Superman vs Spider-Man (Stats Equalized)

 

So two of top 5 favorite characters in fiction are Superman and Spider-Man. These two actually fought in a crossover before, but as the power levels of these two are completely different it was obviously going to be one-sided after the red sun radiation Spider-Man was blasted with wore off. 

But let's change the script a little. Spider-Man is blasted with enough red sun radiation to bring Superman to exactly his level of strength, durability, and speed but the twos powers remain wholly normal otherwise. Or Spider-Man is given instead some new shade of Kryptonite to do the same thing. It doesn't run out during the fight. Who would actually have won?

This is assuming the two are as strong as their modern incarnations. Also two more things to specify with how this premise works

Point 1: Both Superman and Spider-Man grow in strength. Superman always holds back because his true might is a threat to everything around him

Initially he couldn't help but hold back, though after training with Mongul he can control the level now. 

Spider-Man also holds back his power

and his true power he only unleashes when extremely determined, able to one-shot enemies normally comparable to him and physically beat enemies stronger then him

For the sake of this equalization, Clark and Peters' base strenghs will be assumed to be equal, and their full strengths will also be equal.

Point 2: Both character have a difference between their movement speed and their reaction speed. Superman is clearly not as fast as the top tier speedforce users.

However, Superman's super-brain can process information much faster then his body can move and he can tag the likes of Professor Zoom or percieve The Flash moving faster then he ever had

Spider-Man is explicitly noted on many ocassions to not be as fast as light.

Due to the incredible rate at which his spider-sense slows down time from his perception, he has been able to react to light on many ocassions

As such I will be assuming that both characters movement speeds are equal and their reaction speeds are equal

3: Area of effect is brought down to scale. 

4: In this scenario, Superman is being scaled down to Spider-Man's stats, rather then Spider-Man being scaled up to Superman's stats.

With that out of the way, I'd like to compare how the two characters compare in some other stats.

Range:

Area of effect is equalized since being able to destroy the planet via area of effect is obviously not lowering Superman's stats to Spider-Man's. Regardless Superman clearly has the range advantage. His Heat Vision has reached all the way to the moon:

and he's extremely accurate with it

For comparison, Spider-Man's Webs have only ever shown the capacity to cover large buildings

Spiderman would need to keep in relatively close range.

Intelligence:

Superman has a super-brain that gifts him with a supergenius intelligence. Kryptonians in general are stated to have 1/1000th the intelligence of Brainiac, which is actually a really good feat as Brainiac has the intelligence of octillions of entities and nearly the information of the entire universe

This would be at the very least equivalent to a beyond type 3 intellignece. Moreover Superman was able to recreate the Miracle Machine, a machine which can reality-warp on a multiversal scale and is thus at least a type 5 technology from a few seconds of seeing it

has regularly outwit Mr. Mxyzptlk who can percieve the entire multiverse at once and is often portrayed as relative to Batman and Lex Luthor who have their own string of Type 5 intelligence feats. This supports Superman being a baseline Type 5 intelligence.

Spider-Man, on the other hand is a scientific supergenius in the Marvel Universe, a verse with probably the steepest intelligence scaling for non-cosmics in existence. Spider-Man with just the scraps of material available in a post-apocalyptic future been able to active a cosmic cube, a type 4+ technology

Peter Parker has feats of being relevant intelligence wise, if not somewhat a rival to Reed Richards, who is at the top of a hierarchy of Type 5 intelligences. He and Reed have directly fixed and improved technology extending in and out of reality from over 3.1 billion years into the future, with humanity expected to reach type 3 in "only" 1 million years

and was able to reverse engineer Terminus' staff, a weapon used to fight the Celestials, a type 5 civilization

for the purposes of creating an energy source capable of nullifying powers as strong as multiversals powers like the Phoenix Force

Overall, Superman is around the level of a baseline Type 5 intellect, while Spider-Man has feats higher into Type 5, and is relative to intellects at the top of a hierarchy of Type 5 intellects. In terms of general intelligence, particularly in the fields of science and math, Spider-Man would have the advantage. This combined with Spider-Man's general trickiness, as he is the incarnation of Anansi

Spider-Man is more likely to outwit or trick Superman in this fight then the inverse.

