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Also genuine question: How does this work for Marvel Cosmology and anyone beyond tier 3? Or Avengers villains.
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Marvel and DC Policy - Cross-Scaling Revision Proposal
- Thread starter M3X_2.0
- Start date
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- dc comics marvel comics
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Where does this leave Taskmaster ?
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I won't comment on anything else (I'm not knowledgeable enough on Marvel and DC to weigh in), but I do want to point out that, while Nasuverse was nuked from the wiki, it was eventually brought back with no changes (other than every profile getting the outdated tag) before revisions actually started. So, it wasn't actually redone from scratch (and it has taken months to make any sort of revisions anyway).
Even if it was nuked and rebuilt from the ground up, I highly doubt that approach would work well for a verse as large as Marvel or DC Comics.
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Wolverine's high end stuff is obviously due to the potency of Adamantium; which admittedly has some degree of inconsistency as well. There are plenty of cases of Adamantium armor being the reason Ultron is so much tougher than even the strongest avengers. But it also has some scientifically impossible antifeats if we go off some pseudo consistencies. Like Adamantium has been shown to melt from extreme heat that appears to be finite. And it's impossible to be able to withstand infinite joules of force without being able to withstand infinite joules of thermal energy. Though it's possible the opposite end. And at same time, there are plenty of cases where having weapons made of Adamantium is what enabled street level tiers to severely injure the cosmic tier heavy hitters. Which Wolverine's claws are basically the equivalent of that.
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I feel like extreme heat should be listed as a weakness for Adamantium then, unless there are feats of it withstanding extreme heat
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But also, I don't think just scratching someone should be grounds for scaling at all. Like as this thread has discussed just being able to fight against someone isn't enough. Unless Wolverine is like cutting off limbs or severely hurting people, I don't see any reason to treat that differently than something like Captain America supplexing Power Man, someone on Wonder Man's level.
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Wolverine when harming people with his claws actually is drawing blood and shit
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Yeah, but I don't think that should necessarily scale. Like, at least the example on his profile, is just a surface level wound. I think characters should only scale if they can consistently severely wound or defeat someone or if they have statements of being comparable. To me, this just seems like the inverse of us not scaling a character's durability to someone else's due to not being one-shot by them.
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I'm gonna be honest, that genuinely makes zero sense.
Rate normal humans as 9-C instead of 10-B because their femur are that durable, is basically what I see here.
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Although, to give a supplementary case to the Wolverine example, months back I created a thread to downgrade Captain America’s shield being Outerversal in durability despite this clearly being a disqualifier instance for 1-A according to the FAQ, only to be stonewalled and roughly met with the attempt to demoralize as a counter-argument; e.g., “this would blow up the entire verse and would require a super-large revision which means you can’t edit even this much smaller value without investing hundreds of hours to dismantle the setting more generally”.
This seems like a much larger issue than others have noted here, especially with regard to the attempt to split the difference character types into separate “cosmologies” which is a very big commitment
This seems like a much larger issue than others have noted here, especially with regard to the attempt to split the difference character types into separate “cosmologies” which is a very big commitment
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That and the fact that Cap's Adamantium is magic IIRC
Also, checking the scans on Wolvie's page... both Hulk and Thor hold back on Earth like, a lot. The only thing of note there is the Thanos scan because the Mad Titan generally doesn't dick around, but that's for a Wolverine Rework, not this thread. Just saying that Low 1-C claws for Wolverine don't seem very solid.
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My main concern is over someone like say Moonstone at this point.
Her biggest appearance is without a doubt in the Thunderbolts, making the bulk of what people would consider her main stories.
Now what's the issue there?
It involves people from multiple "cosmologies" in each team. The first iteration of the team is ran by Count Zemo (Captain America villain) and one of her teammates is Beetle (Spider-Man villain). Meanwhile the team's second iteration is ran by Osborn and has a Venom on it (Spider-Man villains), has Radioactive Man (Someone who up that point had his most notable fight be against Thor and Iron-Man), has Bullseye in it (Daredevil villains), AND it's when the Dark Avengers actively contrasted her with Captain Marvel (Highlighting her Kree heritage which until then barely got used). After all this we get the third version of the team she was on which is lead by Luke Cage (Crossover merchant) and Juggernaut (X-Men) while their main villains ends up being Dr. Doom.
