“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” - Winston Churchill
Phoenix, the Omega-Level Mutant known as Jean Grey from Marvel Comics’ X-Men.
Raven, half-human, half-demon daughter of Trigon and Teen Titan from DC Comics.
There are few foes and threats more dangerous than the darkness that lies within our own hearts. And when that power has the capacity to threaten the cosmos itself, it becomes paramount to keep your power in check at all times, lest the consequences doom all you know. There are few heroes who know that better than these two absolute powerhouses of comics fame.
Be it in the form of a raging inferno threatening to consume all, or one of the darkest shadows known to the multiverse, these two fighters are almost entirely unlimited in the scope of their power and the impact it could have. But when the flames of the Phoenix Force itself rain down fire and ash upon the unstoppable daughter of Trigon, only one of these heroes can come out the victor. Will the cycle of the Phoenix Force continue, or will Raven cause it to battle nevermore? The stage is set for a duel that will crumble the multiverse in its wake in this reality-defying DEATH BATTLE!
Before We Start…
The comics will be the main source of material for both, as per usual. However, because there’s quite a lot of history with both characters, with it being more complicated than usual, let’s lay some groundwork about both of them first, before we really dive in.
First, regarding Jean Grey and The Phoenix. While the Phoenix Force has had a handful of different hosts over the years, Jean is usually described as the “perfect” host for the Phoenix, and as such, she is considered the most powerful and has the most control over its powers. Any feats or abilities shown by other hosts, with exception to host-specific abilities such as Emma Frost’s Diamond Form, will be given to Jean, given that she upscales from all of them.
Next, there’s been a few times where Jean hasn’t exactly been herself. The first was in the Dark Phoenix Saga, when the Phoenix Force took to mimicking Jean’s appearance and personality, while the original Jean was out of commission. When the Phoenix is on its own, it’s usually referred to as “the Phoenix Entity.” Given that the Phoenix Force is weaker without a host, any feats and abilities from the Phoenix can also be applied to Jean. The second time worth noting is when a version of Jean from her past, known as “Teen Jean,” was sent to the modern day. Given that all of her memories were transferred to regular Jean after being sent back to the past, any feats, abilities, and knowledge Teen Jean possessed should now be available for regular Jean to use.
Finally, there’s a caveat regarding the White Phoenix. In the series New X-Men (2001), issues 151 to 154 specifically, an alternate future timeline was shown where Jean became the White Phoenix, while also showing some new powers and abilities. Although this is not the main timeline, the only real difference is how the events in this timeline play out. As such, any of the abilities and feats the White Phoenix showed can be applied to the 616 version of the White Phoenix.
Regarding Raven, given that she’s a DC character, she has been subjected to a number of different Crisis events and reboots. Her history is surprisingly smooth, however, considering her universe has been rebooted at least twice, though there’s still some things to point out. Raven, as well as the rest of the Teen Titans, have had their Pre-Crisis events referenced Post-Crisis, proving that those events are still canon. Additionally, when the Rebirth and Infinite Frontier reboot occurred, it seemingly merged both Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis events with New 52, solidifying that Raven’s entire comic history is canon. We’ll also be including some small feats from dubiously canon stories like Titans: Burning Rage, as they’ve described as “canon adjacent”, taking place in their own sort of reality close to the comics, and so should be reflective of Raven’s abilities.
With all of that out of the way, let’s dive into the blog!
Background
Jean Grey
Jean Grey’s story is tragically similar to many mutants on earth. A normal childhood, loving parents, siblings and friends to play with, and then her powers awaken. In this instance, she was merely 10 years old and playing with her best friend, who was hit by a car. The stress of this accident awakened the latent telepathic powers supplied by her X-Gene, which caused Jean’s mind to link with her dying friend. The stress of this event caused Jean to essentially shut down, unable to control her powers and terrified of what she had become. Luckily, her parents called in Charles Xavier, who took her in under his wing, like a telepathic protégé of sorts. Xavier then blocked off her telepathic abilities temporarily until she matured enough to handle them, as he trained her to use her abilities telekinetically instead. Eventually her parents enlisted Jean into a small private school Xavier was running, and her life would never be the same.
Jean is an original X-Man, she showed up in the very first Uncanny X Men #1 and was a part of the original five-man team, alongside her future hubby Scott Summers. The team's resident mind-over-matter member, she quickly hit her stride and was a key player in their early adventures. Years passed, and eventually Xavier removed the psionic barriers he placed in her mind, Jean began dating Cyclops, graduated from the academy, and generally found life to be working out for her. But as always, all of this changed, when Jean and other mutants were captured by Steven Lang, the creator of the Sentinels, and imprisoned on his space station. A successful rescue was staged, but as the X-Men began their trip back to Earth, a solar flare assaulted the ship with cosmic rays. As the cockpit was unguarded from this radiation, someone had to make the sacrifice to pilot the ship safely back down to Earth. While her telekinetic abilities were able to protect her for some time, eventually the cosmic radiation became too great, and Jean began to die.
Except… she didn't. Because as she began to telepathically call for help, for anyone to come save her, Jean’s prayers were answered by the Phoenix. A cosmic entity representing life and rebirth in the Marvel omniverse. The Phoenix offered Jean a chance to live, one she gladly took, and the ship ultimately crashed safely in Jamaica Bay. And the X-Men and Marvel universe would never be the same again.
The Phoenix Force
The Phoenix Force is the embodiment of all life and psionic energy in the Marvel multiverse, representing the idea of ‘rebirth’ and ‘resurrection’. During a spacefaring mission, the X-Men found themselves exposed to it, and it took up residence inside Jean, using her as a host. Acting like a symbiote of sorts at first, it drastically increased Jean’s power to cosmic levels, but slowly corrupted her and drove her mad.
This culminated when Jean/The Phoenix Force, now simply together as Phoenix, destroyed an entire star - one that had a civilized planet orbiting it. Realizing what she had done, Jean heroically sacrificed herself, pleading with her team to kill her before she could cause any more harm.
…except that wasn’t really Jean. It was the Phoenix Force pretending to be her. And then the real Jean came back and merged with the Force again. Comics, man. Fortunately, after extended time together and several convoluted plotlines, the inverse of the first time happened. Jean’s bubbly attitude actually rubbed off on the Phoenix Force, making it more… well, not quite docile, but cooperative perhaps. It was a lot less interested in destroying planets at least, and it and Jean bonded once more as a genuine force for good with Jean in control of both of their full powers. And while the Phoenix has hopped between a few different hosts, Jean Grey always has and always will rise from the ashes to become the Phoenix.
Raven
"I guess, in the end, there really is no end; just new beginnings."
Raven’s story doesn’t begin with her birth, but before it. It begins with a woman just seeking love. Angela Roth was a Gothamite woman born within a highly religious and abusive family. They beat her every time she fell out of line, and once she hit her teens, she ran away, never to return. She lived aimlessly, never knowing a home, until she fell into the wrong crowd. And boy howdy were they wrong. They were Satanist cultists who wanted to bring the devil to the human realm. They used the impressionable young adult as a vessel, promising to keep her clothed, fed, and sheltered so long as Angela did this for them. And it worked, to an extent.
The archdemon Trigon took a human form to take the woman as his bride, and despite knowing he was a demon, Angela was smitten with him, and laid with him. The fact that he took a human form is important though, as Angela pictured him as closer to a Lucifer in that form, a fallen angel who kept his beauty, rather than the four eyed borderline eldritch demon he actually was--and what he revealed to her once he finished the deed. The very instant the woman saw the red skinned monster in all his horror, she hated him. But by that point it was too late. She was pregnant. And upon impregnation, Trigon tossed her aside and killed every single cultist other than her.
Upon surviving the encounter and realizing she was pregnant, Angela attempted to take her own life via overdosing on sleeping pills. There was no way she would let herself give birth to the spawn of Satan, and would rather die than see it come to fruition. But she was instead taken to Azarath, a nexus point between dimensions. It is here where she changed her name to Arella, meaning “Messenger of God,'' and gave birth to her half-human, half-demon child, Raven.
From birth, Raven had a heavy burden to carry. As the daughter of Trigon, she was constantly under his influence and served as a direct gateway between realms, and if she were to ever lose control, he would use her to break through dimensions, devastating and conquering all he could. This is why the people of Azarath taught Raven to suppress her emotions, and as an empath, this wasn’t exactly easy to do. But she learned, having to keep up this cold veil her whole life. But even then, as she reached adulthood, Trigon eventually began to breach, and it was harder for her to push him back. Ever compassionate and selfless, she wanted nothing to do with her father’s sick plans and instead fled to Earth to prepare them for the coming invasion.
Raven went to the Justice League to beg them for help, but was turned away at Zatanna’s behest. Therefore, Raven set out to form the new Teen Titans, with the boy wonder Dick Grayson at the helm. Though her mysterious arrival and evil heritage spurred unrest and uncertainty within the hero community, the team of teens eventually came together to take Trigon head-on and send him back from whence he came. Raven soon became a mainstay of the team, using her incredible magical prowess to great effect.
Over the years, now that she was free from her father’s influence and surviving her ordeal with her father despite being presumed dead, she had many adventures until she turned evil and became Dark Raven, ruining a very wanted wedding, both by the people in the story and the audience (though not by Barbara Gordon) in the process. It was after this where she was able to inhabit a new body and take the name Rachel Roth… after a run-in with Brother Blood but that’s unimportant.
Once reunited with her friends after said ordeal, Raven went on many more adventures. She became Dark Raven again, frequently fought Brother Blood, met and threw hands with her brothers, and fell in love with a certain Beast Boy. But no matter what trials she went through, no matter how many times Trigon tempted her, she continued to fight. Because while a destroyer is what she was meant to be, a savior is what she chose to be.
Experience & Skill
Phoenix
Jean herself has accessed her mutant powers as early as ten years old. Trained by Charles Xavier for most of her early life, her telepathic powers have been honed to a fine point. Furthermore, as one of the original X-Men, she has more battlefield experience than most other members and is on par with its more tactical minds like Cyclops. She’s also downloaded the fighting skills of Colleen Wing and Misty Knight after scanning their memories, and has some training in hand-to-hand combat, though generally prefers to use her telekinetic abilities in combat.
Raven
Raven has trained under the tutelage of the Azarathean people since birth, spending the first 18 years of her life learning to harness her empathic powers, specifically being noted as an enthusiastic student who desired to learn everything she could. In the New 52, Raven spent “an eternity” conquering worlds for Trigon and training under him, as time passes differently in his realm. She regularly participates in Titans training sessions, has undergone mental training sessions where she simulates battles in her own head, and has even acted as a teacher at Titans Academy for those with similar powers to her. While she may not have explicit martial arts training, she’s clearly not inexperienced, having defeated her demonic brother Envy in a purely physical confrontation while whipping out some pretty sick moves.
Equipment
Phoenix
Uniform
Jean has a standard X-Men uniform that she wears on her missions. An added bonus for the uniform is that the material is unstable on a molecular level, which helps keep it from being damaged by extreme temperatures.
Magneto’s Helmet
Jean from time to time is shown using a facsimile of the Master of Magnetism’s helmet. Its main purpose is to protect the mind of whoever wears it from other telepaths.
Image Inducer
Jean has access to an image Inducer which serves as a purpose to alter her physical appearance. It's mainly used to enter enemy bases undetected and it worked so well it even fooled Spider-Man.
Raven
Uniform
Over the years Raven has worn several uniforms. Her original and well-known cloak is a standard robe worn by the denizens of Azarath. She also wore a white version of said robes for a few years, which she gained after being mind controlled by Brother Blood. In the New 52, however, her outfit has noticeably changed. She gained a pretty sick retractable mask and a new feathered cloak, which she can shape and shift at her will to either restrain or attack her opponents. She also has a weird thing for constantly swapping uniforms with her power at will. To flex I suppose.
Chakra
The red jewel on Raven’s forehead, which strengthens and allows her to control her powers, even freeing her from mind control. It’s also been used as a conduit to create a portal to bring Trigon to Earth, this portal being tied to Raven’s lifeforce.
Communicator
A communicator for contacting her friends/teammates, the Titans. This device allows for quick long-distance calls between members, sometimes as an earbud, sometimes as a wristband and even something residing inside the emblem of Raven's cloak.
Ebon-Sword
A cool-looking sword Raven used while serving under Trigon’s army in the New 52. Unfortunately we never get to see it in action. It's still pretty cool though.
Legion Flight Ring
A ring given to her for a mission by Superboy, allowing her to fly through the vacuum of space.
Rings of Azar
A pair of rings given to Raven by the goddess Azar before she died, acting as a “nexus” to Raven’s soul, through which Raven can feel Azar herself guiding her. Their true purpose was as a countermeasure against Trigon, as Raven’s soul flowed into the rings when Trigon fully corrupted her and wretched her of her soul. When placed on Raven’s dead, soulless body, they channel the spirits of Raven, Azar, and all the souls of Azarath through her as “mental energy”, massively empowering her and allowing her to obliterate Trigon, body and soul, before dropping to the ground while Raven disappears.
Abilities
Phoenix
Telepathy
One of Jean's main powers is her telepathy. With the help of Charles Xavier or Professor X, she has learned to hone her ability to the limit and even beyond that. As an omega level telepath, Jean can read a situation from afar, sense a person's emotions to tell if they’re lying, predict a person’s actions before they do them, telepathically connect with every mutant on the planet, and has shown she can enter a person's mind and take their experience and skill as her own. Jean alone is considered second only to Professor X as a telepath, let alone as the Phoenix, who was able to mentally battle Xavier across infinite planes of reality and would have won were it not for Jean holding it back. Emma as the Phoenix was capable of easily connecting with every mind on the planet as well, and Jean has read minds as massive as Knull’s and the World-Eater’s, albeit with great strain.
Besides the normal abilities, Jean has shown more unique ways she has used her telepathy. She has turned off other mutants' powers, entered people's minds to make evil spirits leave a person's body, detected if someone is alive or not, put people to sleep, turned off pain receptors, made someone relive a moment of their life, created mental blocks so people are unaware of her presence, created a mental defense system that will protect her if someone were to try and take over her, and has been stated by Cyclops to be able to possibly just shut off other people telepathy. Other telepaths like Emma can also see ghosts (spooky). As the Phoenix, Jean can amp her own physical strength with her telepathy to match The Thing, and can do this to others’ powers too, to the point of harming even Celestials.
Jean can also apply her telepathy for more direct offensive assaults. She’s suggested that she could telepathically fry someone’s synapses or shut down their mind, has disconnected people’s audio cortexes, and can induce pain with just her mental powers. Emma as the Phoenix was able to give someone the equivalent of a psychic lobotomy with ease.
Another more notable thing Jean can do with telepathy is mess with a person's memory. She has done this many times, examples including wiping another person's memory, mind-wiping a crowd and giving or taking other memories as the Phoenix. Other telepaths like Emma (funny how she keeps coming up) have proven able to apply this across a whole town.
