How to be OP in the DC Comics-verse.
You know, every time I made a strategy guide before this one, I felt like I always knew at least one verse that could be used as a counter. DC Comics, the verse with probably the most content of any verse ever. A verse filled to the brim with every variety of stats and powers and characters and broken haxes. I think of DC as the strongest verse in fiction, at least conventionally, and trying to counter it is easily the hardest one of these challenges I've had to do.
Nonetheless, I am going to give it a try. I am forced to abridge and speak in generalities for this rather then go over every possible threat at every level, and I am using DC Rebirth versions of everyone, meaning I'm not using versions of a character that existed temporarily such as Post-Flashpoint Superman as a separate entity, just Rebirth Superman ie the version incorporating Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis and Post-Flashpoint.
Local Scale Threat/Vigilante Tier:
This is the tier of most trained fighters in the verse, unlocking some of the superhuman potential DC Humans are born with it given the dormant godwave in their forms.
In terms of power much of this tier is wall level both from often having direct wall level feats and scaling to various mooks who have their own wall level feats. Some get as high as the lower building range both from direct feats and scaling from Amazons one of whom was noted as being able to lift 10 tons, multiple times that of an elephant, and the Atlanteans who can survive the pressure of the deep ocean. In terms of speed, the verse in general is in the hypersonic range from numerous point blank automatic fire bullet-timing feats, though some are much faster. Most notably there's the Cosmic Clown, an alien android that flew to Earth from another planet at FTL speeds that happens to resemble an Earth Clown which has laser vision capable of destroying walls as well as anti-gravity floppy shoes.
The verse has highly potent stealth. There exists multiple conspiracies, even outside government ones, that secretly manipulate the fate of nations such as the league of assassins, the league of shadows, and the court of owls. These regularly incorporate cutting edge and otherwordly tech, hypnosis, and supernatural levels of skill and stealth to infiltrate and assassinate. Likewise there exists the Lilim, Demonic Descendants of Lilith whose leader Mazikeen has sworn loyalty to Lucifer Morningstar. The Lilim, even their warriors, have powers highly useful for inflitration including non-corporeality, shapeshifting, literal face-stealing, logia intangibility (shadow) and teleportation strong enough to teleport into and out of Hell.
However there is another form of stealth focused on being too small to perceive normally. On the smallest scale there is the Microverse, a universe existing smaller then subatomic particles, yet this reality forms the basis of existence and destroying the Microverse would destroy the higher worlds predicated on the Microverse. Defenders of this realm are the superheroes who go by the name "The Atom" who can at will control the size and density of objects, and via the microverse can travel casually between the macroscopic realities. If the real is not to your taste, in the digital cyberspace resides the villainess Doctor Cyber, once a beautiful woman she was disfigured and sought refuge in the digital world until the time comes she could have her consciousness take over the mind of the beautiful body of Wonder Woman. Even more threatening then these is the living virus Morticoccus. Morticoccus the virus takes control of the minds and bodies of those it infects, able to fuse the genetic codes of those it infects to alter their traits rapidly aiding it's spread. The virus was so effective that it effectively destroyed a whole universe. There's even Queen Bee, who controls her own inter-galactic Bee Hive.
Bees. My God.
There are other forms of physical hax. Flash Villain Captain Cold has a gun that can create temperatures as low as absolute zero, and Batman villain Mr. Freeze has frozen multiple city blocks at once. There is most forms of elemental manipulation including fire, lightning, acid, radiation and so forth. There is also god tier vibration manipulation as in DC, finding the vibrational frequency of something allows you to interact with it more fundamentally. DC Superhero Vibe was able to find the frequency of the multiverse and could actually threaten the entire multiverse via vibrations. Minor villain Pied Piper was able to tap into the frequency of the Anti-Life Equation and destroy the realm of Apokalips, which at the very least would be galactic level, and likely multiverse level. It's unknown if Pied Piper's music can tap into the other aspects of the Anti-Life Equation. There's numerous time travelers, to the point there are whole groups whose job is to govern the timestream (The Linear Men). Of particular note from 1 Billion Ad is the "Lord of Time" Epoch. Epoch not only has time travel and time manipulation, but has a supercomputer capable of freezing the entire spacetime continuum in time, as well as armor that assimilates the weaponry of whatever time period he's in, and and a quantum scale weapon. Speaking of quantum, there's pretty insane probability manipulation. There's the semi-redeemed villain Major Disaster who direct control of chaos, able to cause heart attacks, tsunami and earthquakes via sheer probability manipulation and once caused multiple meteors to approach Superman's position at the same time a cosmically small probability. But even this pales in comparison to Jill Presto.
Jill Presto was given the power of the Basanos, 52 entities that control fate. Jill Presto upon seeing an entity can see their past, present and literally every possible future including every possible way they could die and can have any happen at will, or in fact can have all of them happen at will subjecting the target to experience every single way of the infinite ways they could die. She can heal and resurrect, even herself, and can completely wipe memories as she did to Cestis. The Basanos power is acausal and will protect her from trans-temporal attacks. Also she is a good cabaret dancer which comes in surprising handy.
Defensively, outside of Jill Presto, numerous other beings have their own forms of regen. For instance there are the Fables, embodiments of the fairy tales who will regen so long as their story is told. More notable of these to my memory is the Secret Agent Cinderella who can summon her animal friends to help her, including the time manipulating mouse Dickory. There exists the nightmarish monsters from a previous creator, the Jin-En-Mok who returned from having their whole creation destroyed and can warp space and minds. Within the Dreaming resides the court of the Dream King, Dream of the Endless including the Raven Matthew he sends as scout, the brothers and Abel, the timid librarian Lucien who manages the dreaming's information, the pumpkin headed Meryl Pumpkinhead who paints the backgrounds of dreams. These are mental plane beings who because of their nature as part of the dreaming will regenerate so long as the Dreaming exists. Cain is particularly hard to kill due to the Mark of Cain placed upon him, so that anyone who harms Cain will suffer the same harm sevenfold over, a defense so potent even Lucifer Morningstar paid heed too.
Cain's only real weakness is being psychologically manipulated away or into harming himself. Speaking of which, the tier has numerous high tier psychological manipulators. There are many supergenius intellects in general like Ozymandias (who created technology that could harm the multiversal being Doctor Manhattan), Detective Chimp (an intelligent ape whose detective skills are noted to rival even Batman), Calculator, Thinker, Oracle, and even Alexander Luthor, an alternate universe version of Lex Luthor. There are also characters, genius or not, who specialize specifically in manipulation. There's the street level hero Heckler who heckles his opponents into submission by mocking them (Basically the living embodiment of the D&D spell Vicious Mockery). There's Centurian, one of Emperor Claudius' imperial guard given alchemical powers of advanced charisma and hypnosis (enough to be able to threaten the world) as well as having the ability to manifest a ghost army of the roman legion that served him in the past and a gun that erases an opponent from existence and causality. There's the villain Tao, who has a truly godly level of intellect able to with just a few words or gestures cause anyone to obey his will without any hypnosis. Tao also usurped from metahumans the abilities of telekinesis, teleportation, transmutation and superhuman stats.
Speaking of psychics, the verse has got that in spades. Due to their connection to the dreaming any conscious being has a subliminal ability to warp reality with their minds to the point that 1,000 people dreaming together warped the entire spacetime continuum in The Sandman. This is repeated with Brainiac's plan of capturing humans to use their ability to dream to warp reality. There are a lot of psychics, including the black heart of darkness itself Crazy Quilt who hypnotizes people with colors. There exists good martial arts techniques to erase or alter memories and the villain Phobia can show people their greatest fears. Greater than this is Ex-Preacher Jesse Custer who possess the Word of God. The Word of God forces anyone who hears to obey Jesse Custer's commands, even if they are physically impossible things like "drop dead" or "burst into flames". This only doesn't work on beings that can not comprehend his commands such as those that don't speak English, the deaf, animals etc.
The Word of God is also a magical effect, which the verse has in spades. DC-verse magic....is absolutely insane. There is a vast amount of DC Magic-users, to the point that the Homo Magi subspecies of humanity numbers at least in the thousands. Reality-Warping like removing gravity, turning rain into flowers, or turning night to day are treated as trivial. Most incredibly, 7 mages were able to bind even Dream of the Endless, one of the God Tiers of DC Comics. Of this tier, the most powerful of the mages is the laughing magician John Constantine whose wit and skill in magic has allowed him to beat numerous God Tier threats like the Upside Down Man or Blight and even one time seemed to have outwit God himself. Constantine most famously uses the synchronicity waves, a form of passive luck or probability manipulation that even Lucifer Morningstar views as notable. There are outright magical entities as well like Kid Eternity, a non-corporeal entity who can summon historical or mythological entities to fight for him. There's also anti-magic, including the magic absorption of Black Alice who was able to absorb even the magic of the Spectre or Doctor Thirteen, a man who believes all magic and supernatural and has dedicated his life to disproving it because he emits a passive aura that turns all magic nearby into elaborate hoaxes including, it's implied, the Phantom Stranger.
Of course there is reality-warping on a greater scale then most magicians of this scale can achieve. The 30th century villainess the Emerald Empress wields the Emerald Eye of Ekron which can warp reality on a planetary scale. Johnny Thunder by saying his magic word can summon a djinn, most often Thunerbolt, to aid him. It's unknown how strong the djinn's reality-warping is, but given they are 5D beings like the 5D Imps it's possible it's on a multiversal scale. Even more impressive the psycho Doctor Destiny once got his hands on the Dreamstone, containing a part of the power of Dream of the Endless. With this power he could warp minds on a planetary scale while still playing around and when trying could warp all of reality and the dreaming and even threaten Dream of the Endless.
Though there are threats even Dreamstone Doctor Destiny might struggle with such as Resurrection Man who resurrects each time he dies with a new superpower or Negative Man, a mass of pure virtuality (IE potentiality) who drives people insane just by looking at him. And how he could he possibly deal with the intangible sword-wielding hero The Gay Ghost or against Fairy Tales "Thor" Fenton, a mob boss who dresses up and impersonates the Norse God Thor when bank-robbing so people won't fight back.
I'm expected to counter THAT. How on Earth does any one being have the abilities to counter the verse?!
Well....the trick here is they don't have too. The DC Universe is akin to a natural enviornment where natural resources are highly rich. Magic, Martial Arts, Technology, Psionics etc. are all amped beyond what most verses can do with them. The real trick is picking characters that can take advantage of the resource-rich DC Universe and evolve quickly by exploiting the verse's amped up abilities.
Examples: A strong technopath could probably quickly become vastly stronger then they normally are by exploiting the verse's powerful technology. A mage able to steal other forms of magic could quickly gain access to the strongest magic the tier has to offer and become comparable at least.
