(Rina Antiqua)

(GraveTLK)

(BlerdElitist)

(Khero64)

(Cabbage)

(Ninjamonkey3904)

(Stationsearcher)

(Pasbros)

(Adam天)

(Maddie Antiqua)

(The Cardinal King)

(WWAL)

(Kingsly)

“The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.” -Edgar Allan Poe

(Gif by Pasbros)

The Sentry, the Golden Guardian of Good.

Superboy-Prime, the ‘true’ Superman.

The idea of the Superman is one that’s been explored throughout fiction time and time again. The symbol of heroism, the simple solution to overwhelming problems, the hopecore golden boy. And it’s been explored throughout fiction what would happen if the cracks formed in that facade and the weight that overwhelming power has on a soul, and the consequences that come with not being able to handle that burden. And frankly, none exemplify it more than these two, riddled with tragedy and calamity that they have to live with having caused, and yet in spite of that they rose to try to be better, trying to live up to the ideals of heroism, ain’t that inspiring. But when against each other, will The Sentry a-Void defeat at the hands of Earth-Primes Clark Kent or is Superboy-Prime just a punch away from shattering Bob’s expectations? Let’s find out in a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

To get straight to the point, this is a fairly straightforward blog for what we’re going to use. Both will get the extent of their comic appearances from what we pull from, though, for Superboy-Prime it’s not as if he has any other material to pull from, unless we wanna bring up Scribblenauts of all things. It’s a fairly simple rundown for what we’re using, no need to overcomplicate things.

Additionally, as a small aside, we have slightly altered our usual structure for how we present the characters. Rather than alternating from one to the other, we’ll be fully presenting each character consecutively, similar to how it’s done in the actual show. This should hopefully make things more digestible going forward.

With all that aside, let’s get superman.

Sources

While this blog was mainly the result of our own research and analysis, several calculations, scans, and reference materials were sourced from or inspired by work from the broader debating and blogging community. We’d like to thank the following for their contributions and assistance:

• G1’s (hey that’s us!) Doctor Strange vs Reimu and Martian Manhunter VS Silver Surfer
• Ultraguy blogs: Silver Age Superman, Golden Age Superman, and Wonder Woman
• Bang’s Blogs Dormammu vs Trigon
• VS Battle Wiki
• Comicvine
• Respect Threads for Superboy Prime and Sentry by /u/Analypiss

The Sentry

Background

(Image by GraveTLK) (The Sentry Art by @Mikemaluk)

“I’ve been lying to myself all along, Lindy. I don’t think I’m Bob anymore. I think I’m just the Void.”

You are Bob Reynolds. You’re approaching your mid-life. You’re 30 pounds overweight. You like watching old cartoons. You are an alcoholic. You live with your wife and dog. You have agoraphobia. You are just a man. You can feel it when you wake up. The Void has returned. The Void, your greatest arch-nemesis, comes to destroy all you hold dear and devour the souls of those who would do good. You have to take action. Memories of a past life flash through your mind. You have to get the team back together and save the world.

You are Bob Reynolds, down-on-his-luck bullied teenager. You stumble into the professor’s secret lab and uncover his miracle formula. You ingest it, and are granted incredible powers beyond your wildest imagination. You have become the Sentry, the first startling superhuman of the heroic age, the man with the power of a million exploding suns. Your nobility makes you a paragon for the new world, and soon other fantastic heroes follow in your footsteps to usher in a world of marvels. Monthly issues are published chronicling your battles against your greatest arch-nemesis, the Void, the dark entity who destroys as much as you save. You disappeared.

You are the Sentry, formerly Bob Reynolds. You remember your past life which was stolen from you. You learn the truth, that the superhero community stripped the whole world of your memories and branded you a traitor. You settle old grudges and reconnect with old friends. On the shore of Liberty Island, you confront the Void, which is you. The Void, a manifestation of all Bob Reynolds loathes about Bob Reynolds, as much a part of your psyche as you are part of yourself, defeated only through forgetting the Sentry existed.  The only way to stop it is to forget the Sentry once more. The Sentry is forgotten and yet returns, and Bob Reynolds cannot escape it.

You are the Sentry, a New Avenger. Unable to rid your memories, you rejoin the superhero community, and the world begins to learn who you are. The Void is suppressed, but you are still feared for your power. Your power is exploited and manipulated by monsters who think themselves worse than the Void. You become the Sentry, a Dark Avenger. The Void brings ruin and calamity to the gods, and is struck down for its transgressions. The Sentry is dead, and you die as Bob Reynolds.

You are the Void, returned to life through the power of dark angels. You have become the messiah of a race of superhumans. You are the Sentry, having been restored through magic and tasked to suppress the Void once more. A world of your dreams acts as restitution for your suffering, but it too falls to a former friend driven mad with power. You are the Sentry and the Void, having merged yourself with yourself. You are a dark beacon of power and think you accept it. The Void is claimed by an entity you never knew, and the Sentry dies a gored corpse. Bob Reynolds accepts his death, and moves on.

You are Bob Reynolds. You are an addict. You break into the professor’s laboratory and claim his secret serum, a military experiment designed to create a superior being. You gain power, and your life falls into your hands. You think you became the Sentry, the man with the power of a million exploding suns, but thinking that requires trusting yourself. You are now yet again returned to life. The Void is yet again returned to life. The Sentry is yet again returned to life. All Bob Reynolds can ask is that things get better.

Experience & Skill

After Bob drank the experimental Golden Sentry Serum, he possessed the power of a million exploding suns then developed a dark alter ego called “The Void” as a side effect, which was related to his depression and other mental health issues like trauma, addiction, and anxiety. This destructive second self affected his capability as a fighter, but that didn’t stop Sentry from wanting to become a beloved superhero. For the sake of the universe, Sentry has been trying to maintain his emotions and utilize his positive attributes to control the Void for years.

Additionally, Sentry has super-intelligence, having designed C.L.O.C, his watchtower, and is capable of hacking space computers mid-combat. His inventive ability is described as comparable to Tony Stark and Reed Richards, if not superior. Sentry’s genius also extends to combat, as he deduced Red Ronin was covered in energy particles, and in an alternate universe could stop earthquakes by plugging their fixture, and trapped the giant Ursus by making a whirlpool from his super speed.

Sentry’s endurance is also worth noting, as Bob could quickly regain his composure after being transported to the Microverse, and for hours fought World War Hulk in a brawl until they both couldn’t fight anymore from exhausting their power.

Equipment

Costume

Initially sewn by Bob himself upon beginning his career as a hero, the costume began to manifest around him when he regained his memories.

Golden Sentry Serum

You are Bob Reynolds, a massive drug addict in need of a next hit and then you found it, the ultimate high, what you would call “The Serum”. The thing that would turn Bob Reynolds into the Sentry. In the past, Sentry took repeated dosages of the serum to increase his power, at the risk of making him addicted. The horrific part of the serum was the many effects it gave Sentry, for starters, The serum created a phase shifting effect in the molecules of his body, causing each atom to step ahead in the timeline. The serum also somehow induced a photosynthetic reaction, creating a hyperstate of consciousness. The serum was capable of powering the transmitter which broadcast the subliminal signal to wipe Sentry from humanity’s memory.

The Watchtower

Designed by Tony Stark, and used by The Sentry as we know him, the tower quite literally materialized back into existence after the world remembered him once he was erased. It serves as the Sentry’s headquarters and is maintained by CLOC(more on him in the next section). It includes “Helioscopes” to monitor locations around the world with live feeds, “Turbovators” to travel throughout the Watch Tower, an energy field around it, alongside a Quinjet landing bay and a multitude of other locations within it. For more, albeit less important info, detailed schematics are here.

C.L.O.C

Full designation Centrally Located Organic Computer, C.L.O.C. is a supercomputer designed by The Sentry and Reed Richards. Its primary function? To observe ongoing events worldwide, detect crises, and streamline Sentry’s response to them. Built upon the ideal of predictive analysis, CLOC actively surveils the whole planet for information on a frequent basis. To aid in its info gleaming process, CLOC is equipped with highly advanced scanning technology, capable of scanning everything from latent hormone levels & identification cards up to the activation of advanced weaponry and physiological traits of organisms. It’s also fully capable of breaching heavily guarded security systems, and can consistently track people across alternate dimensions. As for the predictive aspect, to assist The Sentry’s threat response CLOC is constantly running scenarios in their processor, being designed by default to inform The Sentry of all likely conclusions from his current course of action. On top of this, CLOC is fully capable of formulating tactics and strategies for the golden guardian when he himself requests. He even comes with a “therapy mode”…probably after Bob got tired of his old therapist’s business tactics.

CLOC is a very reliable piece of machinery, as it was capable of remembering Sentry’s existence even after he had been wiped from the world’s memories, and recognizing and fighting off viruses in its system. It’s fought and bypassed the limitations of its coding multiple times to assist The Sentry, and has actively defended him before in moments of crisis. It also has lasers, because of course it does.

Sentry Sensors

Sentry has sensors on his person that alert him to nearby criminal activity.

Confluctors

Serve as gateways to the Negative Zone operated by C.L.O.C. It’s basically an imaginary dreamscape where Sentry and the Void can be free.

Watchdog

Sentry’s heckin pupper, capable of hurting the Thing. They can also fly, allowing him to follow a tree that the Hulk throws into space and fetch it back. 

Abilities

The Power of a Million Exploding Suns

Sentry’s powers seemingly stem from the Golden Sentry Serum, a clandestine experiment to replicate the effects of Captain America’s Super-Soldier Serum with potency magnified a thousandfold. The serum had the unexpected effect of creating a phase-shifting effect in the Sentry’s body, causing each atom of his to be an instant ahead of the current timeline, rendering him molecularly different from an ordinary human. This induces a state of “hyper-consciousness”, described as making him effectively omnipotent and immortal, and gives Sentry photosynthetic properties, allowing him to draw upon potentially limitless energy from the sun with no need to eat or sleep. He’s even got a photostatic memory that lets him memorize information instantly. All of this is described as giving Sentry the psionic power of a million exploding suns. Nobody is exactly sure what that means, not even Tony Stark or H.A.M.M.E.R’s scientists. What is known is that it makes the Sentry possibly the most powerful being on the face of the planet. This statement is repeated so many times throughout his comic runs, and some sources do directly compare these statements to the power output of a real supernova. The clearest elaboration we get on what this actually means is from the alternate universe comic The Age of the Sentry, which depicts Sentry as drawing power from an alternate dimension with a million suns constantly exploding. The depiction of it as a power source as opposed to a literal description of Sentry’s power output is generally most consistent with Sentry’s usual scale.

While usually described to stem from the Sun, Sentry’s powers have also been suggested to be ultimately psionic in nature. He’s been described as having the potential for unlimited psionic power, with Tony Stark stating he risks triggering a psionic outburst that reshapes the entire world in the same way House of M did. Some sources go as far to suggest all his powers ultimately stem from a form of reality warping tied to his mental state, with the Void simply being the form he transforms into when his self-loathing overtakes his perception of self. The Marvel Handbook notes his psionic powers are vast and latent, but untapped, and that his strength varies based on his mental state. At his peak, he possesses the power of a million exploding suns, but if his mental state wavers, he becomes significantly weaker. According to Paul Jenkins, the Sentry’s powers don’t originate from the serum, and are simply a manifestation of his mental state.

If Sentry wished to, he could give his enemies a taste of his “million suns exploding” power by coming into physical contact with them, transferring that energy directly into their body. Most will be unable to handle such power and even other wielders of Sentry’s powers, like a Power Man who purposefully absorbed Sentry’s powers, would have had every one of his cells vaporized if he didn’t have the regeneration to counter it. If Sentry’s body has taken quite a toll, it can enter a super-conversation body that slows his heartbeat to one beat per hour and eventually lets him come back from near-death experiences. 

Energy Detection

On more than one occasion in the The Age of the Sentry comic run, Sentry has been able to detect invisible traces of energy. Not only can he track his stolen energy from across the Atlantic Ocean, but he can pick up traces of interdimensional energy from machines like the Pyramobile Chronal Exhaust. Frankly, he can draw energy from anywhere and everywhere, including the Microverse.

Flight

One of Sentry’s signature abilities, he has free control of his movement while maneuvering through the air, impervious to the effects of the elements around him, with his updraft allowing other flight-based heroes like Angel to ride on his trail. Sentry is capable of flying at faster-than-light speeds through space, a feat comparable to that of a herald of Galactus.

Light Manipulation

The Sentry constantly generates an aura of light around him with esoteric properties. The light prevents normal photos from being taken of him, and has the peculiar ability to calm the Hulk, rendering him totally docile. Sentry can project this light as an energy blast or he can just shoot out solar blasts from his eyes. Sentry can also manifest forcefields from his hands to block attacks.

Invisibility/Cloaking

While not a power he’s showcased directly, Absorbing Man with a fraction of Sentry’s power was able to cloak himself using Bob’s abilities. The interesting thing about the wording is that Sentry can cloak from both light AND all radiant emissions, which would also make him invisible to other forms of vision such as heat sensing.

Matter Manipulation

A latent ability Sentry would eventually come to recognize. Even early on in his history, he displayed the ability to turn ordinary clumps of dirt into jewels infused with his light. This matter/molecular manipulation later evolved to the point where he overpowered Molecule Man himself in a battle of molecular control and ultimately disintegrated him, though Sentry still required Owen’s help to restore the people he had killed due to his own lack of experience with the power. An important note here is that Molecule Man is confirmed to have been significantly weakened when he fought Sentry with no frame of reference for how strong he is, meaning the exact potency of Sentry’s molecular control is hard to determine.