Rounding it out, Jean can create illusions with her psionic powers, including blocking people from seeing what’s right in front of them or tricking others into thinking they heard painful sounds.
Telekinesis
This is usually the other thing that people first think of when they think of Jean. Her mental abilities also correlate with the ability to express force through simple thought. Jean is inconsistently described as an omega level telekinetic and an alpha level one, but should definitely be considered an omega level with the Phoenix Force. Jean with her telekinesis can rip out the nanotechnology of a sentinel, pull down a meteor, and could create a funnel that was able to channel Black Bolt’s voice. She can make barriers with her telekinesis that can help others breathe in the vacuum of space, and she can make a bubble barrier that can redirect any attack someone throws at it.
Jean has also shown that she can use her telekinesis to do stuff like deconstructing a motorcycle, a sentinel, and a gun. She has also shown to be capable of precisely pulling nanites out of someone's body.
Flight
Jean has shown the ability to fly through two separate manners. As an avatar of the Phoenix Force, she’s capable of flying unaided, but even without the Phoenix, she can fly through the use of her telekinesis.
Matter Manipulation
Jean has shown she is able to use her telekinesis to cellularly, atomically, and subatomically manipulate a person's body. She has shown this in different ways, like changing outfits by rearranging its molecules, altering matter on an atomic level so she can make a ship, and threatening to blast someone to atoms.
Jean has also been seen using biological manipulation, likely an extension of her matter manipulation. She has shown to do things like turning a plant into a crystal, turning people into flesh and blood, and turning a simple tree into solid gold, too heavy to lift all the way off the ground.
This matter manipulation extends even to herself, as even after being totally vaporized, Jean was able to reconstitute her body molecule by molecule with just her psychic energy. And that was without the Phoenix, to be clear.
Energy Blasts/Constructs
Jean can create large blasts of pink energy which have harmed various heavy-hitting foes, such as in the image above. Her younger self also learned to create constructs out of these after some training with Psylocke, such as swords, shields, claws, etc.
Power Siphoning
Teen Jean was able to learn how to use her powers to steal power away from various sources. She’s able to draw power from the people on Earth, Terrax the Tamer/Tyros, Galactus himself (who present-day Phoenix was currently fighting) and from the Phoenix Force itself, and was able to use that power to deliver a punch squarely in Galactus's face, which knocked him to the ground. She can also surround herself in the energy to assume a weird pink form, strong enough to match a confident Gladiator.
Soul Manipulation
Despite not having too many instances of it, Jean herself has the ability to manipulate souls, as demonstrated by the instance above, when she was able to wake up and turn all the sleeping souls under Nightmare’s control against him.
However, with the assistance of the Phoenix Force, Jean’s soul manipulative powers are massively amplified—as her other powers are—to a likely infinite amount, with the Phoenix Force itself having demonstrated soul manipulation on numerous instances. Nightmare has stated that the Phoenix Force had “burned up” a bunch of souls in space. While this could potentially be figurative, the Phoenix Raptor’s fire has also shown enough potency to begin melting Thor’s soul. Dark Phoenix of an alternate universe has claimed that she was able to burn souls down to such a level that only the scorch marks would remain in the husk that was once a body. The Phoenix Force has also taken Jean Grey’s soul from the White Hot Room back to Earth to revive her, and White Phoenix Jean from Days of Future Past stated that she was protecting her daughter’s soul the entire time.
Similarly, the Phoenix Force, knowing for being life itself, has shown the ability to create souls, albeit, doing so on a massive scale—such as the time Firehair and Starbrand recreated a lost multiverse and all of its inhabitants—can cause the host to become lost in the White Hot Room. Jean can also persist after death as a spirit and possess people, albeit she doesn’t seem to have her full power.
Portal Creation and BFR
Phoenix has shown the ability to create Stargates that allow her to travel to different points within space. She can also escape from pocket spaces that exist outside of space-time.
The Phoenix can also BFR its opponents to the White Hot Room, such as when Maya took the Adversary to the White Hot Room, albeit it is noted to be quite a difficult task. Specifically it’s said that the easiest way to grant a mortal access to the White Hot Room is through death. There are ways to bypass this condition however. The Phoenix was able to give the Avengers a minor connection to the Phoenix Force, and transport them to the White Hot Room, without much issue.
Phoenix Avatar
The Phoenix is able to make an avatar of itself through its host, which manifests in the form of a phoenix made of fire. This avatar can be used to attack people, and has grown to sizes larger than the moon, has grown large enough that it was bigger than a solar system and has even expanded across the entire universe.
I guess you can say she is the biggest bird.
White Hot Room
The White Hot Room is the heart and mindscape of the Phoenix, connected to the M’kraan Crystal and acting as a gateway to the afterlife. The room essentially acts as the Phoenix’s home base, the place the Phoenix goes to whenever it’s damaged and must restore itself, and the place where its hosts are sent to heal. If the Phoenix is ever fully erased or destroyed, it will eventually resurrect as an egg in the White Hot Room. The Phoenix can freely take itself and others connected to it to the White Hot Room, and Phoenix hosts can even grow in size beyond the bounds of reality to reach it.
Speaking of, the White Hot Room is no ordinary alternate dimension. It is, in reality, a dimensionally transcendental realm which exists beyond the Far Shore, the farthest reaches of reality beyond even the Eighth Cosmos, beyond even the Beyonders themselves. The White Hot Room is just another name for the Mystery and the Above-Place, and beyond it lies only the House of Ideas, the resting place of The One Above All.
Fittingly for such an immense realm, the Phoenix’s own power is suggested to be heightened while inside the White Hot Room. The Beyonder claimed that even he stood no chance against the “pure Phoenix Force inside the White Hot Room”, and the Phoenix herself stated that it is life and death incarnate “in the White Hot Room most of all”.
Characters like the Adversary have been able to wrest control of the room away from the Phoenix, but the Phoenix is able to take it right back, and Jean herself could do the same to the Phoenix Force.
Nigh-Omnipresence
The Phoenix is life and death on many levels, the repository of the psionic energies of the entire multiverse. It is both these concepts in all things and all places, showcasing a type of omnipresence as it exists across all creation. In the White Hot Room, it is the “most” omnipresent, existing in its totality throughout the entirety of the White Hot Room.
It’s suggested a few times that the Phoenix’s physical body which manifests in reality is different from its “true” state. The Phoenix Force has claimed its appearance as Jean Grey to Rachel is nothing more than “a physical manifestation for that which has none”, and that its “true nature is without form, touching all that lives”, consistent with other descriptions. The Jean Grey from Rachel’s timeline eventually became White Phoenix, and also claimed that her physical appearance was just “the smallest part” of herself, and that she’s responsible for all of creation.
Given this, and that Defenders: Beyond suggests the Phoenix is one with the White Hot Room itself, one can infer that the Phoenix likely works similar to other abstract entities in Marvel, with its appearance in realities like Earth-616 being more of a limited physical manifestation to interact with reality, with its “true” self existing inside and as the White Hot Room beyond the edge of existence. This would also explain why alternate universe versions of the Phoenix, such as Old Man Phoenix, are still connected to the White Hot Room beyond the Far Shore despite having different Phoenix Forces.
Summoning
The Phoenix has shown the ability to summon clones of other X-Men, mainly other dead X-Men. These clones are able to hold off other X-Men for a short time, and some have shown the ability to regenerate lost limbs if they were to take damage.
Power Amplification
The Phoenix Force massively amplifies whatever powers the host possesses to a practically infinite degree. When Hyperion gained the Phoenix Force, he essentially was able to see, hear, and feel the entire cosmos in himself, essentially gaining a certain level of “omniscience.” It was also shown in a guidebook that Jean Grey’s psychic activity is massively amplified with the Phoenix Force, indicating that her telepathic and telekinetic powers are at a far greater level of power with the Phoenix Force.
This power amplification also works in a more esoteric manner, being able to manipulate the way the powers work. This could be seen when being in close proximity to the Phoenix gave Riverwalker the ability to physically travel through time whereas before, he could only move his consciousness through time based on the ancestral line of any given person.
Clairvoyance
The Phoenix can look across time from the White Hot Room. It has also shown the ability to look into the future and show the future to individuals such as Scott Summers as can be seen above.
Cosmic Awareness
While it is not fully explained, it has shown that the Phoenix has some form of awareness of the cosmos, stating that it “knows the universe”. This has been shown with Hyperion, whose senses could perceive the universe after becoming a host, and the Phoenix has called itself aware of the whole cosmos. Emma has also described the Phoenix as “nothing but knowledge and understanding”.
Reality Warping
As the cosmic font of life itself, the Phoenix Force has a number of esoteric abilities. It was able to project the essence of a tower through all the infinite planes of reality across the entire multiverse, can create pocket realities for its hosts, can teleport, and can manipulate the universe itself as White Phoenix. Alternate versions of the Phoenix grew strong enough to pull the powers out of people outright.
Time Manipulation
The Phoenix Force has been shown to have time manipulation, having frozen time to speak with Jean. It could also be viewed as a way of communication between the Phoenix Force to talk to Jean, since the White Hot Room exists outside of time. The Phoenix Force has also been able to send a portion of its energy throughout the timestream, showing that it can also travel through time. As the White Phoenix of the Crown, Jean’s ability to manipulate time throughout reality becomes much more potent. She can completely splice off parts of the timeline and make incredibly precise alterations to completely change the course of reality. In this method, Jean gains the ability to manipulate the totality of the timeline by altering it on the most fundamental level.
Life & Death Manipulation
The Phoenix has shown multiple times it can manipulate the life force of others. The Phoenix Force has shown its capable of draining other peoples life force and is stated it can bring back the undead, this is mostly shown with how the Phoenix Force constantly resurrects Jean so she can go back to being the Phoenix Force’s host, even beyond complete incineration.
Existence Erasure
The Phoenix Force has numerous statements implying that it can completely reduce a person to non-existence. During Defenders: Beyond, the Phoenix Force’s fire burned the Defenders down to the Abyss, a plane of non-existence outside even the Mystery where not even the narrative concept of the Defenders existed. In an alternate timeline, the Phoenix Force was able to erase Emma Frost and other mutants along with the entire timeline from existence while still preserving the life-forces of all creatures to recreate them in a completely new timeline.
Cosmic Pyrokinesis
Given the Phoenix is made from the flames of the Big Bang, it's no wonder it has fire manipulation. The Phoenix’s fire is absurdly hot, with statements that it has the Sun itself backing it. Jane Foster could feel the Phoenix’s heat from galaxies away from her, and the Phoenix’s blast can melt a supernova, with radiation equal to a neutron star. The fire of the Phoenix is so potent that it can harm and melt souls, and the Phoenix can shape it into constructs like chains.
Regeneration
As the Phoenix Force is the embodiment of life itself, it allows its users to regenerate from any damage they have been dealt and even come back from life sustaining injuries. This regeneration ranges from rather tame to more extreme levels, such as how the Phoenix has allowed Jean’s body to casually regenerate from piercing wounds from Logan’s claws, as well as other Phoenix users surviving their head being diced into several pieces by Logan. The Phoenix was capable of reanimating Jean’s corpse during the events of Phoenix Endsong, after her death. The Phoenix also allows its users to essentially ignore damage at a certain point, such as the instance in which Namor, despite having his limbs torn off, was able to control the limbs without a connection to his central nervous system and was able to subsequently reattach them and gain back full control through the Phoenix Force.
On the most extreme level, it is capable of bringing back people whose bodies have been entirely incinerated and turned to ash, as well as stating itself that bringing back the composition of bodies which have been destroyed was a ‘simple matter’ altogether, though it notes it doesn’t fully understand the human mind and soul and will take time to restore Rachel’s shattered psyche. And don’t forget the time that Scarlet Witch and Hope Summers completely erased the Phoenix Force from existence, yet the Phoenix Force was able to regenerate and hatch into reality from a Phoenix egg after enough time passed.
Resistances
Mind Manipulation: Naturally, Jean has had a lot of experience with fending off a variety of mental attacks. She has resisted Xavier’s telepathy, albeit with immense effort and anguish, forced Psylocke out of her mind, and can even reject the mental corruption of Apocalypse’s Death Seed. Additionally, trying to telepathically restrain the Phoenix Force will burn the user’s mind, and Jean is consistently shown capable of shielding her thoughts from others. As the Phoenix, she could break the psychic restraints Xavier placed on her to limit her power, and could battle Xavier across infinite planes of existence as said above.
Time Manipulation: The Phoenix Force entity and the White Hot Room transcend the concepts of space and time and thus would be unaffected by time manipulation.
Soul Manipulation: While Jean herself has not shown any notable instances of her resisting against soul-based attacks, the Phoenix Force entity does not exactly have a “traditional” soul due to being on many levels, the most fundamental concept of life itself in all of Marvel. An in-universe Phoenix Raptor has tanked the hellfire chains of Robbie Reyes while an alternate-universe Dark Phoenix has survived being burnt by the hellfire of this Ghost Rider as well as being sealed in his hellfire car. Hellfire is commonly known to be capable of burning the soul, even to the point of complete obliteration.
Energy Absorption: While it is possible to absorb the energy of the Phoenix, absorbing too much at once from it can cause the absorber to become overwhelmed and be destroyed, as seen with Necrom when he tried draining the Phoenix from Rachel.
Power Absorption & Nullification: Magik claims that due to being one with the Phoenix Force, Rogue is unable to drain her power from her. However, it is possible for a powerful-enough entity to remove the Phoenix Force from an inexperienced host. Due to the Phoenix Force being the embodiment of life itself, Galactus could not remove the Phoenix from Rachel without dooming all of reality to oblivion.
Existence Erasure: When imbued with the Phoenix Force, both Maya Lopez and Firehair were able to temporarily resist the waves of the omniversal tsunami from the First Firmament, which was capable of fully erasing the current multiverse to the point that there would be no life or afterlife, implying complete erasure down to a spiritual level and potentially even beyond.
BFR: While the Phoenix has had instances of being removed from the battlefield, such as Phoenix Force Namor being teleported away by Scarlet Witch, this is something Jean should not have an issue with, as she’s able to create her own portals to transport elsewhere within space. As mentioned before, Phoenix Maya is also capable of breaking out of a dimensional void.
Raven
Demonic Physiology
As a half-demon, Raven is noted as having an unusual anatomy. It’s been speculated that she’s an “interstitial lifeform”, a being who exists across dimensional boundaries and is one with her other selves in alternate worlds. After being empowered by Brother Blood, Raven boasted superhuman strength that rivaled even Donna Troy, with it being suggested that she retained this amp permanently.
