Discuss and Debunk a feat with a Viner

I'm posting this because I'm getting tired of people on the battle forums thinking the infamous incident from Tales of the Unexpected #4, where Batman seemingly hurts the Spectre with a kick, is somehow a valid point to raise in an argument. If you haven't read the issue in question or if you're one of the seven or eight people on Earth who haven't seen it floating around on the internet, here it is:

This is most often brought up by people who claim Spectre's a jobber (another point that is erroneous and tiresome, but that's a discussion for another day). I raised it because a user on this site was debating on a Darkseid thread a while back, and tried to claim that the incident in Superman/Batmanwhere he hits Darkseid hard enough to make him bleed (for the love of god, Loeb) is somehow not PIS because "Batman sometimes hurts people he shouldn't be able to". He brought up this incident as proof of that point. That was what prompted me to make this thread, though I took some time to get around to it. As you might expect, there's a context to this incident.

First of all, you need to understand how the Spectre functions. He's literally the Presence's wrath made manifest, and so in his primal form he's perpetually pissed off at everything. In his early days his rage was so all-consuming that he would have destroyed everything if Michael Demiurgos hadn't intervened and placed restrictions on his power. Michael made it such that the Spectre needed to bond with a human host to access all his power. However, the presence of the host was also a clever safeguard against the Spectre going on a rampage. The host would exercise discretion over the Spectre's activities. Therefore, the power of the Spectre was linked to the personality of the host. If the host wasn't queasy about violence, the Spectre's power would face very few limits. It's for this reason that Jim Corrigan is commonly considered the most powerful of the Spectre's three main hosts. Corrigan was a tough-as-nails homicide detective from the 1940's. His father was an evangelist preacher, and he'd been raised with the eye-for-an-eye philosophy and the idea of Old Testament-esque severity in justice. He was fine with the violence the Spectre dished out, and most of the time he supported it. And it's for this same reason that Hal Jordan is commonly considered the weakest of the Spectre's hosts. Hal was a hero, and so he stood in opposition to the Spectre's usual MO. His guilt over all the people he killed as Parallax also played a part. He was opposed to murder, and thus denied the Spectre's true nature.

Point being made is that the host can restrain the Spectre, curtailing the amount of power that flows through him. Moving on to the incident itself:

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Spectre's trying to kill a criminal, but his host Crispus Allen is trying to stop him. That's restraining his power right there. Moreover, read Spectre's sentences in the last scan. He says:

a) "I thought it might make you feel better", and

b) "The human already shackles me more than I am willing."

Not only do you have the Spectre's host restraining his power from the inside, but you've got the Spectre himself feeling sorry for Batman and allowing him to vent. If Batman kicking Darkseid is valid (helpful hint: it's not) because Batman "sometimes hurts people he shouldn't be able 

to", then why is Batman stunned that he was able to hit the Spectre? Because he hurt someone he shouldn't be able to.

There's no Batfactor at work here. It's just the Spectre letting Bruce vent before turning away to get on with his job. Next time someone raises this point I'm just going to direct them to this blog.

Batman has never once beaten Superman in canon, Post-Crisis or Post-Flashpoint continuity. People like to bring up Batman taking down Superman with prep in stories like TDKR/TDKSA, but none of that is canon. In canon stories, Batman has lost virtually every fight he's ever had with Superman, even when he had prep or real superpowers. Below is a list of most of their fights. I think it might be all of their fights, but I might have missed a few, and either way if I did Batman didn't win those either.

Batman #428

Batman's trying to bring the Joker to justice for beating Jason to death and blowing him and his mother up, but Joker was conferred diplomatic immunity by Iran (don't ask), so Superman's telling him to calm down since there's nothing he can do. Batman gets angry, and...

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End result: Batman punches Superman and is saved from being Oracle before Oracle because Superman rolled with the punch. Advantage Kal-El.

JLA #44

The infamous Tower of Babel incident, where Ra's al Ghul steals Batman's contingency plans for bringing down the JLA and employs them against the various members. Turns out Batman's plan for taking down a rogue Superman was a specially engineered form of red kryptonite that wreaked havoc with Superman's ability to metabolize sunlight.

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End result: This is probably the only canon incident that could be used to claim any kind of win for Batman over Superman. And it's not even a direct encounter. A lot of people claim that since Ra's could easily pull this off, Batman should also be able to. Couple of points regarding that:

• Ra's has resources that dwarf Batman's. In The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul he told Tim Drake that comparing the Wayne fortune to his own wealth would be akin to comparing a drop of water to the ocean or something along those lines. He also has an army at his beck and call that he can deploy to achieve his desired effect. It would be much easier for Ra's to do something like this than it would be for Batman.
• Batman is a member of the League, and thus under constant scrutiny from the people he's plotting against. Ra's operates in the shadows, he does not have to worry about Superman finding out about what he's up to. Especially since he's not even a League villain.

I guess if you stretch a little, Batman is potentially capable of this. Very well, advantage Batman.

Batman #612

Probably the most famous fight between the two. Or given that the only image from this fight that ever sees the light of day is the one where Batman punches Superman, it's probably the most famous fight between the two that no one bothers actually reading before posting "LOL SUPERMAN GOT PUNCHED OUT BY BATMAN, SO HULK SMASH PUNY KRYPTONIAN".