How do you decide what scale is fine for her???????
Her biggest appearance is without a doubt in the Thunderbolts, making the bulk of what people would consider her main stories.
Now what's the issue there?
It involves people from multiple "cosmologies" in each team. The first iteration of the team is ran by Count Zemo (Captain America villain) and one of her teammates is Beetle (Spider-Man villain). Meanwhile the team's second iteration is ran by Osborn and has a Venom on it (Spider-Man villains), has Radioactive Man (Someone who up that point had his most notable fight be against Thor and Iron-Man), has Bullseye in it (Daredevil villains), AND it's when the Dark Avengers actively contrasted her with Captain Marvel (Highlighting her Kree heritage which until then barely got used). After all this we get the third version of the team she was on which is lead by Luke Cage (Crossover merchant) and Juggernaut (X-Men) while their main villains ends up being Dr. Doom.
How do you decide what scale is fine for her???????
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- Thread starter
- #94
Honestly I’m not familiar enough with her full history to give a precise answer on where she’d land. But that’s kind of the point. The answer would require actually researching her appearances across those Thunderbolts iterations, looking at what she consistently demonstrates across all of them, and building a tier from that average. That’s more work than just plugging her into a scaling chain, but it’s more accurate.
And I’d push back on the framing a little. The fact that one character with a complicated history presents a challenge doesn’t invalidate the proposal. Every system has edge cases. The question is whether the core methodology is sound for the majority of characters, and I think it is. Moonstone would just need proper research done on her before her profile gets updated, which is how it should work anyway.
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Ignoring Wolverine a little bit. What do you think about the thread now after we’ve discussed for several comments? I’m obviously willing to concede some points and arguments to make the proposal work, and implement more exceptions since there are characters that only appear in crossovers.
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It's not fair to dismiss them as a glup shitto. They are point out an issue with the proposal that needs to be resolved. The time to figure out the issues is before accepting not after.“No wait, glubshitto wont work anymore! What will we ever do???”
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I personally do not like the idea of separating every into different character "cosmologies" since that feels even more arbitrary than what we have now. It just adds another layer of complications. If we want to further increase the burden for scaling then fine, but I personally don't like this way of doing it. In my opinion we should strive to find internal consistency (which admittedly is easier said than done), and these "cosmologies" are an entirely fanon concept with no bearing on the way Marvel works either in-universe or even in its storytelling. Teams are of much bigger importance in Marvel than in DC imo, so I don't agree with treating scaling in team books as secondary. I'm not that strongly opposed to it and won't fight against it, but yeah I don't really like it.
I do strongly agree with the idea that characters shouldn't scale just due to fighting alongside someone else though.
I do strongly agree with the idea that characters shouldn't scale just due to fighting alongside someone else though.
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Please read the thread. If there’s something this proposal does is removing complications.
If approved, you wouldn’t have to worry about having to upgrade everyone from the scaling chain just cause you’re upgrading a character that makes part of it.
Which is what the thread proposes.
This gotta be a joke? It’s Marvel that introduced this concept, not us fans. Spider-Man has his own villains, supporting characters and different super-heroes that shares the same environment as him. Spider-Man comics also have their own rules, their own portrayals and everything.
You can’t read comics and deny the idea that Marvel clearly separates their characters within their own rule sets, portrayals, explanations etc.
What you can say it’s arbitrary is trying to fit characters into one of them, though.
Contradictory to say the least.
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Okay this is just straight up wrong, literally every marvel character has nearly half of their appearances being in comics that aren’t their own, different series aren’t entirely different environments they are the same environment just from different perspectives, there are numerous times when these perspectives have overlapped and there is a large complex system, a system that holds itself together by a thread but that thread hasn’t broken yet, yes comics about different characters work slightly differently, but they aren’t completely incompatible
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Declaring team books to be secondary to solo books is not internal consistency.
Yes which makes the whole idea arbitrary. There are very few characters who will fit cleanly into this. And yes the concept of cosmologies is inherently contradictory with the shared universe idea of Marvel. Characters jump around ALL THE TIME. Scarlet Witch is tied to both Magneto and Avengers. Whose cosmology is she part of?
