly replenished with a green glow.

Norrin stared, then reached out, focusing his senses. He could feel nothing. Quadrillions of worlds, endless stars, all life… gone. Not gone; stored within one ring. As fuel. "How could you do this?! You are sworn to protect these lives!"

"So were you," Hal responded through set teeth. "We're doing the same thing. Difference is, I'll bring them back when I'm done."

Norrin's body began to glow. "Your hypocrisy betrays you."

"You wanna talk about hypocrisy?" Hal jerked his head up. "How about what you said in that dream? You couldn't predict anything about her, right? So, admit it. Humans can't be controlled, can't be predicted. Free will is too powerful."

Norrin shook his head. "I will stop you. I will use our energies to reform the universe. It is my destiny; the ninth cosmos will be ignited through me." The glow gave way to a silver sheen. "Your wish shall come true after all. You will live barely long enough to greet a new universe."

"No offense," Hal spat, "but I'm pretty sure all the power in the universe is here, now. How do you expect to get past me and remake it?"

"There are some forces so fundamental, even you cannot reach them," Norrin replied fiercely. "For example…" he waved a hand over the space in front of him, and as he passed it, it brought to him six multicolored gems.

Hal's ring immediately informed them of what they were: the physical representations of Power, Space, Reality, Soul, Time, and Mind. Infinity Stones.

"No way…" Hal murmured.

As soon as the words left his lips, the stones shook and fell, transforming into pure energy. Energy which entered the Silver Surfer's body.

As each passed into him, the Surfer glowed each of the six colors for a single planck instant, and returned to his full sheen, but with a taste even in the vacuum, a sense that existed throughout all of everything; a power greater than cosmic, combined with the power of cosmic, held in the hand of a single man.

With the destruction of the infinity stones, the last holds of the concepts fell, and Hal's ring suddenly took into it all remaining time, space, and reality. His suit flashed between every lantern color, settling temporarily on white before his entire body peeled away. Hal transformed into his own construct of pure green; the unmitigated form of willpower itself.

There was nothing.

An empty void of colors incomprehensible to even these two, so they perceived it as white. Perceived is the wrong word; perception is relative, and there is no relativity in the void. In fact, right now, there was nothing.

Nothing but a construct of the purest of human belief, and a nomad of power greater than cosmic.

Hal and Norrin were silent, mentally taking in where they were and what would happen. This was the everything, and the nothing. All that was, is, and will be, hinged on the actions performed here.

The Green Lantern slowly held his ring out towards the Silver Surfer.

"Norrin Radd of Zenn-La. You are under arrest for the unwarranted destruction of worlds, for aiding and abetting a universe-scale criminal of the Green Lantern Intergalactic Police Patrol, and for attacking an officer of the Guardians of the Universe. Your rights include-"

"Enough." Norrin blasted Hal with power surpassing the Infinity Gauntlet.

The power tore Hal's construct body at every dimension at once, reversing him so he never existed, wiping his memory cleanly, piercing his soul, disrupting his physical form under power equal only to power itself, teleporting every atom an infinite distance from each other, and forcing the infinite void to accept a reality where he did not live.

And yet, he remained.

"Norrin Radd of Zenn-La. You are under arr-"

Norrin created a new Surfboard and had it strike the construct that was Hal at infinite speeds. It pierced his body, scattered into atoms, and reformed inside of him, becoming one with the Surfboard itself. It shattered itself under its own pressure, remaking Hal as a being of no existence.

And yet, he remained.

"Norrin Radd of-"

Norrin altered all of space so that the underspace and overspace overlapped. The incongruity forged an infinite paradox, removing even the understanding of physicality. In planes many infinities higher, comic books ceased having words. Images faded away, and individuals forgot the name of Hal Jordan.

And yet, he remained.

"Norrin."

The voice was softer, this time.

Norrin felt his head sink into his hands. "Human will… is truly incredible."

"I'm sorry about the Black Mercy plant. I just thought that if you-"

"I understand, Lantern. Our views are incompatible. By my view, you are dooming the universe. By yours, I am. You sought a non-violent solution."

