Spider-Man vs. a Herald of Galactus.

[starwolf_oakley]

Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz did a great run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. They made Spider-Man the "giant killer" of Marvel in the 1980s.
Despite that, this makes no sense whatsoever.



From AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #270, 1985. Spider-Man is not wearing the symbiote.









No. Just... no.

Maybe my opinion is shaped from reading too many Galactus and Silver Surfer stories, but when a being gets the Power Cosmic from Galactus, he/she isn't really a "being" anymore. Any man-made object used as a transport or focus (surfboard, ax, staff) isn't man-made anymore. It is Galactus-made. It is made up of the Power Cosmic. That's why I understand Terrax's ax being left on his planet after Phoenix Force "purged" it (in MARVEL POINT ONE), because an ax that Galactus made can withstand. any. thing.

tl;dr: Galactus built his heralds to last. Against anything. Except Galactus.

No matter how much determination/guts/power/responsibility he has, Spider-Man cannot beat Firelord unconscious. He just can't.

Comments

[auggie18]

...yeah. I mean, that's why it was supposed to be a big deal when Phoenix fought this dude to a standstill back during the Dark Phoenix Saga. Cosmic kids should have a level of untouchability. I mean, Spidey's cool and all, but I'm pretty sure he's a street level dude. And we all know that it goes street<sky<cosmic. Really clever street level people can sometimes beat sky people, really clever sky level heroes can sometimes beat cosmic, but past that...

[biod]

This remains one of my favorite Spider-Man moments. Sure, it's an extreme, but it showcases a lot of the things I love about the character.
You could always rationalise it to Firelord giving up to save himself the trouble of dealing with such an unnaturally tenacious foe.

[owesome]

To be fair, I always considered Firelord kind of a low-tier Herald.

Actually, all of the Heralds other than the Surfer were kind of a let-down.

[korvar]

Ah, yes. The panels that are almost guaranteed to start a flamewar on any comics site anywhere. There was this huge thread on the Hero Games site back in the day, where people were arguing (using Hero Games stats) whether Spidey could possibly have actually done this.

[tpsreports]

Listen, I have it on good authority that off panel Firelord was drinking Olympian mead with Herc, and Spider-Man didn't so much knock him out as he passed out. It's true because John Buscema told me so.

[dr_archeville]

Here's what gets me about this: Spidey's in his original black costume.

The costume that was eventually revealed to be a Symbiote (i.e., Venom).

A Symbiote that is vulnerable to sonics and to heat.

If anything, Spidey should be going down faster against Firelord than usual.

[stolisomancer]

This comic came out when I was a kid, so I have a nice shiny pair of nostalgia goggles on when it comes to this one. It still stands out to me as one of the quintessential unbalanced punch-ups, and is probably one of the reasons why I tend to brush off concerns to this day that relate back to pure power-level complaints. Anybody can beat anybody if the circumstances are right, particularly in the Marvel Universe.

One of the consistent threads in the discussion, though, wherever it shows up, is always people complaining about the fight as if the last two pages' worth are the entirety of it. It's not Spider-Man swooping down out of nowhere and doing the everywhere-at-once punch-up until Firelord falls over; it's two full issues of hit-and-run, whittling Firelord down and hitting him with everything, including being at ground zero when a full gas station exploded, tricking him into getting hit with a subway car, and dropping an entire tenement building on his head. It's only after he's completely out of options that Spider-Man actually attacks, going into such a berserk frenzy on the guy that he doesn't notice he's been knocked out, and this is a guy who can total cars with his bare hands, moving faster than the eye can conveniently track.

As has already been pointed out, the heralds after the Silver Surfer tend to be much weaker than he was, to the point where most of them are cosmic-level cannon fodder. Terrax, for example, gave the Fantastic Four and New Warriors a good fight, but lost. The Surfer is really in a class all his own, and looking at all the heralds who came after him, you have to figure that Galactus never decided to make another one on his level. Firelord in particular has been a jobber almost since his introduction.