No, it obviously isn't at all. I am saying that if Iron Man and Captain America are both fighting against the same villain in an Avengers book, Captain America shouldn't scale just because he is there. But, if in a teambook, Iron Man has several statements of being superior to 5-B characters, there is no reason to treat those statements as lesser just because it's not a solo book. Now Iron Man's scaling isn't the point, that's just an example, but surely you can see what I'm saying.
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I know that Marvel does take in account a method of attempting to form a consistent level of power through things like the power grid, where they split it up into sections for different stats, with strength (lifting) such as
Now I understand peoples' issues (and lackthereof, a lot of the issues here suck) with the proposal, but like, we do need something to base these ratings off of
Unless we just scrap it to hell, work off the power grid, and call it a day
Like people mentioned Luke Cage, and he has high tier feats and lower tier feats, but according to the grid he's on Level 4 alongside Spiderman, Wolverine, etc, but has Level 5 dura.
Now i'm not. saying that we should use the grid or some shit, but i'm saying that finding a place to start is essential, and this is better than what we got
- Weak (Children and Non Physical Combatants), Normal (The Average),
- Peak Human (Super Trained Soldiers and Peak Human Transformed Individuals)
- Superhumans (Characters who transcend superhumans through enhanced suits or mutated biology)
- Superhuman2 (Before but to a higher extent, usually tech amped, hybird creatures, or just aliens)
- Superhuman3 (Same, but to a higher level, usually individuals who can fight each other but are on the baseline level of what we consider "Heralds"),
- Superhuman4 (Gods and just, top tier peeps)
- Incalculable (Top tier Heralds, pantheon deities, and the like who shouldn't exist, Hulk Sentry Thor etc)
Now I understand peoples' issues (and lackthereof, a lot of the issues here suck) with the proposal, but like, we do need something to base these ratings off of
Unless we just scrap it to hell, work off the power grid, and call it a day
Like people mentioned Luke Cage, and he has high tier feats and lower tier feats, but according to the grid he's on Level 4 alongside Spiderman, Wolverine, etc, but has Level 5 dura.
Now i'm not. saying that we should use the grid or some shit, but i'm saying that finding a place to start is essential, and this is better than what we got
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not even close, that grid acts like Captain America and Wolverine are more skilled then daredevil, silver surfer is only as durable as thing, Thor would speed blitz hulk, etc etc for things that make absolutely no sense
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- Thread starter
- #104
Nobody is denying that Marvel is a shared universe, that’s literally the premise of the proposal. The point isn’t that Spider-Man’s comics exist in a vacuum completely separate from everything else. The point is that different series have different tones, different power levels, different rules for how strong characters are portrayed, and different writers with different interpretations. That’s not a fan invention, that’s how Marvel comics actually work in practice, which is exactly what the existing policy page already acknowledges in detail.
Saying that half of a character’s appearances are outside their own series doesn’t mean those appearances are all equally valid for scaling. An issue where Spider-Man shows up as a guest in a Daredevil story and gets tagged by a street level thug isn’t the same weight as a story where he’s the focus and performing at his actual level. Volume of appearances isn’t the same as consistency of portrayal.
And “the system holds itself together by a thread” is doing a lot of work in your argument. That thread breaking is exactly what we’re trying to prevent by having clearer criteria.
Nobody said team books are secondary across the board. The proposal says that a character’s primary source of stories takes priority, and for most characters that is their solo run. For characters like Luke Cage or Nova whose primary showcase genuinely comes from team books and events, those are their primary source by definition. If a character’s most important and consistent appearances are in team books, then that’s what we use. The hierarchy isn’t “solo always beats team”, it’s “consistent primary portrayal beats isolated incidental interactions.” If you can’t prioritize a character’s own consistent history over random crossover appearances, then what exactly are we basing profiles on?
Scarlet Witch is actually a perfect example of why the proposal works. She appears in Avengers books, X-Men books, her own solo runs, and everywhere in between. But her power level and what she’s capable of is remarkably consistent across all of those contexts because her feats speak for themselves. The cosmology concept isn’t about locking characters into one group forever, it’s about recognizing that her consistent portrayal across all those appearances is what defines her tier, not a single outlier interaction in one of those contexts.
The fact that characters jump around doesn’t make the idea arbitrary, it makes proper research more important. If Scarlet Witch consistently performs at a certain level across Avengers books, X-Men books and her solos, then that’s her tier. If one random appearance puts her way above or below that, it’s an outlier and gets treated as one. That’s not arbitrary, that’s exactly what consistency means.
