Do they ever even address...?

[TheORKINMan]

Why Superman Prime is able to throttle Mr Mxyztplik? If the imps are so powerful they can defeat the Spectre etc... why is he able to just waltz in and subdue him so easily?

[botch]

Cos he's the sole survivor of the silver age, and has those power levels.

[carabas]

Cos he's the sole survivor of the silver age, and has those power levels.Yeah, but even silver age Superman didn't have that kind of power. I guess he absorbed a lot of juice from that Guardian of the Universe he killed.

[Buried Alien]

Earth-Prime was unique in the Multiverse in many ways. We'd only seen it a few times before COIE. Perhaps the abilities of the last son of Krypton-Prime surpass even those of the last Kryptonians other Pre-COIE universes such as Earth-One and Earth-Two.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[MWGallaher]

Will they ever even address*...
...why Jimmy Olsen's powers only worked when he was under "genuine" attack?
...why Lightray's corpse had two left arms?





*or did they address it already and I missed it?

[Kid Kyoto]

because he's an author fiat character. It has nothing to do with Silver Age power levels, even then Kryptonians were vulnerable to magic, red suns, kryptonite etc. He's not.

I want to see him fight the Beyonder :D

[Will.S]

Why Superman Prime is able to throttle Mr Mxyztplik? If the imps are so powerful they can defeat the Spectre etc... why is he able to just waltz in and subdue him so easily?
They never really explained how Superman Prime was able to put Mxy in restraints and how that was able to work (looks like it was powered by the Source Wall) but that earth's Zatanna had a little to do with it.

Superman Prime also had certain energies within him that also weren't specified which could have been solar or magical or both that made him able to affect Mxy but not to the point where he could kill him. In the end it Mxy probably could have done something to him but he probably saw no fun in it.

[JCAll]

Just reread the issue. It's my favorite on in Countdown (with the Monarch/SBP fight being second).

Remember the time the Specter screwed up all the magic in the DCU and Mxy accidently ended up trapped in the 3rd Dimension with almost none of his powers. That's basically what SBP did.

He flew into the 5th Dimension and grabbed Mxy from behind. He was apparently only able to get there because of the Guardian energy he absorbed. The Earth 3 Zatanna shut off his magic. The exact line was "Break his will. Not more magic for Imp. No more magic for Imp." Backwards of course. No more magic was getting to him so he couldn't do squat as SBP tried to torture him into finding Earth Prime.

Shame is, that if he had done it more tactfully Mxy probably would have helped him and we wouldn't have to hear him whine anymore :D

EDIT: There is an interview with one of the Countdown writers about how SBP is teh 1337 pwnzorz and could totally have taken Mxy anyway. These people apparently went to the George Lucus school of writing, where you do something right the first time and then bitch and moan that it was supposed to be different and we just don't understand :rolleyes:

[Sean Walsh]

Will they ever even address*...
...why Jimmy Olsen's powers only worked when he was under "genuine" attack?

Perhaps the powers that he possessed were trying to protect him? :confused:

...why Lightray's corpse had two left arms?

I never noticed this. Whoops.

....perhaps he grabbed the killer's arm? :confused:

[carabas]

Will they ever even address*...
...why Jimmy Olsen's powers only worked when he was under "genuine" attack?Presumably, the powers are not his to use, but are merely a security system to safeguard the New God souls he's carrying.

...why Lightray's corpse had two left arms?Homage to Rob Liefeld?

[MWGallaher]

I never noticed this. Whoops.

....perhaps he grabbed the killer's arm? :confused:

Yep. In COUNTDOWN #48. At first I blamed it on sloppy artwork (I think the artist on that issue was one of the many unknown Brazilian studio hands with an Anglicized pseudonym), but even a sloppy artist wouldn't make that same mistake in every panel where the hand and arm are visible, would he? Hm, maybe he was looking at himself in the mirror for reference or something, and got the anatomy mixed up that way?

[Paul Newell]

I just looked at it. His arm is broken at the elbow and twisted right around. The cloth near the elbow is drawn torn, bunched and twisted.

EDIT: Oh wait! You're right! He should have either drawn it as the back of the hand or the thumb on the other side! I wonder if it was the penciller or the inker?

[NotSuper]

Superman-Prime is immune to magic. It doesn't matter if one has limited magical abilities or god-like ones (in the case of Mxy), he can't be hurt by the stuff. Prime doesn't play by the rules of the DCU, they play by HIS rules. That's a very important difference.

Of course, Mxy could've used his magic to ESCAPE and/or hide (which is what he did when he got them back), but that's why the evil Zatanna was there. Basically, Prime weakened Mxy and had her strip him of his powers. Without Prime weakening him, there's no way a human magic user could've affected him at all (not when it took all the magic users on Earth to slow a being like the Spectre down). And without the evil Zatanna there, Mxy could've escaped from Prime's clutches, even though he couldn't beat him in an actual fight.

Then there's the case of Earth-Prime and the fact that Prime is the sole survivor of that universe. Earth-Prime was a world where human beings (comic writers) had the ability to affect the reality of other worlds in the multiverse. In a sense, many of the rules on those worlds were created by them (which explains why Prime's punches could affect reality). Therefore, it stands to reason that Prime would play by his universe's rules, and not the ones from the current DCU. Granted, he's still affected by lack of yellow sunlight, but that's his only real weakness. (He's not affected by red suns in the same way our Superman is. Any source of light other than a yellow sun merely gets in the way of his power source.) Also, other Pre-Crisis Kryptonians (like the Silver Age Kara Zor-El) have not been able to push planets, but Prime has. This shows that he's special even among Crisis survivors.

I don't think Mxy was exaggerating when he called Prime "the end." He's as unstoppable as entropy, and you get the feeling (that doesn't mean it'll actually happen, but it makes one feel that way) that he'll eventually succeed in his goal. All the heroes have really been able to do is slow him down.

And here's a scary thought: What if Prime's solar "weakness" is merely psychosomatic (i.e. in his mind) rather than physiological? Maybe he's only weakened by a lack of yellow sunlight because he BELIEVES that's one of Superman's weaknesses, and he's Superman. (Kryptonite wouldn't work the same way because it's not really from his Krypton, but light is light.)

[JCAll]

As you can see, NotSuper and I have completely different opinions in this area.
It's cool though, cause after the Final Crisis I'm sure we'll be the first ones to rush here and say "I told you so!" :p

[bjtrdff]

I don't think SBP is necessarily 'immune' to magic. He just has some level of resistance and invulernability to it. It just takes a very very high level to affect him (along the line of regular superman's 'invulnerability'.