Telepathy

Bob has been able to telepathically communicate with Professor X, and the Void can enter the minds of those who enter its shadows, even driving beings like the Super-Adaptoid insane with horrifying hallucinations of the Void itself.

Mind Manipulation

Alongside general telepathy, Sentry is able to manipulate others minds, having personally erased the world of their memories from him prior to the events of The New Avengers.

Life Bestowal

When Lindy was killed by Female Ultron, Sentry later learned that Lindy was alive and was convinced that touching her had brought her back to life, even supported by the narrative that Sentry literally revived her by doing the impossible.

A later inheritor of a fraction of Sentry’s powers, Mallory, even temporarily resurrected the people who had fractions of Sentry’s powers that Ryan Topper killed, since their minds were within Ryan for some reason. Although it didn’t end up lasting, since according to them, the magic wore out.

Regeneration

Sentry’s regeneration borders on outright self-reconstruction, allowing him to recover from destruction that would permanently kill most Marvel heavy hitters. He regenerated after Molecule Man completely disintegrated him on a molecular level and immediately resumed fighting, and he regenerated after an empowered Thor, boosted by the Norn Stones, struck him with a massive lightning blast, then launched him directly into the Sun, later described as constantly regenerating from a single atom while stuck in the Sun. He even reformed himself after being seemingly completely annihilated in a massive energy explosion caused during his confrontation with Morgan Le Fay’s reality-warping magic. 

While the exact level of destruction Morgan caused to him isn’t entirely known, the fact Bob was confident that the Absorbing Man, who at the time had absorbed Sentry’s power and augmented himself, was going to come back from subatomic destruction provides great insight into the absurdity of Sentry’s survivability. This is even present in people with a fraction of Sentry’s powers, such as Marvin Chow, who came back from getting shot. 

Energy Restoration

While Tony Stark had his energy drained by being too close to the destruction of Doom’s castle via Doomstadt Neural Energy Swarm, Sentry was able to completely reboot/recharge Tony’s armor grid in an instant by hitting him with his own power of a thousand exploding suns.

Teleportation

A rather uncommon ability that Sentry has used to teleport himself away, like here where disappears from Captain America and Mr. Fantastic in a blinding light. Even people with a fraction of Sentry’s powers like Marvin Chow are capable of performing this ability.

Forms

The Void

The Sentry’s greatest villain, the dark to his light, and the manifestation of all his self-doubt and insecurities. As a part of Sentry himself, it will always return after destruction so long as the Sentry exists. It also serves as an equal and opposite reaction. Whenever Sentry does something good, it will do something horrible and wicked in response. When Sentry struggles, the Void thrives. When Bob first started to recover his memories, the Void returned in the form of a large dark mass manifesting over various cities across the planet, growing stronger in power the more the Sentry manifested, to the point it developed its own conscience and volition.

In fact, The Void is so powerful that even just a small piece of it gave the Omega-class telepath, Emma Frost, a lot of trouble. Emma once made a white room inside Sentry’s mind to access inside it, which she used to her advantage to defeat him when he was on the Dark Avengers. Though she is successful in separating them, she is unable to contain the Void’s influence and a sliver of it ends up inside her. This wasn’t an isolated affect either, as the White Queen had to remain in her diamond form to contain it, making her strained from her emotions and limiting her psychic link with the X-Men. 

Speaking of which, The Void has also proven to be surprisingly strategic, since when Cyclops ventured into Emma’s mind to free her of The Void, it then headed into Scott’s mind when he tried to push her out of Emma’s. While Scott was successful at containing The Void within his mind and not revisiting it, he never did properly get it out him. 

While the Void’s true origins remain dubious, it has been implied that the Sentry and the Void are the modern manifestations of Lifebringer One and Anti-All respectively, who are the archetypal personifications of existence and non-existence from the primordial third cosmos.

Teleportation

Once the Void had completely taken over Sentry, it was able to manifest within Hood’s darkness as a means to reach Norman’s location immediately.

Infinitendrils

The Void’s signature weapon are the “infinitendrils” oozing from its amorphous shadows. These tendrils allow the Void to merge minds with whatever it stabs, the merest brush causing one to experience all the trauma and suffering throughout their life all at once, past, present, and future. The process of experiencing so much despair rends the soul itself, capable of twisting apart even the Hulk’s soul. The only recompense is to evade the tendrils and prevent them from touching you in the first place.

Cosmic Cocoons

The Void can fire “cosmic cocoons” from its hands, capable of paralyzing all of the Avengers, even Thor.

Elemental Manipulation

As the Void re-emerges, it displays the ability to control fundamental elements, capable of causing wide-scale tremors across portions of the country, conjuring building-destroying worldwinds, and creating huge storms which, bizarrely, spin clockwise.

Soul Manipulation

The Void is described as the beast which devours the souls of men, stated to be capable of stealing human souls, claims to have eaten the General’s soul, and threatens to devour the souls of the entire universe.

Spatial Manipulation

After Annihilus caused a small crack in reality by teleporting to the Positive Zone, the Void tore it open with his bare hands to be large enough for several ships to fit through. Sentry and the Void were also able to rip a hole between two universes when they were separated in the Negative Zone. The Void has displayed other forms of potent dimensional travel, having “escaped” into the White Hot Room after the Sentry was left in the Sun.

Merged

“I’m whole, Billy. I’m finally whole.”

Bob had always viewed the Void as his evil half, eventually wanting to suppress it through a mental prison created by Doctor Strange so that the Sentry would no longer have death walking behind him. But after being put in a situation where he needed the Void’s help, he began to realize he may have always been denying the person he really was, and that Sentry and the Void may in reality be equal halves that are meant to complete him. From taking his hand, Bob merged with the Void, achieving a new state of power where both sides worked as one, becoming who he believed he was truly meant to be.

This complete version of Sentry boosts his power exponentially, as he went from taking fatal blows from Billy to tanking his attacks and putting him down with little effort, along with being able to throw hands with multiple heavy hitting avengers at once.

Void Manipulation

Sentry can now manipulate the Void for extra versatility in combat. He utilizes this with forming tendrils to catch, suspend and throw foes, along with making barriers to block attacks. Sentry also uses this to basically pull a Domain Expansion if he wants to confront someone without outside interference.

Reality Warping

Sentry’s presence alone can now warp reality, as his meditation caused reality to go berserk, such as accidentally causing legions of shadows to appear in the area while doing so. This was passively able to affect the spirit energy shields in Wakanda, causing them to mask Sentry’s presence. Bob and the Void later being unfused also caused a tear between the Cancerverse and the Negative Zone.

Electricity Manipulation

While he hasn’t used it directly, Sentry’s merged state has shown coursing electricity, like when he first appeared or when it was sparking around him while meditating.

Resistances

• Cold Temperatures: He was unbothered by sub-zero temperatures. 
• Acid: Acid has been used against Sentry multiple times, neither of which to any avail. 
• Loud Sound: Sentry would be unaffected by a soundwave that easily blew up numerous ships in the area. In case you were wondering, said sound was the cry of a newborn planet.
• Memory Manipulation: After the entire planet’s memories of the Sentry were wiped from existence, Bob eventually remembered his past.
• Mind Manipulation: While Merged, Sentry broke out of the mind prison Tony Stark designed to contain him with a single punch, broke free from Doctor Strange’s mind cancer magic, and forced Strange himself to admit that Sentry had simply become “too powerful” for his spells to suppress. Emma Frost attempted to contain the Void within Sentry’s psyche but was nearly crushed by the endless psychic darkness consuming his mental plane, while Professor X couldn’t properly read his mind at all. Even Uranium’s attempt to probe deeper into Sentry’s consciousness ended in failure after encountering what he described as an infinitely stretching, impenetrable darkness that terrified him enough to stop before risking whatever lay beyond it. Non-psionic means of mental tampering have also been a bust, as Absorbing Man’s touch was unable to absorb any more of Sentry’s mind than he allowed.
• Dream/Sleep Manipulation: Likely a subset of his pre-existing mental fortitude, Bob completely no sold a projectile from the Inhuman Somnus, which forces the target to fall asleep into a dreamscape of their choice.
• Electricity Manipulation: Withstood lightning with barely any sign of damage from Ultron’s weather control on two occasions, given that Sentry notes that Ultron’s lightning doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s also shrugged off lightning from Thor.
• Anti-Matter: Physically touches an extension of N-Space, which is made of antimatter, and is hurt but fine.
• Matter Manipulation: Endures feedback from the E-Nullifier, which operates on a quantum level and threatens to alter him chemically.
• Soul Manipulation: The Sentry’s soul has resisted powerful spiritual corruption and absorption on multiple occasions. A jewel containing the Sentry’s light was the only thing keeping Hulk alive as the Void twisted his soul and Sentry himself resisted being absorbed and overtaken by the millions of souls inhabiting the corpse of a dead Celestial, a realm treated as an afterlife-world unto itself.
• Power Absorption / Nullification: Absorbing Man had successfully absorbed the powers of Hulk, Thor, and Odin, but Sentry’s power proved too much to contain. Instead of draining him, Creel was overwhelmed and destabilized by the attempt and even Rogue was unable to successfully drain it. Even if someone successfully absorbs his powers, such as when Yelena Belova was turned into a Super-Adaptoid and took them (it’s a long story), she inadvertently took with her a piece of the Void, which tormented her mentally and could be controlled by Sentry.
• Biological Manipulation / Possession: Symbiotes were unable to take control of Sentry, despite effortlessly overtaking numerous other heroes beforehand, with the invasion itself being described as a biological attack.
• Nuclear Radiation: Flew away completely unscathed from a thermonuclear explosion powerful enough to wipe out thousands of lives, even while caught near the blast itself.
• Data Analysis: Ultron couldn’t fully scan Sentry’s energy source in his enraged state mid-fight (as seen above), even he can’t complete Sentry’s files in his normal state at first glance, unlike other Mighty Avengers.
• Causality/History Rewrite (Debatable): The Age of the Sentry states that reality continuously reshapes and retroactively rewrites history around this comic’s version of Sentry and the Void’s existence, creating entirely new events and timelines so the universe can properly accommodate them. Their existence is treated as an anomaly within spacetime itself, to the point that history alters on a fundamental level rather than simply removing or correcting them, with villains like Cranio even lacking a proper origin point within the timeline and simply existing so that Sentry can have a villain
• Temporal Manipulation: The Golden Sentry Serum causes every atom in Sentry’s body to exist an instant ahead of the current timeline, leaving him chronologically out of sync with conventional spacetime and making him inherently resistant to effects that operate through temporal alteration.

Feats

Overall

• Fought against his inner demons and The Void numerous times
• Helped during a breakout at the Raft and became a member of The New Avengers
• Stalemated the Hulk at his best
  • And was the only lightspeed foe Hulk could keep up with!
• Considered to be the most powerful human in the universe by Mr. Fantastic
• Eventually accepted and merged with the Void as one being
• Following his death, his powers gave way to a new generation of heroes

Power

• Sentry:
  • Holds back trains
  • Beats up Wolverine
  • Effortlessly flies Carnage into space to rip him in half
  • Takes on Balder and also rips him in half
  • Collides with another version of himself hard enough to create an explosion heard across New York
  • Having stolen Sentry’s power, Void could intercept a giant asteroid and throw it into the sun
  • Presumably using Sentry’s power, Luke managed to reignite the sun
  • Destroyed Iron Man’s Hulkbuster and suit in a single blast
  • Pastes Emma Frost
  • His power rivals that of the gods
  • Noted to be on the same level of power as Thor
  • Slices Thor’s arm off
  • Brings down the entirety of Asgard by flying through it a few times
  • In the Microverse, Sentry matched Photon in a clash while both were explicitly holding back. Despite this, the energy released by their battle was stated to be enough to shred entire worlds apart, devastating the Microverse
  • Tears Ares in half
  • Sentry temporarily contained a Cosmic Cube while Reed Richards studied it
  • Damaged Doctor Doom’s armor shield up to 7% in one hit and depleted it quickly by the second one
  • Spider-Man claims Sentry once fought Galactus to a stand still
  • Matched World War Hulk in a stalemate
• The Void:
  • Threw two of Kingpin’s henchmen into space
  • Obliterated a large chunk of Manhattan with a tendril
  • Luke combines the Void’s power and Iron Fist power to send Danny flying far into space
  • Wiped out an alien planet
  • Broke through a planet-spanning force field
  • Given enough time, Void manages to grow large enough to dwarf Earth
  • Is described multiple times as capable of ending the universe
  • Has infinite power (duh)
  • Shatters Hulk’s bones one by one multiple times
  • Doctor Doom is burnt to a crisp after Sentry ceded control over Void
  • Defused from Bob and brought the Negative Zone to the brink of annihilation
  • A manifestation briefly overpowered a Luke who had Sentry’s, Hulk’s, and Danny’s powers
• While Merged:
  • Blew up the Cancerverse Scourge assimilating Nova, the latter being described as taking all of the Cancerverse into himself while doing so
  • Could simultaneously fight off and knock away She-Hulk, Captain Marvel,Thor and even Captain America
  • Blasted a hole through a Symbiote Celestial’s head
  • Managed to make All-Father Thor bleed (though he lacked the complete Odinforce), later matching him head-on in a direct clash that generated a massive energy shockwave