Hal looked guilty for a brief moment. "I didn't think it would hold you forever. I was just hoping that, by the time you were done-"

"I would see your view. Of life, and what it deserves. And all this power would not be necessary."

"Human will, right? Gotta believe until the very end."

"This is the very end." Norrin shook his head. "I am not going to be able to end you with anything less than my complete and total Power Cosmic, am I?"

"And I'm not going to be able to convince you to give up, either."

Norrin lifted his head. "It is inevitable."

Hal tightened his fist unhappily.

With a burst that outshone even the endless white of the void, a spiral of light came from Hal's ring, holding all the energy of every aspect of life, and all his own willpower.

Which Norrin blocked with a rectangular force barrier.

"I told you. No weapon can pierce my defenses."

Hal hissed as his construct began to overheat from the energy. His light bended all that was and could be. Still, with Norrin pressing up against it, feeding unlimited power into the defense, the barrier stayed firm. Norrin's body leaked; all the energy of all the universes was within this.

The Silver Surfer grunted as he braced his energy against the barrier. "You… have great power, Hal Jordan. This, I admit freely." At this, the barrier suddenly grew larger and began pushing back against the beam. "But. I. AM. POWER."

Hal clenched his teeth as the barrier rose against the beam. It began to morph into an expanding cylinder; a capsuled shield at the base keeping the beam contained while beams of Norrin's own energy launched up at Hal.

Power Cosmic pouring out of every atom of his body, Norrin shouted. "I am the Silver Surfer!"

Even the Surfboard now dissipated and joined into the barrier, doubling its power. The barrier rushed at unthinkable speeds to destroy the Green Lantern.

Norrin screamed. "I am… INEVITABLE!"

Hal narrowed his eyes as the rotating blue beams approached him. "No."

The Green Lantern's beam focused further, shining with all the realms of color. It struggled against the barrier of the nomad. And this barrier, a barrier composed with all the energy of infinite planes, a barrier that represented the will for life of the strongest forces in the universe, a barrier that could withstand Eternity itself…

This barrier cracked.

"You're just stubborn."

The blue beams faded. The energy of the Surfer rescinded. And the barrier shattered.

And the spiral of will pierced Norrin's chest, erupting on the other side. There was a mental scream as light erupted from every opening on Norrin's body, from his eyes to his mouth to his ears to the holes the beam had created, the light constantly shifting, from purple and black squares to blue and silver spheres to red and black dots, and then-

In the void outside creation, most thoughts and understandings lose their meaning.

There is no sense of space, no flow of time.

No concept of life or death.

There simply IS and IS NOT.

But through sheer willpower alone, at this moment, in this reality:

Green was.

And Silver was not.

-KO!-

As the colors faded, Hal lowered his fist and sighed in relief. For a brief moment (not that such things existed here) he allowed himself to relax. His body once more took shape; the construct of his will fell back into its human pattern, and he became him anew.

Then he raised his right hand and clenched his fist once more, and from his ring spilled planets, stars, galaxies, entire universes, and before long, all of creation had been recalled. All was the same as it was before the battle, with one, silver, exception.

Hal held out his left hand as he eyed the green frontiers that quickly changed to their original colors.

And as Mjolnir slammed into his hand, he took off towards Earth, Green Lantern's light shining through the cosmos all the way.

…

Conclusion

TWO: I guess you could say he… drowned in power? Get it? Um, okay, that's fine, I think I have something in my notes about a green lighthouse and surfing-

LZ: The Silver Surfer was absurdly powerful, easily strong enough to destroy most DC Superheroes without a second thought, especially with Mjolnir and at his full strength. But Green Lantern's light was too much for him to power through.[1]

TWO: To start with, Hal was definitely faster. Sure, the Surfboard could cross the universe in a couple of seconds, and scaling to the God of Hammers put Norrin at speeds literally too big for us to comprehend, but even then, Hal was at least a trillion times faster. Not even counting his infinite speed feats, which Norrin didn't really have.[2]

