@Static Shock said:
@Freefa11 said:
Static Shock: It may sound like splitting hairs, but there actually is a difference between a punch hurting more and a punch hitting harder.
I don't exactly see the difference.
Basically, being in pain and being damaged are not necessarily the same thing. A fork under the finger nails hurts a lot, but it isn't really a powerful, damaging attack. Punches can be like that too. I've been hit in the face in a way that hurt a lot and caused my eyes to water up instantly, but that's it. I've also been punched in the head with the effect of being staggered, half my vision going black, the room spinning slightly, and barely being able to stand. I'm quite sure the latter was a much stronger, much more damaging blow, but it did not cause as much actual pain.
@Freefa11 said:
The size of the fist alone can actually have a lot to do with it, as well as distance and angle.
What about the speed his physical blows were tagging her at? She claimed that his punches were moving at the speed of light. Superman's punches don't really fly that fast, and Zoom generally ignores physics with his powers.
Distance comes into it in that distancing yourself so that your arm reaches full extension at about the surface of their skin or just an inch below it causes a different effect than positioning yourself so that your arm reaches full extension at the back of their skull or a few inches past the spine. The former is a get way to get painful stinging punches. The latter is a good way to traumatize internal organs (which may also hurt a whole lot; not saying getting slammed in the liver isn't painful). Most people without a lot of fighting experience or training tend to go for the former, shallower punches, probably in part because the distancing feels safer, and in part because it's just easier to see.
Basically, my point is that pain is both subjective, and doesn't always correspond to what is actually more damaging or more powerful.
Yes, speed is important. However, determining Superman's speed is always tricky because he isn't consistent with how he uses it. Moreover, comic book punches in general are kind of funny with strength. Hulk really isn't a speedster at all, yet hits with enormous power.
So basically, I'm more inclined to guess at the force of someone's punch based on the effect it has on what it makes contact with, rather than how fast I think their fist might be going. After all, it is ultimately the kinetic energy that is transferred that would affect the punched person/object; the total kinetic energy of the fist before impact doesn't matter if (for whatever bizarre contrived comic book reason) the object is obviously affected by much more or much less. Going back to Hulk, for example, if he can punch at, say, 200 mph, that shouldn't have a lot of kinetic energy. But if he hits a moon and it explodes, well, I'm at a loss as to where the extra force came from, but he clearly delivered a whole lot more than the 1/2mv^2 of his arm. Zoom is kind of the same, except with the opposite effect. He can supposedly move with infinite speed (which I deny a lot, actually, but that doesn't matter here), but if he hit anyone with infinite force, the whole planet would explode and the universe with it, either instantly or in a shockwave of infinite force traveling at the speed of light (depending on how much you want to break physics). This obviously doesn't happen, so he is obviously hitting with some finite energy.
I feel like I'm being kind of longwinded and technical, so I'll try to get to the point: What we can get a reasonable estimate for with regards to Zoom's punch is how fast Wonder Woman's body was moving as a result of it. I don't know the issue, so I can't check, but from what I recall of the scan, she came down at a relatively steep angle. That would mean she went up at a relatively steep angle. This would also mean she couldn't have been moving too much faster than escape velocity, otherwise he would have simply knocked her off the planet. Now, escape velocity is about 11 km/s. How long would it take her to travel the distance from the sun to the earth at escape velocity? About 22.5 weeks.
The point here isn't to come up with real hard numbers for either, but to illustrate the difference in scale between the two. It is pretty clear that it did not take Wonder Woman 5+ months to make the trip back to earth; a timeframe of minutes seems far more reasonable. This would require Zoom to have hit her with enough force to accelerate her to a couple hundred thousand times escape velocity, and I just don't see how a blow like that wouldn't send her flying into space. The huge margin of error is what makes this meaningful to me; I could be a factor of 100 low on my estimate for Zoom hitting her, and a factor of 100 high for Superman hitting her, and it still favors Superman by a good amount.
Of course, like you said, physics is wonky with these guys. Demanding consistency is crazy, because it was never intended by the writers, so you kind of have to pick and choose your own physics, so everyone is going to have slightly different ideas of what the most "reasonable" explanation is for how Zoom can throw out punches that can hurt Superman, a guy who can survive a supernova, without obliterating everything within at least a few miles.
Isn't this Proof of the Surfer going FTL? Faster than the speed of light to be precise, Wally on the other hand hasn't shown any evidence of reaching that sort of speed however I would give it to Wally if there's some non cannon or at least evidence of him going faster than the speed of light.
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