Skill:

Both Superman and Spider-Man are often downplayed in their fighting skill to being barely better then an average human, if at all. The truth is both of them are incredibly skilled fighters due to much training.

Superman due to his training with other metahumans and his many years of experience has become a master of pressure point combat. This is how he regularly beats his evil counterpart Ultraman who just lords his raw power over the weaker species

He has regularly defeated the Kryptonian General Zod, a Kryptonian of similar power who is an accomplished military general

Superman has defeated some thugs without his powers

and defeated a magical dragon nearly powerless, which is a definitive superhuman skill feat

He has also defeated Kobra, a master of every martial art when Kobra was in Batman's body and he was in Kobra's body, a scene whose purpose of writing seems to specifically be to debunk the "Superman is unskilled" argument

He is a master of the Kryptonina mental art of Torquasm Vo and it's physical side Torquasm Rao. These two collectively open up one's body and mind to the energies of the universe, uniting one with being

Spider-Man was initially viewed as a rather unskilled fighter, because he was caught between and had to alternate between his animalistic side of the Spider and his rational human brain The Scientist

Spider-Man trained under numerous martial artists to reconcile these sides, with Shang Chi finally teaching him to beyond the Spider and the Scientist, becoming the two at once by going beyond his sense of self and becoming the fight itself

Allowing him to develop his own unique martial art that worked with his spider-powers called "The Way of the Spider." After his training with Shang Chi, Spider-Man is able to defeat numerous Hydra Agents without his powers

and can consistently defeat people with his same spider-powers, also noting his knowledge of pressure points and nerve points

Spider-Man's Way of the Spider is advanced enough to defeat Madame Web, despite her having his spider-powers, his spider-sense and being able to see the future while he didn't have his spider-sense

Madame Web's precognition is strong enough to see every single event of someone's life if they make a certain decision

When Spider-Man's spider-sense returned mid-combat, he was able to seamlessly combine it with The Way of the Spider and defeated Tarantula, an amped form of Kaine, a much stronger clone of him orders of magnitude stronger then him

In terms of combat skill, Superman and Spider-Man are both superhumanly skilled, able to defeat opponents much stronger then them via skill (A magical dragon vs an amped mutant clone of oneself.) I think it's pretty debatable who would actually be more skilled in a fight, however I think I would give the advantage in this category to Spider-Man because the Way of the Spider seems to be a hard counter to Torquasm Rao.

Torquasm Rao is opening up oneself to the universe, recieving the information and acting without conscious thought, this is what entering the Theta State is. However this is actually equivalent to the mindset of the Spider relying on the cosmic scale spider-sense to act on instinct. Spider-Man has transcended both the Spider and the Scientist, and can beat someone who has basically a mastered theta state and precog on top of that even without his spider-sense.

Stamina:

Superman has virtually no normal state of exhaustion or wearing down over time, his super cells not being worn down by time like ours. Superman fought alongside Wonder Woman and Thor in Valhalla for 1,000 years without wearing down

He was able to withstand torture from Gog for 200 years

Under a Yellow Sun, Superman's stamina recharges fast enough that he is essentially impossible to wear down.

Spider-Man is also definitely no slouch when it comes to stamina. While he can tire much easier then Supeman can, he can also push through his exhaustion due to his absolutely insane willpower. He fought Morlun, a character signifigantly stronger then him, for 12 hours straight

He also had to fight through every single fight he had ever been in, easily thousands of fights if not hundreds of thousands of fights without rest

While Superman has clearly greater stamina, Spider-Man's is great enough that it is essentially a neutral fact, as neither of these two can realistically rely on wearing down the other over the battle.