LZ: Both were immensely tough to kill, but while Norrin's forcefield could protect from enough energy to rewrite a universe, Hal's could do the same for infinite universes. And while both were way above foes who could defeat the entire rest of their respective teams, generally speaking, the Justice League was more powerful than the Avengers. Don't get me wrong, the heavy hitters of the Avengers like Thor and Sentry could certainly hold their own against a huge chunk of the Justice League's strongest… but then you start going down the lists and noticing how much farther the list of heavy hitters on the Justice League goes than the Avengers'.[3]

TWO: But come on, isn't this kind of stat-scaling kinda missing the point? Who cares about numbers and power-level feats when they can both scale to infinite powers? Shouldn't the Surfer's speed be infinite, 'cuz it comes from a source of unlimited power and all that? And if they're both infinitely above their teammates, then why compare that stuff at all?

LZ: A fair point. Both have power sources with theoretically unlimited potential, and both have proven to use that to accomplish the impossible, even scaling to characters outside their own traditional universes and physical planes, like the Spectre and Celestials.[4]

TWO: Exactly! And they're both above events and folks that could destroy the "infinite multiverse." So, I mean, how do you measure that?

LZ: And there's the rub. See, Marvel's multiverse isn't like that of DC's. It's a continuously splitting timeline determined by the Never-Queen, creating infinite universes with infinite possibilities with every choice made or statistic fulfilled. DC's meanwhile, is an actual, string-theory multiverse with infinite universes that can function in any number of ways and have any number of meanings, all separated by possible vibrational frequencies. In Marvel, there's always a Spider-Man. Maybe that Spider-Man is Miles Morales, or a pig, or dead, but there's always a Spider-Man. In DC, there's no guarantees for anything. You could have a universe where Superman is a nazi, or you could have a universe with only one superhero that happens to be 10 quatterodecillion times larger than most of the others. Both are infinite amounts of universes, but they're formed differently.

TWO: So what? So long as one infinity isn't larger than the other, this would be- oh.

LZ: Yeah, so here's the thing: DC Comics… also has that infinite timelines thing going on. Except they have it for every universe in their multiverse. This is directly stated in many comics, and outright confirmed in the massive, omniverse-changing events of Zero Hour and Doomsday Clock. Marvel has a universe with infinite timelines, and DC has a multiverse of infinite universes that each have infinite timelines.

TWO: If you're wondering how something can be larger than infinity, think about it like numbers. There are infinite numbers, right? And infinite odd numbers? But how can the odd-

LZ: This explanation is already going to be too long and confusing without bringing dead Marvel memes into it. Anyway, what DC refers to as a "Multiverse" is closest to what Marvel refers to as a "Megaverse." So even scaling to events that shake or break the "infinite multiverse" means something very different, and more powerful, in DC than it does for Marvel. Note that this doesn't actually expand to their higher or lower fields; just as there are infinite DC Multiverses that make up the Omniverse, so there are infinite Marvel Megaverses that make up their Omniverse. Plus all the conceptual beings in the realms between, all the higher spatial dimensions, and the Outerverse outside where the boundary between reality and fiction breaks down. It's even been suggested a few times that Marvel and DC share an Omniverse. The two's highest tiers of power are at similar levels. But when brought down to the level of a multiverse, the two simply are not analogous.

TWO: Now, some of you are probably waiting at the ready with scans from old Doctor Strange comics to "disprove" all this. But the truth is, both DC and Marvel have had dozens of different explanations for how their universes, multiverses, timelines, spatial dimensions, and all that stuff works. It's what happens when you have a hundred authors writing new chapters of the same story without reading what the guys before them wrote. None of these explanations work with each other, and there have definitely been moments in comics that completely contradict how their multiverses are supposed to work. BUT, these are the systems that are, by far, the most often seen, most consistent in modern comics, and talked about in official guidebooks. This is how Marvel and DC themselves think their multiverses work. And we'll take that over fan theories any day.