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End result: First and foremost, this was written by Jeph Loeb. 90% of the things Jeph Loeb writes require a liberal suspension of disbelief, even for comics. He thinks a tiny piece of kryptonite stuck in a ring is enough to lower Superman's durability to the point where Batman can make him bleed. Why Superman even gave Batman that ring, I'll never be able to figure out. If he ever actually went rogue, a kryptonite ring is not going to stop him from simply nuking Bruce with his heat vision. But ok, I'll play along. Note three things: that Batman himself says that if Superman wanted he could kill him with superspeed, that Batman himself says that if he continually punches Superman every bone in his hand will shatter, and that Batman himself says that Superman is holding back as much as he can while fighting Ivy's control. Even so, after hitting Kal with all the electricity in Metropolis, the battle still comes down to Catwoman putting Lois in danger, forcing Superman to break Ivy's control and save her instead of beating Batman to death with a car. Look at that scan. If Catwoman had been a few seconds late, Superman would have brought a car weighing several tons down on Bruce's head, and exactly what could he possibly do about that? Advantage Kal-El.

Superman/Batman #2

The first of a series of fights between the two in this series. Here Superman and Batman fight an alternate future version of Superman. I've included this because technically, it's still Superman vs Batman in canon content.

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End result: Evil Supes backhands Batman and is about to throw a car at him, something Bruce a) cannot do anything about, and b) cannot survive. He runs out of time before that happens and fades away to his own timeline. Advantage evil Kal-El.

Adventures of Superman #642

Superman is mind-controlled by Max Lord and placed in an illusion where he thinks he's fighting Darkseid (he says it's Ruin, but that might simply be an error), but in reality he's fighting Batman. He's enraged because he saw Darkseid kill Lois in the illusion, so he's taking it out on Batman.

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End result: While fighting off the Watchtower's defenses, Superman nearly murders Batman, who is saved by the intervention of Wonder Woman. Advantage Kal-El. Duh.

Superman/Batman #23

Bats is possessed by the Kryptonite Man. That's right. He's literally glowing with kryptonite.

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End result: While literally glowing with kryptonite, Batman still loses to Superman. Advantage Kal-El.

Superman/Batman #33

Here Batman was under the control of an alien life form called the Blackrock. He had super powers. Legit super powers!

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End result: With legit superpowers, Superman still beat him so hard the Blackrock got scared and abandoned him. Advantage Kal-El.

Justice League #2

This fight is the first face-to-face encounter between Superman and Batman post-Flashpoint. I've only included the Batman stuff since the rest of the fight is mostly GL and Flash, so it's irrelevant.

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End result: Batman throws literally everything he has at Superman and it doesn't do squat. Who do you think has the advantage here?

Batman: The Dark Knight #5

This is their most recent fight, and already the single image of Batman punching Superman is circulating everywhere as if that's what the fight actually was. Batman is on Bane's new Venom, and with it he somehow hits Superman hard enough to make him bleed. That in itself is PIS, mainly because if this new Venom amps your strength to the point where you can hurt a Kryptonian, then Batman should have been splattered across the wall when Clayface, Deathstroke and Bane hit him while they were on the drug. Towards the end of the fight, Batman starts channeling Frank Miller, so Superman goes like:

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End result: Even with the PIS strength and durability increase, Superman still wins with one punch. Advantage Kal-El.

Even with all the prep money can buy, Batman is going to need a whole lot of plot to fight Superman (let alone beat him) even with prep. Am I saying it's impossible for Batman to ever beat Superman, no matter what the circumstances are? No. I'm just saying it's extremely unlikely. Odds are that in 99% of their encounters, there's only going to be one real outcome.

People who claim this usually only post one scan (second in the series below) and omit the rest of the fight (from Thor: The Deviants Saga #2).

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The fight appeared strange visually (afterimages and pauses and so on) because Thor and Tutinax were fighting in a chamber where an Eternal scientist named Phaestos had slowed down the speed of light, not because the two of them were fighting at lightspeed. If Thor were actually fighting at lightspeed (something he isn't capable of anyway), he would have wrecked Tutinax easily, since the latter is a slow brick with peak human speed at best. Yet Tutinax won the fight quite convincingly.

hey, remember awhile back we discussed if Thor's hammer strikes have magic amp to them? They do. This is from a interview from John Byrne, a writer for DC and Marvel.

. Mjolnir hits with its own devastating magical impact regardless of who wields it. If Thor was able to tag Superman with it, which would require Superman not to use his super-speed to easily avoid getting hit, than Mjolnir would knock Superman unconscious. At the very least Superman would always be vulnerable to Mjolnir's magical impacts and would not be able to simply block a full-strength blow with the palm of his hand.

••Being actually ABLE to hit him is, of course, the key problem, but I have said for years -- nay, DECADES -- that if Thor was actually able to hit Superman with Mjolnir, it would be like one very strong guy hitting another very strong guy -- WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER.

e this part here

"Mjolnir hits with its own devastating magical impact regardless of who wields it."

Leob sucks I know but besides that it's pretty clear what Byrne says is also backed up by plenty of feats. Thor's hammer strikes are magically amped, enchanted or whatever one may want to call it. They are not just blunt force trauma.

From the words of Ed Brubaker himself. The man who wrote Captain America for 8 years.

"I agree with parts of a lot of people's comments here and elsewhere. But I think it's a bit funny to see people get so bent out of shape when a guy who's given something called the "Super Soldier Serum" turns out to be a bit more than the average human. He's been leaping out of the windows of eight story buildings and across city streets in NYC, dodging bullets, doing amazing feats of speed and strength, since I started reading the book in the early 70s.

My take has always been that Cap is the peak of human POTENTIAL. What humans might someday be able to do, physically, he already can. If it was just about having an olypic-level athlete, do you really think all these groups and scientists would have been wasting 50plus years trying to replicate the SSS?

All I've done is have him say outloud what's always been pretty clear to me as a fan of the character. He's always been a lot stronger and faster than the average well-trained athlete. And I've always hated the Batman comparisons. Batman trained himself, Cap got given a miracle serum. I'm not making that up or changing anything.