Senses:

Both Superman and Spider-Man rely on their incredible superhuman sensory abilities. Superman's sight is strong enough to watch the Justice League from another universe

Superman can see things on the sub-atomic things and the entire electromagnetic spectrum

He can see things in 4 spatial dimensions and things on the astral plane or even conceptuals like The Black Racer

Superman's other senses are similarly enhanced. He heard Earth-2 Superman from another universe and can hear the motion of air molecules

Superman can also track by scent although lacks signifigant feats in this area

While Spider-Man's normal senses are not particularly enhanced, he relys on his supernatural sixth sense, the Spider-Sense. The Spider-Sense works by picking up distortions in the web of life and destiny, a 3-dimensional construct in 5-dimensional space that models and connects the entire multiverse

The Web is life and destiny itself

The Spider-Sense grants him a supernatural sense of space, energy and electricity and tells him the exact direction and potency of danger

While the Spider-Sense can extend to cosmic distances, it can't extend into other dimensions until it crosses the web of life and destiny

The Spider-Sense not only guides Peter unerringly but tells him which combat strategies are good and which are bad

and it extends into the future allowing him to dodge blows before they are thrown

The Spider-Sense can act as a form of aura-reading and can give Spider-Man general information about an object or a person

It even allowed him to track down Doctor Doom, who is warded against telepathic detection like this

This is a category that's hard to compare as Superman and Spider-Man's senses are suited towards two entirely different things. Superman's senses would give him much greater intel on Spider-Man at the beginning of the fight as while Spider-Man's spider-sense would probably give him a sense that Superman is a massive threat and maybe that he's got superhuman strength/durability, Superman would be able to scan Spider-Man's genetic code and know immediatly he has spider-powers. On the other hand, Spider-Man's spider-sense would help him throughout their fight, telling him how to most optimally act while Superman's senses wouldn't come in huge help after that.

Now I'm going to go over both character's unique powers and assess how well the other character would be able to combat it.

Superman's Unique Powers:

Superman can fly

While Spider-Man has fought flying opponents, often fighting the Vulture, this could be problematic for him. It's not super in-character but Superman could just fly out of reach of Spider-Man high in the sky and heat vision down at him and he'd have little response.

Superman can spatially warp. This is done even with his basic flight but also something he can do more actively with things like his static electricity

Mildly annoying to Spider-Man but because Spider-Man's spider-sense grants a supernatural sense of space, energy and electricity, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to super-think his way around it

Superman has his famous Heat Vision, much stronger then his physical strength and incredibly accurate

Spider-Man could probably dodge normal heat vision with the spider-sense, although if Superman just covers the area with it, then it would be very difficult to avoid. On the other hand, that is not an in-character tactic for Superman.

Superman to compliment this has his super breath which can freeze people relative to him like Wonder Woman

This should work and it's an important point because it's an in-character tactic as a non-lethal KO

Superman can phase invisible

This would do nothing against Spider-Man who since the very beginning of his superhero career could neg invisibility with his spider-sense

Superman can phase intangible by moving his molecules fast enough that his opponent's move through him

However Spider-Man actually hard counters this as his Adhension ability allows him to control the electromagnetic flow of molecules, which would draw his molecules to Superman's

Superman also possesses time travel capability

This could be either impossible to beat or absolutely useless in this fight depending on what theory of time travel is being used. If this is dynamic timeline set then Superman can obviously win the fight just by stopping it from happening by going to the past and ambushing Spider-Man, duplicating over time. If Multiple Timeline Theory is in set then Superman can beat alternate Spider-Man but it wouldn't effect main Spider-Man that he's fighting. 

There's a few other reasons this may not effect the fight. Time Travel in Marvel is made more difficult by Eternity stopping it and so if this fight takes place in a combined DC/Marvel Universe, Eternity may stop Superman from using it. Spider-Man has invented time travel technology before so this is not something hypothetically only one side can use. Finally both phasing and time travel are abilities granted by speed and in this example Superman's speed is being lowered to Spider-Man's level so he probably shouldn't be able to do them regardless.