Raven also represents the sin of Pride, the original sin from which all others spawn, meaning Raven can utilize the powers of the Seven Deadly Sins, such as when she filled her brothers with the sin of Greed. However, using these powers always leaves her sick for a week, and constantly puking every 5 minutes, which is why she never does it. It’s possible Raven can utilize the powers of all of the Seven Deadly Sins, as all other sins spawn from Pride, and she nearly granted the powers of the sins to the Titans, though this is speculative.
Empathic Powers
Raven is an empath, meaning she can detect and experience the emotions of those around her, feeling their worst sorrows and their greatest joys. Raven spent the first eighteen years of her life under tutelage by Azar, the leader of the people of Azarath, training to harness her powers, and so learned many applications of being an empath.
Emotion Sensing
Raven can detect the emotions of those around her, allowing her to both constantly know the location of people and tell how they’re feeling, to tell when someone is lying, or detect invisible people. Her sensory powers have worked across interstellar distances, across different dimensions, and even on beings without souls. She can also sense weirder things that aren’t directly tied to emotions, such as if someone is a “nexus” between realities, a portal being from another time, and surges in energy. This doesn’t just extend to individual people either, as she’s sensed the presence and emotions of millions of people at once, has sensed the combined emotions of the entire planet multiple times, and is considered a greater telepath than Schiz, who was able to sense the emotions of “untold billions” upon being born.
The drawback of Raven’s power is that she feels the emotions she senses, and the more intense the emotion, the more susceptible she is to it. Extremely intense and negative emotions can cause her physical pain, and even knock her out cold in the most extreme cases. That said, she’s also handled the combined emotional pain of hundreds of people at once, so it’s gonna take more than ordinary hatred to knock her out.
Mind Manipulation
Raven is able to manipulate and alter the minds of those around her. She’s always had this ability, being able to forcibly make Wally West fall in love with her, but after receiving a permanent amp from Brother Blood, she could do so much more freely with less restrictions. She can use these abilities even on immaterial beings. She’s capable of draining others of emotions, forcing people to feel specific emotions, purging people of their emotions entirely to turn them into empty husks, feeding on the feelings of those around her and outright devouring said emotions. Or just, you know, brainwashing people into her servants. She can even affect herself with these powers, such as by forcing herself to feel calm.
Additionally, Raven’s mind manipulation extends to affecting memories themselves. She can wipe people of memories (including herself), plant thoughts in people’s heads, and was even able to project false memories into the entire population of San Francisco. Her powers are so potent that she once accidentally erased her family’s memories of her existence, whoops.
More ethically, Raven can use her powers for telepathy, allowing her to communicate with her teammates across long distances. This extends to full-on mind reading, as she’s able to scan through people’s memories across their entire life and read them even without directly touching them, including to the likes of Miss Martian. She can use this to instantly learn other languages, translate what others are saying, and follow the “psionic pulses” of people.
Illusions
In a similar vein, Raven is able to create highly complex illusions and project them onto people, able to reflect the victim’s deepest dreams and fears. These illusions are incredibly realistic, seemingly able to affect all 5 senses such as smell, and Raven can keep them up for extended periods. They can also create variables in time, whatever that means.
Healing/Energy Absorption
One of Raven’s primary functions on her team is to act as a healer. By absorbing the pain of an injured person into herself and expelling it out of her own body, she is able to cure people of their injuries. This can heal things as severe as broken bones and bring people back from near-death, though missing limbs and more grievous injuries are beyond her ability to cure. She can also absorb things such as diseases and poisons. The trade-off is that Raven experiences the pains she absorbs herself, with it being described as Raven’s soul directly entering the soul of the one she’s healing. More extreme pain can seriously debilitate Raven, but as said above, she’s also managed to handle the pain of hundreds of people at once and expel it without collapsing, so her tolerance at her peak is pretty high. She’s also more directly able to empower people and give them a boost in strength.
On the flip-side, Raven is able to heal herself of her wounds too. Even while unconscious, she can take the good emotions and thoughts of others and absorb them to heal herself. On a similar basis, Raven can absorb the power of others directly. This is explained as being the opposite of her healing, taking the strength of others instead of lending on her own. She’s done this to Supergirl, an entire crowd of people, and even Trigon himself, tapping into the very core of her soul to sap his strength. Of note is that her demonic siblings have done something similar, draining Trigon’s energy, making this consistent for Raven.
Teleportation
Raven is able to freely teleport, frequently shifting across dimensions between Earth and Azarath. Beyond just Azarath, she’s been shown to be able to teleport to both the Crossroads, the doorway to the afterlife, and to straight-up Hell. On Earth itself, she’s been able to teleport across the entire planet instantly, teleport 7200 miles, teleport into space, and can carry multiple people with her at once. More specifically, Raven’s teleportation is described as “shifting” between dimensions, moving through dimensions before returning to Earth in a different location from where she was. It’s even been shown that if she strains herself too much while teleporting, she’ll literally tumble between dimension after dimension before landing. Speaking of, teleportation is frequently described as one of Raven’s more draining abilities, and using it multiple times in a row can seriously tire her out, though she has been able to teleport across a city many times in quick succession without too much visible strain.
Raven has occasionally used her teleporting offensively, primarily to banish her enemies to some far-off location, like Azarath itself, or to remove an enemy of their equipment. She can also create portals through space with a gesture, which serve a similar function.
Soul Self
Raven’s signature ability, a powerful projection of her spiritual essence and full might, that she can either summon or turn into, or just sheathe herself in. It is capable of flight and is impervious to physical attacks. In the past, she could not survive if separated from it for too long with a rather short limit of 5 minutes, but this weakness has since been rectified, and she’s gone several weeks separated from her Soul-Self with no notable side-effects.
The Soul-Self can manifest in multiple forms, from a bird to a projection of Raven herself like it was her Stand or something. Raven can control it from over a thousand miles away, and as Dark Raven was suggested to be controlling it from across interstellar distances, more on that later. One time, she astrally projected it to Azarath while on Earth. She can operate it even while she herself is knocked out, and can speak, hear, and see through it, making it useful for surveying an area, and she can even split it up into up to 5 copies. It has also occasionally appeared to be invisible to other people. While it is a bit inconsistent, the Soul-Self is typically depicted as intangible, requiring special abilities to affect it, and Raven has used it to outright phase through attacks and become intangible. It’s been stated that the Soul-Self cannot survive in the vacuum of space for too long, though this was early on in her history.
The Soul-Self possesses all of Raven’s powers and more. In combat, Raven primarily uses it to envelop her enemies and pacify them with her empathic powers, or sometimes just scare them shitless. She can also manipulate emotions more generally with it, such as by absorbing their anger, freeing them from mind control, or putting them to sleep. As her Soul-Self possesses all her empathic abilities, any mind manipulation feat she performs normally she should also be able to do with her Soul-Self. She even once possessed a group of people with it and spoke through them.
The Soul-Self acts as a portal to an entirely different dimension inside it of “infinite darkness”, which serves as Raven’s personal domain. She can use this to absorb anything from attacks to people, either to carry them with her for transport or to trap them. Her Soul-Self does appear to have a kind of limit to the amount of energy it can absorb though, as it exploded from the constant energy applied by Sparta. This dimensional portal can be used to banish things to other dimensions entirely, or just to teleport them across the planet. This could be a result of her Soul-Self, according to Raven, inhabiting the space separating the Earth and the 11 afterlifes, however that works. Raven can also just vanish into her own soul as a retreat.
On occasion, the Soul-Self has been depicted as corporeal, with Raven using it to restrain people and disarm them, or to apply force by projecting it as an attack (see what happened to Twilight Sparkle). She also once used it to project a wave of cold to literally cool someone off. In-turn, the Soul-Self can itself be damaged and shattered into pieces. This naturally causes Raven immense pain, but even when her Soul-Self is completely shattered, she can recall it into her body and repair it mid-fight.
Raven’s soul possesses a number of weirder properties beyond all of that. As the well of Azarathean souls, it’s essentially worth many souls in one. It can act independently and block threats Raven isn’t even aware of, such as possession and soul absorption, alongside preventing her from getting sick. This is likely because Raven’s Soul-Self is actually sentient, containing all of Trigon’s essence that he instilled in her long ago and essentially representing all her evil aspects, with it being stated Raven’s physical body and her soul exist uniquely independently. Raven’s physical mind keeps the Soul-Self in check, but if her body is totally destroyed, the Soul-Self can keep operating on its own as a result. It’s not all bad though, as the Soul-Self contains both Raven’s good and bad aspects. Her good half can subtly influence her dark half and rebel against it, possibly even taking back control if everything works out.
Naturally, the Soul-Self is responsible for many of Raven’s powers, and if she loses it, she loses access to a large portion of her abilities, alongside her ability to feel any emotion. While she used to need to transform into her Soul-Self to fly in her early days, since being resurrected in a new body she can just fly naturally, even without her Soul-Self in her body. The Soul-Self also still has to obey some laws of physics, and as a result could be affected and shattered by Superboy’s telekinesis.
Soul Manipulation
Raven can manipulate souls and interface with them, able to control their shapes. She can show people their own souls with her Soul-Self, and can even outright stab them, even while their souls are still contained in their bodies. Naturally, that’s pretty painful.
Perhaps more potently, Raven can absorb souls outright, which she can use to greatly empower herself. She has twice done this to defeat Trigon, absorbing the powers of many souls to overwhelm him in power and seal him away.
Magic
Raven is, at her core, a magic user, powered by the same belief as people like Zatanna. She can apply magic in many different ways, both offensively and defensively. Miscellaneous spells she knows include Brother Blood’s flesh ritual, a ritual to project her mind into Trigon’s realm, making people invisible and revealing invisible people, trapping people in energy spheres. chains, or nets, creating fires, closing holes in reality, and even shutting down people’s powers with an incantation. She can also scry on people from across large distances and even other dimensions.
Energy Projection
Raven’s primary offensive option, able to shoot out blasts of magic from her hands which can punch through solid walls. These blasts can harm even non-corporeal beings like the Shadow Riders. She can also project large shockwaves from her body, which can take out groups of people at once and even send the likes of Supergirl flying, or hit people with "the power of some long-lost dimension" from her cape. She can also produce fancy looking lightning-shaped blasts, though that’s more prominent as Dark Raven.
Force Fields
Raven can create force fields, ranging from small shields right in front of her, to larger fields to protect entire groups, to even massive city-block sized bubbles strong enough to defend against tidal waves. These shields don’t have to be purely physical either, as Raven has created psionic shields potent enough to defend the Titans from an attack by the HIVE Queen, a being engineered by Brainiac to be the strongest psionic on Earth. Her mother, Arella, has also used her Azarathian training to create mental shields which blocked Raven from sensing her.
Summoning
Raven can summon a variety of interdimensional monsters and demons to aid her in combat, through her cloak or an incantation. When strengthened by the mystic energies of Azarath, she could summon the Teen Titans themselves from across dimensions to aid her.
Telekinesis
It’s used way less frequently than you’d expect, but Raven does have telekinesis, strong enough to lift buildings and restrain Superboy.
Time Manipulation/Chronokinesis
Probably an unexpected power. While Raven is much more of a magician than a time manipulator, her background of being raised in a limbo outside of normal time in the New 52 universe makes her uniquely attuned to manipulating the energies of the time-stream, able to weave the Titans across time with her Soul-Self and transport them across time periods to a certain extent, though doing this too much will kill her. Even after Rebirth, her “chronokinesis” could be used to help stabilize a time vortex which was threatening the entire multiverse.
Raven can also stop time. Early in her history she could trap the entire Justice League in “time stasis”, including the likes of Hal Jordan and Zatanna who normally resist such effects, while recently she’s been shown to be able to stop time for well over 5 minutes.
Matter Manipulation
Raven has claimed that with her Soul-Self inside her, she could vaporize things or transmute them into “inert molecules”, supported by a comment from Klarion. She’s threatened to remove the bonds holding Neron’s atoms together and, more directly, accidentally created the Wyld by merging many animals into one with her energy.
Smoke Manipulation
Raven can produce large smokescreens around her body, and can create small smokescreens around just her eyes. She also frequently produces smoke around her whenever she teleports.
Precognition
While its origins are unexplained, Raven possesses an elementary precognitive power, ranging from battles occurring only a short time later to as far as an outright future apocalypse. As these visions come to her randomly and she can’t control them, they’re not something she can entirely rely on for combat, which is just so Raven.
Size Manipulation
In her battle with the unbound Spectre during Dark Crisis, Raven was able to grow to giant size to match him, presumably with her own magic.
Resistances
Mind Manipulation: Raven has resisted mind control since her very first appearances, her mental battles with Trigon forming the crux of her character and with her ultimately being able to resist his corruption. She’s resisted emotion manipulation from an alien energy sphere which had already affected 27,000 people, and could protect herself and the Titans from mind control from the HIVE Queen, who was engineered by Brainiac to be the strongest telepathic being on Earth. Note that while Raven was struggling immensely with this, she was also trying to protect her entire team, and lasted for most of the issue, with her “chaos energies” helping break the HIVE Queen’s entire hivemind. Raven directly compared the HIVE Queen’s psionic power to Trigon, who, as said above, Raven is able to resist the control of all the time, meaning this feat can be applied as a general showing of mental resistance. The Wyld also needed to be at full power with a full eclipse to consume Raven, despite the fact that at just a ¾ eclipse it was strong enough to match Miss Martian in a mental battle. Raven herself was able to resist the corrupting effects of the Great Darkness even as it was taking over both Jon Kent and Swamp Thing.
Soul Manipulation/Possession: Raven survived an alternate dimension which attempted to rip apart her soul, has blocked Jericho’s attempts to possess her, and her Soul-Self has blocked soul absorption and possession from the likes of Trigon and the souls of Azarath without Raven even being aware. Raven was also too powerful for the aforementioned alien energy sphere to absorb her soul, with it absorbing souls from across all of San Francisco to grow powerful enough to claim her. Even after doing so, Raven could still break out of it. And of course, all of Raven’s showings with her Soul-Self prove that just shattering or damaging it isn’t enough to put Raven down.
Matter Manipulation: As a bodiless soul, Raven was able to breach the shell of a titan which absorbed things on an atomic level upon contact.
Power Absorption & Nullification: Raven has resisted having her power absorbed even while unconscious and overcame Doctor Psycho trying to steal her power in her mindscape, and her Soul-Self was immune to the power nullifying abilities of the Disruptor. Even while having her abilities nullified by a helmet, her Soul-Self was still active, and she eventually broke out of the helmet through her own power.
BFR: Raven has resisted getting banished from Azarath, and could teleport to Wintersgate despite Baron Winters thinking it was impossible and being the only one who has control over Wintersgate.
Time Slowing: Due to her mystical connections, Raven was completely unaffected by an arcane device which alters the perception of time and slows it down so much it seemingly stops.
Sealing: Raven could teleport Skye away from magical chains which restrained her, and Trigon himself was able to break out of Arella’s seal by absorbing enough souls to power through it.