Speed

• Sentry:
  • Caught a bullet before it can penetrate a man’s skull. 
  • … and another millimeters away from Norman’s head
  • Quickly catches up to a nuclear missile in orbit
  • Can fly so fast he creates holes in the clouds
  • Flew into the ionosphere within moments
  • He flew into the stratosphere within 12 seconds, then escaped an explosion and flew back down to earth. 
  • Flew across the globe at high speeds
  • Flies from Earth past the moon to deep space, all mid-combat
  • Caught up to and took down Iron Man
  • Grabs an incoming missile and throws it at the sun
  • Flew to the sun within a short timeframe and tossed the Void into it. 
  • Dodges an incoming Quicksilver
  • Moves out of Mister Fantastic’s sight before a flower can finish falling
  • Using Sentry’s power, Luke flew from Earth to Jupiter in a short timeframe
  • Using Sentry’s power, Luke could rocket across the solar system in two minutes
  • Flew across five space quadrants within the span of ten minutes
  • Avoids a Mjolnir throw from Thor
  • Generated a sonic boom hundreds of miles away from Thor before slamming into him moments later with enough speed to warp space-time and leave Thor disoriented
  • Kept pace with Ares in combat, matching and reacting to a god capable of operating on a plank-time scale
• The Void:
  • Both a manifestation of the Void and Luke (with Sentry’s powers) fly to the sun in a short time period
  • Tagged Nova mid flight
  • Kept up with Beta Ray Bill
• While Merged:
  • Traveled at near lightspeed. Wow!
  • Flew away from various Avengers into deep space
  • Could keep up with All Father Thor in combat

Durability

• Sentry:
  • Survived the destruction of a ferris wheel. 
  • Nick Fury states that the shield aircraft he was in is incapable of harming Sentry. 
  • Endures a nuclear missile exploding on top of him
  • Unfazed by Thing’s punches (as seen above) before the latter being easily overpowered
  • Took repeated blows from Sentry Billy
  • Tanks the combined energy of every Mutant energy removed by House of M exploding after bringing it to the sun
  • Got up after getting smacked by Red Hulk into an oil tanker and crashing onto a van
  • Shrugged off getting rammed into by Thor with Mjolnir
• The Void:
  • Shrugged off a blast from Blastaar
  • Tanked being struck by Stormbreaker
• While Merged:
  • Took blows from All Father Thor

Scaling

Thor image by Adam, other images by Khero64.

Legacy Characters

Bob isn’t the only one to be under the Sentry mantle. After his death, fractions of Sentry’s power was split among various individuals, which means Bob more than likely scales to them. They were even considered Omega-level threats since they had Sentry’s powers

• Mallory Gibbs:
  • Saves everyone from a collapsing building before she even got a hang of her powers
  • Upon first using her Sentry powers accidentally busts through multiple floors at once
  • Dodges Ryan’s beam
  • Along with the souls of the individuals with Sentry’s powers, defeat Ryan Topper
• Ryan Topper:
  • Rips off Farhad’s arm and kills him
  • Moves much faster than Captain Marvel
  • Blows up a house
  • Punches Jessica Jones from Denver, Colorado all the way to a mountain

Thor

Sentry doesn’t need chain scaling to reach Thor’s level because they’ve fought directly multiple times. In a What-If, he physically trades blows with Thor in extended hand-to-hand combat, tanks Mjolnir strikes, and keeps forcing Thor on the defensive hard enough for Thor to admit how dangerous Sentry’s power is.  Also in Siege, he tanks repeated attacks from Thor and keeps coming, with Thor only putting him down after Sentry regains control and asks to be killed. In Uncanny Avengers, Death Seed Sentry outright overwhelms Thor, casually stopping Mjolnir and dominating the fight. Even Merged Sentry fought an All-Father Thor, wielding an early, incomplete version of the Odinforce.Thanks to this, evidence for Thor-tier scaling is pretty straightforward. 

• A different Thor clashed Mjolnir against another enchanted hammer, unleashing a wave of mystical energy that erupted across all planes of reality. The resulting force was compared to the Big Bang
• His strikes against Gorr were so powerful that they generated shockwaves that shattered nearby worlds and even caused visible destruction on distant planets/moons
• Created shockwaves powerful enough to shake all of Asgard just by striking the Destroyer
• Overwhelmed the force of the World Engine, a machine which could move the nine realms simultaneously
• Flew fast enough to catch Red Hulk before he can be pulled into a black hole
• Traverses multiple light-years in near-instantaneous flight
• Endures a planet-destroying energy beam from an amped Thanos
• After throwing Mjolnir, he struck a rapidly approaching Silver Surfer with enough force to knock him completely off his board
• Even after being stripped of the Odinforce and heavily weakened, Thor still defeated M.Y.T.H.O.S., a being wielding the full power of Yggdrasil itself
• Defeated Mephisto within his own realm, then later fought him to a complete stalemate despite Mephisto being empowered by his hell dimension
• Zeus admitted Thor resisted his power during their fight more than the Olympian Gods and Titans, placing Thor above Atlas, who upholds the Greek cosmic structure itself
• Slightly dented Silver Surfer’s forehead with a headbutt, and Loki noted that Thor possessed even greater raw strength while battling a serious Surfer
• Knocked over Galactus
• Staggers Galactus with a Godblast

Hulk

Sentry scales directly to Hulk through their stalemate in World War Hulk, where both pushed themselves so hard they reverted to human form. The Void later goes even further in The Sentry (2005), effortlessly restraining Hulk and systematically breaking every bone in his body one by one, while Hulk was completely helpless to stop it. With these showings, Marvel consistently portrays him as operating firmly within and often above Hulk’s normal physical tier, depending on the Void’s influence.

• One-shot Thor with a single punch powerful enough to crack his skull
• Defeated Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes with a single blow
• The shockwaves from Hulk’s clash with Ironclad violently rippled through the Crossroads Nexus, spreading across an infinite number of dimensions
• Apocalypse stated that the immense energy flowing through Hulk was crucial to stopping the Celestials
• Knocked Thor in his Warrior’s Madness and physically pinned him down afterward, despite Warrior’s Madness amplifying Thor’s overall power and durability by tenfold.
• Physically overpowered a member of the Celestial Order empowered by the Heart of the Universe, who could effortlessly one-shot heroes like Doctor Strange and Namor
• Overpowered an entire Avengers lineup consisting of Vision, Red Hulk, Wonder Man, Rogue, Thor, and Hercules simultaneously.

Doctor Strange

Sentry scaling to Doctor Strange honestly tracks when you look at how even Marvel’s top mystics struggle to deal with him. In World War Hulk, Hulk overpowered Strange even after Strange tapped into far greater mystical power, yet Sentry later fought that same enraged Hulk to a complete stalemate while both reverted back to human form from exhaustion. On top of that, Strange himself admitted his magic could no longer properly contain the Void because Sentry was simply too powerful. Characters like Moonstone and Molecule Man all describe his mind, power, or molecular structure as something completely abnormal and beyond conventional understanding. As such, there’s more than enough to argue that Sentry operates on Strange’s level, if not outright above it in raw power.

• Escaped the expansion of the Big Bang
• After being sent to the edge of the universe by Adam Warlock wielding the Infinity Gauntlet, Doctor Strange used the Scrolls of Watoomb to near-instantly traverse the cosmic distance and rejoin the battle
• His mystical energy attacks are powerful enough to injure beings like Kulan Gath, King of Hell Johnny Blaze, and fellow Sorcerer Supreme Jericho Drumm
• Eternity’s apparition warned Doctor Strange’s growing power threatening the cosmic balance
• Matched Scarlet Witch in direct magical combat
• Sent Galactus crashing to the ground from a spell
• Traveled at speeds surpassing any living being before him, carving out an “interdimensional road of repetition,” creating a self-perpetuating endless loop
• Survived a direct attack from a thousandfold-amplified Mephisto within Mephisto’s own realm, and later defended himself with mystical shielding
• Defended himself from Black Bolt’s voice with nine protection spells, a force powerful enough to stagger an amplified Galactus.
• The Shield of the Seraphim successfully blocked an attack from Baron Mordo while he was empowered by the energies of millions of dimensions
• Endured a direct blast from Kulan Gath while Gath was empowered by the power of Shuma-Gorath.

Galactus

At the top of Sentry’s scaling chains lies the Devourer of Worlds himself, who Spider-Man directly stated fought to a standstill in the past. So thanks to this and the previous sections showing feats against the guy, scaling to Galactus is pretty straightforward.

• Regarded as being capable of rivaling Odin himself, with both fighting to a stalemate
• Pierced straight through a force field containing Thanos and the blast still had enough power left over to injure Thanos afterward
• Got blasted back by Thanos hard enough to stagger him, but instead only pissed him off
• One-shotted a Celestial 
• As Lifebringer, Confronted Lord Chaos and Master Order in the Superflow, where they stated they could use their full power, Galactus then overpowered and defeated both of them
• Tore open a rift in space-time between Earth-616 and the nothingness that exists beyond the Omniverse, breaching the boundaries of reality itself
• Overpowers and defeats the cosmic abstract In-Betweener on even footing, with the In-Betweener embodying the balance between Order and Chaos
• His presence in the mystic realms threatened the balance of the multiverse
• Risked collapsing all of creation while fighting Scrier and the Other

Cosmology

Marvel cosmology is structured like the Tree of life of Jewish mysticism. The tree is composed of eleven spheres called the Sephiroth, translated to emanation, each representing a different aspect of the cosmos, literally the emanations of God. The tree represents the flow of energy from the divine to the mortal flesh, from the highest to the lowest sphere and vice versa. The higher you get, the closer you come to unity and God. Opposed to the tree of life is the tree of death, Qlippoth, literally translating it as a shell. While there aren’t many texts about it, in Marvel it is represented as a shell around each of the Sephiroth that blocks the flow of the divine light from passing through each sphere. The Qlippoth is essentially a dark mirror of the Tree of life, and at each Sephiroth there is one corresponding Qlippoth. While the Kabbhallah is a journey through unity, the Qlippoth is about the duality of God. The Kabbhallah is also part of a much bigger Journey referred as the Jacob’s Ladder, in which the cosmos is divided into Four Worlds: The world of actions, the world of forms, the world of creation and the world of emanation, only to arrive at Adam Quadmon, God in the purest form

Note: This does not cover all of Marvel’s Tree of Life, as the higher levels are unnecessary for this debate. You will see why

The first Sphere is Malkuth. It is within Assiah Gashmi, the lowest level of the Jacob’s Ladder, and it is the Physical universe, the one in which you will find most of The Marvel Characters, from the Streets of New York in which Spider Man patrols, to the farthest star guarded by the Nova Corps. 

Universes

The Marvel Universe is big. We know it’s at least one trillion light years in diameter, yet it is far more than that. The Silver Surfer says that the universe is infinite and ever expanding. Maelstrom also says something similar, that the universe is expanding in all directions, and that it has no boundaries. 

If that wasn’t enough there are multiple universes which compose the larger multiverse. To understand the multiverse, one must first understand that infinite is relative, referencing Georg Cantor, who theorised the existence of sets of infinity, a transfinite number. That is what the multiverse is, a transfinite number of dimensions. The infinite three dimensional alternate earths similar to ours are merely at the centre of an even “more infinite” spectrum, in which there exists numerous pocket dimensions. 

The multiverse itself is layered, composed of many numbers of mathematical dimensions, with some universe having a higher number than others. The Dark Dimension in one such place, having more than 6.2985923…(etc) dimensions. There is an even bigger number of dimensions, ranging from 11 dimensions postulated by M Theory, to infinite. Beings like The Watchers can disrupt space time in 12 dimensions and The Beyonder, while still in his infancy, is said to have an infinite number of dimensions. Higher dimensions are usually depicted as being bigger and weirder than the lower ones, Dormammu, a being existing in a dimension even higher than the Dark Dimension, claims that Time and Space are dirty little geometry. 

The Mystical Realms

Past the universes exist the many mystical realms of Marvel, layered atop one another in four specific layers: the Inner Planes, the Outer Planes, the Splinter Realms, and the Far Realms. As the Far Realms and its pinnacle, the Well Beyond Worlds, exist within the Outside, we’ll just be covering the first three here.

Realms of the Inner Planes such as the Astral Plane exist as a realm of ideas, thoughts, and narrative, existing beyond the physical where things are connected in the abstract. A sister realm, Otherworld, is an integral realm that actively sustains the multiverse and is shaped by collective belief and subconscious regarding myths from the British Isles. Indeed, most of the mythical and religious realms reside in the Inner Planes ranging from the Ten Realms of Norse Mythology to the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, all existing outside of dimensional time and beyond time and space.

The Outer Planes are the next layer and are stated to be separate and inaccessible to the Inner Planes even in spirit, requiring high-level magic or specialized bridges to crossover from the Inner Planes to the Outer Planes. Denizens of the Outer Planes like Cyttorak are shown to dwarf entire universes.

The Splinter Realms exist by the borders of the Eighth Cosmos, boundless twilight that holds sway beyond the frayed edges of existence. Beyond the cosmic confines of mere consciousness. Physics do not exist here, instead being beyond concepts that already exist outside man’s understanding as an untouchable, paradoxical realm. One of its realms, Limbo, is the very border of reality itself, and leaping off of it brings one into the Under-Engine, the Un-Beyond that acts as the dark opposite to the Beyond.