LZ: So, if we boil it down to their infinite multiverse feats, when comparing these levels of power, Hal should be infinitely more powerful than Norrin. This Infinite Megaverse-level scaling, would, based on how the story treats these characters, put him above even the likes of Galactus, Knull, the Celestial bodies, and the Never-Queen herself. And since this level is where reality-warping is definitively shown to work on the Silver Surfer with no chance of resistance, there's no reason Hal couldn't just… will him out of existence.

TWO: …

LZ: …

TWO: BUT THAT'S STUPID! You're going to sit here and tell me that because of some wording technicality, my man Norrin doesn't have a chance? Both of them have infinite power wells, and their feats with spatial dimensions means there's something bigger that we can't completely understand yet! Plus, they both compare to folks who have affected the entire omniverse (even if that's not super consistent). You can say that these multiverses aren't the same size and all that, but it's still arguable, and you can't just decide that gods like the Living Tribunal are inferior to gods like the Monitor. This whole cosmology system doesn't make any sense anyway, why should it decide who wins this fight?!

LZ: OH, THANK GOD. Yeah, I did not want the winner of such a fascinating matchup to be decided by saying "well, actually, DC's cosmology is very slightly different from Marvel's, so they win." It's ridiculous. Both Hal and Norrin can potentially fight on infinite scales and have taken down beings that are the equivalent of gods in their own stories. There are reasonable arguments to put them at the level of their stories' infinite multiverses, but there are also reasonable arguments to put them far higher, perhaps on the tier of changing or destroying the entire comics line. The bottom line here is: either Hal Jordan is infinitely more powerful than Norrin Radd, or, more likely, the two are in the same ballpark of power.

TWO: Great, then let's go with the ballpark! Forget everything said above this line! Both of their magic systems mean they can be as powerful as gods, or even beyond. Great! Now what happens?

LZ: Now, the match is determined by abilities, experience, creativity, skill, hax, and defenses.

TWO: Makes sense.

LZ: And Hal Jordan takes all of these.

TWO: Oh.

LZ: Well, that's a lie, Norrin does take experience. Both are billions of years old through time-travel and technicalities, but neither used or tested most of their powers for that time. In terms of actual fighting and power use, Norrin's been around a lot longer and has seen far more races with different tactics for fighting or hiding. He was certainly the more experienced of the two.

TWO: But it didn't matter much, because Hal had the creativity.

LZ: Hal has consistently overcome great odds and unfamiliar foes not by being more powerful than them, but being able to come up with creative strategies and solutions on the fly. From rearranging cells to tricking villains into giving up their power to sending his attacks through time so they would be impossible to predict, Hal's creative ability has allowed him to hold his own against beings far more experienced than Norrin. When he can outmatch a device that deduces the perfect way to defeat an opponent and destroy a robot specifically designed to kill him three times, there's not much Norrin could do that Hal wouldn't be able to adapt around.

TWO: And, while both's power has grown significantly since they began, Hal started his journey with a bunch of weaknesses and limits that he had to always take into account and work against. Norrin's almost always powered through his problems since the beginning, and when he finds a creative solution instead, it's a rare treat. But Hal didn't have that luxury; his inability to affect yellow alone meant that he had to think and fight creatively even from the very first time he used his ring. He might have insane power and no real weaknesses now, but because he earned that power, he knows, way more than Norrin, how to fight from behind.

LZ: Not that he would be fighting from behind. Both had incredible magicks that allowed them to do almost anything they wanted, but Hal's ring tended to always go one step further.[5]

TWO: Norrin can shrink himself down so that atoms are the size of solar systems, but Hal can do that to the entire planet. Heck, he beat up Guardians who could do that to the entire universe. Norrin could turn intangible except energy attacks still hurt him, but Hal could turn intangible and have anything he wanted go through him. Norrin could make a house, Hal could make a universe. Repeat for almost all of their powers. Even if the overall potentials of power are similar, Hal has shown more of it, and has way more experience using way more of that power to pull off way more complicated stunts. About the only comparison here where Norrin takes the lead is the Cosmic Sense, and even then, Hal's ring can sense things outside of his multiverse and tell him stuff that humans aren't supposed to comprehend. Way weaker Green Lanterns can check up on the "stability of the universe" no problem. So, while Norrin showed off more in that, Hal wasn't totally outclassed.