Forms
Phoenix
Green Phoenix
The Phoenix Force’s normal appearance when it bonds with Jean, or as Jean herself puts it, the “good” Phoenix. Beast has suggested that the Phoenix Force without a host is weaker than it is with one, and the Phoenix Force itself has called Jean the “perfect” host with the most potential and power, with it massively enhancing her already potent psionic abilities.
Dark Phoenix
Even though the Phoenix Force gives a lot of power to its host, if the host gives in to the Phoenix’s corruption, the Dark Phoenix will take shape. Once the host gives their mind to the Phoenix, they will become obsessed with nothing more than destruction and consumption and want to destroy everything.
On top of obviously being far more violent and destructive compared to their normal state, it’s suggested that the Phoenix’s powers increase in this form, as they are not tempered by joy or love. Note that, rather infamously, the Phoenix who appeared in the Dark Phoenix saga was retconned to be the Phoenix Force entity itself taking on Jean’s form and memories. As said above, the Phoenix manifesting on its own is likely weaker than it is with a host, and this retcon has subsequently had tons of retcons on top of it as well, so any feat the Dark Phoenix performs in this saga should be applicable to Jean as well.
White Phoenix of the Crown
This form is the Phoenix’s most powerful state, and Jean’s ultimate state of being. This form is gained by Jean connecting her mind with her loved ones she cares about, allowing her to stabilize herself with the Phoenix, achieving a kind of apotheosis. This form first appeared when Jean manifested in the White Hot Room after the Dark Phoenix saga, and has since also been achieved by the Jean of an alternate timeline, the Jean from the timeline of Days of Future Past, Hope, and Taaia.
With this new power Phoenix has shown to be able to hold universes in her hands and can make incredibly precise alterations to rewrite reality, able to absorb entire timelines into the White Hot Room. With these abilities and the amplified powers that Jean already possesses, Jean essentially gains total control over all existence to such a point that it was stated that Jean could perhaps even remake God in her own image. Taaia as White Phoenix has also shown the ability to erase entities from existence on a narrative scale.
Raven
Dark Raven
As the daughter of Trigon, Raven frequently struggles with resisting the urges of her father’s influence. If she gives in to her evil side or is otherwise corrupted, she transforms into Dark Raven.
As Dark Raven, Raven’s powers take on a much more destructive bend. She can project dark lightning both from her hands and through weaponry, corrupt people into her servants, project her soul as a shield, restrain people with telekinesis, knock people out with snake-like black smoke, grant people new powers, and even turn entire islands into stone. She can use this transmutation offensively, once trapping the Titans in illusions where they fought for their very souls while their bodies were turned into “living flesh”, essentially stone. These illusions threatened to destroy their souls entirely.
At one point, Raven’s body was completely destroyed, but a “Trigon Seed” entered her soul at the last second and gave it life anew, leaving her corrupt Soul-Self to act independently as Dark Raven. As it risked dissipating quickly without a host body, it possessed a normal woman and destroyed her soul, taking her body as Raven’s own and adopting Dark Raven as her supervillain name. She claimed her soul was actually better than her body, as it could not be destroyed or killed, and she was able to project her Soul-Self from her hair, restrain people with it, and trap others in illusions
During this period, Raven fed on souls themselves. She was able to implant these “Trigon Seeds”, aspects of Trigon’s soul itself, into people with a kiss, corrupting them into her slaves. Any body not strong enough to hold the power of a Trigon Seed would rapidly age and ultimately explode from the power. In the case of Starfire, Raven attempted to plant a Trigon Seed in her, but in-reality planted the lingering aspect of Raven’s good side who was subconsciously manipulating Dark Raven as part of her plan, allowing Starfire to use Raven’s Soul-Self. Even after a Trigon Seed is removed, some small aspect of it still lingers in the victim.
While in the past Raven was constantly battling herself internally to prevent Trigon from taking control, over the course of her history she has learned to resist these effects and control herself. She was ultimately able to defeat and overpower a dark version of herself who fully succumbed to Trigon with just her base power, proving that she’s surpassed her dark side both mentally and in terms of raw power.
White Raven
Just a disclaimer: White Raven isn’t actually a separate form from normal Raven. It’s a common misconception due to the highly popular 2003 Teen Titans series, but the white robes are purely ceremonial, and don’t indicate any shift in power.
She first donned them after being brainwashed by Brother Blood during New Teen Titans Volume 2, and kept wearing them for the rest of the run until her apparent death in issue 84. While her wearing them did coincide with an amp from Brother Blood, this amp was unrelated, and just enhanced her physicality and empathic powers. It wasn’t some cataclysmic shift in strength, and it’s entirely unrelated to Trigon. The next time she wears the white robes is while brainwashed by Brother Blood again, and she immediately switches back to her black robes upon breaking free of his control.
It does look really cool though.
Golden Raven
Golden Raven is closer to what people think White Raven is. After vanquishing Trigon and the dark half of her soul, Raven’s pure soul was all that remained, appearing golden and entirely without a body. Raven remained in this state for over half a decade of comics, periodically showing up to help the Titans when they needed it. This form has all of Raven’s standard powers, but has some interesting additional showings. It was able to channel the spiritual energies of the Amazons into Darkseid to replenish him and even fuse part of Wonder Woman’s soul into Darkseid’s without him knowing.
She also once guided Cyborg’s soul into a CPU (?) and was able to prevent it from dissipating, in that same run repeatedly flying from the Earth to the Moon in short time with no issue. When hit by Zauriel’s holy sword, her soul acted as a portal to the celestial plane, and she’s even teleported herself and others to Heaven on her own (fun fact, Raven is banned from Heaven, poor girl). Of note is that despite being just a soul, Raven still appears to run on limited stamina and energy.
Eventually, Raven’s soul disappeared, speculated by Cyborg to have transcended to a higher plane of existence, but her soul was summoned back to earth by Brother Blood and placed in a new, younger body, meaning Raven returned to normal, with it being said some aspect of Trigon still lingered within her even now. That said, modern comics have shown that Raven’s soul still contains a good aspect separate from her demonic self, with this good half not dissipating despite being separated from Raven for weeks, and as said above, Raven has overpowered her dark self with just her normal powers. This means that if Raven’s entire body is ever destroyed in a fight, she should be able to manifest as Golden Raven.
The Unkindness
In a possible future to the main DC reality, the world was being threatened by the all-powerful Riders of the Apocalypse. Seeing no other way to win, Raven created a plan to “tether” the Riders to herself, restraining them within her own body. By performing an incantation, she was able to physically restrain them and drag them into her body, before letting Shazam seal her, and in-turn the Riders, in the Rock of Eternity. The Riders within her ultimately corrupted Raven, and after some trickery from Neron, Shazam was made to say his own name, giving Raven the power of Shazam and letting her escape the Rock of Eternity. Now known as the Unkindness, Raven would go on to destroy all of creation.
The Unkindness is absurdly powerful. She consumed every plane of existence, her minions alone could massacre Superman Prime, and she decimated the speedforce wall, New Genesis, and Skyland, ultimately destroying existence itself. She can also go full Phoenix style and manifest as a giant, planet-sized raven. The word of god from the comic’s author, Jeremy Adams, takes this even further, claiming she’s more powerful than Perpetua, Hecate, the Presence, and that she’s the most powerful being in “any universe”, having absorbed the realms of Dream and Nightmare. Obviously, that’s a writer making comments without editorial supervision, so not the best to take at face value, but it does go to show how ridiculously powerful she’s intended to be.
As you might have gleaned from that description, the Unkindness as we see it in Future State definitely isn’t standard, as Raven needed to absorb the power of both the Riders of the Apocalypse and Shazam to achieve that level of power, before going on to consume reality after reality. That said, it might not be entirely out of reach for her in a fight depending on the scenario. Jeremy Adams, the creator of the Unkindness has talked about how he conceptualized the character for the Teen Titans vs Teen Titans Go movie, where TTG Raven absorbed all of her alternate selves to transform into a giant super powerful draconic creature. He explains that he imagines Raven as having the ability to absorb power to amplify her own, essentially an extension of her already established energy absorption abilities, and that the Unkindness we see in Future State is her after having consumed realities and timelines for power.
On its own this word of god would be dubious, but it’s actually supported beyond just the author’s own words. The editor of the Future State: Suicide Squad comics, Mike Cotton, backed up Adams’ words on Twitter, stating that Raven could conceivably transform into the Unkindness whenever she wanted, but that her powers in Future State were amplified due to absorbing the powers of the Riders of the Apocalypse, Shazam, and the other mystical entities in the Rock of Eternity. Most importantly, this idea has backing in the comics themselves, as in the later Dark Crisis: The Deadly Green special released in late 2022, it’s shown that Raven being in the presence of the Great Darkness begins amplifying her and morphing her into a similar appearance to the Unkindness in Future State. She claims that if she were to touch the Darkness, while it wouldn’t consume her, its hold over her would be absolute, and we’re shown a vision of her corrupted in a similar manner to the Unkindness threatening the entire Earth. In essence, if Raven is able to absorb enough energy, it’s possible she could achieve similar levels of power to the Unkindness in Future State in a fight.
PCP Raven
After absorbing pain from a person suffering from drugs, Raven ended up accidentally spiking herself with both weed and PCP. While in this state, she apparently got a power amp and was able to take on the rest of the team single handedly without much effort. It also made her go kind of insane. Don’t do drugs kids!
Cosmology
Marvel
(oh God)
Marvel has a vast cosmology. It starts out with a singular universe, infinite in size and then expanding into an infinite number of alternate timelines every quantum moment. With every subconscious and unconscious action and nonaction, an infinity of alternate timelines (universes) is generated. And then for every one of those universes, an infinite amount of alternate universes is generated over and over again, AD Infinitum. This simply starts from a single universe, turning into its own subsection of the multiverse. Each of these universes represents a manifestation body of Multi-Eternity. The greater multiverse is much, much bigger, already being described as infinite and even transfinite (an infinite series of infinite numbers, each greater than each other - this all starts with aleph-null, the baseline infinity). Atop the transfinitely-growing multiverse are an infinite number of spatial dimensions, even being referred to as planes of reality (of which there has been implied to be a transfinite number). And of course, Marvel being Marvel does not just have one multiverse, but rather an infinite number of multiverses and megaverses as well making up an omniverse.
This omniverse and all multiverses and universes within are kept separate by the multiversal Superflow which is conceptually transcended by the Superflow of Dreamtime or the “true” Superflow. This Superflow is a conceptual space that holds abstract, metaphysical concepts and archetypes that are beyond time, space, and form. The Superflow holds many layers such as the Microverse, Macroverse, Astral Plane, No-Space, and the Multiplane. The realm of abstracts, Overspace, sits within and atop the Superflow of Dreamtime. Otherworld sits separately from Overspace and contains pocket dimensions like Blightspoke which contains dead realities. Beyond the Superflow of Dreamtime would be the Neutral Zone which is also located between and beyond the multiverse. It is the edge of science but also so much more as it is an archetypal space for primal forms beyond that of the Superflow. Just as the Superflow views all underneath, the Neutral Zone views it. It is the final edge to the 8th Cosmos before it (Multi-Eternity of the 8th Cosmos) can be viewed as an infinitesimal speck within the Outside. Every iteration of Eternity grows more powerful than the previous one up until they ascend to their afterlife. The First Firmament is bigger than all though.
The Outside is the Beyond. It’s the outer dark - nonexistence in its purest form - it is Oblivion. Beyond even Oblivion lies the farthest Far Shore at the end of all things. This is the point at which the truest nature of Yggdrasil surrenders to, its aspects and aspects of aspects emanating into lower realms. Merely looking at the Far Shore from Oblivion is enough to drive one insane. It views everything below it as fictional ideas. It is conceptually beyond everything else, viewing everything underneath as mere comic books with conceptual ideas within it. It is the final step in the Marvel Cosmology before stepping into the unknown… into Mystery. The Mystery is the White Hot Room and the Above Place… the opposite to the Below Place of the One Below All. It is more like Heaven than any other heaven beneath, just as the Below Place is more like Hell than any hell above. The Mystery is where probability spawns from creation… where the ideas of Marvel sink into from the tip of the author’s pencil. From the Mystery, one can gain Mysterium, a magic metal made up of primal Kirbons (named after Jack Kirby).
Beyond the Mystery is only the House of Ideas. It has many entrance points on Earth and is the core of all Marvel. From it comes everything that ever was, ever is, and ever will be. Anything that is even slightly relevant to Marvel stems from the House of Ideas, whether it be canon or noncanon. Even fanfiction and headcanon are parts of the House, for the dreams of true believers of Marvel become reality within the House. From it, infinite stories are born. It contains all characters, all stories, all ideas, and all concepts. Nothing in Marvel is beyond the House, except for its true creator, the One Above All, who is Marvel’s “omnipotent” God and the representation of all of Marvel’s writers, editors, readers, artists, and fans.
Of course, with Marvel being as large as it is, this is absolutely nothing to the truest scope of what it truly contains. Especially without the help of a canonical cosmology map! For more information, you can visit https://topstrongest.fandom.com/wiki/Marvel_Cosmology.
DC
(oh fuck)
When you think of cosmology, it’s hard to think of a franchise that’s spent more time delving into the deepest roots of what should be than DC. It all starts out with a simple point. A single, infinite universe that expands into infinity. 52 universes that function as the “main multiverse” and then an infinite number more in the grander scope within the greater multiverse. Of all of these universes, Prime Earth represents the “main universe.” It is the universe from which every “main” change is caused. It is the metaverse. From it and every other universe surrounding it comes an infinite number of universes and timelines that branch off with every event and non-event. This happens every moment, on and on and on. These universes contain themselves pivotal points which lead to an uncountable infinity worth of distinct universes branching off from them,
This multiverse and all other infinite multiverses exist within the Orrery of Worlds. This Orrery is entangled in Bleedspace, the lifeblood of the multiverse. The Bleed separates universes. Ultramenstrum, a component of Bleed, is recognized by even the Monitors and respected for its immense healing properties. The Orrery and the Bleed contain not just infinite universes and multiverses but also an innumerable amount of spatial dimensions. Atop both of these would be the Speed Force which exists across every dimension and connects to DC’s “timestream,” a cosmological location which connects all timelines across all universes, multiverses, and dimensional planes together.
Beyond the Speed Force would be the Sphere of the Gods. This is a conceptual realm that houses archetypal entities of jungian or platonic-like nature. The Sphere of the Gods formed out of pure possibility around Hecate. It’s the home to all spiritual and mystical energies in the multiverse, and its residents are powered by belief. Beyond the Sphere of the Gods would be the Collective Unconscious. Comic Book Limbo is another realm that exists beyond the Sphere of the Gods, containing characters long-forgotten. There is no time in Limbo and there are no stories. Beyond even Limbo is the Monitor Sphere which houses Nil, the home of the Monitors. In the Monitor Sphere, everything is realer than real. It is more profound. It is archetypal from an archetypal view as it houses primal forms such as the Monitors. This is where form and meaning surrender to the Overvoid.