Abstracts & The Superflow

Above sits the Abstract, entities which exist as more real than us, as concepts and ideas beyond human understanding. The infant Beyonder, which as said before, is a being of infinite dimensions, is considered insignificant compared to them, and has only ever fought dim shadows of them. In fact, to interact with the universe and us mere mortals, these cosmic beings use Manifestation Bodies, or M-Bodies, humanoid forms of their true self, of which there are an infinite amount. Eternity claims that what we see, the big man with horns, is merely a manifestation of the concept of their existence, and that battling them is akin to battling one thought, for what you perceive is reality. The abstracts live in the Superflow, the space between universes, where dreams live. It is where metaphors and reality meet. It is a conceptual realm made of pure information. In this place combat is purely metaphorical, a literal clash of ideas

Beyond the Superflow, at the furthest edges of creation, there is the Neutral Zone. It is a place where negative and positive matter coexists and beyond it, there is only the “outside”

The Eighth Cosmos

All of this is, everything, is what composes Eternity, or rather, the real Eternity, an omniversal being that encompasses all of creation. The universal Eternity is merely a fragment of the much bigger multiversal Eternity. Every soul is equal, because everything is equally important in cosmic design. That is the fifth element, which is Eternity’s own spirit. Eternity transcends time and space, and all levels of reality and dreams. Even higher dimensional beings like Dormammu are mere flickering thoughts in his endless consciousness. 

The Far Shore

Outside of Eternity there is, well, the Outside, also known as The Far Shore. Outside of everything, beyond Life and death, a no-space in which here and there have no meaning, from there you can see Eternity’s true self. Even Life Bringer Galactus cannot stay for long without experiencing “Trauma”

The Far Shore is also linked to Oblivion, as in the new Cosmic map in the recent Storm comics, The Oblivion Void is linked as right outside Eternity and in between the Upper realms

TLDR: Considering his defeat at the hand of Knull and scaling to a partially Odinforce Thor, Sentry would scale to the Abstracts and within the boundaries of Eternity. Knull has been explicitly stated to be lower than Oblivion, an Ur-Divisor comparable to the Living Tribunal, and the Lumina dimension, a power equal to the King in Black, was said to be a gateway to the Mystery, meaning Sentry does not scale to the higher Marvel realms. While Thor has faced the Utgard Gods, which exist beyond the Far Shore and outside of Existence, he did so only after gaining the full Odinforce as well gaining two Mystic artifacts specifically made to battle them. The same goes for Hulk feats done in Immortal Hulk onwards, him and Sentry never chronologically interacting during this period when Hulk was vastly stronger than before and constantly grew to where he is now, someone capable of breaking the doors holding the Mother of Horrors. Universal Abstracts, the form of Abstract that Sentry has exclusively fought, effectively die if they’re in the Far Shore for too long and cannot handle existing there. As there is, as of now, no reason to scale Sentry to the feats Thor performed in Immortal Thor, Hulk feats in Immortal Hulk onwards, or Abstracts beyond Universal Manifestations, Sentry should still be within around two to three levels into Outerversal capping at the Superflow.

Weaknesses

While the Sentry is without a doubt one of Marvel’s heaviest hitters, even the Golden Guardian isn’t impenetrable, and has shown weaknesses throughout his history:

Life Force Absorption: The Age of the Sentry has shown Bob’s vulnerability to his life force being stolen. Sentry was able to have his life force drained by the Void, with him dying after all of his life force was drained.

Energy Exhaustion: Sentry’s fight against World War Hulk had eventually drained him of all his energy, reverting him back to Bob. This was after hours of fighting however, so it’s unlikely to come up.

(Merged) Madness: After merging, Sentry was eventually discovered to have driven himself mad from meditating, causing reality to break and for him to not notice anything he was doing. Mad Cobra later had to purge said madness out of Sentry, expelling the evil energy and making Sentry fly away to reflect on his actions. That said, this was a one off showing, and Sentry’s time while merged afterwards hasn’t had this happen again.

Strong-Minded Foes: The Void explains how Sentry’s biggest weakness is his own mind, like how a Skrull was capable of making Sentry retreat after mentally damaging him from impersonating the Void. As the Void’s powers are mind-based, one with a strong and clear mind is able to influence his effects on them, though this of course requires knowing how his abilities operate.

Power Nullification: A power-nullifying device was able to strip Sentry of his powers, causing him to lose his memory, rendering him out of commission even after it was turned off.

Reality Warping: During House of M, Sentry had his memories and power reset from Wanda’s Chaos Waves, which were potent enough to affect the multiverse and White Hot Room. Absorbing Man, while amplified by the Cosmic Cube (though was still learning how to use it) could overpower and separate Sentry and the Void back to their classic versions. Only after Absorbing Man was hit with a sword capable of undoing the spell binding him to the Cosmic Cube could the Void and Bob combine back to Sentry’s usual self.

Superboy-Prime

Background

“What if you and I just have a bunch of fun, okay? Go on a hero’s journey, learn some important life lessons, and maybe make some new friends along the way. What do you say? Fly with me?”

You all know the story of Superman by now. Krypton is on the verge of destruction, two loving parents send their baby Kal-El to the planet Earth to avoid its devastation, where he’s found by the Kent family and raised as their own. The classic comic origin story retold from movies to cartoons, quality of said retelling aside.

Except this one is going to be a bit different, cause in the universe of this Clark Kent, the standard heroes of DC comics were just that, comic book heroes, his name even on purpose to reference the comic book Man of Steel, the comics that this Clark would come to love. 

Little did Clark know that every comic book fan could dream of gaining superpower in real life which has been granted to him via literal wishing comet. By wishing comet, I mean Halley’s Comet. It happened when Clark, who was in his Superboy outfit which turns out, was totally not a coincidence considering what happened next, was attending some beach party with a bunch of his friends including his girlfriend at the time, Laurie Lemmon. As he was looking at the stars, specifically, Halley’s Comet. Clark tried to touch it but found himself flying from the beach. Turns out, he had the powers of his namesake and then some! From there, he finally gets to meet his favorite hero, Superman who was there and the following rest is, well, history! With the multiverse revealed to our Clark and the information he was the only superhuman on the entire earth in this reality, he became Superboy! Though, considering the Earth he was from, he took up the name Superboy-Prime! A dream come true for him, and in theory, a never-ending one!

And then the Crisis happened, the one you all know and the start of many, many comic book events that would reshape the DC universe foreveeeer, or, at least until the next comic event, you know how it is these days. But this one was the first, the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Where every Earth to ever exist was under threat, and that included Earth-Prime, and every hero had to answer the call, and Superboy-Prime did, helping battle off the Anti-Monitor itself alongside the greatest heroes in the multiverse to decide what would exist in the end!

And after all was said and done, One Earth existed. And it was not Superboy-Prime’s, it was no issue though, he hadn’t processed the losses and what it meant, as the Anti-Monitor still had to be slayed! He fought alongside Earth-2’s Superman and Alexander Luthor to try to defeat the Anti-Matter powered destroyer, and after a nail-biter of a battle, they won, the trio sacrificing themselves in theory to slay the Anti-Monitor, a heroes end, just like the idealistic comics the Superboy had read in his youth, no?

…Except it wasn’t the end, the trio, plus Earth-2’s Superman’s Lois, managed to survive, stuck in a limbo to watch over the new Earth that had been born from the multiverses reset… no biggie though right? He just gets to watch the new world that he helped save, right? That’s what he thought at least, and then he saw how… well, for lack of a better term, realistic it was becoming and all he could do was watch as more permanent damage became done, the status quo changing. The Death of Superman against Doomsday, Batman becoming crippled against Bane, the death of Ted Kord and Wonder Woman executing Maxwell Lord, the last being the one to break the metaphorical camel’s back. As Superboy-Prime couldn’t handle seeing a world where the idealistic dream had long since died, and the world was no longer an adventure of the week to see what these heroes were up to. Add on Alexander Luthor nudging him a bit further with the reminder of what he had lost, and Superboy-Prime’s rage at what the world had become and what he had lost all boiled over as he punched the wall of limbo.

And shattered reality with that punch, the ever-so famous Retcon Punch. Shaking the continuity of DC comics itself and letting himself back into the main reality, where he would cause his own Crisis, in the attempt to undo the Anti-Monitors and bring back the Multiverse with the help of Alexander Luthor. And in crisis fashion and being the de-facto heavy hitter of the crisis he was causing, Superboy-Prime went on a gauntlet of heroes… Including getting blood on his hand, killing people, killing Heroes, beating in the head of the idealistic Superman of Earth-2 in his rampage as he donned an armor similar to the original Crisis Bringer. A start of a rampage, a tantrum of sorts where he was angry at the world, angry at the fact he couldn’t get his world back, angry at the loss of the idealistic world he admired… And after all the blood he shed, after Alexander and him failed, all that was left was a toxic, self destructive rage towards everything, a former fanboy who was unable to deal with the fact that times were changing and wouldn’t be what he liked growing up.

After losing in his own event, well,  it was sorta just, a blur for him, in and out, only really showing up for big events, the Sinestro Corp War, the Final Crisis, the Blackest Night, helping the Legion of Doom one time, fighting the Shazam family another time, and nothing really developed, nothing truly changed for him. He was full of bitterness and hate. Lashing out at anyone and blaming everyone for the loss of his Earth, of his family and friends, and the fact that the world he had to live in wasn’t the idealistic comic book world that he had read when he was younger. Sorta just, one long never-ending tantrum in a way, never really getting to grow as a person in any way that’d be deemed positive growth. Stuck in his own status quo in a way where all he was known for was the manchild who carved an S into his own chest and killed people and broke reality that one time.

In a way, it’s perhaps poetic that the event that finally would push him into growing as a person would be one that called upon all the past events that had happened, with Death Metal. Given his own ideal world to fuel Crisis Energy for the latest big bad who wanted to rewrite existence, Prime finally was given a moment to think about what his existence had become, and decided to, after a stern talk-no-jutsu from Wonder Woman, fight for the side of Justice. To fight and beat down another twisted version of a beloved superhero in the form of the Batman who Laughs, another edgy, distorted, broken powerful monster who was going to rewrite the multiverse in his own crisis. A mirror of himself in a way, but one that he would shatter like he did reality, even if it wouldn’t kill the Batman who Laughs, it’d weaken him enough for the real heroes to save the day, to sacrifice himself for the greater good, even at the cost of his life. Even if no one would know of his sacrifice, he’d do it regardless.

Truely, even for just a few moments, Superboy-Prime had learned what it meant to wear the S, and became just for those moments, Superman.

…Except his story didn’t end here.

So, Superboy-Prime didn’t die, instead just being stuck in a reality made by the Time-Trapper for a bit, before he was called to help in the next latest event caused by Darkseid, seems Superboy-Prime almost has a nose for showing up in events these days-And with a renewed, healthier mindset on the reality he was in, Superboy-Prime was here to help save the day… a few hiccups from old habits and unhealthy tendencies aside, but the point was that he was improving, he wasn’t a raging manchild anymore, he was… more of a hero now, or at least trying his best to be. Fighting on the side of the heroes rather than being another tool for a Crisis.

And when Superman went missing due to a certain tournament related event? Superboy-Prime got the chance to take up the mantle. After years upon years of being known as the toxic manchild, the one fans sometimes only cited as ‘the reason Jason Todd wasn’t dead’ and the ‘edgy Superman’, he had grown past that and had earned the S. Becoming the current Superman in the latest run, going from a comic reader with an idealistic vision of heroes, to a comic hater who wanted the old times back, to accepting the way comics are and breaking free of his own status quo to become something greater.

So hey, with the hero he’s become and how big of a spotlight he’s in now, there’s no other Prime-time for him to show off how much of a powerscaler’s wet dream(his words, not ours) he is then in a DEATH BATTLE! Now let’s show how much of nerds we are and show you everything he’s got!

Experience & Skill

Despite Superboy-Prime not receiving any formal combat training, he’s a fairly capable fighter and difficult to keep up with. He has fought opponents with far more consistent training, combined with superior martial arts skills. Such as Superboy (Conner Kent), who was trained in hand-to-hand combat by The Guardian and Supergirl, who received training from Wonder Woman in Themyscira, helping her become a better fighter as well as have greater control over her Kryptonian powers. Then we have the most impressive display of his skill was when he fought a huge number of superheroes attacking him all at once and managed to go toe-to-toe with them. That’s enough evidence to show how much of a threat Superboy-Prime can be.

He’s also remarkably crafty for someone who grew up on a normal Earth, having built his own armor based on Anti-Monitors… while also trapped in the Speed Force and escaping it at the same time. Alongside how rapidly he’s adapted with how to learn the Retcon Punch during Death Metal to use it to change the Dark Earths. And has gotten to the point where he has the surgical precision to use the Retcon Punch to travel across space-time. Add on his comic book knowledge being, fairly applicable surprisingly, and he’s much smarter than you’d assume.

With his already incredible Kryptonian powers and his sun-consuming armor, he’s without a doubt one of the most dangerous characters in the DC Multiverse, to the point that he has battled against multiple powerful beings like Superman, Martian Manhunter, Black Adam, Shazam, Anti-Monitor, Green Lantern Corps and The Darkest Knight.

Equipment

Energy Collecting Armor

Superboy Prime’s gear isn’t just for style, it’s a specialized armor based on the Anti-Monitor’s harness, capable of taking energy and feeding it to Prime as yellow sunlight to keep him fueled.

Abilities

Kryptonian Physiology

Being the Clark Kent of Earth-Prime, Prime has access to the usual Kryptonian bag of tricks.