Daredevil is more like Batman, physically, and yet in Born Again, Cap races by him so fast he's a breeze. As for Cap running 60mph. In the comic, I think he says he can run a mile in a little over a minute when he HAS to. It's not even implied that he can keep that up all day. It's a full-on burst of speed, when he has to."

"Daredevil is more like Batman, physically, and yet in Born Again, Cap races by him so fast he's a breeze. As for Cap running 60mph."

Here, this is what Brubaker was talking about.

And finally this is Ed Brubakers writing here where he clearly puts it out there in his own dialogue, no artist is determining an obscure feat here. Cap is clearly running 5 miles in 5 minutes.

Again, what Ed Brubaker is saying is that Steve is not just the peak of man, but evolution wise he is the absolute peak of what a human can be physically in evolution. Whatever physical potential we have in evolution, he already is.

"My take has always been that Cap is the peak of human POTENTIAL. What humans might someday be able to do, physically, he already can."

The Coruscant nightfall was spreading through the galaxy. The darkness in the Force was no hindrance to the shadow in the Chancellor's office; itwas the darkness. Wherever darkness dwelled, the shadow could send perception. In the night, the shadow felt the boy's anguish, and it was good. The shadow felt the grim determination of four Jedi Masters approaching by air. This, too, was good.
As a Jedi shuttle settled to the landing deck outside, the shadow sent its mind into the far deeper night within one of the several pieces of sculpture that graced the office: an abstract twist of solid neuranium, so heavy that the office floor had been specially reinforced to bear its weight, so dense that more sensitive species might, from very close range, actually perceive the tiny warping of the fabric of space-time that was its gravitation.
Neuranium of more than roughly a millimeter thick is impervious to sensors; the standard security scans undergone by all equipment and furniture to enter the Senate Office Building had shown nothing at all. If anyone had thought to use an advanced gravimetric detector, however, they might have discovered that one smallish section of the sculpture massed slightly less than it should have, given that the manifest that had accompanied it, when it was brought from Naboo among the then-ambassador's personal effects, clearly stated that it was a single piece of solid-forged neuranium.
The manifest was a lie. The sculpture was not entirely solid, and not all of it was neuranium. Within a long, slim, rod-shaped cavity around which the sculpture had been forged rested a device that had lain, waiting, in absolute darkness—darkness beyond darkness—for decades. Waiting for night to fall on the Republic.
The shadow felt Jedi Masters stride the vast echoic emptiness of the vaulted halls outside. It could practically hear the cadence of their boot heels on the Alderaanian marble. The darkness within the sculpture whispered of the shape and the feel and every intimate resonance of the device it cradled. With a twist of its will, the shadow triggered the device. The neuranium got warm. A small round spot, smaller than the circle a human child might make of thumb and forefinger, turned the color of old blood.
Then fresh blood.
Then open flame.
Finally a spear of scarlet energy lanced free, painting the office with the color of stars seen through the smoke of burning planets. The spear of energy lengthened, drawing with it out from the darkness the device, then the scarlet blade shrank away and the device slid itself within the softer darkness of a sleeve.
As shouts of the Force scattered Redrobes beyond the office's outer doors, the shadow gestured and lampdisks ignited. Another shout of the Force burst open the inner door to the private office. As Jedi stormed in, a final flick of the shadow's will triggered a recording device concealed within the desk.
Audio only.
"Why, Master Windu," said the shadow. "What a pleasant surprise."

Shaak Ti felt him coming before she could see him. The infra-and ultrasound-sensitive cavities in the tall, curving montrals to either side of her head gave her a sense analogous to touch: the texture of his approaching footsteps was ragged as old sacking. As he rounded the corner to the landing deck door, his breathing felt like a pile of gravel and his heartbeat was spiking like a Zabrak's head. He didn't look good, either; he was deathly pale, even for a human, and his eyes were raw.
"Anakin," she said warmly. Perhaps a friendly word was what he needed; she doubted he'd gotten many from Mace Windu. "Thank you for what you have done. The Jedi Order is in your debt—the whole galaxy, as well."
"Shaak Ti. Get out of my way."
Shaky as he looked, there was nothing unsteady in his voice: it was deeper than she remembered, more mature, and it carried undertones of authority that she had never heard before. And she was not blind to the fact he had neglected to call her Master.
She put forth a hand, offering calming energies through the Force. "The Temple is sealed, Anakin. The door is code-locked."
"And you're in the way of the pad."
She stepped aside, allowing him to the pad; she had no reason to keep him here against his will. He punched the code hungrily. "If Palpatine retaliates," she said reasonably, "is not your place here, to help with our defense?"
"I'm the chosen one. My place is there." His breathing roughened, and he looked as if he was getting even sicker. "I have to be there. That's the prophecy, isn't it? I have to be there—"
"Anakin, why? The Masters are the best of the Order. What can you possibly do?" The door slid open.
"I'm the chosen one," he repeated. "Prophecy can't be changed. I'll do—" He looked at her with eyes that were dying, and a spasm of unendurable pain passed over his face. Shaak Ti reached for him—he should be in the infirmary, not heading toward what might be a savage battle—but he lurched away from her hand. "I'll do what I'm supposed to do," he said, and sprinted into the night and the rain.