That’s exactly what the proposal says. If Iron Man has consistent statements and showings of being at a certain level within a team book, that’s valid scaling because it’s narratively relevant to him specifically. What the proposal prevents is someone like Colossus or The Thing scaling to those same statements just because they fought Iron Man a couple of times in isolated crossovers. Those interactions aren’t consistent enough or narratively central enough to justify pulling them into Iron Man’s scaling chain. You just described the core criteria of the proposal, so we’re actually in agreement here.
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“This is better than what we got” regarding the op
The grid shows that marvel has a perceived level for every character and we should look for it in their narrative work instead of arbitrarily scaling people to others
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The point is that a verse like Marvel has a lot of glubshitto, and really Moonstone's type of history is not uncommon. Her issue effectively translates to any character that is heavy on team-ups, villains for groups like Avengers, and so on.“No wait, glubshitto wont work anymore! What will we ever do???”
The solution of "Do research" is just something we'd already do???? Like, this is why this entire thread feels confused, it's just saying we need to do something that modern Marvel pages already do, but then for some reason we're stapling a confusing standard to explain it.
You can't spouse a standard that has a ton of exceptions imo. At that point why are we even having it, if Moon Knight has more feats in his series that are tier 8, sure upgrade him, but I don't think the upgrade's reason should fall back onto "Solo runs are important than crossovers" especially for a franchise built on so moving parts.
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I literally just debunked this, this is your exact same argument as before
Here’s the thing though, that isn’t what happens normally, what happens is spider man stomps daredevil and Captain America and gets stomped by giant man and hulk, marvel has consistency to it, it’s just hard to track down the consistency, but hard doesn’t mean we should give up and treat all these characters as seperate
That thread has held together for 65 years, it isn’t breaking any time soon, it’s been stretched and pulled even cracked in a few spots, but it has still managed to hold together overall, and our criteria doesn’t affect the thread, that thread is determined by marvel not how we handle marvel
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- #108
The Spider-Man example actually supports the proposal. If Spider-Man consistently stomps Daredevil and Cap, and consistently gets stomped by Hulk, then that’s the consistency we use, and that’s exactly what the proposal formalizes. The problem isn’t that consistency doesn’t exist, it’s that the current system doesn’t have clear enough criteria to distinguish genuine consistency from isolated interactions that don’t reflect it.
And that consistency isn’t even as clean as you’re making it sound. Wolverine has consistently come out on top against Spider-Man across multiple runs, including during Superior Spider-Man when he was arguably stronger than ever. Captain America has consistently landed hits and held his own against him too, arguably more often than the reverse. If the internal consistency of Marvel itself is already messier than your argument suggests, then “it’s just hard to track” isn’t a defense of the current system, it’s an argument for having clearer criteria instead of assuming the consistency is there and hoping someone eventually tracks it down correctly.
The thread holding together for 65 years is a Marvel publishing argument, not a scaling argument. Marvel maintaining narrative cohesion across decades has nothing to do with how we handle powerscaling on this wiki. Whether Colossus should scale to Iron Man because they fought once is entirely our problem to solve, not Marvel’s.
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all of this is what we already do and we aren’t changing things to the exact same thing they already are, and all of that isn’t what you’ve proposed what you’ve proposed is mostly make characters only scale to characters commonly associated with them
wolverine coming out on top of spider man and Captain America holding his own is because of a little thing called holding back which spider man consistently does, and even with that based on what I’ve read across marvel comics spider man is generally a decent margin ahead of Captain America and Wolverine, if I’m wrong about that then I’m wrong, but if it’s the other way around then it’s just the other way around and we’ll have to find a way to deal with it, and I’m not assuming consistency is there it is there it just has a few holes in it that can be patched, and I am definitely not just hoping someone tracks down the consistency tracking down the consistency is what the marvel supporters try to do
how we scale marvel is based on marvel, we use what’s in marvel, arguments about marvel’s general narrative are scaling arguments, yes who scales to who is our problem to solve but it’s marvel’s problem to create and provide context for, we are not here to create a system we are here to identify the one in marvel
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- #110
The proposal isn’t just “scale characters to who they’re commonly associated with.” It’s that a character’s consistent portrayal across their own history takes priority over isolated interactions, and that cross-scaling requires narrative justification beyond shared appearances. That’s a meaningful methodological change, not a restatement of what we already do. If it were already what we do, we wouldn’t have the homogenization problem the proposal is addressing in the first place.