• Energy Absorption: Prime’s body absorbs solar energy and acts as fuel for him, allowing him access to his other abilities. Though Primes oddly seems to extend beyond just Solar Energy, as the Self Destruct of a Guardian of the Universe Left him having absorbed its energy, which boosted him enough to enter the 5th dimension, huh. Alongside the time he absorbed the Magic of Captain Marvel without Billy willingly sharing it with him.
• Superhuman Physicality: Prime is extremely strong, tough, and fast, as well as having quick reflexes and agility.
• Superhuman Senses: Prime’s vision allows him to perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which allows him to see transmissions and frequencies. He can see through anything with X-ray vision, observe infrared rays and sense heat signatures, perceive things from far away, and view objects down to the atomic level. He also possesses super hearing.
  • His senses are precise enough that Prime can sense when he’s in a different universe.
  • Prime could perceive a nanovirus in Ted Kord’s spinal cord and sense its satellite transmissions to Brother Eye.
• Flight: Prime can fly. End of sentence.
• Heat Vision: Prime can shoot concussive beams of intense heat from his eyes.
• Freeze Breath: Prime can exhale a breath of cold air that freezes things.
• Super Scream: Prime can yell so loudly it tears up the ground around him and push his foes away

And in theory, while he hasn’t replicated all of the Man of Steels typical tricks with his Kryptonian powers, it’s not out of the question considering his comic book knowledge for say, him replicating Superman using his Heat Vision to ionize the air or use his freeze breath to freeze ghosts for instance. Though your mileage may vary on more misc applications applying to Prime.

The Retcon Punch

Clark’s punches can send out ripples across reality, allowing him to change or ‘retcon’ history with his bare hands by punching space and time, creating ‘conflicting’ truths and overwriting what previously existed. Where it caused such things as bringing Jason Todd back to life, the Doom Patrol’s history to be rebooted, Hal Jordan no longer serving for Drunk Driving? And messing with the origins of characters as Hawkman and Donna Troy. It also served to let Superboy-Prime “solve” paradoxes and glitches in reality, sorting through conflicting permutations and resolving all possible realities. And this was the first time he did it too! While in the past he wasn’t able to control it, even being confused on how it was working during Death Metal, nowadays Prime can outright control the retcon part of it, even using it at will if he wanted to.

The Multiversity Guidebook implies that Prime’s punches affected Hypertime, and when he makes a re-appearance in Death Metal his punches are shown capable of shattering his own, Darkseid’s, and the Anti-Monitor’s respective Crisis worlds with just a single punch, realities meant to be copies of the entire multiverse during specific Crisis events that were generating Crisis energy for Perpetua. Indeed by Death Metal his punches had improved to the point that blows to individuals can alter their entire history, shifting a dark reality into a more hopeful one and later shattering the Last 52 worlds created by the Darkest Knight to where he couldn’t recreate them afterwards just by punching him repeatedly.

And since his return, the Punch has gotten even more usage out of it, being able to use the Retcon Punch in order to shatter reality to travel across time and space in an unconventional way that he’s used to avoid having to take the natural time-stream, which he’s used with surgical precision to use for travel. Or outright sending someone else across Space and time with the punch.

Plot Manipulation

The specifics of this ability of Prime is unknown, but he is an inhabitant of Earth-Prime, which within DC represents the real, or the metafictional world. It has been stated that some inhabitants of Earth-Prime, most notably DC writers, who Prime famously got to terrorize into changing his ending, possess the power to control reality, and that every denizen of the Earth has this ability to at least some extent, and the collective power of many citizens of Earth-Prime managed to attract five DC heroes to their world, and even prevent Flash from leaving it, even with the cosmic treadmill. It is very likely that Prime’s retcon punch is a focused application of this power, amplified by his being a kryptonian, though we technically never received a direct confirmation for it. Without an active application of the retcon punch, he unconsciously changed the narrative of an alternate Superboy by hitting him.

Fourth Wall Awareness

In Gwenpool adjacent fashion, Superboy-Prime coming from the ‘real world’ came at first with the knowledge of how comics work and the histories of most heroes. But since his return it has developed to the point of having a meta awareness of the medium he’s in and a more acute knowledge of the history of comics. Which includes but is not limited to:

• Is a Spider-Man fan and knows the exact issue where Peter ditched the symbiote suit
• Summarizes his history to the reader
• Acknowledges that the time he killed a bunch of people was two reboots ago
• Believes that he knows how the story will end

• Addresses the reader directly again and tells them to come back next month because he can smell an event coming
• Anyone who interacts with Earth-Prime seems to receive some sort of Fourth Wall Awareness, seeing as Alexander Luthor Jr. was capable of extending his hands towards the reader upon finding it.
• Beefed with the DC Editorial of his Earth

Resistances

• Magic: Superboy Prime has high resistance to magic, claiming that it “tickles” him. He is even able to resist the magic of the powerful sorcerer Mordru of the 31 century.
  • Mordru states that it took an entire planet of sorcerers to defeat him, each of whom was as  powerful as Dr Fate. He immediately proceeds to one shot a Dr Fate amped with the powers of two Green Lantern’s rings while only having half of his powers, with Superman confirming he was weaker than usual
  • Was stated by the narrator to have the power to move worlds, blacken suns and annihilate galaxies
  • Soul Manipulation: Prime was completely unaffected by a spell meant to trap and enslave his soul
• Radiation: Superboy Prime wasn’t phased by being hit with blasts of radiation. He also munches down on uranium (his favorite).
  • He also wasn’t bothered by the main universe’s Kryptonites which won’t harm him directly unlike it did to Superman and other Kryptonians.
• Fire, Ice, Electricity: Withstood blasts from Fire, Ice and Black Lightning using well, Fire, Ice and Lightning on him.
• Possession / Empathic Manipulation: Superboy-Prime was able to reject a Black Lantern Ring and multiple ranges of the Emotional Spectrum trying to appeal to him.
  • For reference in the same event, Deadman and Crispus Allen Spectre were affected
• Anti-Matter: Survives attacks from the Anti-Monitor, who uses Anti-Matter. Anti-Matter itself has an array of effects, such as Atomization, Existence Erasure, Time Distortions and Energy Draining
• Battlefield Removal: Escaped the Speed Force despite the Flashes’ active attempts to keep him there. 
• Energy Absorption: Parasite notes that sucking up Superboy-Primes energy would probably kill him
• Transmutation: Maintained his form after two years in the Speed Force, when anyone who enters it without a proper connection ends up being assimilated into it and converted into energy.
• Atomic Cutting: Shrugged off a slash from Zauriel’s sword, which can cut through atomic bonds.
• Telepathy & Mind Manipulation:Successfully hid his thoughts of double-crossing Absolute Saturn Girl
  • This version of Saturn Girl could break through the mental defenses of both Time Trapper Doomsday and Superman relatively easily

There’s also discussion on if Prime would resist the same things that various other Pre-Crisis era Kryptonians resisted, due to similar physiologies and being a, well, a Clark Kent/Kal-El, though your mileage may vary on that. This would include things such as resistances to Age Shifting, Absorption, Transmutation, Soul Destruction. and Mental Attacks, among other resistances. Granted, lack of direct showings to some of these does mean your mileage may vary on how much you’d want to apply these to Superboy-Prime.

Feats

Overall

• Implied to be an aspect of or influenced by the Great Darkness
• Resurrected Jason Todd from the dead after Joker killed him
• Was able to break free from the phantom zone by retcon punching it
• Beat up Earth-Two Superman to the death
• Fought against Teen Titans, The Doom Patrol, and The Justice Society all at the same time
• After sacrificing himself to beat the Darkest Night, he seemingly returned to his world and earned his happy ending
• He’s the current Superman (as of writing)
• Escaped the Speed Force

Power

• Fought all of the Teen Titans at once
  • In a retelling of Infinite Crisis in the Dark Multiverse, he successfully kills Superboy and Kid Flash (Bart Allen)
• Blew up a planet
• Moved planets throughout the cosmos
• Tore apart Monarch’s Armor
• Makes Chameleon bleed with a punch
• Headbutts Superman
• Throws Imra into a wall 
• Slams Lightning Lad into the ground
• Makes Superman bleed with a punch
• Threw Anti-Monitor out of orbit
• Destroys a small part of a Source Wall
• Punched through the Fifth Dimension and tortured Mr. Mxyzptlk
• 1-shots Alexander Luthor with heat vision
• Easily rips apart Lex Luthor’s War Suit
• Portrayed as stronger than both Black Adam and Shazam
• Overpowered Wonder Woman off-screen
• Could defeat Power Girl and kidnap Martian Manhunter
• Shattered Crisis worlds occupied by an Old God Darkseid and an Anti-Monitor that became one with the multiverse
• Battled on par with the Darkest Knight, and even overpowered him

Speed

• Flies out of Orbit in the span of a few sentences
• States he can fly at lightspeed
• Is so fast that other heroes cannot catch up, and it took the Green Lanterns’ effort to make a detour to slow him down.
• Blitzed Ted Kord & his agents
• Moved planets throughout the cosmos, shifting the center of the universe, which would require him to cross interstellar distances
• Blitzed the entire Shazam family minus Shazam himself
• Stated to be quick enough to catch Mr. Mxyzptlk unaware
• Kept up with three Flashes attacking him at once as you can see in the image above

Durability

• States he could survive a new Big Bang
• Fended off multiple attacks from Black Lanterns
• Tanked attacks from Black Lantern Alexander Luthor
• Shrugs off Bart Allen, beating him up after absorbing the entire Speed Force. This exhausted Bart’s connection to the Speed Force afterwards
• Survives Monarch Using his Quantum Power to Nuke a City
  • Monarch also compared his Quantum Power to the Big Bang
• Survives a Guardian of the Universe self destructing in his face
• Withstands Anti-Monitor hitting him with all the power of his universe
• Tanks blows from Wonder Girl and Red Star
• The Darkest Knight says he was incapable of killing Prime

Scaling

Superman image by Adam, other images by Ninjamonkey.

Superman

The Man of Steel himself, one of the greatest heroes of all time. He has fought countless villains including Superboy-Prime but with different versions of himself. Superboy-Prime has the same Kryptonian physiology as Superman and was able to kill his original counterpart. After the redemption arc, he teamed up with superheroes to defeat The Darkest Knight and with Superman to stop multiversal threats caused by The Legion of Darkseid. Since Superboy-Prime is also considered an alternative version of Superman, he should be evenly matched with him in all aspects if not more. Meaning he clearly scales to all of his incredible feats.

• Earth-2 Superman could have performed the Retcon Punch if Prime didn’t do it
• Traveled several billions lightyears in a nanosecond to get to the heart of a monster that has been threatening Earth.
• Outsped the very bonds of infinity by just flying so fast
• Destroyed an entire solar-system with a sneeze (Bless him)
• At a young age, Superman was pulling several planets with ease from a dying galaxy
• Survived an insanely strong gravity shock that weighs quintillions of tons
• Countered the Green Lantern rings’ energy, restoring all Earth’s possible futures while fighting Jaxon the mighty
• Golden Age Superman and Silver Age Superman were having a fight. The struggle between them destroyed a universe along with shattering the boundaries of space and time. 
• Golden Age Superman easily defeats several DC villains, including Giganta and Clayface
• Golden Age Superman punches into the DC Universe from outside it
• Took an energy blast from Anti-Monitor sending him to the surface of the moon then got stomped by him afterwards 
• After going through a lot of suns, he defeated The World Forger and destroyed his entire multiverse with just a single punch.
• Punched God Brainiac so hard every version of him felt the exact pain
• Absorbed the big bang in his fight against Darkseid (Who became King Omega)
• Crossed the finish line before The Flash (Barry Allen), beating him in a race
• Shook the phantom zone while fighting Rogal-Zaar
• Smashed through endless realities 

The Justice League

The world’s greatest heroes. From the Scarlet Speedster and the Emerald Knight, to the Mighty Atom and the Mistress of Magic.While Superboy-Prime hasn’t directly battled every member of the Justice League. He’s required Three Flashes at once to hold him off, killed Earth-2’s Superman, kidnapped Martian Manhunter, and broke free when being quite literally held down by an entire Justice League just with a bit of sunlight. Add on his showings against the likes of the Anti-Monitor and Darkest Knight, and it’s fair to say the Earth-Prime iteration of Clark Kent should be more than comparable to the many feats the greatest heroes in the multiverse are capable of.