Beyond this would be the World Tree (also called Yggdrasil), which birthed elemental sources such as the Green and the Red. Its antithesis would be Maha Pralaya, the void of nonexistence that preceded creation.
What lies next would be the Source Wall. The Source Wall is the edge of DC’s entire creation and then some. It is an omnipresent border that emanates across all universes, multiverses, and dimensions in DC. It is the final edge before all realms on the map become one with the Overvoid. However, there is a possibility that the 6th Dimension of Perpetua is beyond the Source Wall but this has been kept vague by DC. Beyond all things in DC though is the Presence. He is the ultimate creator of all things in DC. Even his opposite and his unconscious simply are a part of his eternal being. The Source is his energy and the Overvoid is the canvas upon which this energy is expelled to create all things.
As amazing as DC’s cosmology is, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. For more information, please do visit: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:PrinceOfTheMorning/DC_Cosmology_-_From_a_Holistic_Stance_on_the_Overall_Canon.
Feats
Phoenix
Overall
Classified as an Omega-Level mutant
Founding member of the X-Men
Considered the most powerful telepath in the world at her peak
Restored the M’kraan Crystal
Jean has defeated Professor X, Emma Frost, Galactus, and the Phoenix Force itself
Rachel with the Phoenix defeated Necrom and Galactus
Maya with the Phoenix defeated the Adversary
Maya with the Phoenix helped stop a flood that was going to destroy creation
Hope with the Phoenix restored the mutant race
Power
More powerful than Gorgon, who made a shockwave that spread through Attilan and shattered a mountain
Contained and repaired the M’kraan Crystal, which was threatening the universe
Matched Galactus in a beam clash and was able to harm him, with Galactus stating her power rivals his own, and later stating that he reveres her power
Dark Phoenix’s power was stated to be rival to both Galactus and X-Man
The Phoenix Force was stated to be the most destructive cosmic force in the universe
The Phoenix Force was stated to contain a power that defies measurement
The Phoenix Force was stated by the Watcher to be second to only “the creator”
The Phoenix Force is the direct counterpart and even match to Scarlet Witch’s Chaos Magic, and was able to undo the effects of her No More Mutants spell, when not even Doom with the Life Force could accomplish that
Phoenix Force Cyclops one-shot Thor; Phoenix Force Magik and Colossus were also shown to be capable of beating up Thor
Dark Phoenix Cyclops easily defeated the Avengers with a single attack
Rachel as the Phoenix could destroy a galaxy in a minute, and devastated a solar system in her fight with Necrom
Rachel as the Phoenix overpowered and defeated a hungry Galactus
Giraud as the Phoenix cauterized a wound on Eternity and caused him pain
The combined power of multiple Phoenix hosts was able to briefly contain a multiversal flood which was threatening all of reality
The Phoenix has control over the White Hot Room beyond the Far Shore, and the Beyonder stated that in the White Hot Room, he and the Defenders stood no chance against the pure Phoenix
Stated to be the second strongest abstract entity next to the One Above All
Is so powerful, the Phoenix Force can even destroy entire planets! (Wow!)
Speed
Emma says that the Phoenix would atomize her in a nanosecond
Thane with the Phoenix Force kept pace with a spaceship that was going lightspeed
Scott with the Phoenix Force was fast enough to block a attack from Mjolnir
Dark Phoenix could mentally battle Xavier across infinite planes of reality (Infinite)
Durability
Withstood blasts from heralds of Galactus such as Firestar and Terrax
Took a blast to the face from Cyclops, the same kind of blast capable of splitting a small planet
Thane with the Phoenix Force could take hits from Thanos that blew up a planet
Rachel with the Phoenix Force took a blast that ruptured the surface of the planet
Survived being inside a star, and also survived the supernova that she caused while inside it
Raven
Overall
Founding and integral member of the original Teen Titans
Assembled the New Teen Titans
Founded the Titans Academy
Repelled Trigon’s invasion of Earth multiple times
As Dark Raven, successfully helped take over the world
Aided Trigon in his conquest of the Underrealms
Defeated her own dark counterpart
Defeated Trigon, Donna Troy, Deathstroke, Terra, Mongul, Neron, and many more
Banished Brother Blood to Hell
Tethered the Riders of the Apocalypse to herself
As the Unkindness, destroyed all of creation
Was everyone’s childhood crush
Power
[Pre-Crisis] Stated that her powers could "destroy a universe if left uncontrolled, and more", repeated again Post-Crisis
[Pre-Crisis] Her possessed Soul-Self fought off all the Titans, including Donna Troy
[Post-Crisis] Considered by Sparta to be a force of almost godlike power, so strong she was mistaken for the final Titan seed
[Post-Crisis] Physically matched Donna Troy
[Post-Crisis] Stated to be more powerful than her mother, Arella
[Post-Crisis] Shook the entire Titans Tower by projecting her Soul-Self
[Post-Crisis] Sent Supergirl flying with a shockwave
[Post-Crisis] A demon claimed Raven could destroy planets, blot out all stars in the sky and burn the Heavens if she gives in
[Post-Crisis] Threw a cultist so hard it broke a gravestone (impressive, we know)
[New 52] Tore out Belial’s heart as he was beating on Superboy
[New 52] Deflected an attack from a massive alien energy sphere with her Soul-Self, and, after being empowered, destroyed it completely
[Rebirth] Blasted a berserk Beast Boy with some magic lightning, subduing him
[Rebirth] Telekinetically lifted up parts of two buildings and slams them into Superboy
[Rebirth] Was capable of holding her own against the corrupted unbound Spectre, ultimately winning after Jim Corrigan helped restrain the Spectre
[Rebirth] Blew away Swamp Thing multiple times
[Pre-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Released a shockwave which knocked out Aqualad
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Has easily defeated all the Titans multiple times, including heavy hitters like Donna Troy and Wally West, with Cyborg claiming she could easily take on the entire team in this state
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Vaporized two criminals
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Shattered Azar’s soul
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Fought Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy, restraining the former with her Soul-Self
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Knocked out all her brothers all at once
[Rebirth] [Dark Raven] K.O.’d both Kyle Rayner and Steel with her lightning
[Post-Crisis] [Golden Raven] When used by Starfire, her purified Soul-Self helped destroy Trigon’s soul/energy, when not even the combined souls of Azarath after just destroying his body could do so
[Teen Titans Go!] Casually destroyed the sun in a second
Speed
[Pre-Crisis] Dodged an attack from Trigon, with Trigon even commenting on her speed
[Pre-Crisis] Evaded a blast from Hal Jordan
[Pre-Crisis] Her Soul Self flew from New York to Blue Valley, Nebraska in mere minutes, reaching blistering, unimaginable speeds of up to Mach 36 (Woah!)
[Pre-Crisis] Her Soul-Self flew to the Justice League satellite from a great distance away
[Post-Crisis] Has dodged lasers multiple times
[Post-Crisis] Teleported to a location faster than a young Wally West could get there
[Post-Crisis] Teleported at “the speed of thought”
[Post-Crisis] Intercepted Superboy with her Soul-Self before he can react
[Post-Crisis] Her Soul-Self traveled across an entire city and back in just a few seconds
[New 52] Intercepted a blast of electricity
[New 52] Her Soul-Self traveled from her school to a distant house in the span of a conversation
[Rebirth] Teleported away from helicopter fire
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Her Soul-Self flew from Earth to Tamaran in a short timeframe
[Post-Crisis] [Golden Raven] Flew from the moon to Earth
[Post-Crisis] [Golden Raven] As a soul, quickly flew into orbit and to the moon, before flying back to Earth
Durability
(Adios nuclear reactor!)
[Pre-Crisis] Has taken direct hits from Trigon, several times
[Pre-Crisis] Survived an explosion which completely destroys a small island
[Post-Crisis] Survived an exploding sun
[Post-Crisis] Took a punch to the face from a possessed Wonder Woman
[Post-Crisis] Survived blasts from Superboy
[Post-Crisis] Tanked an energy blast that knocked out Donna Troy
[Post-Crisis] Endured an explosive arrow she compared to the energy of an atomic bomb
[Post-Crisis] Withstood being assaulted by the energy of “a hundred thousand dimensions”
[Post-Crisis] Survived a hit from Zauriel’s flaming holy sword, which was once wielded by Michael Demiurgos
[New 52] Survived a Martian Vision blast from Martian Manhunter
[Rebirth] Withstood Jon Kent’s solar flare
[Rebirth] Endured a hit and electrical torture from Mother Blood, described as “the full force of her magic”
[Rebirth] Had the stamina to fight for three days straight in a battle on the astral plane
[Various] Tanked attacks from Terra, Etrigan, Brother Blood, Inertia, Doctor Light, Taylor, a Speed Force amped Deathstroke, Neron, Starfire, Jon Kent, and many more
[Post-Crisis] [Dark Raven] Survived a large explosion caused by Phantasm which destroyed a building
[Rebirth] The Unkindness, according to the author of the comic, was unhurt by Black Adam’s lightning, which disrupts “the fundamental fabric of the omniverse”
Scaling
Phoenix
Wolverine
WOlveRine cAn fiGhT iN BlIghTspoKe, a rEalm abOvE tHe multIvErse WhEre cOLLapsed reAlitIes aRe StorEd. In tHis fiGHt, EnTire uNivErseS shAtTeRed aRouNd anD atoP LoGan, bUt He wAs abLe tO cOntInue fIgHtiNg.
Thor
The Phoenix Force has been compared to Thor in power before, and even overpowered him several times in the past.
Shook the 9 realms as a baby (each realm being a universe)
Should be comparable with Old King Thor who held up all creation to save everything from falling into Oblivion
"Rip the fabric of the universe", banishing Ymir and Surtur to another dimension
Lifted a book of infinite pages as a child; Donald Blake does this afterwards as well
Consistently fights the Hulk
Savage Hulk can shake the infinite multiverse
Physically matched Onslaught and cracked his armor, who easily contained Franklin Richards inside of himself, the same Franklin whose powers are so great that he made pocket universes and his abilities have been described as equal to Celestials
Comparable to Valkyrie, who searched the ten realms and every point in between in the blink of an eye. (1.5768 undecillion c, likely immeasurable, hell yeah he has achieved MAXIMUM FAST)
Scarlet Witch
Considering her Chaos Magic is a direct equal to the Phoenix Force, and Wanda and Dark Phoenix are able to fight each other on even ground, the Phoenix and the Scarlet Witch should be relatively even in terms of strength.
The “No More Mutants” spell affected the entire Marvel multiverse including all timelines, and likely affected the entire omniverse
Wanda’s alteration of reality started up a trans-temporal tsunami called the Chaos Wave, which destroyed infinite realities and spatial planes between them, to the point where it reached Otherworld. It also:
Brought Mad Jim Jaspers (one of the most powerful reality warpers) back to life
Meggan used the power of the Beyond to barely stop the Chaos Wave
Odin
The Phoenix has been shown to be comparable to the Scarlet Witch as explained above. Wanda was powerful enough to damage Nyx, who could snap Zeus’ neck, a being comparable to Odin in power.
He and Zeus shook the Infinite Embassy in a fight, a structure that exists above infinite dimensions
Odin, while weakened, could fight on par with Seth, threatening infinite planes of reality and tearing apart the fabric of the multiverse. Seth was even planning to tear out Yggdrasil by its roots
Yggdrasil grows in directions beyond conception and contains liquid in its roots that embody all of space and time
Mephisto was self-stated to be Odin's equal. A fight between him and Hela would make Ragnarok pale in comparison and cause omniversal armageddon.
Fear Lord Nightmare holds Mephisto's power in high regard and sought him as an ally in fighting the Serpent. Fear Lords like Nightmare are able to control and maintain 6-dimensional realms.
Odin and Lady Phoenix can rebuild creation together after it’s destroyed by the Celestials
Was able to fight at speeds beyond space, time, and thought (immeasurable)
A weakened Odin was also able to react to Mjolnir flying from a realm beyond the farthest reaches of the known multiverse beyond the eyes of even the most ancient, abstract, primordial gods (immeasurable)
Galactus
Galactus and the Phoenix are consistently shown to rival one another. Reed Richards claimed that she can rival Galactus' power and she has harmed him, along with Galactus respecting and revering her power.
While plagued with a conceptual hunger, Galactus could consume the 8th iteration of the omniverse down to the First Firmament
Galactus’s battle with Scrier and the Other threatened to destroy the entire multiverse on a level beyond even the Chaos War
The Ultimate Nullifier, which is a part of Galactus, can destroy the totality of Eternity
The Beyonders
The Beyonder has outright admitted he wouldn’t hold a candle to the Phoenix Force at its peak, saying he’d end up like a carrot in a blender.
Three Beyonders working together were enough to kill the Living Tribunal
Meggan used the power of the Beyond to barely stop the Chaos Wave
The Phoenix should also be beyond the Beyonder unit from the first two Secret Wars, who was millions of times more powerful than the entire combined multiverse
Misc. Abstracts of the Universe
The Phoenix Force is the embodiment of all life and represents multiple concepts, such as creation and destruction. The Phoenix Force existed before the void that was Oblivion. As an abstract entity, it should safely be on the same level as these other abstract entities. Additionally, Phoenix Giraud was able to cauterize a wound on Eternity, showing that this level of power is consistent for the Phoenix.
An M-Body of the In-Betweener represents the concept of concepts
Eternity embodies the totality of existence,on all planes and levels of creation (see cosmology section)
Even the M-Bodies of Eternity are composed of condensed plot
Celestials are composed of an infinite number of aspects that exist in each universe
The Chaos King exists as a greater threat than the Infinity Gauntlet
Mikaboshi is the void which existed before Eternity (all of existence) and sought to bring everything back to that void
Was the greatest threat to the multiverse ever seen up to the point of Chaos War
The Living Tribunal is the judge of all creation and is powerful enough to depower the Infinity Gauntlet
The soul gem contains its own multiverse
Raven
Important Note: As Raven has overpowered and defeated her dark self in combat, and has matched her demonic half multiple times, any feats or scaling linked to Dark Raven should also apply to Raven as she is normally.
The Teen Titans
Raven is pretty widely regarded as the most powerful of the primary Teen Titans cast, so it stands to reason she should be capable of everything they are.
Donna Troy survived a nuke from Monarch, who compared his power to the Big Bang
Donna Troy took a blast which harmed Ion Kyle Rayner, and was stated to be almost as strong as Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman
Cyborg has on more than one occasion claimed he can fire “one million decibels” of white sound, which is such a ludicrous number that it would tear apart the universe, so it is dubious on that alone, but he is capable of harming DC’s powerhouses with this technology
Trigon
Raven is able to consistently dodge, and shrug off attacks from Trigon. More importantly, her purified Soul-Self form is fully able to destroy his soul/energy state, despite the combined souls of Azarath that were responsible for his body’s destruction being unable to.