Superman can use hypnosis to manipulate the minds of his opponents

This isn't hugely relevant as Spider-Man has resisted far stronger mind hax before. Even if you say Superman is effecting all of Metropolis at once, something that has been implied before, Spider-Man resisted a mental shockwave that turned 30% of the US into Magus' slaves

Superman can quickly regenerate, almost instantly restoring himself under sunlight

While Spider-Man does have his own relative healing factor, this does suggest Spider-Man would have a hard time putting him down with just punches and would really need to use his full power to overcome this healing factor with just raw strength

Superman can use the solar flare technique, which supercharges his cells with solar energy and create a massive burst of power

As the attack is stronger then Superman himself, it would likely be massively damaging to Spider-Man. That said I actually think it's not actually a major threat in this fight. If Spider-Man sensed a Solar Flare coming with his spider-sense he could create a web cocoon or a web shield which have blocked things stronger then Spider-Man himself

Not only is Superman not likely to use such a lethal move that destroys so much of his surrondings against Spider-Man, but when he uses the Solar Flare he loses his powers for 24 hours meaning if Spider-Man withstands the attack, even heavily damaged, he will easily win. 

Superman can use Torquasm Vo to create a mental battlefield with which he can shift himself and his surroundings

Believe it or not, Spider-Man can hard counter this ability. Doctor Octopus once took control of Peter's body leading to Peter engaging Otto within his own mind, during which he showed the ability to control his surroundings and summoned his friends and loved ones, the true source of his own strength

Doctor Octopus being normally stronger then Spider-Man himself, Spider-Man's mental projections of his loved ones would be a viable threat to Superman, especially as Superman would be particularly hestistant to fight civilians.

If their mental battle comes down to a battle of willpowers, Superman has a near infinite willpower, stronger then even his physical might

However Spider-Man's willpower would still completely destroy. Spider-Man's will was strong enough to influence the Nexus of All Realities, the absolute plane of reality

thus transcending all forms of infinity and conceptual existence.

Superman can travel outside dimensions or bfr other things there

This would be a massively helpful against Spider-Man as the Spider-Sense can't sense things in other dimensions. However it's a speed ability so it may not apply here.

Superman has the ability to create anti-matter through the usage of virtual particles

Not only is this an out of character tactic for Superman to use offensively, but Spider-Man can actually physically interact with anti-matter without problems

Superman can erase things from existence by matching their vibrations in opposite direction

Spider-Man has resisted existence erasure but nothing on this level. That said this is also out of character.

Superman has more abilities but many of them reach a similar problem of "this is not something that he would use in-character" or "this is simply not relevant here"

Superman also has fourth wall breaking

However Spider-Man also has it

Finally of course we have without a doubt Superman's greatest ability, his super-mathematics

There are obviously very few counters to such an ability in fiction, though fortunatently Spider-Man does happen to have one, specifically the power of Chest Expansion

Spider-Man's Unique Powers:

Inverse of above. How well would Clark do against Peter's particular set of abilities.

Spider-Man is known for his well-slinging abilities. This has been used as binding hax. It can bind normally people on his level

One could argue Superman would struggle to break it even without power lowering as it has bound the likes of Squirrel Girl before

That said, Superman can vibrate through webbing pretty easily. Even if you say vibrating wouldn't work, Superman could simply stop holding back and rip through normal web or break it with his heat vision and even if Spider-Man uses full cartridge, Superman could alter the webbing on an atomic level with his heat vision which should still let him get free

Spider-Man doesn't just use his webs for binding though. Spider-Man uses his webbing along with his spider-sense and his agility to be virtually untouchable in combat

Superman's precision with his heat vision may be incredibly precise but he would have an incredibly difficult time tagging Spider-Man without area of effect attacks or outside melee