This all leads up to the singular best powerset for this verse; power absorption/power copying. A being that can copy or absorb powers would have a virtual buffet of godlike powers to soak up. But that takes time...is there anything else?
Yes actually. I found one ability that would be broken on almost every single DC Tier, depending on scale. That ability is fourth wall manipulation. Being able to see hypertime, past the fourth wall, actually gives any being that can a massive advantage. Joker, who is often hypothesized to having seen past Hypertime, was able manipulate the plot and turn the pages of the comic book for the reader. Harley actually broke the DC reality by causing a continuity problem and restored it all by exploiting the metafictional nature of DC. Animal Man became vastly stronger via seeing past the fourth wall, able to even beat Overman by trapping him in the space outside the panels.
So the abilities that are really helpful here are fourth wall manipulation, the ability to exploit the verse to grow massively stronger, and power manipulation. My first counter has 2 of these and a number of more circumstantial benefits, that being
Professor X from Marvel Comics.
One of the comparisons I like to make between DC and Marvel is that while both have lots of mages and psychics, and while they reach about the same level with the top tiers, the average DC Mage is a lot stronger then the average Marvel Mage while the average Marvel psychic is a lot stronger then the average DC psychic. Most DC psychics are limited to affecting only one person or a few people at a time while Marvel psychics often manipulate large swaths of people, up to and include entire planets and of them Professor X is a top tier psychic.
Professor X had fended off Galactus by transmitting into his mind the thoughts and feelings of a whole planet. Professor X defeated the skyfather level Ego, the living planet, by transmitting the thoughts of an entire planet. Imagine what would have happened if they all had access to the dreaming, where 1,000 people dreaming together can warp the reality of an entire spacetime continuum at least.
Professor X's mental might is so great that he can mentally battle Dark Phoenix across all planes of reality. This and his mental resistance shows he could fight even the Negative Man or cosmic reality warpers like Emerald Empress or Thunderbolt.
He wouldn't get blitzed as Professor X's mind works at faster then light speeds. And stealth or manipulation would absolutely not work. Professor X has passive mind-reading and can scan the thoughts of an entire world and his supergenius intellect is one of the greatest in the Marvel Universe.
He also has what would be an absolutely broken combo. Professor X has the ability to mentally shut off parts of the brain, including the parts that grant superpowers, being able to basically turn off his enemies superpowers, especially if combined with his ability to telekinetically disarm opponents of any notable weapons that are threats. He also has the ability to enter his own dream dimension where months can pass while hours pass outside. The people most likely to be able to enter this dimension at all are the Homo Magi, which are the exact group of people Professor X would most likely have the capacity to turn off their powers.
But my favorite counter is against Doctor Destiny. If the psychopathic Doctor Destiny had the Dreamstone and threatened all of reality, Professor X has one last resource, almost perfectly the Marvel equivalent to the Dreamstone, the 616 Mind Gem. If Dreamstone Doctor Destiny fought Mind Gem Professor X, Professor X's harmonious, focused, rational mind would be able to beat Doctor Destiny's psychopathic, confused, unfocused mind, in a fight thematic to both of them.
The only real threats to Professor X would be the time manipulators and the probability manipulators taking advantage of his physical frailty. For a counter that is not physically frail, you could use
He wouldn't get blitzed as Professor X's mind works at faster then light speeds. And stealth or manipulation would absolutely not work. Professor X has passive mind-reading and can scan the thoughts of an entire world and his supergenius intellect is one of the greatest in the Marvel Universe.
He also has what would be an absolutely broken combo. Professor X has the ability to mentally shut off parts of the brain, including the parts that grant superpowers, being able to basically turn off his enemies superpowers, especially if combined with his ability to telekinetically disarm opponents of any notable weapons that are threats. He also has the ability to enter his own dream dimension where months can pass while hours pass outside. The people most likely to be able to enter this dimension at all are the Homo Magi, which are the exact group of people Professor X would most likely have the capacity to turn off their powers.
But my favorite counter is against Doctor Destiny. If the psychopathic Doctor Destiny had the Dreamstone and threatened all of reality, Professor X has one last resource, almost perfectly the Marvel equivalent to the Dreamstone, the 616 Mind Gem. If Dreamstone Doctor Destiny fought Mind Gem Professor X, Professor X's harmonious, focused, rational mind would be able to beat Doctor Destiny's psychopathic, confused, unfocused mind, in a fight thematic to both of them.
The only real threats to Professor X would be the time manipulators and the probability manipulators taking advantage of his physical frailty. For a counter that is not physically frail, you could use
Sadako from Ring.
Sadako was powerful enough to shake buildings and survive the power of the Bushinsaba. She was also fast enough to battle Bushinsaba across an entire mountain range suggesting she would be considered highly powerful for the tier, and would be able to equal them in speed. Sadako has 2 powers together that would make her extremely dangerous for this tier;
First is her famous technopathy. Even in her own universe with more normal techology, Sadako's control of technology has allowed her to control machinery and technology making them do things like electrocute people, call out to victims, or upload her directly into there (suggesting she could do what Doctor Cyber does and simply remain in cyberspace to be highly difficult for anyone else to interact with). However the DCU has hyper-advanced techology such as Lantern Rings, Blue Beetle Scarab (which as a magical being she would be able to attune too) or even more powerfully the technology of the new gods such as the mother boxes, mobius chair etc, which would allow Sadako to gain a vast variety of powers. Computerized Lasers and Reality-Warping New God technology would become her fingers able to claw into the verse's weak points, and various shield technology would become her new skin, nearly impenetrable. New God Technology would hypothetically allow her to access even other dimensions with ease, which brings to the other important power she has.
Sadako has a virus like nature and spreads across biological entities. Sadako can infect biological entities, even possessing them if she wishes, and spreading from entity to entity, even altering their genetic code at will. This is very similar to Morticoccus the sentient virus which wiped out an entire universe. However Morticoccus was limited to one universe and only spread across the stars because the Green Lantern of that world, unknowingly already infected, flew through the stars to get help spreading it. Sadako can simply travel between dimensions at will. Sadako could spread across numerous dimensions at once, and it would be nigh-impossible to stop the spread of her, especially as she would grow stronger with each being she consumed. Even more chillingly she can absorb other spiritual other entities, meaning it should be possible for her to infiltrate Underworld and grow even infinitely strong by absorbing the endless helpless souls there.
Even if the tier tried to fight against her, they would find it incredibly difficult as not only does she naturally exist in her own dimension but she would know if any of them wished to threaten her by the precognition she inherited from her mother and have mind hax equal to essentially all the psychics of this tier. This would be especially true if she used her clairvoyance to find the Mirror Master's dimension, a dimension of seemingly endless mirrors that the Mirror Master use as portals to other dimensions where Sadako could use her form of duplication to duplicate herself seemingly un-endingly and gain immediate awareness of any dimensions.
Also this is more speculative, but during the New 52, John Constantine and company fought Blight, the darkness of the embodiment of mankinds sins and evil thoughts and they couldn't defeat it because any negative thoughts they had of trying to beat it simply became part of it, possibly due to the nature of thoughts and the dreaming in DC. Sadako has also been described similarly specifically as an "absolute darkness that continues forever" so it's possible especially given Sadako's already established ability to absorb parts of consciousness she would similarly be able to absorb and negative thought of harming her into herself and become stronger.
In case you're thinking that Sadako's tendency to use creative ways of killing and tendency to wait would be a hinderance, it should be noted that is only true when fighting normal humans she could easily kill any time. When fighting other powerful beings like other Onryu, Sadako actually tries to kill immediately to the best of her abilities.
Sadako's only real threats would be the high end reality-warpers. Even though she could probably simply manipulate the psychotic Doctor Destiny and the naive Johnny Thunder it is hypothetical they could warp her from existence or Sadako could be beaten if she was attacked by strong magic-users immediately after spawning (which isn't hugely likely). For a even harder to fight counter, I would suggest
Hatou Manabu from Murasakiiro no Qualia
Hatou is a being who can manipulate the concept of quantum superimposition (ie the state of reality of existing in all possible states before being observed) allowing her to communicate with every version of herself and able to access every reality that potentially exists at any moment.
Hatou's interesting to talk about in that there are two things needed to beat her, but the both are not possessed by the same being.
Hatou in a fight instead of acting in any particular reality, acts in all of them acting like light which always takes the shortest path, with all non-shortest possibilities experiencing interference and thus disappearing. This means if in any possibility she wins, she will observe the one she wins in. Affecting her is nigh impossible, as she has switched her own status to quantum mechanically observable, neither wave or particle, nor even a probability. She is not able to be interacted with any of the fundamental forces making her fundamentally impossible to interact with her outside her own actions or higher plane forces.
To defeat her requires an infinite quantum manipulation and the ability to affect non-existent beings. DC sorcerers actually have the ability to attack aspects of nothingness, but would be beaten by her quantum manipulation causing them to spontaneously not existing.
Jill Presto would actually be able to match her quantum manipulate via the Basanos which control every fate, and if Hatou was still a physical being, being able to subjugate her to all of the infinite possible ways she could die at once, would be a way of defeating herself. This is because experiencing every reality at once means there would be no quantum position since all of them would be being observed at once.
However Hatou is a non-existence being which Jill Presto has never been shown to interact with. More then likely Hatou would be able to solo the tier. However it's possible either Jill Presto or John Constantine via the Synchronicity wave would be able to defeat her. For the ultimate counter to this tier, I present
Aoi Hayanose from Instant Death
Aoi is one of the sages and so should scale to other similar beings who could move comparable to light making her faster then most of the tier but not quite as fast as Cosmic Clown.
Aoi's power is Balance of Power, which is like Dr. Thirteen's power ramped up to 11, nullifying not just magic but any power that is not achieved by great efforts and all supernatural, which would essentially turn off the abilities of the entire tier, even the superhuman stats of otherwise mundane humans.
But that alone wouldn't be enough as there is technology that was attained by great effort that wouldn't be nullified but Aoi Hayanoise can create her own dimension with "To Reject All, To Not Let Anyone Past Here" that is difficult to enter, which would be especially hard without magic.
But these are just nice bonuses to the big one: Aoi has "Meta Perspective" allowing her to see and manipulate the plot itself, which would give her god tier control of reality within DC. Her meta perspective lets her know the past, present and future of a character in their script, and in DC would hypothetically let her hijack the Meta-verse, the metafictional nature of reality, and simply dictate the next part of the story. Aoi's powersets would allow her to remain nigh-untouchable in her own dimension and rewrite the abilities of essentially everyone on this tier to make them powerless.
City to Planet Scale Threat/Metahuman Tier:
This tier has most of the Earth-bound metahumans as well as most peak humans whose physical power is so great that people like Batman are often mistaken for metahumans outright.