LZ: There's also the awkward matter of durability. Even if you break his defenses, Norrin could come back from almost any amount of damage. Shattered like glass, reduced to atoms, given enough time, he would survive. And even if you break Hal's defenses, his ring could regenerate him instantly from a skeleton, give bodies to clouds of gas and metaphysical concepts, and even pull him back from the afterlife. These two were virtually impossible to kill through normal means.

TWO: But they did both have hax to work around that. Both could absorb the other's soul, control their mind, transform their atoms, or travel through time to kill them before they even got their powers. The difference here is that Hal had more experience with that stuff and was way more suited to defending against it.[6]

LZ: Take, for example, both's primary weakness of psychic attacks. Their mental protections are enormous, but can be overcome. Norrin's mind broke from the pressure of around 47 Quintillion minds, which is, frankly, incredible.

TWO: But Hal was even more incredible. Starrow had to have his powers upgraded in order to keep Hal's mind from structuring a sentence, and he was already the strongest telepath in DC.

LZ: Even after he died, his genetic clone Jarro was still directly stated by Wonder Woman to be "the most powerful psychic being in the universe."

TWO: This means that Starro was more powerful than, say, the Psycho-Pirate, who could control every mind in the universe.

LZ: Three universes, actually. One of which… was the universe of Earth-S.

TWO: Yeah, I don't think Norrin's brain quite scales up that big.[7]

LZ: And both had ways of sensing that they were being attacked in the past, but Hal had far more options to defend against that. He could consolidate or alter the flow of time, pluck individuals out of the timestream, send his own attacks through time to meet the attacker, or just show up himself.

TWO: The only way Norrin could defend against Hal trying to blow baby Norrin to smithereens would be to try to go there himself, which is way harder for him and has big consequences if he messes it up. Not even Mjolnir's time-travel would work, because that doesn't rewrite time like Hal and Norrin, it just follows the whole multiverse thing.

LZ: Hal's time manipulation in general was something Norrin could not defend against. Not only is he far more experienced in time-travel with no risk to himself, but abilities such as slowing, rewinding, or stopping time were options that the Surfer didn't have at all. We have seen stories where the Silver Surfer was affected by stopped time; there's no reason to think he could resist it.

TWO: But Hal didn't even have to do any of that to get around Norrin's regeneration. He could always consume Norrin with Entropy, or separate his atoms into different containers or even dimensions, or just make his attacks super-effective and unheal-able against people named Norrin. Unlimited potential, man, it's crazy. He might not even need anything like that, because Green Lantern energy has affected spirits, demons, and beings who live in higher spatial dimensions before, plus interacted with things like light or sounds as if they were physical. I'm willing to bet a fair bit of money that it falls under the umbrella of spiritual stuff that could perma-kill Norrin.

LZ: Especially when he has canonically been killed by weapons like Mjolnir.

TWO: Speaking of, sure, Norrin's chances with Mjolnir go way up, but even the God of Hammers is nothing Hal couldn't handle at his full potential.

LZ: Unlike Hal and Norrin, Mjolnir's magic has never been infinite in potential, and all of its abilities were mostly weaker versions of the ones they already had.

TWO: Even the stats of the God of Hammers, while absolutely bonkers, can be seen, predicted, and altered by higher levels of power. No infinite stats here.

LZ: Hal had multiple ways of handling Mjolnir. Like distracting it with clones of the Justice League, the Green Lantern Corps, or even himself. Or siphoning its magic away with the ring. Or changing its molecular structure. Or sending it to the end of time and making it not exist on a conceptual level. Or altering the hammer's enchantment to whatever suited him most. Mjolnir does have some magical protections, yes, but it has been altered many times before, and has never faced something with the reality-warping capabilities of Hal's ring.