[the following is a transcript of an audio recording presented before the Galactic Senate on the afternoon of the first Empire Day; identities of all speakers verified and confirmed by voiceprint analysis]
PALPATINE: Why, Master Windu. What a pleasant surprise.
MACE WINDU: Hardly a surprise, Chancellor. And it will be pleasant for neither of us.
PALPATINE: I'm sorry? Master Fisto, hello. Master Kolar, greetings. I trust you are well. Master Tiin—I see your horn has regrown; I'm very glad. What brings four Jedi Masters to my office at this hour?
MACE WINDU: We know who you are. What you are. We are here to take you into custody.
PALPATINE: I beg your pardon? What I am? When last I checked, I was Supreme Chancellor of the Republic you are sworn to serve. I hope I misunderstand what you mean by custody, Master Windu. It smacks of treason.
MACE WINDU: You're under arrest.
PALPATINE: Really, Master Windu, you cannot be serious. On what charge?
MACE WINDU: You're a Sith Lord!
PALPATINE: Am I? Even if true, that's hardly a crime. My philosophical outlook is a personal matter. In fact—the last time I read the Constitution, anyway—we have very strict laws against this type of persecution. So I ask you again: what is my alleged crime? How do you expect to justify your mutiny before the Senate? Or do you intend to arrest the Senate as well?
MACE WINDU: We're not here to argue with you.
PALPATINE: No, you're here to imprison me without trial. Without even the pretense of legality. So this is the plan, at last: the Jedi are taking over the Republic.
MACE WINDU: Come with us. Now.
PALPATINE: I shall do no such thing. If you intend to murder me, you can do so right here.
MACE WINDU: Don't try to resist.
[sounds that have been identified by frequency resonances to be the ignition of several lightsabers]
PALPATINE: Resist? How could I possibly resist? This is murder, you Jedi traitors! How can I be any threat to you? Master Tiin—you're the telepath. What am I thinking right now?
[sounds of scuffle]
KIT FISTO: Saesee—
AGEN KOLAR: [garbled; possibly "It doesn't hurt"(?)]
[sounds of scuffle]
PALPATINE: Help! Help! Security—someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!
[recording ends]
A fountain of amethyst energy burst from Mace Windu's fist. "Don't try to resist."
The song of his blade was echoed by green fire from the hands of Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin. Kolar and Tiin closed on Palpatine, blocking the path to the door. Shadows dripped and oozed color, weaving and coiling up office walls slipping over chairs, spreading along the floor.
"Resist? How could I possibly resist?" Still seated at the desk Palpatine shook an empty fist helplessly, the perfect image of a tired, frightened old man. "This is murder, you Jedi traitors! How can I be any threat to you?"
He turned desperately to Saesee Tiin. "Master Tiin—you're the telepath. What am I thinking right now?" Tiin frowned and cocked his head. His blade dipped. A smear of red-flashing darkness hurtled from behind the desk. Saesee Tiin's head bounced when it hit the floor. Smoke curled from the neck, and from the twin stumps of the horns, severed just below the chin.
Kit Fisto gasped, "Saesee!"
The headless corpse, still standing, twisted as its knees buckled, and a thin sigh escaped from its trachea as it folded to the floor.
"It doesn't..." Agen Kolar swayed. His emerald blade shrank away, and the handgrip tumbled from his opening fingers. A small, neat hole in the middle of his forehead leaked smoke, showing light from the back of his head. "...hurt..." He pitched forward onto his face, and lay still.
Palpatine stood at the doorway, but the door stayed shut. From his right hand extended a blade the color of fire. The door locked itself at his back. 
"Help! Help!" Palpatine cried like a man in desperate fear for his life. "Security—someone! Help me! Murder! Treason!"
Then he smiled. He held one finger to his lips, and, astonishingly, he winked. In the blank second that followed, while Mace Windu and Kit Fisto could do no more than angle their lightsabers to guard, Palpatine swiftly stepped over the bodies back toward his desk, reversed his blade, and drove it in a swift, surgically precise stab down through his desktop.
"That's enough of that."
He let it burn its way free through the front, then he turned, lifting his weapon, appearing to study it as one might study the face of a beloved friend one has long thought dead. Power gathered around him until the Force shimmered with darkness.
"If you only knew," he said softly, perhaps speaking to the Jedi Masters, or perhaps to himself, or perhaps even to the scarlet blade lifted now as though in mocking salute, "how long I have been waiting for this..."

Anakin's speeder shrieked through the rain, dodging forked bolts of lightning that shot up from towers into the clouds, slicing across traffic lanes, screaming past spacescrapers so fast that his shock-wake cracked windows as he passed.
He didn't understand why people didn't just get out of his way. He didn't understand how the trillion beings who jammed Galactic City could go about their trivial business as though the universe hadn't changed. How could they think they counted for anything, compared with him? How could they think they still mattered? Their blind lives meant nothing now. None of them. Because ahead, on the vast cliff face of the Senate Office Building, one window spat lightning into the rain to echo the lightning of the storm outside—but this lightning was the color of clashing lightsabers.
Green fans, sheets of purple—
And crimson flame. He was too late. The green fire faded and winked out; now the lightning was only purple and red.
His repulsorlifts howled as he heeled the speeder up onto its side, skidding through wind-shear turbulence to bring it to a bobbing halt outside the window of Palpatine's private office. A blast of lightning hit the spire of 500 Republica, only a kilometer away, and its white burst flared off the window, flash-blinding him; he blinked furiously, slapping at his eyes in frustration. The colorless glare inside his eyes faded slowly, bringing into focus a jumble of bodies on the floor of Palpatine's private office. Bodies in Jedi robes.
On Palpatine's desk lay the head of Kit Fisto, faceup, scalp-tentacles unbound in a squid-tangle across the ebonite. His lidless eyes stared blindly at the ceiling. Anakin remembered him in the arena at Geonosis, effortlessly carving his way through wave after wave of combat droids, on his lips a gently humorous smile as though the horrific battle were only some friendly jest. His severed head wore that same smile. Maybe he thought death was funny, too.
Anakin's own blade sang blue as it slashed through the window and he dived through the gap. He rolled to his feet among a litter of bodies and sprinted through a shattered door along the small private corridor and through a doorway that flashed and flared with energy-scatter. Anakin skidded to a stop.
Within the public office of the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, a last Jedi Master battled alone, blade-to-blade, against a living shadow.

Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life. More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways. He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.
Vaapad, the seventh form of lightsaber combat, takes its name from a notoriously dangerous predator native to the moons of Sarapin: a vaapad attacks its prey with whipping strikes of its blindingly fast tentacles. Most have at least seven. It is not uncommon for them to have as many as twelve; the largest ever killed had twenty-three. With a vaapad, one never knew how many tentacles it had until it was dead: they move too fast to count. Almost too fast to see. So did Mace's blade.
Vaapad is as aggressive and powerful as its namesake, but its power comes at great risk: immersion in Vaapad opens the gates that restrain one's inner darkness. To use Vaapad, a Jedi must allow himself to enjoy the fight; he must give himself over to the thrill of battle. The rush ofwinning. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side. Mace Windu created this style, and he was its only living master. This was Vaapad's ultimate test.

Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once.
The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine?
Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—but he could feel them in the Force. The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent. And it was darkening.
Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts. There was no Jedi restraint here. Mace Windu was cutting loose.

Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being. Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center—
And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.
There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared. He had learned that it is fear that gives the darkness power. He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But—
Neither did he have power over it.
Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue.
Impasse.
Which might have gone on forever, if Vaapad were Mace's only gift. The fighting was effortless for him now; he let his body handle it without the intervention of his mind. While his blade spun and crackled, while his feet slid and his weight shifted and his shoulders turned in precise curves of their own direction, his mind slid along the circuit of dark power, tracing it back to its limitless source. Feeling for its shatterpoint. He found a knot of fault lines in the shadow's future; he chose the largest fracture and followed it back to the here and the now—
And it led him, astonishingly, to a man standing frozen in the slashed-open doorway. Mace had no need to look; the presence in the Force was familiar, and was as uplifting as sunlight breaking through a thunderhead. The chosen one was here.
Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish. His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad.
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop. Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete. Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.
One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain toward the distant alleys below. Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached white by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.
"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest."
"Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frightened old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?"
"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear."
Palpatine lifted his head. His eyes smoked with hate. "Fool," he said. He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.
"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"
Lightning blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him. Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him. And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source. Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that loured from his hands only intensified. He fed the power with his pain.
"Anakin!" Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, as if it came from the bottom of a well. "Anakin, help me! This is your chance!"
He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind—And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all. "Destroy this traitor," the Chancellor said, his voice raised aver the howl of writhing energy that joined his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest. It's an assassination!"
That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatterpoint of the Sith. The shatterpoint of the dark side itself. Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker...
Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.
Palpatine's eyes glowed with power, casting a yellow glare that burned back the rain from around them. "He is a traitor, Anakin. Destroy him."
"You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade. "Take him. It's your destiny."
Skywalker echoed him faintly. "Destiny..."
"Help me! I can't hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as though the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bones of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin—! Please, Anaaahhh—"
Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me—"
"Ahhh—" Palpatine's roar above the endless blast of lightning became a fading moan of despair. The lightning swallowed itself, leaving only the night and the rain, and an old man crumpled to his knees on a slippery ledge. "I... can't. I give up. I... I am too weak, in the end. Too old, and too weak. Don't kill me, Master Jedi. Please. I surrender."
Victory flooded through Mace's aching body. He lifted his blade. "You Sith disease—"
"Wait—" Skywalker seized his lightsaber arm with desperate strength. "Don't kill him—you can't just kill him, Master—"
"Yes, I can," Mace said, grim and certain. "I have to."
"You came to arrest him. He has to stand trial—"
"A trial would be a joke. He controls the courts. He controls the Senate—"
"So are you going to kill all them, too? Like he said you would?"
Mace yanked his arm free. "He's too dangerous to be left alive. If you could have taken Dooku alive, would you have?"
Skywalker's face swept itself clean of emotion. "That was different—"
Mace turned toward the cringing, beaten Sith Lord. "You can explain the difference after he's dead." He raised his lightsaber.
"I need him alive!" Skywalker shouted. "I need him to save Padme!"
Mace thought blankly, Why? And moved his lightsaber toward the fallen Chancellor. Before he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord's hands and without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine's hate struck him full-on.
He had been so intent on Palpatine's shatterpoint that he'd never thought to look for Anakin's. Dark lightning blasted away his universe. He fell forever. Anakin Skywalker knelt in the rain. He was looking at a hand. The hand had brown skin. The hand held a lightsaber. The hand had a charred oval of tissue where it should have been attached to an arm.
"What have I done?" Was it his voice? It must have been. Because it was his question. "What have I done?"
Another hand, a warm and human hand, laid itself softly on his shoulder. "You're following your destiny, Anakin," said a familiar gentle voice. "The Jedi are traitors. You saved the Republic from their treachery. You can see that, can't you?"
"You were right," Anakin heard himself saying. "Why didn't I know?"
"You couldn't have. They cloaked themselves in deception, my boy. Because they feared your power, they could never trust you."
Anakin stared at the hand, but he no longer saw it. "Obi-Wan—Obi-Wan trusts me..."
"Not enough to tell you of their plot."
Treason echoed in his memory.
...this is not an assignment for the record...
That warm and human hand gave his shoulder a warm and human squeeze. "I do not fear your power, Anakin, I embrace it. You are the greatest of the Jedi. You can be the greatest of the Sith. I believe that, Anakin. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you."
Anakin looked from the dead hand on the ledge to the living one on his shoulder, then up to the face of the man who stood above him, and what he saw there choked him like an invisible fist crushing his throat. The hand on his shoulder was human. The face...wasn't.
The eyes were a cold and feral yellow, and they gleamed like those of a predator lurking beyond a fringe of firelight; the bone around those feral eyes had swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilled from a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blanketed it had gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast. Stunned with horror, stunned with revulsion, Anakin could only stare at the creature. At the shadow. Looking into the face of the darkness, he saw his future.
"Now come inside," the darkness said.
After a moment, he did. Anakin stood just within the office. Motionless. Palpatine examined the damage to his face in a broad expanse of wall mirror. Anakin couldn't tell if his expression might be revulsion, or if this were merely the new shape of his features. Palpatine lifted one tentative hand to the misshapen horror that he now saw in the mirror, then simply shrugged.
"And so the mask becomes the man," he sighed with a hint of philosophical melancholy. "I shall miss the face of Palpatine, I think; but for our purpose, the face of Sidious will serve. Yes, it will serve."