In terms of power this tier varies greatly from building level from being superior to the previous tier to planet level. In terms of speed this tier ranges generally in the same range of hypersonic to ftl though most hypersonic characters at this tier have higher reflexes and massively hypersonic to ftl characters are much more common.
Most of the options of the previous tier are here, at the same or higher levels. This is mostly going to be over the relevant new threats at this tier.
There are powerful mages at this tier, such as Flash Villain Abra Kadabra who can react at mftl speeds turning intangible to avoid the Flash and spacetime bfr. There's Nightmare Nurse who can heal the Swamp Thing from only a small amount of him to being able to restore all of creation and who even memories of her are sentient entities that can attack. There's Madame Xanadu with god tier sealing and is completely immortal even against beings like the Spectre. The two of them together contributed 2/3 of the magic to freeze time across the entire multiverse. There's the ghost Deadman whose possession is impressive enough to possess Swamp Thing and the entirety of the Green, the metaphysical force behind all plant life in all universes.
Outside the mystical there are beings like B'wana Beast who can merge animal species together to create hybrids, including the various mythical beings of the DCU. There's Mr. Terrific the third greatest intellect in the DCU, whose T-Spheres are among the greatest tech in the multiverse, and who can make himself invisible to all technology. There's the Signal whose a light manipulator whose light manipulation and ability to see photons is so strong that he can see the past and future of whole universes, seeing the fates of any entity or seeing their past. Speaking of electromagnetic waves, Black Lightning is an electricity manipulater strong enough to move at the speed of lightning and with great effort control the electromagnetic field of the whole planet. Manipulation of the mirrors serves the Mirror Master well, as he can exist in his own mirror dimension outside of reality, that gives him access to all universes, which he can use to dimensional bfr or create reflections of his opponents to fight them as well as other tricks like sealing, transmutation into glass, intangibility, invisibility and so forth.
You have even greater breadth of manipulation of matter and energy such as Lady Quark who can control the very atoms making up existence or regenerate from subatomic energy or the great Jenny Quantum whose matter-energy control is great enough to create or tear apart whole universe as well as many other tricks such as manipulating anti-matter, changing the age of beings, and manipulation of probability on a quantum scale.
Numerous members of the Doom Patrol are here. You have Dorothy Spinner whose strength of mind is great enough to contain multiversal beings like the Candlemaker and to create conceptual reality from nothingness. You have Flex Mentallo, hero of the beach, who can flex hard enough to warp reality, giving visions of god, change a pentagon into a circle, and stop threats to all of creation. There's the Negative Man, made of negative energy that transcends creation and can shrink down seemingly past the microverse to the nothingness making up existence, can destroy the Candlemaker via it's negative energy (suggesting multiversal negative energy manipulation). And of course you have Crazy Jane whose many alternate personalities are all independent entities with their own superpowers, including abstract ones that have an abstract existence, one with vibration manipulation powerful enough to slow down the Decreator, an imminent threat to all existence so much that reality would be created faster then it could destroy, and one that has art manipulation which reached out and manipulated the art of the comic book itself, giving a metafictional control of reality. The Doom Patrol have high resistance to plot hax as not even Retconn Corps, the group that enforces continuity could stop them.
Speaking of which, the lesser enforces of Retconn Corps are here, with their ability to control concepts and plot and continuity would be here. But these are of course secondary to their greatest ability, their most important job of delivering wholesome delicious milk. Their milk manipulation is truly second to none in all of DC.
Here exists it seems two of the founding 7 members of the Justice League of America. Here exists Batman. Batman has a lot of things to go over, to the point that I simply can't explain all his things here, but in short: he has many broken forms of martial arts at a skill level allowing him to fight beings cosmically more powerful then him, he has hypnosis, he has all kinds of broken technology including reality-warping devices, and he has a massive supergenius intellect, the second greatest on Earth, superior to even Mr. Terrific. Some people say that Batman can beat ANYBODY with prep and while this is an exaggeration, it is true that Batman can and has beaten threats to all of reality via proper planning, good tactical thinking and his tech. This is also where many of Batman's MANY alternate versions are here, most notably two of the versions from the Dark Multiverse, The Grim Knight and the Batman who Laughs, who are comparable to Batman in intellect and power. This is also the position of the Batman of the future, Batman 1,000,000 the greatest martial artist in DC history, greater then even Karate Kid.
The Stronger of Batman's rogues would likely be here, including the meta-manipulating Joker and Harley Quinn, the plant and mind manipulator Poison Ivy, Catwoman whose stealth rivals Bruce's own (who can become invisible to beings who can sense the whole Earth), Clayface, a powerful Earth Elemental-styled being, and Killer Croc who in one form was a match and even overpowered Post-Flashpoint Wonder Woman.
By his direct feats, Aquaman would also be here (some people suggest he should be higher but I'm skeptical of the scaling....if the scaling is legit that would not invalidate any of the strategies here). Aquaman has survived blows powerful enough to sink Atlantis and has lightning-timed. Aquaman's telepathy is strong enough to command all the oceans at once, showing psionic ability FAR behind anyone in the prior tier. He can summon ancient beings of the Ocean that are cosmically strong, far stronger then any of my counters are allowed to be. Aquaman can also just neg energy and magic, and can draw entities into the spiritual seas.
While the same abilities are useful here, this tier has some resistances to them. Plot Hax can be resisted by Retconn Corps and the Doom Patrol.
The other tactics are still probably the best way to go. Having higher stats then most of the verse seems more relevant here, so picking counters near the edge of the stat bracket seems like it would come as an actual advantage for this tier.
While a lot of the abilities are preserved between the tiers, this tier seems to possess less actual character then the prior. This suggests overwhelming enemies with abilities like summoning, duplication or danmaku would perhaps be helpful. Beyond that another ability that I think would be very strong would be existence erasure, as resistance to that seems rare in the DCU as shown by Darkseid's Omega Beams, and without that many threats, one would not be as much of being overwhelmed.
My first counter is a bit hard to analyze but I believe would do pretty well against this, that being
Alucard from Hellsing.
Alucard has the power of the Schrodingers which allows for the quantum superimposition of the individual, to be where they believe they are and in the condition they are, allowing the user to gain limited omnipresence (multi-presence). When combined with Alucard's ability to absorb beings and gain their powers, Alucard could quickly absorb a lot of the relevant abilities, quickly spiraling out of control by exponential power growth, especially given vampires' precognition.
Alucard also notably exists if he chooses "everywhere and nowhere", if he has a form of non-existent being then only the magicians would be able to kill him which are the people he can quickly overpower with power above city block level and massively hypersonic as he had in his original state.
If Alucard had to fight for whatever reason, he has his own strong arsenal including hypnosis, intangibility, teleportation, hemokinesis and telekinesis, and most notably his ability to summon his own army of vampires who would be likely be able to overwhelm the tier.
The biggest threats to him would be Madame Xanadu and Nightmare Nurse, if they catch him off guard. For a counter that would do even better I suggest
Phantaminum from Talse Uzer Story
Phantaminum is the strongest axis of the verse, far stronger then ones who could destroy structures larger then all of North America and able to light-time.
As an axis, Phantaminum can create it's own story, a metafictional dimension where it controls destiny, and can negate any non-absolute powers in it's own terrority, meaning that only the beings aware of hypertime, Crazy Jane and the Retconn Corps would be able to do anything in it's own territory though none of those can physically compete with Phantaminum who can also drive anyone insane just from the sight of it, can use danmaku attacks, can seal and inter-dimensional travel, all strong but fair abilities on their own.
But combined it would be extremely difficult for Harley, Joker, Jane and Retconn Corps to do anything to it, especially as it could transmute them, bfr them away from his dimension, seal them, or control destiny to defeat most of them. It could even erase all of them outright. It could even overpower some level of metafictional manipulation.
That said while Phantaminum would be impossible to defeat for the vast majority of verses, let alone without raw overpowering it, this tier actually could potentially defeat it just by swarming it with Retconn Corps agents. For an even better counter, you could use
Medaka Kurokami from Medaka Box.
Medaka can destroy a moon and can move faster then beings that move at light speed showing in stats she would be near the top of the tier.
Medaka has as lot of relatively normal tricks that would make her strong in most verses, she has supernatural luck, she has has mind-reading and invisibility, precognition and so forth but her talents go far beyond it. She has strong vibration manipulation which would possibly allow her to affect reality's vibrations, but she can also do that in other ways, she can manipulate causes and metafiction which would allow her to neg most of the tier. She can also knock away any physical, astral, mental or spiritual damage she would take onto anyone nearby meaning only abstract or metafictional attacks from the tier would be able to do anything to her.
She has universal scale existence erasure on a conceptual scale as she has the capacity to even erase a color from the universe. This means she could likely wipe out all superpowered entities from the universe. However even this is scratching the surface. Medaka's power nullification and copying means she could nullify any power, or indeed all powers from the tier at once, or copy them and gain them herself. This would allow her to grow exponentially stronger while in the verse.
However it is still hypothetically possible for Medaka to die, and given the verse's probability manipulation which could allow something like a Retconn Corps plot hax to hit the area she spawns in the minute she is in, this isn't a risk that should be taken. But who would be able to definitely defeat the entire tier? Well for my last counter for this tier I would suggest
Nine the Phantom from BlazBlue
Nine the Phantom scales from lesser BlazBlue characters as one of the heroes that took down the Black Beast who could destroy the Earth-Moon system and violently shatter the moon putting them well into the ftl and planetary range, giving her a large decisive stat advantage against the tier.
Nine's biggest advantage is her sheer versatility. She has so many abilities that one would want to fight the verse such as her own supergenius intellect, technology manipulaton from shutting down Tager's comms, duplication, summoning, forcefields that drain opponents power, able to transcend over concepts and thus being invulnerable to almost anything in the tier as well as resistance to basically everything the tier can throw at her beyond even this.
Nine has the ability Phemonema Intervention, an ability that allows her to change which possibility is being observed and can be used to instantly erase any being or number of beings from existence. She also scales to Toya Kagari who was able to absorb Ripper and his abilities showing she could absorb entities and gain their powers, growing exponentially stronger.
Nine also has one more notable ability I think would make her literally godlike in the DCU. She helped create the phantom virus with many unsolvable equations, showing suggestion that she can control mathmatics. If this is the case it's likely she could manipulate the Anti-Life Equation, a mathmatical equation that gives multiversal scale existence erasure and mental warping, and would make her on par with gods like Darkseid. She would also be able to control it's opposite the Life Equation.
Stellar to Galactic Scale Tier/Lantern Tier:
Beings at this tier range from stellar to galactic tier, scaling from Lanterns whose passive shields can shield from solar systems being destroyed, supernova and black holes, as well thousands being able to hold in a galaxy destroying bomb and one of them stretching to galactic size with massive effort.