And the holdback argument doesn’t hold up as a blanket explanation. In Spider-Man & Wolverine (2025) it was actually Spider-Man who went bloodlusted with no holding back, managed to dislocate Logan’s jaw, and Wolverine still came out on top. If holdback is your explanation for every instance of Spider-Man losing, you now have to explain how that applies when he demonstrably wasn’t holding back. You can’t invoke holdback every time Spider-Man loses without proving it case by case. That’s not tracking consistency, that’s retrofitting an explanation to protect a predetermined conclusion. If you’re acknowledging that the consistency has holes that need to be patched, then we’re in agreement on the core problem. That’s exactly what this proposal is trying to address. The difference is that patching holes one at a time as Marvel supporters track them down is a reactive approach that depends entirely on who’s paying attention at any given moment. A clearer policy gives that process a consistent framework so the patches actually stick instead of being reversed the next time someone decides to push a scaling chain.
Oh so it’s based on Marvel? Then you agree with @KingTempest about the grid right?
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I'm not really getting the arguments against OP when you guys are practically agreeing with each other.
My main concern to M3X is about higher tiers and the actual cosmology because this rule can easily work with street levels, but what about things related to scaling to higher dimensions, 4D/5D/6D and outerversal slob like that? I admit this concern comes due to the lack of knowledge about this topic.
My main concern to M3X is about higher tiers and the actual cosmology because this rule can easily work with street levels, but what about things related to scaling to higher dimensions, 4D/5D/6D and outerversal slob like that? I admit this concern comes due to the lack of knowledge about this topic.
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this is literally just a combination of what I said and what we already do, except with more words
I didn’t say every time he’s ever lost a fight it’s because of holding back, I said a lot of the fights he loses are because he holds back, there’s a difference, and holding back makes a lot more narrative logical sense then acting like the interactions straight up didn’t happen, because one interpretation is contradicted and one interpretation just straight up isn’t the case
no this is not proposing we patch the holes, this is proposing that we practically ignore half of a character’s appearances because we prefer the holes that are there from when their the protagonist then from when their not the center of the story
that grid is not the only thing in marvel, that grid is less consistent then everything else, the consistency is a lot closer to the majority then the grid
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- #113
This is pretty much what’s been happening throughout this entire thread. Most of the pushback has ended up agreeing with the core premise while disagreeing on framing or execution details. At this point the discussion seems to be less about whether this should be done and more about how to implement it, which is a good place to be.
Same. To my knowledge most of these things happen in crossovers and they are careful with who scales to what, anyway.
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He’s proposing we treat different characters as seperate environments that can’t overlap without contradicting each other, I’m proposing that it is one environment from seperate perspectives that can overlap without contradicting each other
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My disagreements are about: 1) The idea of dividing characters into "cosmologies" that are separate from one another, and 2) Treating teamups/crossovers as secondary when they are an enormous part of most characters
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You’re fine then cause the second point isn’t a thing.
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Ok that's just straight up a lie. Your entire proposal is making cross-scaling secondary to feats in solo books. That idea is repeatedly stated in the OP. You literally use the word "secondary" too. If making feats in crossover and team books secondary isn't what you are proposing, then what are you proposing?
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There is no other way to interpret this than you treating team ups/crossovers as secondary
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Yeah none of you are reading shit here. I conceded this point to Impress long ago. I said
I had a whole ass paragraph to you about this.
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Rephrase your post then, because the wording you used in the OP makes it a completely different topic than what you are saying now. But this is still the problem I mentioned. What defines "primary source of stories?" Is Iron Man's primary source his solo books or the Avengers or both? Is Doctor Strange's his solo books or Defenders or both?
Consistent portrayal over incidental interactions is what we already have. This is just the already existing policy but worded in a way that adds more needless complexity. Most of what you said in your OP is fine, but for a proposal about clarifying standards, it is worded in a way that has created 3 pages of confusion and misunderstanding and has resulted in you dropping a point that was a central idea of the OP.
Since either the proposal has changed, or the phrasing in the OP isn't representative of the ideas you intended to convey, could you newly your proposed phrasing for the addition to the rules?
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