         

• Mace's speed/power was dramatically amped. He was operating on an exceptionally higher level than he ever has before, due to the events that took place.
• In terms of sheer skill, even with a huge speed and power amp, he still only fought Sidious as a perfect equal.
• Mace beat Palpatine by exploiting fear in him, but this fear was never there to begin with.
• Palpatine could have killed Mace with Force Lightning anytime he wanted.
• Yoda is factually a superior duelist to Mace, yet Palpatine fought evenly with him.

Anakin's revelation—that Palpatine and Darth Sidious are one and the same—hollows Mace to the core. Not days earlier, he and other Jedi had risked their lives against Grievous's droid forces to prevent Palpatine from being abducted. Grasping that the abduction and the war itself has been nothing more than a deception, Mace leaps into action, promising to take Palpatine into Jedi custody, dead or alive.

Because Mace, too, has an attachment. Mace has a secret love. Mace Windu loves the Republic.
Many of his students quote him to students of their own: "Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace."
For Mace Windu, for all his life, for all the lives of a thousand years of Jedi before him, true civilization has had only one true name: the Republic.
He has given his life in the service of his love. He has taken lives in its service, and lost the lives of innocents. He has seen beings that he cares for maimed, and killed, and sometimes worse: sometimes so broken by the horror of the struggle that their only answer was to commit horrors greater still.
And because of that love now, here, in this instant, Anakin Skywalker has nine words for him that shred his heart, burn its pieces, and feed him its smoking ashes.
Palpatine is Sidious. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord.
He doesn't even hear the words, not really; their true meaning is too large for his mind gather in all at once.
They mean that all he's done, and all that has been done to him—
That all the Order has accomplished, all it has suffered—
All the Galaxy itself has gone through, all the years of suffering and slaughter, the death of entire planets—
Has all been for nothing.
Because it was all done to save the Republic.
Which was already gone.
Which had already fallen.
The corpse of which had been defended only by a Jedi Order that was now under the command of a Dark Lord of the Sith. Mace Windu's entire existence has become crystal so shot-through with flaws that the hammer of those nine words has crushed him to sand.

Anakin blinked and rubbed his eyes again. Maybe he was still a bit flash-blind—the Korun Master seemed to be fading in and out of existence, half swallowed by a thickening black haze in which danced a meter-long bar of sunfire. Mace pressed back the darkness with a relentless straight-ahead march; his own blade, that distinctive amethyst blaze that had been the final sight of so many evil beings across the galaxy, made a haze of its own: an oblate sphere of purple fire within which there seemed to be dozens of swords slashing in all directions at once. 
The shadow he fought, that blur of speed—could that be Palpatine? 
Their blades flared and flashed, crashing together with bursts of fire, weaving nets of killing energy in exchanges so fast that Anakin could not truly see them—but he could feel them in the Force. The Force itself roiled and burst and crashed around them, boiling with power and lightspeed ricochets of lethal intent. And it was darkening. 
Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts.

Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being. Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center—
And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.

Master Windu was also known within the Order for his unusual fighting style, one that he developed after studying the dueling styles of various lightsaber masters. His attacks consisted of relentless, unpredictable blows, like shots from an autoblaster. Master Windu himself remained perfectly balanced and centered. In the history of the Jedi Order, only two opponents ever overcame him in battle. One was Master Yoda, who some said was the Order's true master of lightsaber combat. The other was former Master Dooku, whose own fighting style was archaic, yet stunningly effective.