High Tier Heroes of the Post-Flashpoint Continuity would be on the lower range of here here based on New 52 Superman and Doomsday surviving a black hole, New 52 Supeman and Cyborg Superman being able to tank supernova, New 52 Wonder Woman fighting Apollo who was the Sun itself, and New 52 Orion Emanation being able to destroy a star system in a clash with a Nth Metal Golem.
Relative Cosmic Low Tiers of the Pre-Crisis Era would be on the higher end would be here scaling from Pre-Crisis Superboy who was able to throw a neutron star into a distant galaxy and towing the planets of a galaxy on a chain, various Sun-Eaters, one of whom Mongul kept as a pet, being able to just consume a whole galaxy.
Speeds vary between quadrillions of times the speed of light on a lower end scaling from Lanterns being able to traverse the whole universe, 100 trillion light years long in DC Comics at least, in hours at most, to tredecillions for any being that can break the time barrier, including even Child Kryptonians in Pre-Crisis Era scaling from Wally West crossing at least the Earth-Moon distance in less then a planck instant. This speed means I functionally speaking can use any character I want regardless of speed, though I also have to worry about speedblitz.
Speaking of which, Speedforce Users everybody! Kinetic Energy manipulators that manipulate the speedforce, which is all motion in the multiverse that can use it for tricks like the infinite mass punch which uses relativity to cause their relative mass to spike approaching infinity, speedforce dump which allows for dimensional BFR even beings that can normally travel between dimensions can't get out of, speed force steal which allowed even for draining the energy of a multiversal entity and can drain the entity until they're just a statue, to summon the other Flashes, to phase through objects and make them explode, and the greatest of the speedforce manipulators Wally and Barry can outrun even concepts and can absorb the whole of the speedforce within them able to reach infinite speeds and restructure all of time. Oh and they can time travel.
The Flash's strongest villains are here as well, like the Two Zooms and the Reverse Flash who via their own speed or spacetime manipulation can keep up with the Speedsters, though Barry and Wally going all out can outpace even them.
The race of Kryptonians are generally here, with abilities I think most of us are familiar with, though less often referenced is the wondrous technology they have including casual bfr to a conceptual land with their phantom zone projectors.
Lord Helspont, a powerful villain of the Post-Flashpoint continuity would be here, with his raw power enough to overwhelm New 52 Superman and his time manipulation and mind manipulation.
This is the tier of most of the Lanterns, Red Lanterns of Rage, Orange Lanterns of Greed (though none really at this tier due to Larfleez hoarding it), Yellow Lanterns of Fear, Green Lanterns of Will, Blue Lanterns of Hope, Indigo Lanterns of Compassion and Violet Lanterns of Love. It should be noted that the Lanterns include beings like Dkrtzy RRR, a bio-sentient mathmatical equation and other strange lifeforms. Standard powers of Green Lanterns include cosmic scale energy constructs, matter-energy manipulation and spacetime manipulation, generally on the order of solar system wide. Most also possess low level of mental manipulation.
From Wonder Woman's villain gallery there is Circe the trickster, whose magic can warp the entire universe, Cheetah, who can run nearly as fast as as the Flash, and the Queen of Fables, an extra-dimensional planetary scale reality-warper.
Most of Superman's rogues gallery would be here as well, mot notably Lobo who has a legendary regen factor, able to come back and duplicate from a drop of blood, able to regen from just a soul and possess other beings in addition to his other crazy abilities and Doomsday, who also possess an infamous regen factor able to come back and evolve from anything that has killed it, as well as universal raw durability.
This tier also has Firestorm, who has a cosmic scale manipulation of matter-energy and space-time to the point he can potentially create a new big bang, the Hourman who has multiversal scale time manipulation as well as Animal Man whose metafictional manipulation has already been mentioned.
This verse doesn't add much more diversity of abilities, it just pushes up the power level and scale even further. However this tier has way more characters then the prior tier (The Green Lanterns alone number in the thousands) and also has some of the fastest characters without infinite speed in fiction (and they can even gain infinite speed temporarily). Time Travel and Acausality or some form of passive hax is basically required.
However that does give a big weakness of this tier in particular, as a passive hax energy-draining is really great. Most of the fighters here use some form of energy to perform their feats, and being energy-drained passively will neg them. This won't stop everyone, but it's a big help, which brings me to my first counter
Queen Metaria from Sailor Moon
During the Modern Age, Queen Metaria grew to the size of a planet. She passively absorbed energy from all surrounding beings, which would insta-neg much of the tier, especially when coupled with her ability to passively seal away the sight of any entity and transmute them into stone and then to part of her darkness. It's unknown if she can gain new powers this way though if she can she'd be completely broken against this tier.
It helps that Queen Metaria has planetary scale mind hax, which would be above all but top tier dc psychics by this tier and if she has time she can revive beings loyal to her with dark powers, like a slower Black Night situation. She can also grow MASSIVELY more powerful by absorbing energy, growing from only the size of a small room to the size of a planet in minutes at most and if she attains the size she had back in the Silver Millennium, the size of the Sun she would have universal levels of power and be in an even better position.
The biggest concern for Metaria is that she could get haxed from outside her tier, and especially a Violet Lantern using their love-basd light if it hurts her forehead would just shred through her. For a more defensive character, you could use
SCP-682 from SCP Foundation
SCP-682 the "hard to destroy reptile" from SCP is most known for having one particular ability; reactive evolution. Really really good reactive evolution.
SCP-682 was able to quickly grow from low building to being able to disperse clouds the size of large planets and growing in size and power to rival solar system scale black holes, making it comparable to members of this tier. It even had the capacity to grow to large enough to rival the universe, suggesting it could grow more powerful then anyone in this tier in raw power.
SCP-682's reactive evolution is so potent that not even high levels of plot hax were able to do anything to SCP-682 and 682 was able to adapt to gain similar plot hax which would be strong for this tier. SCP 826 had the ability to force whatever is written within SCP 826 into reality. When a short story was written inside SCP-826 called "The Generally Nice, Friendly Thing That Can And Will Kill SCP-682 Permanently if it So Much As Spots That Damn Lizard", this casued a 30 minute battle where SC-682 survived and the story now saying "The Generally Nice, Friendly Thing That Tried To Kill SCP-682 Permanently But Failed". Many other SCPs abilities failed to affect SCP-682 notably, such as SCP-1237-L's power nullification, SCP-1056's conceptual manipulation, SCP-536 which drastically alters the fundamental forces of the universe, SCP-936's possession and so forth. It is known that SCP-682 is a part of a higher dimensional entity, which explains it's Mid-Godly regen, described as no more notable as shaving a single hair off a greater entity that will inevitably grow up.
SCP-682 could simply adopt a similar strategy that made Doomsday so effective against the tier. While 682's raw stats aren't quite as high as Doomsday, it's rapid evolution happens at a far faster pace. It's also more versatile then Doomsday. It can duplicate by having separate pieces of it regen into separate SCP-682. Even more notably SCP-682 is noted to being able to absorb other entities adding their powers to it's own, which would allow it to grow in versatility in the superpowered world of DC Comics.
That said, while killing SCP-682 would be profoundly different for the tier, it's not impossible for them to beat it in other ways as SCP-682's evolution only seems to trigger when something seems to be trying to harm or kill it and a few other SCPs have tamed it, most infamous SCP-999 tickling it into submission.
For a character that would work as a counter without having any pronounced weakness, you could use
Lord Drakkon from Power Rangers
Lord Drakkon was stronger then the Green Ranger and implied to be stronger then the Mighty Morphin Ranger Team as a group. Power Rangers have numerous large planetary to low stellar feats which he should scale above, suggesting that he should be comparable to the lower end of this tier in terms of raw power. It is fairly similar with speed as he should be superior to Andros the Red Space Ranger who could react at close range and move comparable to the Z-Wave which traveled across the universe in seconds, requiring speeds quadrillions of times the speed of light.
But what about the tredecillions of times the speed of light entities? Well Lord Drakkon has one of the best acausality factors in fiction. If anything would threaten Lord Drakkon, the Morphing Grid, an infinite energy field that encompasses infinite universes will split that timeline into multiple timelines until he escapes, wins or until he overuses it, at which point the Morphing Grid will literally collapse the entire multiverse to resolve the paradox of Drakkon losing.
Drakkon can also casually time travel to when an opponent is weakest and/or bfr his opponents to any timeline or control their minds. Most notable is that Lord Drakkon can absorb the powers of his opponents using his blade Saba as he did to the teams of Power Rangers he faced, which caused him to drastically rise in power to the point of being an actual threat to the Morphing Grid and the beings that maintain it The Emissaries Three. If he can absorb the power of the DC superheroes/supervillain his power would rise even faster and give him even more versatility then he had.
If he was fighting this tier of characters, he could use acausality and time travel to attack the characters at a weak point, for most of them this could be as simple as when they are sleeping and use Saba to absorb their powers.
That said you could maybe argue that the speedsters could speed steal him as Barry did to COIE Anti-Monitor who had an infinite multiverse worth of energy similar to the Morphing Grid. While that's arguable, there is one character who would be the bane of the speedsters and outside of them no one can even remotely challenge, that being my ulimate counter
The Shrike from The Hyperion Cantos
Servant of the Machine Ultimate Intelligence, the Shrike has a fairly simple powerset, if one that makes people who hear it go slack-jawed.
The Shrike is a metallic being that exists outside of spacetime, that can pop in and out of time at will or between universes. It can use this to call the infinite other variations of itself to aid it in from other timelines, reduplicating itself an arbitrary amount of times able to slice at beings with durability-ignoring blades at literally any point in their timeline, or at any other being that was responsible for that being's creation, keeping that being from ever coming into being.
The Shrike is the perfect counter to speed characters, as it's attacks and being simply don't care about speed. Movement in space/time simply don't matter to the Shrike. This is bolstered by the Shrike being able to see many timelines at will and is able to see the weakest potential point on a being in spacetime, including events from before their creation. Not that he needs that to kill most entities given he can inflict Merlin's disease, where beings age backwards until they disappear from existence and use Freecasting which portals an enemy to any point in spacetime including the Big Bang or End of the Universe.
Even if they do somehow destroy the Shrike, it would mean nothing to the Shrike unless the entire multiverse was wiped as the Shrike can regenerate itself from another timeline version. And in DC where every universe, generates infinite universe variations of everything in that universe, this means instantly Shrike would have infinite versions.
The Shrike's weakness, it's code of honor when fighting weaker beings, would not at all apply here since the verse is full of strong beings so it simply would use it's full capacity as opposed to giving them a fair chance of winning.