Spider-Man has many variants of webbing. He has acid webbing

Not only would Spider-Man not use a lethal weapon like that on a person, but Superman can tank acid

Peter can use sonic webs that attack via high volume sound

This may hypothetically be a strong weapon against Superman due to his superhuman hearing although it should be noted that Superman has developed resistance to sonics from his continual fights with Banshee

Spider-Man can use freezing webs that work even against the Human Torch

While this would be a nonlethal win that Spider-Man would pursue in-character, Superman has resisted the freezing of the Ice Goddess Cythonna

Spider-Man also possibly has webs that nullify brainwaves for a non-lethal KO although this one is not as clear

Even if Spider-Man can do this, it would do nothing to the Man of Steel who resisted Psi-Phon's ability to turn people's minds off

The Wallcrawler can also use his webs to make web constructs. In particular, he can create a web shield capable of taking blows from people much stronger then him

This would probably be quite helpful to Spidey in this matchup. While Superman would be able to get around the webbing via atomic disruption, Spider-Man can make it just as easily. So long as he doesn't run out of webbing, and he carries a large amount these days, it means Superman would have trouble getting to Spidey with raw power.

Spider-Man's adhesion can be used not just to climb buildings but offensive to tear pieces of an opponent by affecting the moelcular boundary laters holding the atoms in a molecule together, an attack known as the Mark of Kaine. This was able to work on an Iron Man Armor stronger then Spider-Man

However this would not work on Superman even if Spider-Man decided to use it. Superman's invulnerability means every atom and subatomic part of him is superhumanly tough. He has tanked numerous attacks that would disrupt him on the molecular or further scale

Spider-Man has shown stealth ability before, regularly sneaking past people and being called "impossibly quiet" by Daredevil

Even if you were to wank this to say Spider-Man can't be detected by sound no matter how good it is, Superman would have constant awareness of Spider-Man's position due to his cosmic scale sight as well as his enhanced sense of smell.

Spider-Man possesses his own healing factor which let him start to recover sight from being blinded in minutes at most and fully heal a short while later

This regen seems pretty comparable to Superman's, and would make it an extra degree to put down Spidey.

Most of Spidey's other abilities or weapons are either not super helpful here or are non-standard. However he does have his strongest weapon always available that being of course, delicious hostress twinkies, golden cakes with a cream filling, a big delight in every bite

And against most foes this would obviously be a one-shot stomp ability. That said Superman can counter using hostress fruit pies, a snack fitting for someone with super taste

The Fight:

So how would this fight actually go?

In this fight, while both characters have shown some stealth capacity, both character senses outmatch so dramatically that stealth is basically useless. Likewise while Clark has more stamina then Peter, both have so much stamina that wearing out an opponent is basically not a viable option. Clark's senses would tell him more about Peter immediatly then the inverse, however Peter's senses will continually give him more information and warn him about danger throughout the fight. Peter has better intelligence and skill then Clark, although probably not enough to completely eclipse him, his intellect likely around Batman's. On the other hand, Clark has a pretty clear dramatic advantage in range.

If this is a bloodlusted fight, then the fight dynamic would obviously be massively different. Superman has numerous ways to hax one-shot destroy Spider-Man. However in-character Superman wouldn't want to use a lethal method on Spider-Man especially as he can see the goodness of Spider-Man's soul. And this actually gives Spider-Man a massive defensive advantage as Superman's ability to non-lethally defeat Spider-Man are very limited given the Wallcrawler's skill, agility, web-shield and spider-sense.

To try and tag Peter, Clark could try and get in close and in a sense he might even have an advantage. Spider-Man's full power is something he holds back but is also something he can only get when fully determined. Superman has trained to control his full strength, meaning Clark if he needed too could use his full strength if he felt Spider-Man was getting out of control. However Peter can neg this advantage if Clark tries to use it offensively. If Clark tries to use his full strength, he will tap into the Theta State, something his Spider-Sense would warn him off, as it warns him when his opponent is changing power levels. From there Peter could use the Ways of the Spider to counter the Theta State.