Gallery

Gallery

Kit's bulging black eyes indicated Palpatine. "They want to take him alive."
The words had scarcely left his mouth when something hit the train with sufficient force to whip everyone from one side of the car to the other, then back again. The Red Guards were just regaining their balance when the roof began to resound with the cadence of heavy, clanging footfalls, advancing from the rear of the train.
"Grievous," Mace grumbled.
Kit glanced at him. "Here we go again."
Hurrying into the vestibule between the two lead cars, they launched themselves to the roof. Three cars distant marched General Grievous and two of his elite droids, their capes snapping behind them in the wind, pulse-tipped batons angled across their barrel chests. Farther back, clamped by animal-like claws to the roof of the train, was the gunboat from which the frightful trio had been released.
Without pausing, Grievous drew two lightsabers from inside his billowing cloak. By the time they were ignited, Mace was already on and all over the cyborg, batting away at the two blades, swinging low at Grievous's artificial legs, thrusting at his skeletal face. The lightsabers thrummed and hissed, meeting one another in bursts of dazzling light. In a corner of Mace's mind he wondered to which Jedi Grievous's blades had belonged. Just as the Force was keeping Mace from being blown from the mag-lev's roof, magnetism of some sort was keeping the general fastened in place. For the cyborg, though, the coherence hindered as much as it helped, whereas Mace never remained in one place for very long.
Again and again the three blades joined, in snarling attacks and parries. Grievous was well trained in the Jedi arts. Mace could recognize the hand of Dooku in the general's training and technique. His strikes were as forceful as any Mace had ever had to counter, and his speed was astonishing. But he didn't know Vaapad—the technique of dark flirtation in which Mace excelled.
To the rear of the car, where Grievous's pair of MagnaGuards had made the mistake of pitting themselves against Kit Fisto, the Nautolan's blade was a cyclone of blazing blue light. Resistant to the energy outpourings of a lightsaber, the phrik alloy staffs were potent weapons, but like any weapon they needed to find their target, and Kit simply wasn't allowing that. In moves a Twi'lek dancer might envy, he spun around the guards, claiming a limb from both with each rotation: left legs, right arms, right legs...
The speed of the train saw to the rest, ultimately whisking the droids into the canyon like insects blown from the windscreen of a speeder bike.
The loss of his confederates was noted by whatever computers were slaved to Grievous's organic brain, but the loss neither distracted nor slowed him. His sole setting was attack. Successful at analyzing Mace's lightsaber style, those same computers suggested that Grievous alter his stance and posture, along with the angle of his parries, ripostes, and thrusts. The result wasn't Vaapad, but it was close enough, and Mace wasn't interested in prolonging the contest any longer than necessary.
Crouching low, he angled the blade downward and slashed, guiding it through the roof of the car, perpendicular to Grievous's stalwart advance. Mace saw by the surprised look in the cyborg's reptilian eyes that, for all his strength, dexterity, and resolve, the living part of him wasn't always in perfect sync with his alloy servos. Clearly, Grievous—onetime courageous commander of sentient troops—realized what Mace had done and wanted to sidestep, where General Grievous—current commander of droids and other war machines—wanted nothing more than to impale Mace with lunging thrusts of the paired blades.
Slipping into the gap made by Mace's saber, Grievous's left talon lost magnetic purchase on the roof, and the general faltered. Mace came out of his crouch prepared to drive his sword into Grievous's guts, but some last-instant firing of the general's cybersynapses compelled the cyborg's torso through a swift half twist that would have sent Mace's head hurtling into the canyon had the maneuver prevailed. Instead Mace leapt backward, out of the range of the slicing blades, and Force-pushed outward, just at the instant of Grievous's single misstep.
Off the side of the car the general went, twisting and turning as he fell, Mace trying to track the general's contorted plunge, but unsuccessfully. Had he fallen into the canyon? Had he managed to dig his duranium claws into the side of the car or grab hold of the mag-lev rail itself?
Mace couldn't take the time to puzzle it out. One hundred meters away, the gunboat retracted its landing gear and rose from the roof on repulsorlift power. Reckless shots from one of the pursuing gunships obliged the Separatist craft to skew, then dive, with the gunship following close behind.

Before Mace realizes what has happened, Kolar, Tiin, and Fisto have fallen to Sidious's blade.

Vaapad made him an open channel, half of a superconducting loop completed by the shadow; they became a standing wave of battle that expanded into every cubic centimeter of the Chancellor's office. There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue. 
Impasse.

In the inner recesses of his private office, the Jedi confronted the Chancellor. Palpatine produced a lightsaber hidden in his sleeve and let the dark side flow through him. It granted him unnatural dexterity and speed—enough to quickly kill three Jedi Masters and force the mighty Mace Windu back.

Mace disengaged from the shadow's blade and leapt for the window; he slashed away the transparisteel with a single flourish. His instant's distraction cost him: a dark surge of the Force nearly blew him right out of the gap he had just cut. Only a desperate Force-push of his own altered his path enough that he slammed into a stanchion instead of plunging half a kilometer from the ledge outside. He bounced off and the Force cleared his head and once again he gave himself to Vaapad. 
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop. Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete. Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half. 
One piece flipped back in through the cut-open window. The other tumbled from opening fingers, bounced on the ledge, and fell through the rain toward the distant alleys below.

"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade, "is under arrest." 
"Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frightened old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?" 
"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear." 
Palpatine lifted his head. His eyes smoked with hate. "Fool," he said. He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons. 
"Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?" 
Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him. Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him. And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source. Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that loured from his hands only intensified. He fed the power with his pain. 
"Anakin!" Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, as if it came from the bottom of a well. "Anakin, help me! This is your chance!" 
He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind—And Palpatine was not afraid. Mace could feel it: he wasn't worried at all.

Lightning blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him. Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him. And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.

Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.

Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me—"

This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade.

"We've not seen Mace fight yet, and we know that he's second only to Yoda."

"Mace Windu's fighting abilities are second only to Yoda." 

Master Windu was also known within the Order for his unusual fighting style, one that he developed after studying the dueling styles of various lightsaber masters. His attacks consisted of relentless, unpredictable blows, like shots from an autoblaster. Master Windu himself remained perfectly balanced and centered. In the history of the Jedi Order, only two opponents ever overcame him in battle. One was Master Yoda, who some said was the Order's true master of lightsaber combat. The other was former Master Dooku, whose own fighting style was archaic, yet stunningly effective.

"Okay, well, this sequence always started out with Mace overpowering Palpatine, and then Palpatine using his powers to try to destroy Mace, and Mace deflecting his rays with his lightsaber. And it always was that Anakin cut the lightsaber out of his hand. But this part where he pretends to lose his power and be weak was something that I added later, 'cause this is, it moved the point where Anakin turns down to this moment right here, and you can see now, that it's very clear that he's, he, he wants him to go on trial so he can pump him for information about how to get these powers."

Darth Sidious had had most of his beloved Sith statues and ancient bas-reliefs removed from his ruined chambers in the Senate Office Building, where four Jedi had lost their lives and one had been converted to the dark side. Relocated to the throne room, the statues had been placed on the dais, the sculptures mounted on the long walls. Swiveling his throne, Sidious gazed at them now.
As some Jedi had feared from the start, Anakin had been ripe for conversion when Qui-Gon Jinn had first brought him to the Temple, and for well over a decade all of Sidious's plans for the boy had unfolded without incident.