Universal Scale Tier/God Emanation Tier:
Here exists many of the strongest heroes and villains of universe. These scale off numerous Universal Pre-Crisis feats such as Pre-Crisis Superman surviving the Big Bang, Darklord Maaldor turning into a whole universe on his death, Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter threatening the universe in their struggle etc. Speed is quadrillions for some entities, with most of them being Tredecillions to Infinite Speed scaling from the same Wally West Feat.
Universal Reality-Warpers are fairly common here, such as one version of Rama Kushna who could warp reality with a single gesture or the Kollective, a living collective of psychic potential that can observe every timeline and warp a universe or the New 52 manifestation of Mr Mxyzptlk who pulled a universe out of his hat. The Pre-Crisis Villainess Blackstarr was able to control the cosmos in every aspect of it's existence. In terms of energy specifically, Brainiac 5 was able to create a machine that could drain all the energy of the universe with a flip of a switch, something that can be replicated by entities like Waverider or Captain Atom.This is probably where the strongest God Emanations are as well which have massive versatility with their often cosmic reality-warping and large variety of abilities but also tend to have dominion over whatever concept they represent.
Here exists also sentient dimensions like the Darkworld Dimension, which are universe+ sized dimensions that are sentient and can warp themselves to fight. The great Atlantean noble and sorcerer Arion was of such magical power that he could defeat such a dimension by himself.
Various other villains that have threatened the universe have been here. The smartest human Lex Luthor, arguably one of the smartest beings in all of existence would be here with his power suit, with intelligence able to out think even the greatest minds of the multiverse and can invent technology to compete with great cosmic threats. The spiritual criminal Aarbur-Z would likely be here by scaling as would the Image Maker, lord of the extra-dimensional mirror world (possibly the same as Mirror Master's) and able to create alternate versions of any enemy there to fight them.
The Insane Rogue Kryptonian Superboy Prime and Monarch would be here in their normal states based on their battle destroying the universe. Superboy Prime is strong enough to retcon reality with his strikes and Monarch has the same manipulation of physical reality as Captain Atom. The villainous Starbreaker is arguably here as well, the cosmic energy-drainer.
The greatest of the lanterns would likely be here such as the creative Kyle Rayner, the indomitable will Hal Jordan and the bearer of the Starheart Alan Scott. These generally demonstrate cosmic scale physical haxes, especially sealing and spacetime manipulation, as well as lesser levels sometimes up to planetary of other forms of hax such as mind hax, soul hax etc. This would also be the level of the Guardians of the Universe, compared to these strongest of Lanterns as well as the Rogue Guardian Krona.
The Martian Manhunter would be here, famous for both his incredible stealth abilities as well as his insanely powerful psionic ability, arguably the strongest psychic in the entire mainline DCU, even able to mentally hold Vishnu, 1 of the Trimurti and invade the mind of the Spectre. He was able to mentally manipulate whole planets before and has mentally scanned whole realities and was able to mentally stop the worlogog from warping an entire reality by his mental power. He can regenerate from tiny parts of himself, has transmutation and shapeshifting and can phase through attacks. He also is comparable to Superman in stats and was the one to finally beat Darkseid via out-thinking him.
This is the tier of Wonder Woman in her goddess state or with the favor of Zeus, her normal strongest state. Her Amazonian Bracelets can redirect or reflect attacks up to infinite multiversal in scale and conceptual in fundamentality. As the goddess of war, she can summon the souls of every soldier who has ever fought before to fight by her side, which for the DC Universe would be incredibly potent. She is skilled enough to fight and even beat Ares, the very concept of war and battle, she has low levels of a lot of common haxes like transmutation, mind hax and soul hax, and her invisible jet's psychic power is enough to compete with the Martian Manhunter.
There's one more notable threat to talk about from this tier, an obscure character known as Superman. Superman has senses so strong that he can scan the whole planet and sometimes as far as other universes and higher dimensions. Superman has fair bits of spacetime hax, he has intangibility and a supergenius intellect able to compete with even Lex Luthor. He has an insane resistance to hax, often thought to be invulnerability, as not even Blackstarr who can manipulate every aspect of the cosmos was able to manipulate Superman and Supergirl. He also has the ability to use his voice to manipulate the strings making up creation to erase things from existence. This even worked on Darkseid who even while dying was still a multiversal and conceptual entities.
So what are the weaknesses of this tier? It's pretty similar to the last one. Energy and Power Manipulation, though both can be resisted by some people on this tier. Metafictional Manipulation.
One thing that might be a small weakness is from what I can tell range is not great at this tier. Outside of Alan Scott calling on the power of starheart, most characters seem to only have universal range and even if they can hit another dimension, they can't hit the entirety of another dimension unless they're inside it meaning a character with multiversal range but universal power could probably use that, but that's a pretty small advantage overall.
There is a weakness to this tier, but it's kind of a trick. A lot of this characters have individual weaknesses, personality wise or powerwise or both. Superman for instance has kryptonite. Maritan Manhunter has fire. Alan Scott has wood. They may have worked to minimize this but if they're fighting a universal warped they could probably get neg-d by that. Even the universal warpers here seem to have weaknesses such as New 52 Mxy's immaturity.
As such the key here isn't really to be really good at one thing, it's to be very versatile and be able to hit characters with their own personal weaknesses, while also being able to survive the massive onslaught that they would throw at the counter. This brings me to my first counter
Yuuki Kagurazaka from Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken
Yuuki was strong enough to destroy all the celestial bodies of the universe before his final powerup. While his speed isn't very good relatively he has Acausality and Time Travel.
It's hard to describe why Yuuki would do well in this tier, since it's really due to the sheer number of abilities he has, so that he basically an ability that is uniquely useful for any particular matchup at this tier. His ability Information King-Akakshic Records gives him access to basically every ability in his series which is an absolutely vast basically library of abilities.
Using Great Sage's All of Creation he can perfectly analyze his opponent gaining complete knowledge of them. Great Sage also has cloning which he can use in combination with All of Creation and Predator's Mimicry ability which lets him mimic the appearance and skills of another being depending on how much information he has about them.
He also has Beezlebub's Absorption which does as the name suggests and allows him to absorb other entities and gain their abilities. He also has Uriel's Infinite Prison which bfrs an opponent to an infinite space. I think the fastest characters on this tier could probably break out of this as Superman was able to break the bonds of infinity but it would still neg some of them.
Again Yuuki would be really strong not because of any few particular abilities he has, but just due to how sheer versatile he is, and how he would have basically a counter to anything the tier can use due to the sheer number of things he can do.
For an even more hax example of this you could choose as a counter
A fifth tier Mage from the World of Darkness
Mages by this tier are strong enough to create their own seemingly endless realities and naturally exist and can travel outside of spacetime and so their speed doesn't really matter, especially given their time travel and acausality.
Again Mages are here not so much because of any one particular ability but because of the vast amount of abilities they possess, but to highlight a few:
Mages have fate, conceptual and plot manipulation wrapped up together in their ability to manipulate primordial archetypes of a story. In DC this would be strong again because of hypertime and the metafictional nature of DC. They also have vibration manipulation, able to manipulate dimensional and quantum vibrations which would allow them to potentially manipulate the frequencies of the DC Universe.
Mages of higher spheres can manipulate many of the strongest haxes such and data manipulation, causality manipulation, and chaos manipulation which would be generally strong in most verses.
Ironically I think the Kryptonians would do the best since even though Blackstarr could manipulate the universe in all aspects could not directly affect the Kryptonians though they would have a very difficult time affecting the Mage given the Mage can regenerate from having their body and soul destroyed and they exist outside spacetime like the Time Trapper which Kryptonians have struggled with. The Mage meanwhile, which they might have trouble affecting Kryptonians directly, would be able to convert all the stars of the universe into red stars and all the planets of the universe into kryptonite.
Also depending on personality, the Mage might have the infamous Disbelief Hax. A Mage can potentially have the ability to not believe in things and so it be so. If the Mage simply doesn't believe in things like superpowers, aliens, amazons and so on, it could simply negate the existence of those things.
For a counter that is a bit more focused you could use
Ananda from Nobilis
Ananda is an Imperator, presiding over the Powers. Powers are conceptual entities on a universal scale. An Aspect 8 out of 9 Power of Dogs can bark and knock all the stars from the sky and an Aspect 9 can make that a mundane action any dog can do from then on. Ananda transcends Powers of space and time showing that speed would not be an issue.
Ananda has the ability to casually suspend a concept in the universe, as befitting it's nature as the Imperator leading the Council of 4. This alone would make it difficult to fight, especially given it's conceptual nature though Superman could potentially do it with his conceptual attack and powerful resistance. That said Ananda has a few other tricks.
Ananda has an aura of overwhelming beauty. This is not some form of manipulation or power, Ananda is just so conceptually beautiful that one of the Powers attempting to approach it while covering their eyes was still so overwhelming that they had to fall prostrate on the ground and proclaim the beauty of Ananda. This would be especially effective in DC as most of the beings at this tier have ENHANCED sensory abilities and would be more easily and clearly make out the overwhelming beauty of Ananda.
Ananda is also the Imperator of Murder, the Infinite, and the Fourth Age (Imperators reside over numerous Powers so the powers they control may not seem to be related to the human perspective). I'll tell you why that last one would make Ananda in particular very dangerous.
Assuming that Ananda has control over the upcoming Fifth Age in DC (if it is taken to mean the next age as opposed to the literal fourth age) then Ananda would have direct control over most of the beings of this tier and they would be literally a part of Ananda (basically everyone in this tier save the God Emanations) and could use them to fight the verse. If it translates to the DC Fourth Age as well then that would give Ananda control of the Sphere of the Gods which would not just give Ananda control of the God Emanations but would give extend their control of concepts to essentially all concepts and on to a multiversal scale.
However while these two are probably maximally strong against this tier, there's one more counter that I like even more due to thematics. My favorite counter for this tier is
Eru Iluvatar, the supreme being of the Lord of the Rings.
Eru Iluvatar casually created Ea the Timeless Halls of which the universe of Arda takes place in. While the DC Universe is larger then ours by a good margin being trillions of lightyears across, Eru's cosmos may be as big or bigger. Eru also exists in Ea a land beyond the time and causality of the universe Arda showing that speed would not be relevant against him.
Eru exists naturally again in a dimension transcending time and causality akin again to the Time Trapper which would be difficult for the tier to reach. This is especially true given Eru's very notable control of spacetime, for instance turning Arda from a flat plane to a spherical universe.
Eru's conceptual manipulation is even greater as with a single word "Ea!" Eru caused all the concepts and of creation to come into existence. Simply by speaking he could very well warp the concepts of superpowers, drastically reducing the amount of opponents drastically. Helped by his seeming omniscience, knowing all things that have ever happened or will ever happen.