• Wonder Woman
  • Fought against the Justice League while blindfolded
  • Helped Superman and Martian Manhunter pulling the Earth
  • Crushed Ares’ Helmet with her bare hands which stated to be unbreakable
  • A brainwashed Superman punched her, sending her from the Sun to the Earth and she survived
  • Saved Martian Manhunter by pulling him out of a black hole with her Lasso of Truth
  • Survived an explosion that destroyed all of Olympus 
• Martian Manhunter
  • Can read The Flash’s mind, who can think in (a fucking) Attosecond
  • Restrained both Superman and The Flash at the same time
  • Received a punch to the face from Shazam 
  • Can send his telepathy out in Planck time
  • Was able to hurt Superman who got infected by the Doomsday virus
• The Flash
  • Barry Allen Knocked Anti-Monitor across realities with the Infinite Mass Punch
  • Jay Garrick has returned from the 7th dimension to the 3rd dimension through sheer speed and has reversed women spinning at “5th dimensional speed” (Immeasurable)
  • Two Flashes racing was tearing apart the fabric of the Multiverse
  • Bart Allen has absorbed the entirety of Speed Force
  • Wally West Outpaced Teleportation
• Green Lantern
  • Drew willpower from all power batteries across the Multiverse
  • Reduced the explosion of the Golden Destroyer, which threatened two universes
  • Overloaded Dr. Polaris’s control over the magnetic force of the universe
  • Threatened to cause a speed force singularity with his speed
  • Sent probes across the universe in the span of a heartbeat
  • With a few months of training, created a universe
• The Atom
  • Their Ruptured Bio-Belt could counteract the Ignition Point, which was threatening to destroy the Microverse
  • Threatened to blow apart the Microverse by growing too Large
  • Destroyed an Energy Containment Device that was able to buff Jimmy Olsen to match an avatar of Darkseid
  • Blew apart the Spectre with their unstable Shrinking
• Aquaman
  • With his barriers, withstood the Flash’s Speed Force Explosion
  • Pushed a Tectonic Plate
  • Stopped an attack that was able to sink Atlantis
• Batman
  • Muh Batcrater
• Captain Atom
  • Fueled Metron’s chair with enough power that it could collapse the Space-Time continuum
  • Destroyed and Remade the Universe in a Nanosecond
• Captain Marvel/Shazam
  • Shook the Cosmos in a fight with Lobo
  • Flew to the Rock of Eternity, which exists outside of Space and Time
• Supergirl
  • Destroyed the Anti-Monitor’s physical form and forced it to retreat

The Anti-Monitor

The original Crisis-bringer, and the reason Superboy-Prime’s original Earth no longer exists. Superboy-Prime and the Anti-Monitor have had multiple run-ins with each other, and Prime has withstood the best the Anti-Monitor has had to offer. From withstanding the Anti-Monitor powered by all the energy of his universe, to tearing apart the Anti-Monitor’s armor apart and throwing him out of orbit. To, most impressively, shattering a reality where the Anti-Monitor had won the Crisis on Infinite Earths and was in his truest state. Making it clear that Superboy-Prime scales to the full extent of the Anti-Monitor. 

• Has consistently(like, really, really consistently) been stated to have collapsed the Infinite Multiverse
• Shattered Reality in his Battle with the Spectre
  • The Spectre had been amped by the likes of Dr. Fate and Zatanna moments prior
• His attack on the multiverse kicked off the Kali Yuga, the great dissolution of all Creation
• His death shook the Multiverse
• Caught the Flash Mid-Run
• Withstands a combined attack from the Guardians of the Universe
• His Anti-Matter can cover galaxies in a short time
• The Anti-Matter Wave consumed Universes in mere moments
• His Half-Dead body powered the Black Lantern Corps
• Withstood being hit with a Moon
  • Twice, actually
• Alongside the Black Racer, killed Darksied
• Withstood a Solar Flare from God of Gods Superman
• His Astral Brain could destroy the Dark Multiverse
  • And According to Dr. Fate, possibly Everything
• Withstood Hundreds of Infinite Mass Punches from Bary Allen
• Had he won the Crisis on Infinite Earths, would have destroyed ALL Matter in existence
• Cracked the Source Wall
• Comes from the Sixth Dimension of Existence, 
  • The Sixth Dimension is beyond the likes of Mr. Mxyzptlk and required him to use all his energy just to create an entrance to it

The Darkest Knight

The Batkek who Chuckles at his full might. Having taken the powers of Dr. Manhattan and becoming nearly unstoppable to anyone who could challenge him… And despite his level of power, the Batman Who Laughs deemed himself, in his own words, unable to destroy Superboy-Prime, and was actively on the backfoot in his battle against him the entire time. Which is an insane level of power for Superboy-Prime to match, and would let him scale to the Darkest Knights feats.

• Has, Dr. Manhattan’s powers, obviously.
• Even before reaching his peak in power, The Darkest Knight could chase and nearly caught up with an Anti-Crisis amped Wally West.
• His fight with Perpetua raged across every facet of reality, with entities from the Sphere of the Gods powerless to do anything and all of Hypertime and its branches of possibilities burning out as a result. The entire system of the multiverse was going to collapse if the fight went on long enough.
• Matched and defeated Perpetua, stealing all her Crisis Energy before imprisoning her in the Source Wall once more.
• Tackled Anti-Crisis empowered Wonder Woman across time.
• Capable of killing The Hands, which they also confirm.
  • Hands like Perpetua can rend portions of the Overvoid.

Cosmology

Note: Considering the depth of what we’re about to cover, we asked and got permission to regurgitate the information from Bangs Blogs Dormammu vs Trigon, which helped so much in helping us get this blog out on time, so check it out for the proper credit and source of what we’re about to tell you all.

No, seriously, read it, it’s very good. The glaze is immeasurable and absolutely deserved.

Note 2: Also I wrote like 96% of this so yeah I give permission to put it here – Cardinal

The Orrery of Worlds (& Infinite Earths)

A single universe in DC is at least 100 Trillion Light-Years across, expanding at rates that would put it at Nonillions of light-years in diameter, with it being stated that it may simply be infinite in size and still expanding. Universes are stated to contain multiple higher spatial dimensions, ranging from half a dozen more than humans can observe (10-D), 11, 12.3, and 19-D. More recent statements have stated that there are countless angles and layers of existence, and the absolute highest we can get is there being an infinite number of dimensions. Now there are other extra-dimensional spaces or constructs connected to the universe such as the dimension of Azarath, the Shining Tower in the Eternity Girl series or the Heart of Samsara in the Resurrection man series, but nothing quite suggesting we’re hitting the metaphysical spaces quite yet.

Beyond the universe is, of course, the Multiverse. For many years it was limited to the 52 Earths of the Orrery of Worlds, each one on a different vibrational plane but within the same space, due to the Crisis on Infinite Earths and inability to restore the original infinite multiverse. But today an infinite number of multiverses along with the original infinite number of Pre-Crisis worlds are back. In the Pre-Crisis era, the multiverse would be described as infinitely layered.

All of this is bordered by the Speed Force Wall & Wonderworld, the former is the limit to matter, equated with the Speed of Light itself and the latter is the very limit of space and time accessible by traveling at ”faster than light speeds”. Beyond this lies only the abyss, unable to perceive higher realms.

The Metaphysical Realms

Moving past the multiverse and its borders we reach all the metaphysical realms of DC. While there are practically an innumerable number of them, they can be divided neatly into several layers.

First up is the Heroverse, a realm containing the “Metaphysical Potential” for everyone to choose good or evil, and looks down on the multiverse beneath it as if they were comic panels on a page.

Next is the Sphere of The Gods, an Ultra-Multiversal space with its denizens being living platonic ideas in a higher vibratory world. It exists outside of time, spanning unimaginable directions outside the laws of physics and reason. Existing deeper than myth and matter, all realms here are born in the minds of mortals and only exist because mortals believe in them. They are made from “frequencies” that are actually echoes of the mind that lack physicality and transcend space and time.

Above that is the Collective Unconscious, the realm of Hecate whose gift of magic to man caused belief to grow and form all gods and pantheons. Like the Sphere of the Gods, the Collective Unconscious shares many similar statements such as existing beyond physical reality, space, time, and individuality and deeper than the laws of physics to where logic is nonexistent.

Monitor Sphere

Once you’ve travelled past Limbo, after the vibrations and frequencies that form the multiverse have stopped at the borders of the Collective Unconscious, what can only exist next is the Monitor Sphere, the realm that the Monitors of Nil call home. It is an archetypal realm at the edge of creation that exists as a higher dimension to Limbo, perceiving it as a flat disk. It was formed after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, reflecting the shattered multiverse and the original Monitor, Mar Novu, who would be divided into 52 aspects of himself.

Dark Multiverse

But from the highest points of the multiverse we delve down to the lowest: The Dark Multiverse. Among the three building blocks of creation, dark matter far outnumbers matter and antimatter; a fact reflected with the Dark Multiverse being so large it is compared to an ocean that the DC multiverse floats on top of. It is a realm of an infinite number of nightmare worlds. It is essentially just a larger copy of the main multiverse filled with nightmare, darker versions of the main worlds along with its own Sphere of the Gods and Collective Unconscious. It even has its own likely analogue to the Monitor Sphere in the World Forge, where all universes are made from and tossed into either the positive or dark matter multiverses by the World Forger, brother to the Monitor and Anti-Monitor.

Individual worlds here aren’t just universes, but multiverses such as one containing the Orrery of Worlds or another having all the infinite number of Pre-Crisis Earths in it.

Divine Continuum

The Divine Continuum refers to what is the totality of existence and its two key parts: space & time, expressed as the Omniverse & Hypertime, also distinguished in nature as the former being conceptual while the latter is emotional. It encompasses all previous realms and spaces stated previously. The intersection point between the two parts of the Divine Continuum is known as the Branefold Interior, the physical manifestation of Hypertime abstraction, home of the Fuginauts who are the successors to the Monitors.

We would only see the true Omniverse and full scale of space when the Pre-Crisis worlds were restored. What had been seen up until this point whenever the obviously more than 52 number of timelines that composed the Orrery were timelines that branched off and existed within Hypertime, a vast interconnected web of parallel timelines composing all reality. For every moment in the space-time continuum, an infinite number of parallel realities branch off based on an infinite number of decisions. 

Hypertime is just the highest (kinda, it’s weird) of the “geometry” of time that we can perceive in the DC Multiverse.It exists over “Line Space” (a single timeline), Plane Time (all timelines on the same plane), and Cube Time, which has been associated with being the same space that Animal Man gets his meta-powers and awareness of the fourth wall from. Psycho Pirate also accesses this space and calls it the “Pale Gutters” that exist as the flimsy white fabric each universe is built on that is unmoored from Crisis events. Hypertime would later infect and reach into the Monitor Sphere, granting them identity, emotion, and narrative.

The Snyder Dimensions

So with Hypertime existing as high as it does, that certainly means we’re done talking about time right? Well… not exactly. For instance we get implications of this when following the destruction of Hypertime during the events of Death Metal, an Anti-Crisis amped Wonder Woman and the Darkest Knight were still able to punch each other backwards and forwards linearly through time. So how does that work exactly?

Well as we come to find out later in Spurrier’s Flash run (Flash vol. 6), we find out that Time as a whole is the very “Dream” of the Deep Change, an aspect of the Source outside the Source Wall. Where the first three dimensions deal with shape and geometry, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth all deal with Time in some respect. The Fourth is Time itself, the Fifth is Time creating infinite possibility (Imagination), and the Sixth is where all Time exists at once. So the three temporal dimensions in Snyder’s run aren’t really layered realms, but how time exists in different states and transforms itself. These dimensions exist beyond time and Hypertime, with the Sixth in particular being where Hypertime was made by the World Forger and the “Time” that these realms embody continued to exist after Hypertime had burnt out.

At this place’s borders is the Source Wall, the highest vibration before reaching the Infinite. It is the limit to thought itself and separates the multiverse from the Greater Omniverse.

The Greater Omniverse

Past the Source Wall and the multiverse we know lies an even Greater Omniverse, a sublime space of non-dual omni-awareness. There, even the greatest and mightiest ideas in the multiverse can be lost and dissolve in the void outside. Its relationship to the multiverse is akin to how man believes in gods and thus gods exist, so gods believing in the Source beyond the multiverse causes it to exist. It is the aim of the worlds that drift across the Greater Omniverse to reach ascension and join with the Source, otherwise it is sent back to the banks on which it was created. Only when a multiverse has accepted Justice and ascended to a harmonious higher form will it be deemed worthy at the Banks of Judgement.

Multiverses in the Greater Omniverse are made by the race known as the Hands, or rather their full title, the Hands of The Presence. We see the creation of a new multiverse firsthand when Perpetua rent a portion of the Overvoid itself, which recently has been equated with the very Light of Creation itself that spawned from within the Great Darkness, to craft the multiverse and her sons, the Monitor Brothers.

TLDR: Considering Superboy-Prime’s scaling to the likes of the Anti-Monitor and Darkest Knight, he’d be Source Wall Level, which for more comprehensive terms is at least 4 layers into “Outerversal”, with a high-end of High-Outerversal, given members of the Hand like Perpetua can rend into the Overvoid to create the multiverse. The Darkest Knight can explicitly kill the Hands per their own admission but can’t kill Prime, making that pretty straight-forward.

Now go read Dormammu vs Trigon

Weaknesses

Despite Prime’s amazing abilities granted to him by his natural Kryptonian physiology, it’s also something that can be exploited or bypassed. For one, his DNA can be analyzed and bioweapons can be specifically targeted against it such as how a Dark Multiverse version of the events of Infinite Crisis had Ted Kord create a version of the O.M.A.C. nanovirus specifically tailored to Prime’s and other DC characters’ genetic structures that let him take full control over Prime and all other heroes and villains of his Earth, though it’s worth noting that this is was done over an unknown period over days likely with aid from Brother Eye and that it’s usually hard to scan Kryptonians from other realities as they mess up scanners and will vary wildly in results. This is demonstrated with Power Girl being unable to be properly scanned by both Kryptonian and Mr. Terrific’s technology.

And of course, sunlight from Red Suns can weaken and depower Prime if he’s under sufficient exposure without his armor. This is how he was originally defeated in Infinite Crisis where the main Earth’s and Earth-2 Superman pushed Prime through the red sun of Krypton which resulted in all three of them being depowered, albeit Prime less so and still stronger than both Supermen individually. After being weakened from prolonged exposure to magically generated red sunlight, Prime was only able to fight Shazam and Black Adam afterwards because he had absorbed magic from Mr. Mind.

