Superman is one of the most powerful superheroes ever created. Ever since his inception, he’s been redefining what it means to do the impossible. When he first showed up, he could do things like leap an eighth of a mile and outrace a train, but nowadays we expect the Man of Steel to fly around Jupiter and cross the solar system in a couple of seconds. The stories he’s involved in and the villains he’s fought have only gotten bigger and more destructive, and so Superman evolved with them to be even more powerful than ever. Superman is always changing, and for the most part, always getting more powerful to fight bigger threats.
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The simple truth is that Superman is almost always the pinnacle of power, being as strong as he needs to be to save the day. In that sense, there have been a lot of different versions of Superman that have pushed the boundary on what it means to be strong, and a couple of them are some of the strongest beings in all of comics, which is saying a lot, considering how high that scale is. So, today we’re going to look at the ten strongest forms of Superman throughout all of comics, and rank them by raw power. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
10) Superman
Coming in tenth here is our classic, Prime DC Universe Superman, the one we read about every month. This is a strange place for him, because more so than every other character on this list, his power fluctuates based on how strong he needs to be. He’s actually beaten several of the other entries on this list, although his powers were enhanced or the enemy was weakened at the time. Still, this Superman is our baseline, the hero from which all others are judged. He’s consistently incredibly powerful, and able to fly as fast as he needs to to save the day. Clark Kent is the archetypal superhero with all the fancy powers, it’s just that everyone else on this list is him with some added bits.
9) Superbat
Case in point, Superbat. This temporary character is a fusion between Batman and Superman created when they combined their wills to take over a mind-controlled Green Lantern’s ring. He has all the power of Superman, the skills and tactics of Batman, and a fully-functional Green Lantern ring. All three of those heroes have abilities that place them in the top tier of heroics, but mixing them all together creates one of the strongest combinations you can imagine. This character has all of their strengths, which are only amplified by how well they cover each other’s weaknesses. This is one scary fusion that I would never want to be on the bad side of, and is the definition of Superman with just a little bit extra.
8) All-Star Superman
The version of the Man of Steel from the classic Grant Morrison graphic novel, this Superman’s power was greatly enhanced after being overcharged with the sun’s radiation, bringing his powers to heights unseen before. Immediately after being enhanced he lifted a two hundred quintillion ton weight, without much effort, with one hand. The side effect might have been that he was dying of solar radiation poisoning, but it cannot be denied just how much stronger he became in his final years, with Dr. Quintum saying that Superman’s powers had tripled at least, with no upper limit found. This is Superman pushed to his physical limits, and shows us just how incredible that kind of strength can be.
7) Superboy-Prime
This part of the list is when the characters stop being strong and start being cosmic. Superboy-Prime is the perfect example of that, given that he was once able to punch the fabric of reality so hard he created retcons, but also hit time and space so hard he could travel to any era he wished when time travel was cut off. This young hero-turned-villain-turned-hero is the embodiment of the Silver Age of comics where anything could happen, and while I initially wanted to give him a much higher place on this list, he clearly isn’t a Silver Age character.
Despite his unbelievable feats of raw power, like battling the entire Green Lantern Corps on his own and almost winning, he also has quite a few moments when he’s beaten by far weaker opponents, like Connor Kent and the Teen Titans. Prime has high highs and low lows, which makes him a weird one to rate, while everyone else on this list is very strong, and very consistent.
6) Sixth Dimension Superman
The World Forger is the son of Perpetua, the brother of the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, responsible for creating universes to populate the multiverse. This sixth dimensional being once posed as Superman in an attempt to turn the Justice League to his side, showcasing all of his own powers alongside those of Superman’s. He’s a being above even reality warpers like Mister Mxyzptlk, who directly work for him. The World Forger fought Superman directly, and not only defeated him, but trapped him in a pocket of pure darkness where his powers waned, and would have succeeded in defeating the entire Justice League had Batman not betrayed him in the end.
This version of Superman, even without the World Forger’s abilities, was above base Superman in every conceivable way, and adding them on top makes him one of the deadliest versions out there, although it should be noted that his powers are much weaker in lower dimensions like the third one, but even there, he is a being powerful enough to defeat all but the highest tiers of DC powerhouses. He’s equal to, if not stronger than the Anti-Monitor, and I think that says all it needs to about his raw power.