However Eru's most famous and greatest power is why he is my favorite pick for this tier. Eru sung all of existence into being with the song of creation the Ainulindale. The Ainulindale is the primordial song of creation, a harmony containing all of being perfectly in tune with each other. You recall how Superman defeated Darkseid in Final Crisis?
"The worlds of the multiverse vibrate together, Darkseid and make this... sound, like an orchestra. Everything's just vibrations, really. And counter-vibrations cancel them out." Eru's Ainulindale suggest he would be able to match the counter vibrations of any or all beings in an entire cosmos at once. Bear in mind this was an ability that defeated even True Form Darkseid. Eru's song could literally neg everyone on this tier at once.
Physical Multiversal/Bleed Barrier Scale Threat/Crisis Level Event:
Outside the infinite universes there exists The Bleed, the metaphysical plane that the physical universes float within and which connects them. Existing in the Bleed is the Orrery of Worlds which monitors the 52 universes of the local multiverse. Beings at this level transcend the capacities of even a single universe to fight properly and generally require a coordinated defense by numerous universes. This is where Crisis Level Events begin.
Most of this beings are Casual Universal from being way stronger then the prior to somewhere in the Finite Muliversal range, generally from their direct feats. Speed is no longer really relevant to most of these beings.
Here lies the Emotional-Electromagnetic Beings. These are the embodiment of the brain state called these emotions across the multiverse; Butcher the embodiment of Rage, Ophidian the embodiment of Greed, Parallax the embodiment of Fear, Ion the embodiment of Will, Adara the embodiment of Hope, Proselyte the embodiment of Compassion and Predator the embodiment of Love (specifically as obsession). Transcending these are the entities that embody the brain states of death and life; Nekron and the Life Entity respectively. These float through the bleed, imbuing their states of being by their contact. At time they may possess lower entities, fusing with them and become the avatars of their state of being.
This is the power of the Demon Lords like Azazel, Neron and Trigon whose powers grew to include haxes on a universal scale as well as low multiversal scale power, Trigon notably having the power to destroy a universe at 10% of his power.
The Superman villain Time Trapper with a spacetime manipulation and power to create, destroy or warp numerous timelines at once, existing outside spacetime in his own dimension (For he is his own timeline) would be here.
The Cosmic threats Imperiex and Parallax Hal Jordan would both be here, both causing their own semi-crisis events and having cosmic scale physical hax. Brainiac in his God state would likely be at least here as from his perspective in his great state, universal scale technology is the equivalent of nanotechnology. Brainiac's vast cosmic intellect, the standard to which the greatest minds of DC are compared too is a serious threat to anyone at this tier.
Above even these threats are the Lords of Order and Chaos whose metaphysical war controls the fate of all the physical universes. Even lesser Lords of Order and Chaos can threaten whole universes while most can threaten thousands of universes at once, and the strongest are actually in the next tier up threatening physical infinity at once.
The Lords of Order are the beings who manifest the stability and structure of the multiverse. These include the ancient Lord Nabu who grants Doctor Fate his powerful magic, Amethyst, the DC Magical Girl who is princess of the land of magic Gemworld and eventually fuses outright with it (an enitre universe of magic, there's the Wizard Shazam who granted Billy Batson his godly powers, There's Kismet the metaphysical light of reason who granted Superman the power to rival and defeat Imperiex Prime. Arion the wizard did ascend to become a Lord of Order and many of the gods of order do manifest here as Lords of Order like Amon-Ra, Ormuzd, and Anu. They possess the ability to instill order and stability in a region.
The Lords of Chaos are the beings who manifest the spontaneity and chance in the multiverse. Due to their nature they are often less identifiable then the Lords of Order, but there are some notable examples. This includes the raw chaos of Darkworld, it includes "Princess" Shivering Jemmy of the Shallow Brigade who alternates between a childish and a monstrous form. There's M'Shulla and Gorrum who created Kestral to sew chaos. Klarion the Witch Boy is said to be one, and strongest among them is Mordru, the Dark Lord, who seeks to usurp all order and magic in existence into his being. They possess chaos manipulation as one might suspect.
There exists various balancers between them who seek to balance these two ranging strongly in terms of power from the Hawk and Dove to the Cosmic scale villain Libra who can steal half the power of his opponent. But strongest of them is the great Sorcerer Doctor Fate, whose magic spans universes and who can defeat the Lords of Chaos and Order and can rise in power even to multiversal.
Even stronger then these is the strongest threat of this tier, Chrysalis the Formless Girl. Chrystalis is a formless entity that exists as a wave function and intrinsic field, a necessary concept for existence. This form of absolute existence gave her awareness of her own nature as a fictional character and she has shown notable metafictional manipulation. She can also use her intrinsic field to siphon off the intrinsic fields of others, absorbing their concepts as part of her own intrinsic field. That said Chrysalis is only possibly the biggest threat of this tier as she has the really strong weakness of hating her own immortal existence, and wanting to die, even though she can't, and is apathetic towards winning any particular fight.
In terms of weaknesses, energy hax no longer seems to be very helpful, nor is multiversal range which seems common enough at this tier. Sealing actually seems to be helpful at this tier, as numerous Emotional Electromagnetic Entities were defeated by being sealed into the power batteries and Trigon is generally defeated by being sealed from the universe, which even he has difficulty in leaving. Various forms of sealing seem like actually pretty strong here.
Also there's a really low tier tactic that would still be effective, that being just basic psychological manipulation. The Lords of Order and The Lords of Chaos may be powerful, but we begin to see the trend of powerful DC characters being unable to act against their own nature, with the Lords of Order and Chaos generally being compelled to act in orderly or chaotic ways, the emotional entities being compelled to act in the nature of their psychological state, Chrysalis Girl being apathetic towards winning a fight and so on.
My first counter is a counter that would be on the lower end of the power of this tier but whose hax I believe is really well suited to fighting this tier, that being
Hades from Saint Seiya
Hades was able to maintain 3 universal+ sized dimensions; Hell, Elysium and the Hyperdimension via his godly will. He also is above even the speed of the Gold Saints like Gemini Cain whose speed was great enough that he viewed beings septillions of times the speed of light as though they were moving at just the speed of sound.
As a God, Hades presence passively removes the 5 senses and mind of any being in his presence and passively reflects all attacks from non-gods which would neg a number of characters at this tier. Hades also passively emits an aura of death that kills all things within his presence without death resistance. This means that even getting close to Hades would be difficult which would make him very hard to kill given his conceptual nature.
It is notable that Lords of Order and Chaos are the cycle of creation and destruction, linked to the cycle of reincarnation and Hades can dimensional bfr beings into a void outside even this cycle, outside material existence where the cycle of Samsara does not flow suggesting even the Lords of Order and Chaos would not be able to return.
This similar with his famous sword, the sword of Hades creating a curse that no only removes one from existence, but removes one from the cycles of reincarnation, such that one can never be brought back into existence.
In the Lost Canvas, he was also able to seal the power of Sasha (Athena) which suggests he would be able to seal much of the power quickly and casually of most of this tier. Via causality, fate and chaos manipulation, Hades would be able to replicate the powers of the Lords of Order and Chaos, particularly on the other one, using order on the Lords of Chaos and chaos on the Lords of Order exploiting their nature.
Hades can also possess people similar to many of the beings on this tier, but can't as easily be sealed to one body as most of the characters on this tier. It's possible the curse of Hades sword that can kill even conceptuals and remove them from the cycle of samsara might be enough to even kill Chrysalis.
That said while Hades would probably do very well against anyone on this tier one on one, he might get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. For a character I think would do better against raw numbers I suggest using as a counter
Tiamat from Tokyo Babel
Tiamat created the multiverse before the one created by God, consisting of an unknown but seemingly endless amount of universes.
Tiamat is famously powerful for her transcendence over most concepts like death and causality which would make her downright impossible for anyone on this tier and she would be essentially a powerful tank.
She also has numerous other forms of offensive hax including being able to to guide the causality and fate of the entire multiverse which would allow her to individually destroy each embodiment in the Bleed Barrier just by guiding the causation until that thing is destroyed. Chrysalis as a necessary concept would be particularly hard but I believe Tiamat could probably do it simply by transcending the causality of a necessary force being needed before existence could be.
Being the new God of reality, she would also have a form of omniscience that would allow her to manipulate the psychological weaknesses of the tier.
Tiamat I'm fairly sure would win against this tier, though I don't know long it would take. For a similar counter but even more versatile you could use
Vecna from Dungeons and Dragons.
Vecna the God of Secrets is comparable in power to Demon Lords like Orcus who can move around multiple universe+ sized planes of reality with his power.
So Vecna is similar to some of the counters of the earlier tiers in that he's not so much strong for any one ability of his but due to his sheer massive versatility.
He has abstract existence and mid-godly regen as a deity. He has vast and varied forms of offenses such as instant death hax, conceptual manipulation negation of regeneration and durability, existence erasure that would actually work on the embodiments of this tier. Vecna also has the ability to seal beings that warp reality on a multiversal scale suggesting he could seal these beings fairly effeiciently.
Also notable about him is he's very good at manipulation magic and nullifying it which is very helpful against beings like Mordru and Dr. Fate by nullifying their primary power source, as well as the fact that as the god of secrets and a supergenius intellect with an Intelligence score of 43 (ordinary humans have a score of 10, and geniuses have one in the upper 10s) he would be very good at psychological manipulation and could deceive much of this tier.
Though I think there's an even better counter to this tier, that being
Bartleby from Wizard101
Bartleby is the source of the spiral, the magical threat holding together the seemingly countless worlds of the multiverse and is above even the Grandfather Spider and Grandmother Raven.
Speaking off, Bartleby is the balance of chaos and order, transcending them and able to destroy the concepts of Order and Chaos should it desire too, which completely negs the Lords of Chaos and Lords of Order. Though if he were to go up against Doctor Fate and Mordru he can also passively nullify multiversal scale magic.
Bartleby also transcends all spacetime and existence meaning even affecting him for this tier would be seemingly impossible. On the other hand given it's conceptual manipulation, it's sealing which by scaling should be enough to seal away literally infinite energy, probability manipulation able to alter any probability to 0 or 100% and godly levels of regen and regen negation it could very likely easily defeat anyone in the tier save for Chrysalis.
Even Chrysalis however would probably be beaten by Bartleby's most famous ability. Bartleby's main ability is the Titanic Lullaby, a form of cosmic sleep manipulation that can put even sleepless cosmic entities into an eternal sleep. This would KO essentially anyone on the tier.
Beyond that he also has the eye of history which allows him to see all events that happened in the past and that eye of the future which lets him see all things that will happen meaning he would have a vast intel on his opponents along with his massive intellect and be able to manipulate them casually.