Trigon defeated the entirety of the Justice League in an alternate timeline
Took a beating from Superboy, who felt it was “like hitting a mountain with a teaspoon”
Could crush the planet Earth in his hands, and tear a universe asunder
Stated by Lust to be the most powerful demonic entity the world has ever seen
Stated to be “a greater evil than any we’ve suffered before” by Baron Winters
Squared up to the Presence, though we don’t see the outcome of the battle beyond the Presence being okay
Misc. Hell-Lords
Raven easily blocked an attack from Neron and claimed she was far more powerful than he could ever hope to be. She’s also casually ripped out the heart of her brother, Belial, and is suggested to be the most valuable of Trigon’s children to him, meaning she should scale above the feats of many of the various Hell-Lords. Trigon has also killed his own sons by accident, proving he’s well above them.
Neron controls Hell and dictates its reality’s rules, Hell being Heaven’s symmetrical opposite
Neron claimed to be host to Lucifer and Blaze, and suggests he’s taken hits from the Morningstar
The Spectre and Belial engage in battle, though the Spectre wins fairly quickly
The Sons of Trigon take hits from Zatanna, Swamp Thing, and the rest of Justice League Dark
Etrigan, Trigon’s grandson, defeats an angel of heaven, and is the only demon with a chance against Karrien, the Archangel of War
Golgotha, who’s technically Trigon’s great-grandson, one shots a heaven sentry
Merlin aided in constructing a spell that magnified Belial’s powers, allowing him to take over Hell and usurp even Lucifer. Merlin calls Belial “the most powerful being to ever sit on Hell’s throne”, and Belial plans to take over all creation. Lucifer considers that impossible, but Belial promptly shuts him up and turns him into literally a dog (note that this is New 52 Lucifer though)
Superman
Trigon, whom Raven scales to, is capable of defeating Superman, alongside the rest of Earth’s greatest heroes in an alternate timeline, which should be consistent with what Trigon is normally capable of, as he’s depicted as stronger than the Justice League, including heavy hitters such as Wonder Woman and Zatanna.
While split in half, fought the 5th dimensional demon Vyndktvx in a conceptual battle happening across past, present, and future, in all the different worlds there are, all at the same time, in order to save the entirety of creation
Flew so fast he broke time and space, traveling out of the universe and beyond “the very bounds of infinity,” eventually flying into the Spectre after he had been dispatched by the Presence to stop him from bypassing the veil into the afterlife
After being sundipped for an unknown amount of time, was able to one-shot the World Forger and destroy his masterpiece
The Flash
Raven at her peak has frequently been shown to be superior to the other Teen Titans, including Wally West, and she’s comparable to other high-tier characters in DC who should have relative scaling to the Speedforce.
Doctor Fate
Trigon has tanked a blast from Doctor Fate, and even killed him in an alternate timeline. Trigon’s power was also directly compared to Lady Blaze by Raven, the same Blaze who battled fairly evenly with Kent Nelson’s Doctor Fate. Neron, who Raven scales to, also easily broke through the attacks of Hector Hall’s Doctor Fate, and Mordru has likewise overwhelmed him.
The Spectre
Raven was directly capable of holding her own against the corrupted unbound Spectre, albeit on the losing end. Trigon’s power has been directly compared to the Spectre by the Monitor. Raven herself has also overpowered Neron before, who has overwhelmed Jim Corrigan’s Spectre and separated him from his host. The sons of Trigon were also capable of playing poker in an omni-dimensional room that even the Phantom Stranger found difficult to navigate, the Phantom Stranger having matched the Spectre in combat, and Trigon's dark magic has interfered with the Phantom Stranger's powers.
Merlin
It’s a little roundabout, but Merlin derived part of his power from Belial, his father and Raven’s brother, and Belial has controlled a spell which utilizes Merlin’s magic. Merlin himself has said his demon’s blood is his strength. Raven has ripped out Belial’s heart with ease, and Trigon considers her the most valuable of his children, which could also arguably extend to Merlin as additional support.
In a possible future, destroyed the Tower of Fate and drains the magic of Doctor Fate and Zatanna
Dreamed Tim Hunter into existence; Merlin is stated to be the only being who can observe Tim Hunter, when this same issue shows even the rebellion of Lucifer Morningstar
Has battled Mordru, and Mordru has implied Merlin is above him
For reference, Mordru has been the master of an entire planet of sorcerers, each of them equal to silver-age Doctor Fate, and claimed to be more powerful than threats which could include the Upside-Down Man and Hecate while granting Zatanna enough power to fight said threats
Weaknesses
Phoenix
Jean dies… a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Despite such power at her fingertips, it’s important to remember that she’s still technically human, and while the Phoenix Force itself can fight on without a host, it won’t be as powerful without Jean. In addition, enough damage to the host itself can expel the Phoenix Force from their host's body, which would render Jean much less powerful, and if the Phoenix Force itself is killed, it has to travel to the White Hot Room to heal itself, which takes time.
Also, while the White Hot Room is essentially the heart of the Phoenix itself, control over it can be taken by other sources, including Jean herself.
Note: SHE DIED AGAIN WHILE WORKING ON THIS BLOG. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, that’s where the image above comes from. Yes, she’ll probably get brought back just to get killed again.
Raven
(Insert all of your Teen Titans Go jokes here)
Emotion has always been a sensitive thing for Raven. Between having to suppress her emotions to prevent Trigon from taking control of her, and the damage her out of control emotions could create, it’s been difficult for her to normally express her emotions as others would, and opening up to her fellow Titans was difficult at first.
In regards to her powers though, she requires focus in order to use them, and can be unaware of her surroundings when draining the pain of others. Extremely intense and volatile emotions have also been shown to affect her, and she’s had to fight off the influence of her father many times. In the beginning, this was a constant struggle. She is also specifically weak to the light of Solstice.
Despite her awesome power, she is still human at the end of the day. Half-human, at least. Her physical body requires oxygen to breathe, and though her Soul-Self is more resilient to the vacuum of space, it can’t survive there forever, at least in her normal state. Additionally, Raven’s stamina isn’t infinite, and she can eventually tire out after heavy use of her powers. And despite her Soul-Self’s resilience, complete destruction of both her body and soul is something she hasn't shown to be able to come back from definitively.
Verdicts
Phoenix
Stats
The Phoenix Force is ridiculously overpowered to the point that it’s one of Marvel’s most powerful abstracts. It ranks above the Celestials, Galactus, Eternity, Infinity, Death, Oblivion, and even the Living Tribunal. Marvel’s cosmology is vast and extensive. Starting from a multiverse made up of a transfinite number of infinite-sized universes which is only one out of an infinite number of said multiverses kept separate from each other by the conceptual, inter-multiversal Superflow, the cosmology gets more and more insane by the second. The Neutral Zone transcends the Superflow as the Superflow transcends everything below and all of this is merely a part of Multi-Eternity, who contains a lot more layers squished between said realms. The Living Tribunal, who is the judge of the entire omniverse, exists as a mere function within Multi-Eternity.
This same Living Tribunal is so far beyond the Infinity Gauntlet that he can simply make it stop working. The same Infinity Gauntlet which is beyond abstracts like Master Order, Lord Chaos, and Galactus [Galactus for instance battled Mephisto while hungry, and Mephisto is capable of causing omniversal armageddon in a fight with Hela; Galactus also fought the In-Betweener whose M-Body represented the “concept of concepts”]. The same Infinity Gauntlet which houses an entire multiverse within one of its gems and the same Infinity Gauntlet which can overthrow Eternity and the rest of the cosmic abstracts.
Multi-Eternity exists in the Outside which is Oblivion and on a grander scope, the Beyond. Oblivion is the very embodiment of non-existence on all levels. Before creation was, Oblivion is. After creation ends, Oblivion will be. Oblivion is complete physical, mental, spiritual, conceptual, and abstract erasure. When Quasar was hit with the Ultimate Nullifier [a weapon capable of erasing even Eternity], he was thrown into Oblivion. Remember Amatsu-Mikaboshi? The Chaos King who was capable of completely erasing Multi-Eternity? Yeah, he was an infinitesimal aspect of Oblivion whose truest self can supposedly even break the fourth wall and erase the reader from existence.
The Beyonders exist within the Outside and as a whole, are more powerful than the Pre-Retcon Beyonder who was millions of times more powerful than the entirety of the Marvel cosmology beneath the Beyond Realm. They can break out of Loki’s plot manipulative schemes and destroy the entire omniverse (Multi-Eternity) as well as all the abstracts within it, including the Living Tribunal. And yet, their power… all of it, merely draws from what lies beyond even the Far Shore which is already completely transcendental to the Beyond Realm: the Mystery.
Call it whatever you want: the Mystery; the Above Place; Heaven; the White Hot Room. The very heart, the very mindscape of the true Phoenix Force. The Mystery is the embodiment of the One Above All’s love and holds within it, the very flames of the Phoenix Force in its purest state. While in the White Hot Room, the Phoenix Force’s power is so absurdly insane that the power of Loki (God of Stories) and the Beyonder are absolutely nothing to it. The Beyonder even states that trying to fight the Phoenix Force would be like throwing a carrot in a blender. If you want to go a step further, even the One Below All is terrified of the Mystery and vows to destroy it.
This is a level of power that Raven simply cannot compare to. While DC’s cosmology as a whole is roughly comparable if not completely equal to that of Marvel’s, the point at which Raven ranks does not realistically reach the level of the Mystery.
Raven at her best should be roughly comparable to someone like Trigon, who was stated to be on par with the Spectre by the Monitor. Taking this statement at face value gets ridiculous levels given that the Spectre was capable of threatening “all of creation” in his fight against the Phantom Stranger. Trigon is very easily a multiversal threat and “multiversal” in DC can get to some ludicrous levels. He was capable of killing Doctor Fate in an alternate timeline and the power of the Lords of Order (like Nabu) is capable of destroying realms in the Sphere of the Gods which should definitely earn a solid placement of being able to destroy realms that conceptually transcend the very idea of dimensionality itself.
However, the problem arises when you factor in the fact that realms like the Superflow, Overspace, and Otherworld already get to this level of power. That means that the Phoenix is many, many, many, many levels above Raven. The White Hot Room is just completely out of the reach of Raven’s normal power levels. There really just isn’t a comparison with that level of scaling.
And what makes it worse is the fact that Jean doesn’t necessarily even have to be White Phoenix of the Crown to ascend to this level of power. Other Phoenix hosts such as Maya Lopez and Scott Summers have accessed the White Hot Room without becoming White Phoenix of the Crown. What it does guarantee is that Jean will have a level of precise control over the White Hot Room that no other hosts have had in the past. This will be important later on. Now, Raven does have a variety of arguments that say that she should be able to match Phoenix in power. People have gone off to scale Trigon and by extension, Raven, to the likes of Mordru, Merlin, Tim Hunter, Pralaya, and of course, the two funniest characters, Lucifer Morningstar and the Presence.
Now, for starters, the likelihood that Mordru, Merlin, Tim Hunter, and Pralaya would reach the power of the Mystery is unlikely to begin with. Merlin = Mordru is a very solid argument and then as a high-end, it can be argued that Raven would be able to scale to Merlin. However, the problem arises when you begin to argue that Merlin scales to Tim Hunter who is/is above all magic in DC. People argue that Merlin is comparable to Tim Hunter because of his demon blood which he derives from Belial. However, what makes Merlin comparable to Tim is not the demon blood within him, but rather being the vessel for the Song of Magic. These are two different power sources and thus, it wouldn’t necessarily scale back to Belial.
Then, there’s the argument that Raven should scale to Pralaya via scaling to Mordru who scales above Zatanna. The problem with Zatanna scaling is that even if you were to fully buy Pralaya scaling, Zee’s power vastly varies with her belief. Enough to jump into different dimensional tiers entirely. This is shown very clearly when Zee is able to fight the Upside-Down Man and Pralaya on even terms despite not being able to do jackshit against them only an issue or two prior. However, you could potentially still argue it based off of Zatanna viewing Trigon as an unbeatable foe.
Even if we were to argue that Raven would scale to Pralaya, we could potentially equalize the functions of Oblivion and Pralaya since they both represent the non-existence that was before creation was formed. Both Oblivion and Pralaya act through lower avatars which allow lesser characters to view and interact with said entities with the true forms of both entities completely transcending all existence. Even the Chaos King who has a feat of threatening “creation” like Pralaya did would only be an aspect of Oblivion. Oblivion is absolutely nothing compared to the power of the Phoenix Force as the Beyonders which exist on the same level as Oblivion derive their power from the White Hot Room. If we were to assume that Pralaya were equal to Oblivion, the Phoenix Force at its peak would be many, many levels above regardless.
And finally, we have Lucifer Morningstar and the Presence. Now, the main problem here is how high you have Lucifer Morningstar and the Presence. There are many interpretations of the DC cosmology with a notable number of people (including many authors) having Lucifer and the Presence as nothing more impressive than your average DC abstract. However, if you were to have Lucifer Morningstar and the Presence at the top of DC’s hierarchy, it wouldn’t make sense to have Raven or Trigon anywhere near comparable to them. Lucifer has stated before that none of the hells or the demons within the hells are comparable to him. Lucifer is pretty close to omniscient and is also very much against lying so it would make no sense for him to lie about this.
Neron, who has implied that he’s taken hits from the Morningstar, is not as noble and well, we have no idea when he fought Lucifer or how. Lucifer’s statement would obviously have stronger weight. And of course, there’s the time that the Spectre fought against Michael Demiurgos who after getting serious, was able to casually throw Spectre out of heaven with only one hand. The difference in power is very obvious and is made even more clear when the Presence in the form of a dog, absolutely humiliates Trigon and a bunch of his besties off panel. Yes, the fight took place off panel but the comic very strongly implies that the Presence won that fight and with no difficulty whatsoever as he was at no point ever indicated to be in trouble.
Really, to truly argue that Raven can match the Phoenix at its peak would require arguing that Raven can completely tap into full-power Unkindness mode in the middle of the fight. However, we run into a very similar problem here. The Unkindness doesn’t really have any feats to match the Phoenix Force at its peak. We only have statements that haven’t gone through any editorial processes. Now yes, author statements can sometimes be taken into account, even if they’re not published within the original source; however, with something as big as this, it would just be Word of God which isn’t fully supported.
The Unkindness is far, far, far more powerful than any other form Raven has had before and it would definitely boost her power well beyond what we’ve seen her do before. However, to say she could match Jean or even surpass Jean by being above entities like Perpetua and the Presence is a big stretch given that we’ve never really seen that supported within the comic itself. The Unkindness wouldn’t even really be a go-to for Raven as she can’t reach the level of the power that she had in Future State normally without absorbing a large amount of energy.