As noted in Resistance section, while Prime stated that he wasn’t bothered by Main Universe’s Kryptonites which is true, as shown by where Superman and Earth-2 Superman were pushing him through the field of Kryptonites where Krypton was once before it exploded and it didn’t harm him at all directly right before being pushed into Rao, Krypton’s Red Sun. However, in order to harm Superboy-Prime with mere Kryptonite, it would have to be from his universe, Earth-Prime. This was shown when Threeboot!Element Lad turned the ground into a field of Kryptonite and to everyone’s surprise which actually included Superboy-Prime, He was actually harmed by it directly and was already poisoned as result within seconds of exposure to it. Cosmic King had to save him by transmutating the Kryptonite Radiation in his body to Yellow Sunlight cells. The reason this was possible was because Threeboot Legion was revealed to be from the future of Earth-Prime. Same universe that Superboy-Prime came from.

He also, despite being a Kryptonian, isn’t invulnerable. He’s been sealed within the Source wall, had his atoms displaced by a Guardians Self destruct and sent outside the universe. and mentally affected by Manchester Black, so he does have some noticeable holes in his resistances that could be exploited if given the chance.

Though, while this isn’t a weakness, it is worth noting that Prime since his return has managed to mellow out a lot and gained a healthier mental state, and isn’t as vulnerable to going on a rage induced… tantrum, to be blunt about it. So it’s not as big of an issue as it used to be for Superboy-Prime to lose his cool and lash out at everything as it used to be.

Fan Art

(By PitTheSwordmaster!)

(By Flip!)

(Also By Flip!)

(By Adam天 and ItsLordAkira)

Before the Verdict

Is Age of the Sentry usable?

The Age of the Sentry is a 6 issue mini-series from 2008. The framing of the comic is Franklin Richards getting curious about the past and history of the Sentry, and Reed Richards deciding to relay tales of the Sentry’s silver age adventures in the form of a bedtime story based on his in-universe comic books. Throughout these stories, Sentry displays numerous impressive feats and abilities, and a lot of clarification is given to otherwise vague parts of the character, leaving it important to ask if this series is actually usable for the 616 Sentry.

Most obviously to start with, the stories in The Age of the Sentry are set in an alternate universe. The events and characters of the in-universe bedtime story told by Reed are officially labelled as Earth-1611. The Sentry from these stories even makes a prominent appearance later on in the Contest of Champions mini-series from 2015. On top of that, the comic presents an irreconcilably different backstory for the Sentry and the Void, depicting his abilities as stemming from a being of pure energy which originated from an alternate universe while the Void was a separate entity bonded to an ordinary criminal. 

So, case closed right? It’s not quite that simple. Despite the differences of the comic, it is clearly meant to inform about 616 Sentry to some degree. Remember, the framing of the comic is that it’s the main universe 616 Reed Richards relaying the Sentry’s history as a bedtime story, with the natural embellishments one would expect from that framing. The idea of in-universe Marvel comics conveying actual, albeit exaggerated and altered, information about heroes is the justification for why golden age Captain America comics seem at odds with the modern take on the character. At multiple points in the series, the comical silver age tone and artstyle of the story ‘breaks’ and Sentry is depicted as reverting to his modern 616 design, as the world suddenly becomes darker and more surreal before abruptly shifting back to the silver age tone. The stories directly allude to the main universe Sentry, at one point raising the possibility that the world might one day forget Sentry was a hero in the silver age.

This connection is pointed out by the authors themselves in a CBR interview. In their words, “the current world and events of The Sentry will inform and sneak into the stories in different ways”, and “With a character like Robert Reynolds, you can’t entirely trust what you see or what you hear him say – after all, he certainly can’t. Is all of what you’re seeing his actual history, or is some of it the way he wanted it to be?”

This idea that the stories in the comic are in some sense the Sentry’s actual history and in another sense simply what he wishes his idealised history to be bleeds into the series itself, with the final issue stating that reality bends around the Sentry’s existence to create a kinder, more hopeful and comical world. In much the same way that a Superman-esque paragon figure couldn’t actually exist in the Marvel universe without fundamentally altering the nature and the tone of the universe, the Sentry’s presence creates a much more light-hearted Marvel era than the one we’re actually familiar with. After all, a major conceit of the Sentry’s character is the ambiguity about if any of his past was ever real in the first place. The ambiguity of The Age of the Sentry is a continuation of that theme.

Official sources such as the Marvel.com reading guide for Sentry also include the series and describe it as showcasing “the Sentry in his prime”, with the series even being included in the recent Sentry omnibus entirely focused on his 616 history, describing the stories inside as “lost tales” of the Sentry’s past 

So where does that leave things? Well, clearly not everything in The Age of the Sentry is applicable to 616 Sentry. The stories are still ultimately an alternate universe with many irreconcilable differences to the Sentry’s 616 history, and within the 616 universe the stories are embellished and exaggerated by both the in-universe comics and Reed Richards’ recounting of them as a bedtime story. That being said, the comic is also clearly meant to link to the main universe Sentry to some degree, and is labelled as a part of his history by official sources. Elements of the comic, such as the depiction of the “million exploding suns” as a kind of power source for the character, can be reasonably used to clarify on certain vague and unexplained elements of the character, and give insight into what his past and general powerset is intended to be. At the high end, we’ll consider abilities that the main universe Sentry is less provable as actually having, such as the aforementioned reality bending effect, just to be thorough with regards to the debate of this match.

Morgan Le Fay “erasing” the Sentry

Before we get to the actual verdict, we have to address something else that was in our sight for this matchup. Among the community is that there are claims that Morgan Le Fay used time travel to erase Sentry’s existence and that he managed to come back from that somehow. We feel that actual context is strongly needed for this. In Dark Avengers #2, the team is facing Morgan Le Fay and her creatures, and in those pages, Sentry killed her. However, he got exploded by Morgan who managed to come back from death via time travelling from the past. And then in Dark Avengers #4, after returning from the battle with Morgan, the team were surprised to see Sentry alive after the sudden explosion that she caused. Many have claimed this as Sentry finding a way to come back from being erased from existence, but that’s not exactly the case.

See, shortly after Sentry has been exploded, Morgan showed up alive, saying that if they killed her again, she’ll come to their point of childhood and killed them. So what’s the point of saying this after making the Sentry exploding via her magic? Well, the flashback in Dark Avengers #3 shows Morgan backing her time travel threat she made to the team by saying that she can go anywhere in time and remove them. However, she also states it would prove to be a lot of trouble and could put her life in jeopardy if she decided to get serious about said threat due to the difficulty of erasing someone in a way that doesn’t interfere with her own personal timeline, making it something she’d prefer to avoid doing. And given what we know about Sentry, erasing him in a way that doesn’t result in a personal paradox for her would be very difficult to pull it off even with her being very experienced in magic. What happened was that Morgan simply used her already potent offensive magic to explode Sentry. Thanks to his regeneration, Sentry was able to come back from that. 

In fact, this is confirmed by multiple official sources, which state that after she was killed by Sentry, Morgan Le Fay returned to the present from a different point in her timeline and killed Sentry there, with it being described as Sentry “exploding” rather than being erased or anything similar.

So basically, Morgan didn’t kill Sentry via time travelling at all, she just blew him up in the present with normal magic. Her threat about killing the Dark Avengers via time travelling to their childhood came after exploding Sentry and is specifically something she would have difficulty doing and would prefer to avoid. 

Verdict 

(GIF by GraveTLK)

Stats

The most straightforward, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, not quite the deciding factor in this matchup, is Prime’s and Sentry’s horrifying physical strength and speed. So, seeing as both are poster boys of “Top 10 Characters Who Can Beat Up Superman”, there is absolutely no shortage of ridiculous feats and scaling. To quickly summarize how it compares, let’s start with speed. Both can fly cosmic distances within very small timeframes, catch up to nearly any sort of projectile and have direct statements of being able to move at lightspeed. 

Of course, that is hardly the upper limit. Both are capable of matching the respective speedsters of their universe, like Quicksilver in Sentry’s case and the Flash family in Prime’s. They can also keep up with the swiftest of heavy hitters around, like Prime easily keeping pace with Superman and Sentry reacting to Thor’s Mjolnir. This would scale Sentry and Prime to feats like Thor warping space-time with speed and Superman flying fast enough to “burst the bounds of infinity” and nearly entering Heaven respectively. Travel speed is similarly matched, with the Void being capable of flying to the White Hot Room with sheer speed and Prime being so fast that Bart Allen needed to absorb the entire Speed Force to beat him to the main DCU. Seeing as both can approach velocities easily incalculable, there is not much point in comparing their speeds. One could argue either having an advantage due to speed upscaling, something like Sentry scaling to Silver Surfer and Prime scaling to the Flash Family, as they tend to blitz even other immeasurable characters, but those arguments require a fair bit of assumption, can be cancelled out under equal leeway, and, to be honest, being “more infinite” than someone in speed is downright silly. Speed is a tie.

Attack potency is not as clear cut. Seeing as both are dark variants of Superman, it is to no one’s surprise that their respective feats of strength tend to be even more unhinged and destructive than that of the Man of Steel himself. In his normal state, Prime can already juggle planets and moons, challenge DC’s heaviest hitters, like the numerous other super-people, and is already capable of universal destruction, threatening to create a new Big Bang by flying through Oa at lightspeed. Sentry is similarly visually and narratively impressive, something that’s very unsurprising for a man who’s repeatedly stated to possess the power of a million exploding suns. In general, in their initial states, they already have the power to create cosmic destruction and overpower most of the herald tiers.

As it stands, of course, this is not their upper limit. As Prime grew in strength and slowly took control over his reality powers, he became significantly stronger. Aside from being able to affect the multiverse with his blows, he is unambiguously superior to the likes of Superman or Shazam, able to take a beating from Bart Allen empowered by the entire Speed Force (which comes from beyond the Source Wall), has broken a part of the source wall in the past, defeated Anti-Monitor, fought the unrestricted Monarch, shattered entire Crisis universes, and most importantly, defeated the Darkest Knight in the deciding moment of his redemption. For more details, read our cosmology section, but the TL;DR is that Prime, through scaling to the Darkest Knight, who could harm Perpetua, the creator of the Multiverse Map, and Anti-Monitor, who can similarly affect the Source Wall, would scale at least up to the Source Wall section of the DC cosmology, and thus be at least 4 layers into Outerversal, with a possible high-end of High Outerversal if you scale Perpetua to the Overvoid. 

Sentry is similarly impressive when you take into account his Void form and especially Merged Sentry. Void can easily mollywhoop the likes of Hulk and Dr. Doom, and Sentry while Merged can damage All-Father Thor and even celestials. It’s not all sunshine and bunnies, though. Sentry has suffered some notable defeats in his career, most notably one at Knull’s hands, so he would scale to only Universal Abstracts to some extent who can exist in and war in the Superflow. As a result he should cap at 2-3 layers into Outerversal scaling, compared to Prime’s four. As such, by most reasonable metrics, Prime takes the attack potency and stats as a whole.

Tertiary Factors

Unlike stats, comparing Prime and Sentry’s skill, experience and intelligence does lend a fairly obvious outcome to this section.

Intelligence is obviously a no-brainer, while Superboy-Prime isn’t dumb and has made both clever plans and learned how to properly use the Retcon Punch fairly quickly and even built his armor while stuck inside the Speed force. Compared to Sentry being compared to Tony Stark and Mr. Fantastic in intelligence, as well as his deductive skills? It’s no contest.

Experience is also a no-brainer, while the Sentry was out of action for a long while, he’s still been The Sentry for a lot longer then Superboy-Prime’s learned about his powers, especially since half the time he was also out of action, be it trapped in the Source Wall or imprisoned by the Guardians of the Universe, Bob just has a lot more time he’s actually spent as the Sentry and learning how to use his powers.

Skill, to continue the trend, is fairly clear cut. While Superboy-Prime has gone up against some impressively skilled fighters, so has the Sentry, and who they fight doesn’t translate to their skill 1 to 1 which doesn’t bode well for Superboy-Prime. Which when comparing their direct combat showings, The Sentry just has far, far more showings of both creatively applying his powers, and applying his skill mid-combat across the board.

And while it is worth noting Prime HAS read Marvel’s comics at some point… Considering his taste, it’s very unlikely he’s read Sentry’s comics, or knows that much about him that isn’t his appearances in crossover comics at best. It’s certainly not enough to turn the tide if nothing else.

It’s not to say Prime is inexperienced, dumb or unskilled, it’s just across the board, The Sentry very, very cleanly takes all three categories by a noticeable margin.

Abilities 

Considering the depth to how much these two have for their abilities, there’s a lot to discuss for their abilities, so let’s get straight to the point. No use beating around the bush with characters like these two after all!

For starters, Bob obviously has a lot more to throw at Prime, as outside of Kryptonian standard abilities, Prime doesn’t really have much for unique abilities, most of which admittedly end up falling short against Sentry. The Freeze breath wouldn’t be effective, considering The Sentry can withstand Sub-Zero temperatures, and considering the giant explosions the Sentry regularly survives and even generates, it’s no wonder the man powered by a million exploding suns would resist Clark’s Heat Vision. Superboy-Prime does have energy absorption, weirdly consistently even, which would handle Sentrys ranged attacks and his energy blasts he can attack with, but it wouldn’t do that much against Bob’s greater arsenal and only handles a few things here and there.