Conceptual/Metafictional Multiversal Scale/Fourth World to Fifth World Threat:
Above the physical and metaphysical multiverse is the pure platonic archetypal realm known as the sphere of the gods, the fourth world. This world is the concepts that act as the laws and rules of transient reality. This is the scale of beings who can threaten parts of Fourth World at least. Any threat to all of physical reality will do some damage to the Fourth World as shown when Barbatos actions caused damage to the Dreaming from threatening the multiverse. All beings on that scale those with infinite physical power, who oftentimes transcends even the concept of physical power.
Here in lies the gods; gods of knowledge and gods of magic, gods of war and gods of death, gods of nature and gods of civilization, gods of dream and reality. Any force you can imagine is amplified to the conceptual infinite. Even among the gods there is hierarchy.
Great Darkseid, arguable big bad of DC, rules over Apokalips with his great ambition to reclaim the Anti-Life Equation giving him control over the psyche of all reality. He is opposed by his opposite Highfather reigning over New Genesis. In the 8 realms of New Genesis, Skyland, Nightmare, Hell, Apokalips, Underworld, Dream and Heaven these two are generally the strongest of the conceptual entities, serving as guides to all the forces of darkness and light respectively. There are other great beings like Zeus, Jove and Odin who together split even the Power of the Source.
There are even beings that appear on occasions stronger then these. Darkseid's father Yuga Khan ancient entity of discord is greater even then Darkseid and said to be strongest of all the New Gods. In addition from the Dreaming there is Santa Claus, the hope for peace and prosperity for all mankind who every Christmas comes and gives Darkseid a lump of coal despite Darkseid's best attempts to kill him. Even stronger is The One, a fusion of the power of Ares, Zeus, Jupiter, Jove and Highfather created to defend the Sphere of the Gods.
Every concept is in that platonic archetypal world the Sphere of Gods. Even Ahl, the God of Superheroes exists here. Any possible weakness one has can be exploited here by a corresponding god of that concept.
But transcending even this is the Fifth World, The Monitor Sphere, the Metafictional story of metastories and hyperstories, stories about stories. Here the Monitors, representing the wills of the creators and editors and fans of DC Comics observe the metafictional plot of DC and attempt to aid in the preservation of reality. The Monitors are suggested to be the same as the true forms of Angels which is consistent with how it was believed Seraphs, the highest class of Angel would be a relevant threat to Lucifer Morningstar himself and how Angels are described as being essence without form (form=platonic archetypal forms, concepts) showing that they are also absolute beings. The Fifth World is the world of pure imagination, the world of the strange imps with the cartoonish antics. The Fifth World is the world of hypertime, where our minds imagine things about the DC Creation. It is to the Fourth World, what the Fourth World is to the Third World and what the Third World is to the Microverse.
The Fifth World in itself is infinitely layered, in a being called the Leviathan of Stories, a living infinite structure of stories, where each layer sees each layer below as just a fictional story. Within resides The Eonymous, a being of transcendent beings kept eternally placated by the Retconn Corps showing them entertainment and stories, Retconn Corps being a Fifth World corporation capable of wiping clean the entire Over-Monitor with a single button.
So for this tier, there really isn't a limit who I can use, though this is only the penultimate tier. As such I am going to be mostly just using some of the strongest characters in fiction as counters. I should note that these counters can probably defeat many characters from the final tier as well, but I don't believe all of them.
Things that of note here are again a metafictional aspect so as to deal with all the metahax, an ability to incorporate all the insane abilities of this tier, and also a general lack of weaknesses that can be exploited by all the gods.
For my first counter I present
Yog-Sothoth from the Cthulhu Mythos.
This is going to be a pretty short explanation: Yog-Sothoth is a form of absolute existence that emanated all concepts and forms. This means that it would transcend and be able to incorporate all concepts in the Fourth World. Yog-Sothoth also knows everything, as all knowledge is part of Yog-Sothoth would be able to manipulate any of the beings of this tier, as none of them are all-knowing.
That said it's iffy to say if Yog-Sothoth could resist or defeat plothax as nothing like that exists in the Lovecraft Mythos and it's arguable whether the Lovecraft Mythos thinking all concepts include plot or the DCU thinking all concepts are included in plot would take precedence. For a character who definitely has plot hax you could use
Gan from the Dark Tower.
Gan exists as one with the Dark Tower itself which itself is an infinite layer of stories and hyper-stories like the Leviathan of Stories. Gan can casually control such a thing suggesting that the Leviathan of stories and all the reality of Fifth World he could casually control and re-write to his liking.
It helps that he has a non-dualistic form, something even the Monitors thought was impressive, and that he is the conception of purpose. The concept of heroism, Cosmic Armor Superman was able to defeat the Fifth World Threat Mandrakk, and purpose has a similar moral excellence to it in concept, plus could be argued as essentially the role Desire of the Endless, one of the even higher beings in DC play, though probably nicer about it. Though he would also have aspects of Destiny of the Endless as well since Ka or Fate is just the manifestation of his will.
That said, using Gan might be a little cheap since Gan is the supreme being of his own reality. For a non-supreme being that could probably do it, you could use
Bernkastel from Umineko.
Bernkastel as a Voyager witch is her own seperate cosmos of an arbitrarily high number of metafictional layers that she decides, even infinite, which would allow her to equal even the Leviathan of Stories. Her metafictional manipulation is potent enough to that allow her to manipulate the Fifth World to her liking and even her basic attacks called "Truths" are conceptual to metafictional attacks that would be able to one-shot a god or a monitor.
Even if she is somehow killed she can revive herself at will from non-existence which would be a fairly exotic power to the tier. Bernkastel also has a unique interaction with the DCU in that her magic is the magic of miracles, meaning she can cause on a metafictional level anything to happen that is possible no matter how improbable, which for the DCU which encompasses everything imaginable by the Fifth World means she can cause any result she can imagine, which is nearly anything to instantly occur with a single spell.
That said, she does have some pronounced weaknesses like her alcoholism, her excessive pride, the fact that her magic depends on her belief in it and so on. This means that some of the beings of this tier could potentially manipulate her. There's another character with a pronounced weakness but that would not really be relevant for this tier, that being
Protege from Marvel Comics.
Protege by the end of his storyline, was comparable to beings that would already final tier DC characters to defeat him, like the Living Tribunal and the Pre-Retcon Beyonder.
However while Protege is immature emotionally, by this point he has cosmic awareness to the point he would know if anyone on this tier was trying to manipulate and furthermore with his cosmic awareness he would quickly gain any power used anywhere nearby him in the conceptual or metafictional area due to his broken power copying ability.
It's also notable that Protege has the Beyonder's power to bfr beings to beyond realms, which is very relevant as many DC beings have power seemingly related to their place with gods of the skies being weak in the Underworlds etc (Ares for instance created a dimension where even Zeus could not affect him). It would also be hypothetically likely for Protege to simply BFR any threat to the Source Wall where they will be sealed eternally. Protege also has the abilities of the Living Tribunal who can replicate the Reality Gem suggesting he could hit absolute types of beings.
Omniversal Scale/Absolute Multiversal Threat
Above even the Fifth World, the hyper-stories, is the Sixth World where even imagination fails, the world beyond comprenhesion. Here resides Perpetua, who with her three sons created all of creation as e know it and resides the necessary absolute meta-concepts that are needed for all existence and concepts and stories to be defined. In DC Comics there are 7 most notable infinite concepts, vibrating endlessly through all of creation, known as The Endless.
Oldest Brother Desinty is absolute fate who carries the book containing all things that ever happened and will ever happen. Oldest Sister Death is the end of all things, and at the end of all being she will turn off the lights and close the door behind her on all of creation. Dream of the Endless is the lord and sentient hyper-concept of the dreaming, which likely encompasses the Leviathan of Stories as he defines the difference between reality and non-reality. Destruction of the Endless abandoned his post allowing destruction to act in chaos across creation. Despair and Desire modulate the motivations and states of mind of all persona in narrative. Finally the youngest of the Endless, little sister Delirium once Delight, is a force of meta-chaos that sees meta-things that are not even written in Destiny's book. Each of the Endless controls their own domain comprises all of existence, and in the heart of their own domain, they are truly absolute and supreme.
However elsewhere there exists beings that are stronger then even the Endless. The Endless themselves are subject to the First Circle, the mysterious group at the beginning of all creation who set forth the bounds of all conceptions. The Endless themselves are children of Father Time and Mother Night. Father Time is the source of all change beyond even the physical (physical change being the speedforce) and was the one who gave Destiny his book as his birthright as Eldest. Mother Night, who may be the same as Pralaya is the darkness before creation and misses her children dearly, angry that they don't visit, and so wishes to reabsorb them into her darkness.
Above this is the three members The Shekinah. the female half of God who managed to defeat Carnovire after he absorbed the power of the male half of God. Here exists the Trimurti; Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; who together form the cycle of creation, preservation and destruction.
Shiva has been identified as the same as the Spectre, The Spectre being the wrath of God itself a being that can threaten all of creation and who has managed to fight against even Michael Morningstar before. The Spectre appears in Creation as manifestation of God's will. Spectre is rival of the mysterious being known as the Phantom Stranger who seems to manifest to appeal on humanity's behalf against the cosmic beings of DC. There also exists another opposing force to the Spectre, the spirit of mercy Radiant. The three possible form a trinity themselves which may or may not be the same as the Trimurti as Spectre has been identified as Shiva.
Above ever this are the two sons of God. One of these is Lucifer Morningstar, the Infinite Will of God with the power to transmute anything to anything else. Lucifer is well known for being perhaps the best manipulator in all of fiction.
The other is Michael Demiurgos, the infinite power of God. With a mere glare, Michael destroyed normal agents, which were likely on the level of the Monitors. Michael's real power is the power of god, Dunamis Demiurgos which seems to be the godwave, the original wave of power whose first pass through created all of existence and all of it's gods, and on it's bounce back seeded the universe with all the superpowers that would be. Michael's power was able to maintain all of existence every moment. During the original war in Heaven, it was said that Michael could have destroyed all the angels in the rebellion, Lucifer Morningstar included, with a single wave of his hand was his heart not clouded with mercy for his brother and the rest of the rebellion.
These two are not alone, there are numerous archangels, likely of previous creations. For instance there is Demiurge Synnar who casually created all of what is likely the first creation, seemingly having the same role as Michael Demiurgos.
Above even these is Elaine Belloc. Perhaps you've met her? The Little Girl that is also the New God of everything. Daughter of Michael Morningstar she has inherited her father's power and was given the infinite will from her uncle Lucifer. She presides over all of creation.