So in her normal state, can Raven match Phoenix outside the White Hot Room? Potentially! A manifestation of the Phoenix Force was able to directly match Wanda’s Chaos Magic which can affect the entire Marvel omniverse and harm entities like Chaos which can do the exact same. Hell-lords like Mephisto can cause omniversal armageddon as mere side effects of their fights. Odin has threatened to destroy all planes of reality and can even rip out the higher-dimensional Yggdrasil which grows in directions beyond conception. Galactus has threatened the totality of Multi-Eternity in a fight with the Scrier and the Other and when cursed with a conceptual hunger by Logos, he would threaten to consume the totality of the omniverse (Multi-Eternity) down to the First Firmament.
Phoenix can match and even surpass all of this. Destruction that can threaten the Superflow, Overspace, Neutral Zone, and the very whole of the 8th Cosmos iteration of Multi-Eternity. At the Phoenix’s best, it might not even matter if it's within or outside the White Hot Room. Raven would match the low and mid-ends but the higher-ends of the Phoenix would simply be too much for her.
Arsenal & Abilities
For the most part, Jean and Raven’s abilities cancel out against each other, but one thing to note in particular is that Jean has some of the greatest telepathic abilities in the entire Marvel universe. As the Dark Phoenix, her telepathic prowess was great enough to fight Charles Xavier on infinitely transcendental planes of existence simultaneously. Jean’s telepathy has since gotten much better, even surpassing that of Xavier in base. Raven would undoubtedly be able to resist Jean’s telepathy given her showings against both Trigon and the HIVE Queen which would mean Jean’s greatest strength would, for the most part, be rendered moot. The HIVE Queen was engineered to be the greatest telepath on Earth which would include characters like Martian Manhunter who could mind hax the Spectre.
However, the problem is that with the Phoenix, Jean’s already absurd telepathy would be amplified to even greater extents. At this point, Jean’s telepathy could very well break through Raven’s psychic defenses and shut her down telepathically. Jean could use a variety of different methods to mentally play with Raven, even if it were to take a bit of time. Now yes, it is possible that Raven could potentially regain control in a mental setting but it would have to be said that with the power of the Phoenix Force amplifying her already absurd telepathic prowess, Jean would have the mental advantage overall. And well, this is where things start to get absolutely absurd. Jean is very, very, very powerful in her base state but once she gets the Phoenix Force, it’s a whole different territory.
The Phoenix Force is the abstract concept of life and death; creation and destruction; the spark that brings everything into existence and the final fire that consumes all into nothingness. And per its own words, the Phoenix can do anything.
Raven’s control over time is amazing. She can slow down and stop time or travel through it outright. She also has some decent resistances to time being manipulated around her so normally, the Phoenix slowing down or stopping time around Raven shouldn’t affect her. Similarly, Raven shouldn’t really be able to freeze Phoenix in time as Phoenix has shown the ability to be unaffected by time slowing down. The Phoenix is also an entity from the White Hot Room which exists completely beyond the concepts of space and time and similarly, abstracts such as the Phoenix also transcend space and time themselves. Therefore, any alterations to time would be largely ineffective on the Phoenix Force.
However, as White Phoenix of the Crown, Jean’s ability to manipulate time becomes vastly more powerful. It becomes so potent that she can cause massive changes to reality and gains a ludicrous amount of control over existence as a whole. She can break apart timelines and completely remove certain parts of said timeline. She can also create miniscule changes that alter the course of reality. The Phoenix Force can also feed on the life-force of future beings and thus, deny them existence. If the Phoenix were to be able to go to the White Hot Room, it could simply absorb the life-force of Raven’s ancestors, causing her to be erased from the timeline.
The Phoenix Force has also been able to directly erase entities from the timeline and recreate said timeline and all the entities within it using the life-forces. However, if it truly wants to, it has no need to save Raven’s life-force and can simply consume or erase it at will. It also doesn’t help that Jean can simply look into the future and witness how the fight will go. The cosmic awareness and clairvoyance granted by the Phoenix is ludicrously powerful and is far more useful than the visions that Raven can potentially have of the future. While Raven cannot control said visions, Jean can simply view into the future at any point, especially when in the White Hot Room from which she can view all of creation with her cosmic awareness.
One of Raven’s greatest advantages is her ability to absorb energy. There have been numerous times where the Phoenix Force has had its energy absorbed, including by characters like Captain Marvel. However, it needs to be said that if too much power from the Phoenix is absorbed, the absorber could be unable to handle the amount of power and simply explode. This has happened before and if you were to argue that the Phoenix is too powerful for Raven, this could potentially happen. Raven could potentially absorb a ton of energy from the Dark Phoenix to become the Unkindness but all in all, won’t be able to surpass the power of the White Phoenix of the Crown as discussed in the stats section.
There’s also nothing stopping the Phoenix from absorbing the energy back into itself from Raven. The Phoenix Force has stated that it can’t be “conjured forth” against its will and in a perfect host like Jean who’s operating at her peak, it’s unlikely that Raven will be able to easily pull the Phoenix Force away from Jean. Jean has also pulled the Phoenix Force out of Emma rather easily, likely due to her perfect connection with the Phoenix. This would mean that Jean would be able to effortlessly pull any of its energies back from Raven. Instances of the Phoenix Force leaving its hosts also involve hosts that aren’t Jean and really only when said hosts are incapacitated. The Phoenix can choose to leave at its will and while it has been knocked out of certain hosts, none of these hosts have shown the ability of control over the Phoenix that Jean has shown.
Raven undoubtedly has better soul manipulative abilities than what Jean has experienced, but the Phoenix Force has not only shown soul manipulation multiple times, but has also shown the ability to protect its host from attacks that target the soul. Raven can spiritually attack Jean and damage her soul or try to absorb it, however, the fires of the Phoenix have shown the ability to keep spirits away and even burn them. If Raven attacks with her soul-self, the Phoenix’s flames can keep the soul-self away or burn it. If Raven attacks with her physical body, Jean obviously has multiple ways to keep Raven away. While it is possible that Raven could destroy Jean’s soul if she gets past the Force’s defenses, the likelihood that Raven could destroy the Phoenix Force itself is unlikely.
While it is possible to argue that Raven could destroy an M-Body of the Phoenix, the true Phoenix exists
as merely an idea/concept and thus, its “soul” is not what one would see in a human or an animal. Thanos has stated that the spirits of Eternity and Infinity are entirely beyond the capabilities of the Soul Gem, the Infinity Stone that essentially grants infinite control over the totality of souls within the cosmos and perhaps even greater as the Soul Gem contains an infinite multiverse within it. The Phoenix Force is not only an abstract like Eternity or Infinity, but a far more fundamental one at that. Its “soul” should be similarly fundamental and abstract and therefore, unattackable by Raven.
Direct examples of the Phoenix Force taking soul-based attacks include withstanding hellfire from Robbie Reyes. In fact, an alternate universe Dark Phoenix specifically withstood being burnt by the same hellfire and then sealed within Robbie’s hell car. She was able to break out momentarily later without any injury. In another instance, both Firehair and Maya Lopez were able to survive the erasing effects of the omniversal tsunami from the First Firmament which according to Mephisto would erase existence down to such a level that no life and afterlife could exist, indicating that even the souls of the living would be obliterated.
This would make it greatly difficult for Raven to just obliterate the Phoenix Force off the bat. Even if Raven were to somehow destroy Jean’s soul, the Phoenix Force is a separate entity and can simply possess Jean’s soulless body or fight completely independently of it. An alternate universe Dark Phoenix was able to do this with Wolverine’s corpse, taking control after burning his soul into nothingness.
With the ability to create and destroy on an infinite level, it can be safe to say that the Phoenix Force has the ability to create souls. Now, of course, this would be entirely theoretical and abstract which is kind of what the point of the Phoenix Force is; however, it’s not like there are zero instances of this happening. Firehair with the Phoenix Force and Starbrand were able to recreate a mini-multiverse and all of its inhabitants which were erased by the omniversal tsunami. The same omniversal tsunami that could erase everyone down to the point that they wouldn’t even have an afterlife. Now yes, this did cause Firehair to be lost in the White Hot Room, however, Jean has a much greater connection to the Phoenix Force. Even if replacing Jean’s soul did drag them both back to the White Hot Room, the Phoenix Force should be able to, at worst, create more M-Bodies or emanations and send them back into physical reality to fight Raven.
Or better yet, it could even drag Raven into the White Hot Room and continue the fight there where Raven would run into the issue of having to fight the Phoenix Force on the Phoenix’s home turf where the power of the entity increases massively beyond what it is within the limited scope of the multiverse.
Now, in certain interpretations, a lot of wincons may be presented in a manner that suggests that Raven needs to be transported into the White Hot Room for Jean to actually get off her potent hax. There is one statement that suggests that it is difficult for living mortals to be transported to the White Hot Room but there are instances of the Phoenix Force being able to transport other entities to the White Hot Room anyways. During Jason Aaron’s Avengers run, the Phoenix Force is able to create a slight connection between itself and the Avengers and then proceeds to simply transport them to the White Hot Room.
It must also be noted that Jean has far better control over the Phoenix Force than other hosts, so what may be slightly difficult for other hosts would not trouble Jean as much. Even if Jean couldn’t transport Raven to the White Hot Room that easily, she could just build a small connection between Raven and the Phoenix by donating an insignificant amount of the Phoenix and then transporting Raven to the White Hot Room that way.
Jean could also just completely destroy Raven’s physical body and then transport her soul-self to the White Hot Room. Phoenix has incredibly potent matter manipulation abilities and Raven doesn’t have particularly good defenses towards matter manipulation. Her main showing of a supposed resistance is her soul-self being able to breach the shell of a titan which could passively absorb things on an atomic level. However, souls don’t have physical atoms and thus, the ability can’t really be resisted. Jean could easily dissipate Raven’s atoms and then transport her soul-self to the White Hot Room.
Yes, Raven is able to fight as just her soul-self; however, the Phoenix Force has the ability to erase entities from existence. There are numerous statements where the Phoenix Force states that it creates existence at the beginning of all things and then ends it when the purpose is over. In Marvel, this is shown in cycles where iterations of creation are brought into existence from the void and then return into the void when it is time for a reality reset. Phoenix has threatened to “prune” Loki from the Tree of Life and soon after, the Phoenix Force ends up completely erasing the Defenders down to the Abyss, a plane of total non-existence which lies outside the Mystery. A plane of total non-existence beyond even Oblivion that is so, so, so fundamental that the only thing that lies beyond it is the House of Ideas. The flames of the Phoenix were able to burn the Defenders into this Abyss… into this Couldn’t-Be-Shouldn’t-Be where even the stories of the Defenders ceased to be.
This is a level of erasure that Raven has simply never encountered before. Sure, Raven has survived as her soul-self but the flames of the Phoenix could simply reduce that soul to nothingness. The body would be gone; the mind would be gone; the soul and even the very story of Raven would cease to be. There would just be nothing left of Raven for her to come back from.
Tertiary Factors
The Phoenix Force is the embodiment of all life in the entire Multiverse, and has existed above the resets of the many Firmaments and Multiverses that have existed within the history of the Marvel Omniverse. As such, the Phoenix Force has existed for a literal infinitude of time, being above time itself. Its existence as an abstract being therefore makes the experience difference between itself and Raven essentially infinite in scope, and additionally, since the Phoenix is the embodiment of all mental and psychic energy, it also possesses the cumulative experience of all life in the entire Multiverse and all their thoughts, desires, and conflicts, with such experience even overloading the mental faculties of the Beyonder once he encountered the totality of information it possesses.
Therefore, Raven would be fighting an uphill battle against a being with the experience and circumstances of every life that has ever lived in the entire Marvel multiverse. Such a battle is totally in the Phoenix’s favor, and against the ability for Raven to do anything circumstantial to turn the tide of the fight.
Jean has also fought with the X-Men since she was a teenager, and has learned valuable leadership and life-long skills to help her in battle against powerful foes such as Raven. She’s fought a wider variety of psionic opponents with power sets similar to Raven than vice-versa, and in terms of hand-to-hand has downloaded the martial arts skills of expert fighters like Misty Knight, while Raven has no explicit training in physical combat. These characteristics are even infinitely amplified through her symbiosis with the Phoenix, adding another advantage against Raven.
Additionally, as the Phoenix is an aggregate of all mental and living energy in the Multiverse, it would have infinite intelligence as well, meaning that it would be able to easily outsmart Raven in any given battle of wits or strategy. Although this fight is not likely to come down to a battle of ‘who’s smarter’, it is nonetheless a worthwhile point to recognize, as an otherwise evenly matched fight could be settled via niche factors that are usually not considered in fights like these.
Conclusion
Advantages:
Comparable speed
More powerful, especially in the White Hot Room
Far more versatile uses of telepathy and telekinesis
White Phoenix’s time manipulation is much more potent
Could possibly trap Raven in the White Hot Room
Can erase Raven from existence
Can resurrect herself if killed
Cosmic awareness and clairvoyance is more potent than Raven’s visions
The Phoenix Force is much, much, much older than Raven
Level 3 X Factor
Disadvantages:
Raven has more training with the usage of her powers
Complete destruction of Jean’s soul might require a longer-period of healing
The Last Stand & Dark Phoenix (2019)
She can’t control it
Died in a comic that came out while we were writing this
Coming into this debate there was obviously a lot to talk about with regards to stats, abilities, etc. However when looking everything over. Jean edges out more times than not. You can debate stats all you want with Jean and Raven saying they’re equal or not and how they compare inside and outside the White Hot Room, but the real debate came down to if Raven has the right means to take down the Phoenix Force itself. And to put it simply, no, she doesn’t. The reasons come down to the Phoenix having the right defenses against Raven soul attacks, having way more experience then Raven, and most notably, the power the Phoenix has in the White Hot Room, to the point where the second Phoenix brings Raven in, it’s game over for the Teen Titan.
In the White Hot Room Phoenix is way above Raven in power and has plenty of defenses to Raven’s magic. Raven also can’t reliably teleport out of it as its place in the Marvel cosmology is way above the distances Raven has used her teleportation ability to get across, giving her no easy way to escape. This battle was a close one but the host of the Phoenix force had the right tools to rise above her opponent. The winner is the Phoenix.
Raven
Stats
Let’s just face the music out the gate. In a debate like this where both fighters are some of the top tiers in the likes of Marvel and DC, things are bound to be messy. Both of these fighters possess incredible powers and abilities, making it tricky to figure out if either side should have a significant edge over the other in the field of stats. But ultimately, Raven has everything she needs to match Jean Grey and face the flames head on.
