DC & Marvel Power Rankings

The characters & the world building of both DC & Marvel comics have fascinated me since childhood. With the burst of great comic book films for the last couple of years, a lot of general moviegoers who's generally not into comics are increasingly drawn into these exciting fictional universes. This is a ranking of the different power levels in both DC & Marvel-verse. So the non-comics reader can have a perspective where most of the characters stand when it comes to power levels.

Though this ranking is aimed at the non-comics reader, it covers the entire spectrum of power of both Dc & Marvel omniverses. It will highlight the more popular, instantly recognizable characters with some not-so-popular characters in between.

The power levels are based on the characters' area of operation & the ability to cause damage on a scale. For example 'City Level' means the included characters in this tier operate on a City wide scale & also has the power to level an entire city.

Also, the movies have a awful habit of altering the established power levels of a character and vastly de-powering them. All of these instances will be mentioned in this list. From a power level perspective, this list is more in tune with the characters' source material (the comics) than their big screen incarnations.

Street Level : This is the baseline power level in both Marvel & DC. This tier includes many iconic characters like Batman, Spiderman, Wolverine, Green arrow, Black Panther, Daredevil, Captain America, Black widow, Hawkeye, Falcon and many others.

X-men

Aquaman

City Level : This level or tier 2 consists of characters who is a couple notches higher than the street levelers in raw power & can wreak havoc on a city wide scale. Iron man, War machine, Aquaman, The X-men, Dr.Strange, Ultron, Fantastic Four, Cyborg reign in this level.

Planetary Level : This is the A-team of Superheroes & consist many powerhouses that can destroy entire worlds if they choose to. This is the level of Superman, Thor, Hulk, Wonder woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Martian manhunter & many others.

The Thor we saw on The Avengers & The Dark World is a massively depowered version & is no way a representative of his true power level. Thor in comics has some unbelievable feats like lifting incalculable weights (over 6 sextillion tons, the same as Earth), over mach 32 level of speed & busting entire planets with his hammer.

Many of you may know Flash from the Justice league cartoon or the DC animated movies. But those aren't nearly accurate when it comes to portraying Flash's true level of speed. Flash (Wally West) is so fast that he makes the speed of light look like it's standing still, can move & react to more than a septillion times the speed of light, can phase through anything & is faster than death itself.

Silver Surfer

Superman prime

Solar system level: The beings in this level dwarfs even the planetary levelers in every way. They can lay waste to entire solar systems when they don't care. The characters that belong in this insane level of power are Silver Surfer, The Sentry, Superman Prime (an alternate version of Superman who can punch through realities), Darkseid, Thanos & several others.

Remember the red faced guy at the end of The Avengers? That's Thanos. The Avengers & Guardians of the Galaxy have shown glimpses of this famous super villain. No doubt he will take a huge role in future as Marvel slowly builds an epic cosmic event (Avengers 3: Infinity War). To know more about this feared super villain, read the infinity gauntlet series & The End series from Marvel.

Odin

Galaxy level : Remember Thor's father Odin? Odin is the king of the Norse Gods just like Zeus & Vishnu are the king of the Greek & Hindu Gods. They are the supreme leaders of the pantheon of Gods, also known as Skyfather or All-father. They are unimaginably powerful & in a league of their own. Skyfathers are capable of destroying multiple-galaxies & realities if they wish to. Odin once destroyed a galaxy as a side effect of his battle. Oh, and a Skyfather can easily one-shot a solar system leveler.

Now the version of Odin which we saw in Thor : The Dark World was a joke. Odin is embarrassingly de-powered in movies.

Now we will enter a whole new realm of power. This is the level of cosmic entities in both DC & Marvel Multiverses. The characters starting from this level are abstracts & far beyond the level of beings. Many of them are conceptual embodiments & are literally part of the Universe itself. They are beyond any physical forms or dimensions & can affect the entire space time multiversal reality. Their existence is necessary to provide functions in the omniverse.

Galactus

Eternity

Spectre

Universal Abstracts : Eternity is the embodiment of all space & time in the Marvel Universe, Death is the embodiment of the end of Life in an Universe or essentially the opposite of Eternity. While Galactus, the most powerful being in the Universe, creates balance between Eternity & Death by devouring entire planets for his sustenance.

The Universal abstracts in the Dc Universe include Parallax who can create, manipulate or erase entire universes & timelines, Ion, Imperix & Spectre.

The Living Tribunal

Multiversal abstracts : They outclass the Universals in both power & importance. The Living Tribunal, The Phoenix, Molecule man (controls all matter & energy of the multiverse), The mysterious race known as the Celestials & many others belong in this level.

Lucifer Morningster, Michael Demiurgos, The great Evil beast, Nekron are some of the Multiversal level abstracts in DC comics.

The Beyonder

Omnipotent : Very few beings in the entire creation can be said as Omnipotent. Omnipotence means all-powerful, whose mere imagination is the entire reality in all of existence.

The Beyonder is an omnipotent & omniscient (all knowing) character. His origin is outside our plane of existence where he is the be-all & end-all. Just to give a perspective, he can stomp everyone on this list combined without even trying. He can create or erase entire multiverses with a thought. If you want to know more about Beyonder, read the Secret wars mini-series (part 2) from Marvel.

Supreme : The creator of all existence. Omnipotent, Omniscient & Omnipresent (present in every realities, multiverses & dimesions simultaneously). Responsible for the existence of all Life, The One above all & The Presence are the creator of both Marvel & DC Omniverses.
 

References—www.Comicvine.com. The finest resource of everything comics related. Couldn't have made this without being educated by them. God bless you folks. Keep the spirit of imagination alive.