But before here there was a threat that even she would not have been able to defeat. A shadow to the original light of God, known as the Great Evil Beast (GEB). GEB was a darkness so absolute and powerful that it defeated the whole host of Heaven including the strongest angels.
However transcending the GEB is one being. This is a controversial being due to manifesting in many ways. However the manifestations are absurdly strong.
This being is known by their PRESENCE extending across all of creation yet is powerful enough to put Michael Morningstar and Lucifer Morningstar into stasis just from being within that presence. His VOICE is heard by Jim Corrigan turning him into the Spectre. His WORD was spoken by the voice and decides the words of the book Destiny carries, and transcends even the power of the Spectre. His manifestation as the LOGOS can call all existence into being. He reached down his HAND which at the beginning of creation shaped all of creation and fused him with the GEB ending the threat to all creation. Overseeing all of existence is the OVERSOUL that Spectre once fused with, seeing the true reality of God. Transcending all reality is the abstract infinite intelligence known as MONITOR-MIND hosting the infinite spiritual energy known as the SOURCE both of which connect with and merge God outside reality flowing into the one being transcending all. The great GODHEAD is the force behind all other forces. The Great Evil Beast itself was no more then a dark transient reflection of the supreme being. It created Synnar with a stray thought and reduced to subatomic potentiality with a single thought. Cronos the Greek Titan after gaining power to transcend even Vishnu did experience this being and his mind did break from experiencing the paradoxical union of all opposites and things.
It is known by many names. It has appeared as an old man, a dog, the wizards Mike and John, writers Mike Carlin and George Morrison, a glowing silhouette and more. Pralaya is his uncouncious, the Spectre his wrath the Radiant his mercy. Lucifer Morningstar is his infinite willpower and Michael Demiurgos is his infinite power. The Christians refer to him as YHWH, Supreme God who created the heavens and the earths, and all the angels who manifested on Earth as a man and died for our sins. The Hindus refer to him as Brahman, the eternal absolute cause behind, whose cycles dictate even the Trimurti and who the Trimurti are one within. The Fon people speak of Mawu who rode a rainbow serpent giving her essence to all creation, growing consciousness and life from it. The Martians spoke of an unnameable god surpassing even the gods of life and death, behind all the gods.
There is no singular name that refers to this being, for to have a name is to be limited in a sense. The strongest beings in creation refer to this being as "the creator" or "my creator" only referring to the supreme being in it's role as the source of them. I am used to referring to this being as The Presence, for that is the aspect that the being seems to use as a face.
Is the Presence the strongest being in all of fiction? Well that depends what you define. I can say the story "Suddenly Anti-Presence appeared and beat Presence." That story is fiction so should it not count? The metric some use is only published fiction though this seems an arbitrary distinction, especially given the capacity to self-publish. If you could only Relevant Fiction, in this case defined as fictions that the greater versus community cares about then yes I believe The Presence is the strongest being in Relevant Fiction. So how can I counter such a being?
When discussing the strongest beings in fiction, I find the lack of imagination on the part of some versus debaters to be uninspired. They actually try to say that the strongest beings in fiction should be compared linearly, as if by judging how many layers of characters above a certain level is a proper assessment of characters who transcend the concepts of power, infinity and quantification.
Above the realm of the natural is the realm of the supernatural, a realm such quantification and mathematical and scientific thinking no longer apply. This is the realm of philosophy, metaphysics, and narrative analysis. And in such an analysis, we must assess the strongest characters not by what they CAN do but by what they CAN'T do, in other words what binds and limitations the character has.
Claims that a character is Omnipotent are illogical on the face of it philosophically. An Omnipotent being is defined as a being that can do anything, but a character, as in an Omnipotent character is inherently limited in what they can do by their very nature as a fictional construct. No fictional omnipotent I create can destroy our real world, even if I write it so. All fiction is limited by it's nature as fiction and so in understanding what fictional limits a fictional persona has, we can understand how to possibly beat the Presence.
This will be strictly how to counter the Presence. Most of the other entities can be countered by beings from the prior tier's counters. Also as The Presence has all other beings as part of itself, this would still seem to be a win against anyone on this tier.
So in analysis of the Presence's limits what I notice immediately is that the Presence has indeed lost to beings before and shown limits. John Constantine has gotten the Presence to do what he wanted by threatening to cause chaos in creation. Carnivore likewise usurped the power of the Presence by threatening members of the Shekinah. The Presence was unable to make his son Lucifer love him and he was actually killed. Now it's implied some to all of these were part of the Presence's plan however this interestingly does not matter, we do not need to defeat a bloodlusted Presence, only the Presence as he normally is.
The Presence is confirmed to be the same as Judeo-Christian God include the story of Jacob, where God wrestled a human, Jacob, for an entire night and would not overpower him though he easily could as he showed at the end. This seems to carry over to the Presence's characterization.
The Presence's whole plan in Lucifer's series is to get his will (Lucifer) to leave creation to give his creations free will something he destroys with his very touch. The Presence has allowed himself to lose to increase the dignity of his own creations. Even an Omnipotent being could lose if they so wished too.
To defeat The Presence thus doesn't require physical power at all, in fact it may even be a hindrance if the Presence decides to use more of it's capacity to defeat the counter. There seems to be three things going by the past cases where the Presence was defeated
1: Embodying or Symbolically being important for humanity. The Presence deliberately limited himself and in fact left existence to give his creations free will. He would not crush a force that represented the free will or dignity of his creations
2: Intelligence. In both the John Constantine and The Carnivore cases The Presence allowed himself to be manipulated by the great intellects of the entity, much as we might allow a single thought to sway our entire mind.
3: Willpower/Determination. The Presence could force Lucifer to love him but could not do it without violating the willpower of Lucifer that the Presence loves (calling him "my sweet, savage Samael"). This is also the case with John Constantine who the Presence also allowed to beat him, Constantine being famous for his increase determination.
I was on the OBD once and one member claimed Superman could beat the Presence. This was a ridiculed statement, but I actually do think Superman has a better chance of beating the Presence then he would Lucifer or Michael simply because the Presence is more likely to allow someone like Superman to win.
So who are some good counters? In other words who are some characters that the Presence would allow to beat him because of their exceptional willpower, intellect and the importance of their role in existence. Well I think I know a few counters that fit that, the first of which being
The Doctor from Doctor Who
The Doctor I think could pull of a pretty similar gambit as John Constantine, somewhat similar to what the Eleventh Doctor did during his "basically run" his speech. The Doctor as a history of outwitting high-end cosmic entities such as The Eternals, the Guardians of Time and the Quantum Archangel.
While the Doctor couldn't defeat a bloodlusted Presence even with prep, if the Presence tried to sent a cosmic threat down to manifest and interact with the Doctor as is in-character, a prep-ed Doctor actually very well could do, to the point that the Doctor actually became a cosmic entity at one point.
He also has an absolutely immense willpower as without rest he was able to climb up a staircase while in critical condition for 1 and a half days straight. All this would likely garner the respect of the Presence and since the Presence would know how important the Doctor is to saving humanity and the Earth on a vast number of occasions would probably allow him to win.
The only real thing that could be improved is the Doctor is not in particular an embodiment of hope or the greatness of humanity or anything of the like. While this wouldn't be a big deal, especially since part of the Doctor's character is that for a cosmically long amount of time he's lived among humanity and come to understand them and see how special they are, something the Presence would agree with, I do think you could do better. A prime example of being the embodiment of the hope of people as a counter would be
All Might from Boku no Hero Academia
Simply put, All Might is the symbol of peace and hope for the people. This is central to his character and often one of the most important things about him. The Presence would not want to harm All Might because he represents what Presence wishes to give to the people.
All Might also has an immense determination and will, to the point that when the young heroes needed him he managed to push through his own limits and defeated Nomu and when the whole nation, even the whole world needed him he managed to overcome his own weakening with time and overwhelmed even his rival One for All.
Because of his determination and willpower as well being the symbol of hope and peace, the Presence would probably allow All Might to win. That said while All Might is fairly smart he's not the wit of most of the characters who have beaten the Presence. As such I think an even better counter would be
Cardcaptor Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura
Sakura is the symbol of Hope for the entire Clamp Multiverse. Her greatest power is the power of hope itself which she used to turn the negative counterpart of all the clow cards, the nothing into the hope and how she saved the multiverse. It is her catchphase that everything will be alright.
Sakura's hope relates to her powerful willpower and determination. Sakura always believes in the future and that things will get better. Even when it seemed the Nothing had erased everyone she loved or that she was trapped in an endless darkness, her power of hope allowed her to go on.
It also helps that Sakura is a clever girl and in fact if she wanted could become "all-seeing" like Clow Reed allowing her to see hundreds of years in the future in great clarity and becoming cosmically aware AND the fact that Sakura is supernaturally good at making friends. This is often one of her biggest assets, that her opponents simply don't want to fight her, which is exactly what is needed to fight The Presence.
I could very well see Sakura stalemating the Presence if the Presence doesn't want to fight her. That said, Sakura's willpower is only in general and not so absolute for combat, since she doesn't like fighting. Also she is cosmically powerful herself and if her fight with the Presence endangers the multiverse by accident, he would actually try against her which would a stomp for him since he doesn't want to risk creation.
There is one more character, one more character who I think is the perfect mix of the three elements needed. A character for whom being the embodiment of hope, being full of determination and being intelligent and tricky are all central cope parts of the character, that being
Spider-Man from Marvel Comics.
Spider-Man is actually a multiversal constant in Marvel Comics, existing in every universe to influence the multiverse into good. He is destined to be remembered in the far future as the greatest hero of all time, acting as the moral conscious of the entire universe. This combined with his determination and wit actually won Spider-Man respect from the The One Above All himself, the supreme being of Marvel Comics. There is no way the Presence would want to hurt Peter.
In terms of determination, Peter is famous for his willpower, not knowing how to quit. He regularly deals with constant trial and troubles, including enemies comically above him in power. His willpower was enough to battle through the nexus of all realities, battling for the soul of all creation while being bombarded by the psychic energy of every universe. When Spider-Man died along with a little girl, his soul battled Thanos and defeated him via sheer willpower to ask Death to bring the girl back to life.
Spider-Man's intelligence is also similarly legendary. His intellect has been compared to the likes of Reed Richards, the smartest human in the multiverse, who has created devices capable of fending off cosmic entities like Galactus and Reed has said Peter could build similar inventions with the same resources. Spider-Man is more notable as having less raw scientific knowledge but being even better in terms of tactical quick-thinking.
Spider-Man is the hero of the multiverse and of all time, whose determination and intelligence are considered his greatest qualities and rival if not exceed the great cosmics. He is exactly what the Presence would never kill and would allow to win if they were to fight.
And that's how to be OP in DC Comics.
Thank you.
