Who’s Really the Strongest Avenger: Hulk or Thor?

Superheroes vary vastly in strength. Marvel has just as many planet-busters as it has heroes who couldn’t lift more than their bodyweight. This diversity in power levels is great, but it’s only natural that fans will wonder who sits at the true top of raw strength. Hulk and Thor are the prime examples of this. Hulk was introduced as the Strongest One There Is, being an unstoppable behemoth of pure rage who can rip through any threat that stands in his way. Thor was created to be the one hero stronger than him, but both heroes have changed a lot since that time. Regardless, both are utter powerhouses, and fans are always asking which one is stronger.

Writers have been posing that question themselves for decades. Hulk and Thor are Marvel’s best-known powerhouses and have almost always had a massive rivalry, so they’ve battled plenty of times over the years. Of course, different writers have different opinions. Sometimes Hulk wins, sometimes Thor wins, and sometimes they stalemate. Both are clearly capable of defeating the other, but finding who is definitively stronger is very difficult by just looking at their fights. Today, we’re going to attempt to answer the age-old question of which hero is truly the strongest, but instead of looking at their fights, we’ll be judging them based on their greatest feats and imagining our own potential brawl.

The Case for Thor

Thor is a god with near-unstoppable might. One of his greatest feats of raw strength was pushing back the World Engine, a device connected to the tree of Yggdrasil itself. In Thor #494, Thor managed to push both the World Engine and Yggdrasil back, undoing the destruction of Asgard. Yggdrasil is often called the Universal Tree, said to contain everything. This means that, conservatively, Thor pushed a tree that weighed as much as the universe, or, on the high end, a tree that weighed as much as the multiverse. Pushing literally everything in existence is obviously one of the greatest feats of raw strength you can have.

Beyond muscle, there’s also plenty more Thor has going for him. Namely, his control over weather. Thor can output an insane amount of energy by summoning lightning, with his largest outputs appearing able to split planets asunder. Beyond his divine lightning, Thor also commands the Odinforce, a mystical energy that empowers the ruler of Asgard. By harnessing its might, his physical prowess and energy output are massively increased, to the point where his full power attacks can stagger or even hurt cosmic entities like Galactus and Toranos. Thos has range and absolute control over the storm, but how does the Hulk stack up in that department?

The Case for Hulk

The Hulk is pretty simple. The angrier he is, the stronger he gets. Theoretically, his strength has no upper limit, and he’s shown that he’s capable of practically infinite might plenty of times. To name just a few examples, the Hulk and Ironclad’s clashing fists shook the entire multiverse in The Incredible Hulk #304, and in The Incredible Hulk #135, the Hulk was thrown into the time stream during a time storm, which he escaped by punching hard enough to shatter time. In World War Hulk #5, Hulk became so angry that a single footstep shook continents and threatened to rip the world apart. Arguably, one of his greatest feats of raw strength was shattering Onslaught’s armor in Onslaught: Marvel Universe, something no other hero could even scratch.

Of course, he has a bit more going on than just rage and power. Mainly, the Hulk can absorb just about every kind of energy, though that has mostly been attributed to types of radiation, and we haven’t seen him absorb something like lightning. Furthermore, the Hulk can regenerate from just about anything. Ever since the Immortal Hulk storyline, the Jade Giant has been unkillable, able to resurrect and reform from even the smallest pieces of his flesh from different monsters’ stomachs. The Hulk has a surprisingly deep bag of one-off and forgotten powers, including things like laser eyes, and he can use them all to smash his enemy into the ground.

The True Battle for the Title of Strongest Avenger

Any battle between Hulk and Thor could go either way. Both have effectively infinite strength and can smash entire planets with relative ease. Both warriors are capable of destroying each other and coming out on top, but we’re here to imagine a fight with them at their best, so let’s get down to it. In terms of raw power, they definitely appear to be on the same level. I’d give the slightest edge to Hulk, solely because he has more consistent feats where he outperforms Thor, though the difference is so minuscule that it doesn’t matter. Thor has the definite range advantage, between throwing Mjolnir and calling down lightning. He could blast Hulk with an unending storm from outer space, if he so chose.

Of course, the honor-bound Thor would never do that. Even if he did, the God of Thunder would need to be a galaxy away to keep the Hulk from leaping after him. Thor would want to settle things in a fist-to-hammer match, and this is where the fight comes down not to power, but durability. Thor and Hulk both have their limits, but Hulk has a much stronger healing factor that only gets better with time. Hulk has literally stitched himself back together from nothing before, while Thor has to deal with every injury he receives. He can push through the pain like nobody else, but eventually, the damage to Thor would start to stack up, while Hulk would get fresh every time he got angry.

The only way to shut down Hulk’s healing is by specifically cutting off his gamma or rage, or injecting him with certain chemicals, none of which is in Thor’s toolkit. Hulk could tank all the damage and return it with equal force. The longer the fight goes, the more both men risk slipping into a berserker rage, and even though Thor gets a massive boost from that, that’s the Hulk’s bread and butter. It would come down to a slugfest of pure brute force and durability, and even with all of Thor’s extra abilities, the Hulk has enough of an edge in physical stats to secure him the win.

Thor and Hulk will continue battling for the title until the end of time, but, if you ask me, I’d say that Hulk is truly the strongest Avenger, and definitively the Strongest One There Is. Of course, that’s my interpretation, but what do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

Ranking Thor’s First 10 Villains By Power