5) Superman Prime One Million
This is a potential version of Superman who has lived into the 853rd century, and had spent over fifteen thousand years at the heart of Earth’s sun. By that point, Superman’s powers had grown to near godlike levels, evolving a suite of new abilities, and he was even able to gift his abilities to his descendents. He’s a massively more powerful version of our normal Superman, as everything the original can do, One Million can do a million times better, and even wielded a Green Lantern ring of his own, briefly. This is classic Superman pushed to his absolute limit of power and evolution, and his permanent golden glow shows us exactly how radiant this version is.
4) Milkman Man
Out of all the Superman variants here, this one is definitely the strangest. He’s technically not even Superman, but a baby born when two women who don’t exist kissed, and was grafted with the Superman genome by the evil company Retconn. Retconn was a multiversal company that rewrote reality to distract universe-devouring gods called the Eonymous, and created Milkman Man as their ultimate enforcer. Not only does he have all of Superman’s regular powers, but he can alter reality with special milk he can create. The exact level of this is unknown, but it was only seen to function in small-scale ways. Still, any amount of reality manipulation is some serious power, considering that’s rewriting the very story around you.
3) Silver Age Superman
And here we have the very height of power that Superboy-Prime wields on his best day, put out every day by the Superman of the Silver Age. We like to say nowadays that Superman is as strong as he needs to be, but we still have certain guidelines for what Superman is capable of doing, or at least how he’s capable of doing it. The Silver Age, in its eternal expansion towards bigger and bigger ideas, did not have that at all. Superman had whatever powers he needed for the moment, and he could genuinely do anything he set his mind to.
The above image is of him casually hauling planets, but he’s also done impossible feats like destroying a solar system with a sneeze in Action Comics #273, and vibrate every living being into a different reality all at once, safely, in Superman #248. There is no limit to what Superman could do back in the day, he was a dream brought to life. Yet even this version of the character has some limits in some capacity, which the other two most certainly surpass.
2) Superman (Strange Visitor)
Adventures of Superman (2013) #16 gave us this version of Superman, showing a depiction of him as truly immortal, living to be the final living thing in all of creation. Over those billions of years, he developed extraordinary abilities, from splitting himself into thousands of duplicates to roam the cosmos, to literally holding back the end of the universe with his force of will, ensuring that everyone would have a chance to live a full life and natural death. When he finally let the universe end, even that didn’t destroy him, as he moved onto the next one with long-lost survivors of Earth to see a new existence.
This version portrayed him as an almost mythical being, but never lost the humanity that is essential to him. Strictly speaking, this Superman did whatever he had to to help people, and always had or developed the power to save others, practically placing no limit on his abilities.
1) Cosmic Armor Superman
The Thought Robot isn’t just Superman, but the ultimate embodiment of his stance against all evil for the sake of saving everyone. This armor was created by the Monitors to defend the Multiverse against Mandrakk, a being who sought to bring an end to all of DC. It’s a robot driven by Superman’s essence, but importantly for this list, it’s far above what we’ve seen here so far. See, some of the entries on this list can break reality or alter it, but Cosmic Armor Superman is a literal plot device, actually called so in the story itself. Where everyone else is a character in the plot, Cosmic Armor Superman can actually change the plot of the story he’s in.
The whole story around him, the battle with Mandrakk, actually serves as a metatextual commentary on the nature of stories themselves. Mandrakk is the end of stories, the evil who seeks to bring a final chapter, and Cosmic Armor Superman is the living proof that the good guys will always win at the end of the day. He can create any circumstance, generate any ability, and literally rewrite the story itself so that goodness wins. He’s able to adapt to whatever’s thrown at him, stare at Limbo like it’s the size of his palm, and survive the heat of ten billion suns.
Still, his limits go beyond description because he’s literally a living concept. He is the essence of Superman, the battle against evil given form, and for that, he’s easily the most powerful version of Superman of them all. He is the very fact of Superman; that there is always hope, and there is always someone who will fight to save others, no matter how strong the enemy is. Cosmic Armor Superman is a living story, and Superman stories have a happy ending.
So there we have the ten most powerful versions of Superman, ranked to strongest. Still, these definitions of strength tend to get pretty loose. At the end of the day, Superman will be as strong as he needs to be, and we love him for that, because he’s the hero who will always save the day. Still, it’s fun to look at which version can do the most in a fight, and always fun to speculate on which is the strongest. Do you agree with our list, or think a different Superman should top it? What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