Likewise if Clark gets into close range, Peter can web him up. However this will likely not hold Clark very well as he can phase or at worst heat vision the webs. Likewise Peter would struggle under the light of the Sun to do any kind of signifigant damage to Clark, even if he was bloodlusted. If I was in charge of writing this crossover comic and Peter was supposed to win I think the most realistic way would be for science major Peter to realize Clark's super hearing and use sonic webs or other loud sounds to disorient Clark. However I'm not sure if that would actually work as Clark has developed resistance to that type of attack before. 

Peter's also got the problem that while both have freezing capability, Clark's freezing is stronger and Clark has resistance to freezing while Peter does not have strong enough resistance to avoid freezing. Peter can somewhat avoid this via dodge hax or with web shields but if his webbing begins to run low, this will be increasingly difficult.

One of the things that would be clear is that due to the two's durability scaling to their full power, their healing factors, Spider-Man's numerous ways to avoid attacks and Superman's flight, this fight is likely to last a while. This to me has two likely outcomes. A longer fight is likely to have collateral damage, something both superheroes would try to avoid. The first outcome is Superman could very likely try to avoid the collateral damage by taking them into a mental battlefield with Torquasm Vo. There Spider-Man would likely have the advantage. While Superman could resist Dominus' reality-warping meaning I don't think Mental Peter could just warp Mental Clark away, Peter could still summon his loved ones, something Clark would not want to fight and Peter could exert the massive power of his willpower to control the mental battlefield better then Clark could. 

Assuming Clark can escape from that scenario, something which seems likely, I think it would likely lead to the second likely outcome which is Superman eventually winning. In a long drawn out combat I think Superman would likely win, not because of stamina problems on Spider-Man's part, but due to their two's personalities as well as Spider-Man's webbing limit. With the fight dragging on, collateral damage, Spider-Man's webbing running low and having to constantly dodge lots of heat vision blasts; it's likely Peter will become frustrated and progressively angrier. Peter is characteristically impulsive and hot-tempered while Clark is characteristically patient and gentle. If Spider-Man gets angry enough, he stops paying attention to his spider-sense, and while his strength would rise from his rage boost, Superman can tap into his full strength to counter and can use his super-brain and skill to get key pressure point strikes on Spider-Man or freeze him at close enough range Spider-Man can't dodge or block. While Spider-Man is smarter then Superman, and more likely to trick him early in the fight, Reed has chastized Peter for his impulsiveness unfitting for his supergenius intellect and it's plausible Clark can intellectually beat him when he's just enraged and going on impulse. Clark's personality in contrast to Peter's is famously patient and calm. It has to be; since childhood, Clark lived in a world of cardboard that would break if he showed the slightest anger due to his tremendous power. In contrast Peter was always the underdog of his world, physically weaker, and so developed angry and hot-tempered from being bullied.

So overall, I think Superman probably wins an extended fight due to Spider-Man's webbing being finite and due to Clark being a more patient and calm personality. However Peter can possibly win earlier on in the fight via tricking him somehow, battering him with sonic webs or other sonic attacks, or by defeating him using his absolute willpower in a mental battlefield if Superman creates one with Torquasm Vo. They serve different roles in their universes combat-wise. Superman is the tank of the Justice League, the eternal immortal symbol of Hope that never disappears from the universe. He focuses on toughness, resiliance and heroic determination. Spider-Man is a trickster figure, the cunning spider who traps enemies in a web. He symbolically goes up constantly against stronger opponents and impossible odds and defeats them via cunning and willpower. If the two were to fight the result would be thus be Spider-Man tricking Superman or defeating via willpower early on, or Superman outlasting Spider-Man not via stamina but just by patience and Clark letting Peter's impulsiveness get the better of him.

 I hope you enjoyed and feel free to comment if you think I should do more stats equalized matches.