As often as Plagueis maintained that the Rule of Two had ended with their partnership, the Muun remained the powerful one, and Palpatine the covetous one. Bane’s dictum notwithstanding, denial was still a key factor in Sith training; a key factor in being “broken,” as Plagueis put it—of being shaped by the dark side of the Force. Cruelly, at times, and painfully. But Palpatine was grateful, for the Force had slowly groomed him into a being of dark power and granted him a secret identity, as well. The life he had been leading—as the noble head of House Palpatine, legislator, and most recently ambassador-at-large—was nothing more than the trappings of an alter ego; his wealth, a subterfuge; his handsome face, a mask. In the realm of the Force his thoughts ordered reality, and his dreams prepared the galaxy for monumental change. He was a manifestation of dark purpose, helping to advance the Sith Grand Plan and gradually gaining power over himself so that he might one day—in the words of his Master—be able to gain control over another, then a group of others, then an order, a world, a species, the Republic itself.

That warm and human hand gave his shoulder a warm and human squeeze. "I do not fear your power, Anakin, I embrace it. You are the greatest of the Jedi. You can be the greatest of the Sith. I believe that, Anakin. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you."
Anakin looked from the dead hand on the ledge to the living one on his shoulder, then up to the face of the man who stood above him, and what he saw there choked him like an invisible fist crushing his throat. The hand on his shoulder was human. The face...wasn't.
The eyes were a cold and feral yellow, and they gleamed like those of a predator lurking beyond a fringe of firelight; the bone around those feral eyes had swollen and melted and flowed like durasteel spilled from a fusion smelter, and the flesh that blanketed it had gone corpse-gray and coarse as rotten synthplast. Stunned with horror, stunned with revulsion, Anakin could only stare at the creature. At the shadow. Looking into the face of the darkness, he saw his future.
"Now come inside," the darkness said.
After a moment, he did. Anakin stood just within the office. Motionless. Palpatine examined the damage to his face in a broad expanse of wall mirror. Anakin couldn't tell if his expression might be revulsion, or if this were merely the new shape of his features. Palpatine lifted one tentative hand to the misshapen horror that he now saw in the mirror, then simply shrugged.
"And so the mask becomes the man," he sighed with a hint of philosophical melancholy. "I shall miss the face of Palpatine, I think; but for our purpose, the face of Sidious will serve. Yes, it will serve."

"Always two there are"—not only master and apprentice, but persona and true face. Unmasked by deflected lightning during his duel with Mace Windu, the Sith Lord's true face is revealed to the world.

The Hulk's speed

The proposal

Here I wanted to discuss how fast the Hulk is. I would like to hear some feedback. Often times we wonder how the Hulk manages to go toe to toe with enemies who have marginal speed advantages over him. Enemies such as the Silver Surfer, Sentry, etc. The first and foremost response we hear from users around here is that it is obvious plot/writer/artist induced stupidity [PIS, WIS and AIS (PWA)]. My proposal is that the Hulk isn't at a speed disadvantage but rather his reflexes and mind set are not on par with speedsters. This proposal sets a means for consistency rather than we claim PWA all the time. Now to further ado, I give scans for us to discuss.

The Evidence

Hulk performs a Thunderclap with such force, the pressure from the sonic boom sends cars and people (through concrete walls) flying:

The amount of speed Hulk would require would be dozens that of the speed of sound. There is absolutely no way someone of the Hulk's stature can perform such a feat moving at normal or even 10 to 100 times faster. It would have to be tremendous. It is absolutely impossible for the Hulk to perform a feat with strength alone.

The Hulk leaps to escape velocity:

For an object to escape the earths atmoshphere, it must have an initial velocity of Mach 34. Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity. For Hulk to perform such a feat, his legs would have to accelerate and propel someone of his weight, which is approximately 2000 pounds, at even greater speeds than so. It is absolutely impossible for the Hulk to perform a feat with strength alone.

Objects to the moon:

Back to escape velocity. Fin Fang Foom weighs 40,000 lbs (20 tons). The Hulk's arm would have to propel Fin Fang Foom at those speeds in order to make him escape. Fin Fang Foom actually ended up on the moon which is much further than just escaping the earths atmosphere. Much like a baseball pitchers arm swinging at the same speed he releases the ball, the Hulk's arm would have to be moving at much greater speeds than so. There is absolutely no way the Hulk could have performed such a feat with strength alone.

The Reason (then why does the Hulk have difficulties tagging street levelers at times)

So if the Hulk is so fast, why does he have such difficulty tagging street leveler fighters with great dodging ability such as the Captain America, Spider-man, etc? Part of your answer is that they are great at dodging. How often are they hit with bullets? Not quite often. The other part is the Hulk lacks the ability to speed up his thought process and mindset in addition to his reflexes possibly being a few magnitudes above average. The Hulk's powers stem from being physically amped. His powers do not affect his mindset. A great example would be how Superman and the Flash whom are capable of such feats. Here is a scan.

So what is the excuse? Why is it not PAW when the Hulk fights foes such as the Sentry?

This is a fairly simple answer. It's because the Sentry who we all know moves at extreme super speed with a sped up mindset (collects multiple I-Beams and builds a structure within a matter of seconds) has chose to downplay his mindset to Hulk's levels. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to have a conversation. If Sentry's mindset was sped up to super speeds, he wouldn't be able to understand a word the Hulk said along with Hulk not being capable of understanding a word the Sentry said. This is the sole reason why the Hulk and Sentry and trading blows near evenly due to their mindsets being at the same pace.