Naturally, the Phoenix Force is one of the most devastating powers within Marvel’s cosmology. The likes of Galactus, Scarlet Witch, Odin, Thor, and Beyonders are within the range of the Phoenix Force’s true power. These characters are capable of insanely powerful feats of power that could crush the entire Marvel multiverse with ease, as we’ve seen in past battles with fighters like Wanda or various mentions of Galactus. There is no way Phoenix would not scale to these same levels of cosmic power, and to say otherwise would frankly be absurd. This also gives Jean Grey incredible speed, reaching speeds that would be impossible to comprehend and measure, with no limit in sight.
However, Raven can be seen as comparable to characters like Superman or the Flash. And as we have covered time and time again, the speed of the Flashes is just too much for us to properly grasp or ever calculate. In fact, in her Unkindness form, Raven even destroyed the Speed Force itself, yet another backing to the idea that at her highest power, Raven should absolutely be capable of rivaling these displays of speed. Essentially, as fast as the Phoenix is, Raven will be just as fast on the battlefield. Ultimately, speed will likely be something of a non-factor in this debate. Sure, Jean might be immeasurable, but it doesn’t really matter if Raven is as well. And when she’s able to operate against foes comparable to or superior to the Flashes, this stat ultimately equals out.
But what about power? This is likely the most frequently asked question for this debate. Overall, it is likely that Raven has what she needs to keep up with the Phoenix Force here as well. Naturally, we’ve already gone over the sorts of forces the Phoenix Force consistently tangles with, but what can Raven do? Well, she’s obviously capable of going at it against her father Trigon, and he’s no slouch. Trigon’s even been capable of killing the likes of Doctor Fate in alternate timelines.
Characters like Zatanna, John Constantine, the Spectre, or Doctor Fate are all figures that Raven can compare to. These are characters that are capable of performing similar destruction feats encompassing the entire DC multiverse, just like Scarlet Witch or Galactus with the Marvel multiverse. Given Trigon has outright defeated some of these characters and lost to Raven more than once, there’s not much reason to go against the scaling, which could put Raven on the exact same level of power as the Phoenix.
But what about higher dimensions or the White Hot Room? This might be a question some might ask. But ultimately, it is entirely arguable that Raven has the power she needs to challenge even these potential threats. Keep in mind, the Unkindness annihilated all of creation in DC. The Speedforce, New Genesis, Skyland, all of existence was destroyed by Raven in this form. In the event that she gets this power, which isn’t entirely off the table due to the energy absorption, Raven will absolutely be capable of keeping up with any higher ends that one could argue for the Phoenix Force without issue, as the cosmology between both Marvel and DC have been stated to be roughly the same. Furthermore, while Jean’s upper echelons of power are trapped behind the White Hot Room, Raven’s Unkindness form would only face a restriction of absorbing the proper amount of energy to utilize. And even without that, there are still arguments that can be made.
It is possible that one could scale Raven to Merlin, and possibly by extension, Tim Hunter. Tim Hunter is said to be the conduit of all magic in DC, and is likely the most powerful mage of all, even being superior to characters like Fate or Constantine. Tim Hunter’s power source is the logos, or the ‘Song of Magic’, the word of God which created all of existence. Raven scaling to this is through the fact that she should be comparable to higher-tier mages like Mordru who was capable of matching Merlin, another conduit of the logos. Although this matching would involve the sanctity of demon blood as a power source, the scaling chain still exists via the power sources of Merlin and Belial being relative, insofar as Merlin uses Belial’s powers and Belial uses Merlin’s powers.
As the conduit of all of DC’s magic, Tim should absolutely be comparable to Phoenix, and as such enough for Raven, should she scale, to match. This scaling is obviously a bit trickier than say, Fate or Zatanna, given Tim’s absolute dominance amongst DC mages, but it is possible given the power lineage from Belial. Should this scaling or other statements that suggest Raven could compare to Morningstar himself be accepted, Raven might not even need the Unkindness to match Jean Grey at her best. Merlin, Tim Hunter, and Morningstar would absolutely suffice to close this gap entirely, in the event that Death Battle chooses not to equalize them on multiverses in the first place.
Additionally, there are other avenues in scaling Raven to all of magic as well. Dr. Fate was going to destroy all of Magic by destroying the Sphere of Gods, Pralaya was going to destroy all magic by destroying the source of magic in Yggdrasil, and Hecate embodies the source of magic in the collective unconscious, with Mordru being above Hecate.
Additionally, if you were to scale Raven to Pralaya, an equalization with Marvel wouldn’t be made through the Multi-Eternity tiers, but rather to the higher tiers beyond the standard Omniverse, as Pralaya exists as the unconscious void of the Presence, which in Dematteis’ view of DC cosmology precedes the manifestation of the Presence’s consciousness and therefore the proliferation of all things that exist within the entire cosmology, not just the Godsphere. As Pralaya is the Sea of Brahma, which exists even beyond the Presence’s reach according to Lucifer Morningstar, it would be more equal usable to the Mystery itself, as the Mystery is the void on which creation was superimposed, ‘intriguing’ the comprehension of The One Above All. As such, it would be comparable to the power of the Phoenix in the White Hot Room, which is the Mystery.
As such, ultimately there is always an answer to Jean’s scaling. It is entirely possible that Death Battle will do exactly what they did with Scarlet Witch vs. Zatanna again and equalize them out at their multiversal powers. Given Raven compares to the likes of Zatanna and Fate, she’d absolutely be capable of hitting this peak as well. And she has higher ends that would enable her to meet the higher ends Phoenix could hypothetically reach as well. As such, stats are likely something of a non-factor in this debate. At their peaks, Phoenix and Raven will likely be equals, bringing the battle down to other categories.
And if Raven ever starts to fall behind she can just conjure up some PCP to get her buff from tripping balls tbh.
Arsenal & Abilities
Of course, like with stats, these two characters cancel each other out in a variety of ways as well. It would be ludicrous to say that Raven is ever going to be able to damage the mind of Jean Grey, let alone control or impact it. That being said, it’s unlikely that the Phoenix will be able to perform any of that on Raven either. Raven has spent much of her time constantly resisting the influence of Trigon and has been compared to telepaths capable of even breaking down the likes of Superman. As good as Jean is, it’s unlikely that she’ll be able to break through that kind of defense fast enough to make a real difference in this fight.
Soul attacks are likely roughly the same situation. Of course, the Phoenix Force is likely to protect Jean Grey from any soul attacks that Raven might try. Soul attacks are obviously one of Raven’s greatest assets, but the Phoenix Force’s flames can defend against these sorts of things. And given power will likely be equal, it should be enough to shield Jean from Raven’s strikes. And of course, even if Jean did go down, the Phoenix Force can still fight on.
That being said, Raven’s soul will likely be safe from Phoenix as well. Sure, the Phoenix Force can erase things, so hypothetically it could be an ideal counter. But that forgets how durable the Soul Self is. It’s consistently tanked shots from the likes of Trigon or Belial, or even reformed from destruction. We’ve already discussed the power levels of characters like Trigon, Belial, and their scaling, so you can likely see why this is so significant. Sure, Phoenix can do these sorts of things, but when Raven is taking shots from characters possibly comparable to Merlin or Doctor Fate, it’s questionable if Raven is just going to lose to these sorts of things that easily. Odds are, she could resist these strikes.
And of course, there’s the threat of the White Hot Room. That being said, Raven has been shown to be capable of teleporting to Heaven and the Crossroads to the afterlife, which exist in the Sphere of the Gods. This means Raven is able to teleport far beyond even things like the Speed Force Wall and well into some of the higher places in the DC cosmology. Given she is able to do this more than once, she should have everything she needs to be capable of just leaving the White Hot Room and exiting the Phoenix’s home field.
On top of that, it isn’t exactly easy for Jean to drag people off to the White Hot Room all the time anyway. With Raven likely being capable of leaving as she pleases as well with her teleportation, it’s unlikely that the Phoenix Force will be capable of forcing Raven to fight on its home turf. The fight will take place somewhere where Raven is not on such a back foot, completely nullifying one of Jean Grey’s greatest advantages here. And given she can also enter areas outside of time, any time alterations made by White Phoenix would likely be avoidable as well. Really, any serious traps Phoenix might try with her powers can likely be escaped by Raven, making it where the Phoenix won’t be able to end this fight with any swift tricks.
On the other hand, what can Raven do to Jean? Well, she does have options. While it’s questionable how likely the Phoenix Force is to be erased, Jean could potentially still be hit by Raven’s soul strikes herself. In the event Raven manages to break through these defenses, Jean would be in significant trouble, and depending on how far Raven goes, the Phoenix would be without a host.
Raven can also absorb energies, even storing them away in a different dimension. Of course, Phoenix can likely do this to Raven as well, but Raven won’t be in any danger of overloading on power, and can consistently weaken the Phoenix as she drains power away. She can also take power back if Jean manages to siphon it away, which would be difficult in the first place. And without the risk of overloading, she ultimately has the superior option to shut her foe’s power down and take it for herself This makes it where Raven will likely be growing stronger the entire fight, a critical boost that will aid her in the event of equal stats or allow her to cover any possible gaps.
Ultimately, both of these fighters will be capable of unleashing all sorts of cool tricks and powers on each other, but Raven likely has the better kit. It’s unlikely that the Phoenix will be able to wipe Raven off the map with any bizarre powers, given just how good Raven’s resistances are. But with her soul striking powers and the ability to siphon away energy, Raven has ways to take Phoenix down, be it quick or gradual. Regardless, with an answer to the White Hot Room, ways to weaken the Phoenix, and ways to annihilate Jean Grey entirely, Raven takes the win in this category.
Tertiary Factors
So, how do these fighters compare? Both of them fought for control over the dark influences over them, and ultimately won. Phoenix has overcome the Phoenix Force’s corruption and become a perfect host, while Raven has overcome Trigon’s influence and darkness.
Okay she’s done that multiple times by this point, but you get what we mean.
Ultimately, overcoming these threats and gaining control over their skills makes it unlikely that either fighter is going to go down due to such a weakness. Raven at her peak (barring the Unkindness.) is free from that darkness tainting her, and the same can be said for Jean. Even the Unkindness isn’t an issue, as Raven didn’t suffer any weaknesses like this even as a villain.
Of course, Raven’s been trained to control herself for her entire life, compared to Jean encountering the Phoenix’s full power at a much later point, so it’s likely that she’s more experienced in this field. As far as battle experience goes, they’re likely about even overall. Both have encountered all sorts of villains and battles over their comics and shows, making it where both are extremely experienced in these sorts of fights and know how to deal with them properly. The same can likely be applied to skill overall.
Of course, the Phoenix Force itself has been around as a primordial force, so Raven obviously won’t beat it in experience. But it generally is not all that active without a host or may also spend time in the White Hot Room, so this gap is probably not to such a degree as to completely decide the fight.
One could argue that the Phoenix Force will just keep resurrecting to fight if Raven destroys it, but it is worth noting that it can not just infinitely spam revive over and over. If the Phoenix Force is destroyed, it will return to the White Hot Room in an egg, taking time to return to the world and restart the cycle. This is more than enough time to qualify as a win for Raven, making it where she really doesn’t have to obliterate the Phoenix over and over again to take this victory. As such, this hypothetical victory option for the Phoenix is not one that’s all too much to worry about. Once the Phoenix Force is back in its egg, Raven will of course take the victory.
Regardless, it’s just once again the point that Raven either matches or outclasses Jean in these fields. She’s spent all of her life resisting dark influences and has more experience using these specific powers, and she’s no slouch in combat. She has no significantly exploitable weaknesses for Jean to exploit either, making it where Phoenix can not win this fight by finding any openings to use. With these minor advantages, the two are likely about even, though one could argue that Raven’s slightly higher experience in dealing with these situations could give her an edge.
Conclusion
Advantages:
Comparable speed
Similar or superior power base-to-base with Phoenix Force M-bodies
Can counter the majority of Jean’s abilities
Can match the Phoenix in the White Hot Room with scaling chains to higher tier DC abstracts
Attacks to her physical body are meaningless since she can survive and fight as just a soul
Far greater training and experience compared to Jean…
Far more extensive and greater soul-related abilities
More versatile and esoteric arsenal overall
Teen Titans
Disadvantages:
…Although the Phoenix Force itself has existed for much longer
Phoenix’s cosmic awareness and clairvoyance is better than Raven’s visions
Could potentially have difficulty escaping the White Hot Room if unprepared
Weaker time manipulation
Titans
This debate was frankly never going to be easy, naturally. Both of these warriors are capable of crushing the cosmos and annihilating all of existence if they truly wanted to and reach such powers that are incomprehensible. But ultimately, the few existing advantages just fall into place for the Teen Titan to triumph over the X-Woman. Raven has ways to take the Phoenix’s power from her, destroy her soul, and can absolutely keep up with Jean’s power and speed. And with Raven being able to escape the White Hot Room, destroy Jean Grey, or keep taking power from the Phoenix Force itself, the battle will ultimately end with Raven victorious. Ultimately, Jean Grey will be, quoth the Raven, “nevermore.”
Final Tally
Phoenix (8) - AgentRedhead, Akhil, Clockboxxer, Ethan, Grey, Hi Hi, Momo, Walter
Raven (9) - Asura, Cal, Ginger, Hippo, Noah, Pas, Sneed, Soma, Twice
Abstaining/Neutral/Undecided (4) - Js250476, Kingsly, MKF4, Rina
Oh boy. Ohhhh boy.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the episodes research ain't stupid like scarlet witch vs zatanna lol
ReplyDeleteI do believe they are going to give it to the Phoenix.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I see the arguments that give Phoenix as the winner more coherent, that is, their arguments explain both cosmology, power with its maximum, scale and most importantly, against well-founded arguments against Raven's arguments.
ReplyDeleteWith this I do not want to say that it was argued in a bad way with Raven, but if nothing else the arguments are of scale with other characters, saying that this one from DC equals that of Marvel because yes, without taking into account the cosmology or even its Feats, it becomes somewhat more subjective than objective.
I see Phoenix victorious in this battle.
Funny I noticed that myself. The Phoenix has more critical advantages when considering her full power.
DeleteThere seems to be no mention of the fact that its' stated multiple times that when the Phoenix Force dies, all life dies too. Wouldn't this result in an automatic victory for Jean since even if all the Raven arguments are correct, Raven would be erased?
ReplyDelete(Given the fact that the Phoenix Force is superior to literally everything in marvel bar TOAA, this would certainly work on Raven).
King Thanos killed everything in Marvel once and so did Immortal Hulk in that Dark Future as well and God Emperor Doom had everything under his control and you don't see the phoenix anywhere at all
DeleteIrrelevant
DeleteYeah those are irrelevant. Most of these are AUs written by writers who gloss over exactly how these characters ended up killing everyone.
DeleteYou guys were right about Raven winning.
ReplyDeleteThere are still other facts about raven that was not mentioned
ReplyDelete