So Sentry can handle Superboy-Prime’s abilities fairly cleanly, how about vice versa? Surprisingly, he handles it really well actually across the board.

For starters, the vast majority of Sentry’s abilities admittedly fall flat against Superboy-Prime, considering the sheer power advantage Clark has over him, which means Bob will have to rely on a few of his more esoteric abilities to handle Earth-Primes Superman, so let’s cover those one by one.

Sentry’s ability to manipulate matter? Prime has multiple ways to handle this, from resisting Anti-Matter-which can atomize individuals, to surviving the Speed Force which can transmutate those without a connection into energy, and comparing to Superman’s molecular structure would handle having his molecules scrambled, meaning that across the board Matter Manipulation wouldn’t cut it.

The Void’s statement that it can consume souls? We’ve never actually seen how this works on-screen, which does to an extent make it hesitant as a win-con, but even if we did seriously consider this, not only has Prime shrugged off a spell that attempted to trap his soul, but comparing him to Superman means that he can resist attacks on his soul as well, solidifying that The Void wouldn’t be able to reliably target his soul.

Mind Manipulation and by extent, the Infinitendrils? While they are an extremely dangerous weapon to use on Superboy-Prime, considering that it could wipe Superboy-Primes memories or just force him to witness all the trauma he’s been through at once. But Prime has natural resistances built in due to his Kryptonian physiology, one that’s allowed him to fool Absolute Saturn Girl when both Doomsday & Superman’s mental barriers were overwhelmed and resist the Black Lantern Ring when powerful spiritual beings like Spectre or Deadman were overcome in the same event. Theoretically Sentry could break in with time, but it’s not reliable on its own as a win condition. For instance, someone like Manchester Black had to take his time to poke and prod before he broke into Superboy-Primes mind, which means that while Sentry in theory could replicate that, it would again, take time.

So pretty much every major way to bypass the strength gap Sentry has is resisted to some extent, which leaves him without a surefire way to put Prime down… So, it’s a tie in abilities then?

Not quite, to go full circle, Primes few abilities are resisted by the Sentry, which makes things bad for him considering The Sentry’s regeneration, being capable of coming back from subatomic destruction, which is consistent with him being disintegrated on a molecular level and coming back immediately. That’s a level of regeneration that Prime just hasn’t bypassed before. His Frost Breath can freeze ghosts sure but that doesn’t help deal with sub-atomic regeneration.

So, who takes abilities then? Considering Prime can’t bypass Sentry’s regeneration, but also resists all of The Sentry’s more dangerous abilities and is far stronger to boot. Remarkably, this leads us to hypotheticals, which, considering the tertiary advantage the Sentry has, isn’t as far fetched as one would believe.

You see, Prime doesn’t resist red suns depowering him, and while Sentry is never going to think of using something like that earlier into the fight, he could, theoretically mind you, create a red sun to try to help depower Superboy-Prime, given more credence by the fact that the Void has been depicted as having range capable of affecting the entire Sun. A natural weakness Superboy-Prime has that The Sentry could exploit, especially over time with the help of CLOC analyzing Clark over time. Giving him enough of a chance to weaken Superboy-Prime for him to simply beat Clark down into submission. It’s theoretical, hypothetical and would take a lot of time, but considering The Sentry’s hyper intelligence, CLOC’s aid, and the fact that Sentry has all the time in the world considering his regenerative abilities, it’s the only way the fight could end, and so it means that between the two of them, only one has a way to end this fight here and now. Even if we’re playing with hypotheticals, it’s a way to end the fight that only the Sentry has of the two.

So overall, in terms of Abilities, his sheer versatility, nigh unkillable nature and potential ways to de-power Superboy-Prime if given enough time means that this category goes to the Sentry!

And with that, it puts the nail in Superboy-Prime’s coffin, because there’s really nothing he can do to kill Bob, it leaves The Sentry to have his golden moment and take the-

…Ah.

As you may have expected, it’s time to address the elephant in the room. The crux of this debate, above all else, is if Sentry can stack up to the greatest ability in Prime’s arsenal, The Retcon Punch. So what does the Retcon Punch do exactly? Clark’s punches can release ripples across space-time, causing changes across history, one of the most notable ones being when he caused Jason Todd to be revived as Red Hood. A powerful ability on its own, but it’s been honed over time to narrow its effects and give Prime more control over what exactly gets changed. 

The ability has allowed Prime to travel through time, destroy Crisis Worlds, or even change the history of a Dark Superman’s entire universe into a hopeful one. If it were to work on Sentry, there would be nothing stopping Prime from changing moments relating to the Void, stopping Bob from receiving his powers in the first place, or outright erasing him. To answer if the punch would work, let’s look at Sentry’s history against reality and history altering attacks.

“House of M”

During the House of M storyline, Wanda Maximoff famously rewrote the entire Marvel Multiverse. In this new altered reality, Bob now lived an average life with a wife and kid. However, the Void still plagued his mind. In this showing, Sentry wasn’t able to resist history being rewritten at all, while the Void was able to still continue to exist… but was unable to do anything.

“Cosmic Cubes”

The next showing came later, with Sentry and other heroes fighting against Crusher Creel, who had absorbed the powers of a Cosmic Cube. When Sentry shows up to battle Creel, he is overpowered and has his history, very explicitly, rewritten. This leaves Sentry and Void split apart into their classic counterparts, making them fight each other. Sentry was unable to undo this on his own as the effects only wore off once Creel had lost his power. It should also be noted that Absorbing Man lacked full control of the Cosmic Cube, with Hank Pym stating that he didn’t have the proper functions of one either.

“The Sentry”

In his very first appearance in comics, we learn that The Sentry was a world renown hero that was seemingly forgotten to time. The overarching plot of Bob’s first comic outing is that his time as the Sentry was erased from history, and the minds of everyone. During this run it is explained that Sentry’s atoms are a step ahead of the current timeline, which makes him “out of sync” with temporal abilities. However, the history altering properties of even his unrefined Retcon Punches have been stated to “solve Paradoxes and Glitches in reality”, letting Prime shift through and fix imperfections… which a being who is out of sync with the universe would fall under.

It seems that time and time again, Sentry has been affected by reality warping and history changing abilities with no way to reliably come back from them or resist them in the first place. So, yes, the Retcon Punch would work on The Sentry… but is there a way for him to avoid it?

As explained earlier in the blog, Age of the Sentry states that Bob’s existence is an anomaly in the universe, creating his own personal timestream. This is further stated to cause the universe to rewrite its own history just to make space for him, making events that never happened occur to make him exist. Prime’s Retcon Punch would need to bypass this in order to affect Bob, and it turns out to have the range needed to.

Mentioned prior, the Retcon Punch has altered and destroyed Crisis Worlds. Crisis Worlds are recreations of the entire DC Multiverse during different Crisis Events such as “The Final Crisis” or “The Crisis on Infinite Earths”. Prime’s punches being able to affect multiple recreations of the infinite multiverse is more than enough to prove it capable of affecting the main universe and Sentry’s own personal timestream. Furthermore, Prime’s punches have reached Hypertime, an interconnected flow of multiple space-times.

This all leaves Sentry with a single option to deal with the punch, dodging it… but wait. Can he even do that?

“Accuracy”

And now we move onto the last major factor question, the Retcon Punch: Can Prime even target the Sentry specifically?

Well if we look at the very first time Prime threw his Retcon punches, the narration described that each of these blows sorted through conflicting permutations and all possible realities when it came to resolving glitches and paradoxes in the timeline. During Death Metal, not only did Prime display an insane amount of range affecting two other Crisis worlds while inside his own, but enough control to undo all the damage done to Batman and Superman within them after the former had already been dissolved by the Anti-Monitor and the latter corrupted by the Anti-Life Equation. Manchester Black’s plan to bring himself back to life through having Prime punch reality also leans into this control, as it’d only work if Prime knew or was guided into what he was doing… instead of random effects. Even by his own admission, Superboy-Prime could change reality to be the hero he’s always wanted to be, but just doesn’t since it’s not a Superman thing to do.

Sentry is smart and could likely put together what Prime is doing… So would getting out of the way do anything for him? Not at all. Prime doesn’t need to directly hit Sentry to get the retconning to work, in his most famous usage of it he punched reality itself to make these changes and it’s been seen again on his return that he really just needs to punch at open space to trigger it. Additionally, Sentry likely wouldn’t know when to avoid it in the first place. It’s not a massive attack or a telegraphed move, it’s just a punch. Any punch Prime throws could be used to land the move, and it would be disingenuous to argue Bob being able to avoid every single attack Prime throws at him. Prime not even needing to necessarily hit Bob to use the punch, seals the deal. It seems that no matter what argument you give to Sentry, he lacks an answer to the Retcon Punch, meaning Superboy-Prime takes the final category decisively.

Conclusion

Sentry

“I’m scared all the time, Warren. But I’ve learned over the years that it hurts more to fail than to fall.”

Advantages:

• Relative in speed
• Significantly more intelligent 
• Has significantly more experience, and is far more skilled
• Regeneration makes killing him via brute force impossible
• Much more versatile
• Theoretically could possibly depower Prime with a red sun
• Resists most of Prime’s traditional abilities… 
• Has an actually notable adaptation (Thunderbolts* is so good)
• Self (toxic) Yaoi (also a Miracleman homage)
• Horse the Band (go listen to them)

Disadvantages:

• Likely weaker
• …But not the Retcon Punch
• Has no way to avoid the Retcon Punch’s AOE, and it would bypass his survivability
• The majority of his abilities are resisted by Superboy-Prime
• Helicarriers
• The 2023 run (Bob isn’t in it, but it still sucks)

Superboy-Prime

“Well, maybe the story isn’t over. I guess they never are. But maybe you should go outside for a walk too.”

Advantages:

• At least comparable in strength, likely stronger
• Relative in speed
• Resists the majority of Sentry’s abilities
• Far better AOE with the Retcon Punch
• Energy Absorption can handle Sentry’s ranged attacks
• The Retcon Punch can defeat the Sentry and the Void, be it by rewriting his history or outright erasing him
• Scribblenauts Unmasked (Bro has 1(one) adaptation*!!!)
• Spider-Marriage enjoyer

Disadvantages:

• Can’t kill The Sentry though brute force, and can be killed through brute force himself
• Noticeably less versatile
• Sentry can theoretically replicate a Red Sun to attempt to depower him if given enough time
• Far less experienced, skilled, and intelligent
• Probably hasn’t read Sentry’s comics, so he wouldn’t know what Sentry’s capable of with his comic book knowledge
• *His only other adaptation is a delisted mobile game
• He’s such a fucking chud

This is a fascinating idea with a lot of discussion, and is certainly a debatable idea. But debatable does not mean close at the end of the day, as once all is said and done and the pieces are put into place, a winner becomes fairly apparent.

While both are immeasurable fast and insanely powerful, Superboy-Prime on average just scales higher into his cosmology then the Sentry does into his, and even if we were to use leniency and put both at relative levels, Superboy-Prime has defeated opponents like The Anti-Monitor with a single hit that didn’t even directly hit him, and was putting the Darkest Knight on the backfoot actively, which is far more consistently impressive then Sentry’s performance against Knull or his vague statement against Galactus. Putting stats in Earth-Prime’s Superman’s corner.

The Sentry does obviously take tertiaries and abilities, he’s smarter, he’s been in the game longer, he’s more of a fighter and he obviously has so much more to throw at Superboy-Prime and his unkillable nature means that most fighters would struggle for a way to bypass the Sentry’s level of regenerative abilities…Except Superboy-Prime resists any of Sentry’s game-ending abilities that would turn this into a quick-draw for their powers, forcing The Sentry to rely on hypothetical win-conditions that would take time for him to come up with and execute as a plan.

Which is very bad, especially with the Retcon Punch in the room. None of Sentry’s arguments to outright resist it are reliable and rely on shaky context at best, and his actual natural existing defenses like being chronologically out of sync, the Voids lack of an origin point, or the universe rewriting itself to accommodate the Sentry all would get overwritten by just how through the Retcon Punch is, and its range is so absurd that The Sentry could quite literally be in an entirely separate universe and point in time, and Superboy-Prime hitting the air could still threaten The Sentry. Add on how it can rewrite Bob’s history or just outright erase him, and there’s nothing Bob can do to defend or regenerate from an attack like that, especially when he only has anti-feats against similarly potent reality warping attacks.

Make no mistake, without the Retcon Punch in play, The Sentry’s brilliant mind and versatile abilities would net him a win. But against Superboy-Prime’s insane might, perfect resistances and the overwhelmingly oppressive advantage the Retcon Punch lends to him, Bob is put in a Crisis situation he has no way out of, leaving the secret identity of the winner to be Earth-Prime’s Clark Kent.

Final Tally

The Sentry (1) – Lunge

Superboy-Prime (22) – Adam天, BlerdElitist, Cabbage, Garf, GraveTLK, Khero, kingsly, Kriemhild Harley, Luz, Maddie Antiqua, Mino, Ninjamonkey3904, Pasbro, Random Guy #7, Riley, Stationsearcher, TheCardinalKing, Thicc Grimes, Toxin, Tru, WWAL, Yerm

(GIF by GraveTLK)

Before We Go…

Our Thor VS Wonder Woman bonus blog should be releasing soon. Look out for that sometime next week-ish.