TWO: I mean, once he gets the read on how Mjolnir's atomic structure and magic works, there's no reason he couldn't just… make his own. The ring can recreate weapons that can destroy the omniversal Anti-Life once it scanned one, it shouldn't have any problems with a big storm.

LZ: And this is the true deciding factor of a match where these two are equal. Hal's willpower simply allowed him far more possibility than the Power Cosmic. When wielding his maximum potential, Norrin could absolutely shatter the shields and erase the beings of most of the Green Lanterns.[8] But against Hal Jordan? Whose willpower surpasses the essence of willpower itself? Whose magical might has erased and recreated all of time and space across an infinite amount of multiverses? Whose hard limits in his early days stopped existing because he chose for them not to? Norrin had the infinity+1 sword, but Hal had the means to make the concept of that sword meaningless. After becoming a being composed out of willpower, Hal has reached a point where, no matter how much of the Power Cosmic Norrin uses, he could always surpass it. By simply choosing for something to be that way, it would become that way. That's a level of power neither Norrin nor Galactus could claim.

TWO: And remember the Entropy Wave attack that Hal's LONG since surpassed? That thing erased everything in DC Comics in the Post-Crisis world. Its whole purpose was to clean the slate so a new omniverse could be born. Not even Silvey had any feats that proved he could survive something like that.

LZ: The Silver Surfer was one of the most powerful combatants in the history of this show, and his cosmic might put up a stronger fight than perhaps any Hal had seen before, but, in terms of win/loss percentages, he just couldn't keep up with Hal's creativity, defenses, extra abilities, and the true unlimited power of a Green Lantern with endless levels of willpower and no writer inconsistencies.

TWO: Norrin sure was hoping to take home the gold, but I guess he had to settle for Silver.

The winner is… the Green Lantern.

…

Special Notes (For the Conclusion):

[1] Both DC's and Marvel's Prime Universes have been stated to be "infinite" in size on many occasions. However, this is likely yet another result of writer inconsistency. Nothing about how the cosmology of either of these universes works is congruent with infinite size, many characters, including regular humans, have seen or used devices to comprehend the size of the universe in both comics, and it is a core, definitive element of multiple massive story arcs, including event comics in both franchises, that the universe has an edge. It is possible within all of this that both the universes are still expanding, but even if it is an expanding edge, they must have an edge. Most modern guidebooks to both cosmologies also reference the "edge of the universe" and do not imply that their space is infinite. This is just what happens when you have a hundred writers sharing the same story and refusing to read what the others have written.

[2] Silver Surfer's speed could potentially be calculated to be infinite if working on the basis of our normal understanding of space-time and bringing that into how he and other characters have breached and flown through higher dimensional planes. However, the Marvel multiversal dimensional function is clearly different, and there are innumerable examples of regular humans being able to function perfectly well in these higher dimensions. The only way to grant these feats would be to claim that everything in the Marvel omniverse, down to flowers, snails, and bacteria, has immeasurable speed. Which we are, understandably, not willing to do. Even if we did, other Green Lanterns have similar higher-spatial-dimension reacting and exploring feats, nullifying this entirely.

[3] It's arguable whether Hal scales to certain magical members of the Justice League, such as Zatanna or John Constantine. His powers work in similar ways, but these were rarely members during the times Hal fought the Justice League, and were not present when Superman made his claim. It might be questionable to scale him to their most powerful showings. However, he has defeated beings on similar power levels to many of their stronger foes, and has been shown to be definitively superior to Doctor Fate, who has been stated to be the most powerful magic user on Earth.

[4] Green Lantern Sodam Yat was able to fight evenly with Superboy-Prime after absorbing the Entity Ion. As Hal has overpowered this Entity before, and now is stronger than all seven Entities together, it should be reasonable to scale modern Hal Jordan to Superboy-Prime.

[5] The power levels of the members of the Quintessence varies significantly; they even accepted Wonder Woman after she gained power comparable to one of the Hands. This means that characters such as Black Adam and Darkseid do not necessarily compare to Spectre, arguably the most powerful of them all. In his own stories and fights, Spectre has continually matched levels of power higher than even these characters have shown. Hal Jordan, however, has matched and defeated him thrice, all three times when Hal was less powerful than he is now. It should be noted that the vast majority of the Spectre's feats (including his battles against Mxyzptlk and Zor) took place while he was "bound" to a host. When Unbound, the Spectre's power skyrockets dramatically. Yet even the Unbound Spectre was surpassed in energy by Hal's willpower, and fled from Parallax.

[6] With his Cosmic Sense, molecular manipulation, and job as a guidepost for them on occasion, it is possible that, were this fight to take place in the Marvel universe, Silver Surfer could retrieve the Infinity Stones for use against Green Lantern. However, Hal Jordan's ring would immediately tell him all he wished to know about these Stones, including the fact that they only work in their prime universe. From there he could easily enter higher-dimensional space or leave to a different universe so that the Stones would not work. As his ring has defended from high-multiversal threats and blasts before and proven stronger than any feats performed with an individual Infinity Stone, it is very likely that he would survive long enough to do so.

[7] Silver Surfer has twice resisted mind control from the Mind Stone, which could control all minds in the universe when wielded in the power-enhancing Infinity Gauntlet. However, both these times were under circumstances where the wielder was incapable of using the stone's full power, and Norrin has succumbed to similar mental attacks from the Mind Stone and other Infinity Stones many times. Even if we do count this, Hal's ring has reversed mental manipulation from the Miracle Machine's omniverse-level reality warping, firmly establishing his superiority in this regard.

[8] DC and Marvel have had many crossovers, almost all of which are non-canon. In one, the destruction of Oa created a bridge that allowed Hal Jordan (as Parallax) to meet and join forces with the Silver Surfer. The canonicity of this event has evidence both for and against it. Within the story, however, Hal was able to siphon "most of my [Silver Surfer's] Power Cosmic," with which (combined with his own) he matched a Thanos who was empowered by all the energy in both Marvel and DC Comics. The comic also states multiple times that a Green Lantern ring is the most powerful known force in both universes. If the comic is accepted as canon, it only further enforces Green Lantern's victory.

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

TWO: Please, please, no more comic book characters.

A green god silently coats his hand in a blade of energy, and plunges it through the elder god sitting in front of him.

VS

A wrathful mortal transforms his cloak into a blade and pierces the god of thunder's chest, nearly killing him.

(Zamasu VS Gorr the God Butcher)

TWO: OH YOU SONUVA-

Ah, my first Comic Book matchup in years and years. This is one I've literally been researching since 2020, and I honestly can't believe it's done. I'll probably stay away from stuff this huge for a while; this one was draining. In a good way. Hey, you think my love for Surfer's Slott & Allred run shone hard enough here? I don't know, I only referenced those comics, like fifty billion times. Which is, to be fair, about half as many references as there were originally.

I can't tell you how far my mouth fell when Death Battle announced Martian Manunter VS Silver Surfer just a few days before I announced my own Silver Surfer matchup. Spoilers for that, but if Norrin had lost to a much weaker opponent than Green Lantern, it would've been a little awkward here. Luckily, he won pretty handedly, and they did it in a super-cool way that left the window open for me to write a super-powered battle with only a little existentialism.

Speaking of, this written battle between two enormous characters with decades of constant material and infinite superpowers is about half as long as Aloy VS Link's. And that's counting the dream sequence. Geez. I might've overdone that one.

I appreciate the people sending me DMs, but reviews are also welcome! That's, uh, actually what gets this story popping up on searches, so, if you read this chapter and either liked or hated it, please let me know. It doesn't matter how many times you have and haven't reviewed this story; I always love hearing more. I tried to make this battle especially comic-bookey with over-the-top descriptions and "so tryhard it's just the slightest bit lame" moments all over the place. That's my favorite part of reading comics, but I worry I'll re-read this battle in the future and cringe the whole way through. Well, I guess I'll have to find out the hard way.

Okay, you caught me, I'm rambling. I'll see you next time for one of the best fan requests I've heard. It's good. Trust me.