Can Ray explode Hank with his White Dwarf shrinking and mass stealing?
Hank has a direct counter to this. In She-Hulk Volume 3 #7, Hank reveals how his suit has technology that passively prevents exploding. In addition to that, Hank can also replace whatever mass that gets displaced with the mass available from the pym particle dimension Kosmos. He did this when he was duplicated and his duplicate used enough mass to form a new body of his own. This was when they were both pulling from the same mass against each other. Whatever mass Ray would steal Hank could reasonably steal it back or replace it.
Can Hank hack the bio-belt?
Hank does have some hacking skills. Just having the ability to hack on its own is not enough to justify Hank doing so in the middle of a fight, but it turns out Hank has shown the ability to do just that.
When villain The Leader was collecting the world's smartest people, he had already captured Reed Richards and Doctor Doom. While Hank ended up getting captured as well, he did evade their capture for quite some time, and was actively hacking the Leader and MODOK’s tech and defenses while he was in the middle of fighting them. This was after they had already captured the smartest man alive.
The Bio-belt has been susceptible to hacking in the past. Hank’s goggles have the ability to scan and see through energy signatures, so Hank should be able to scan Ray and figure out that his belt is an important conduit to his powers. When Hank fought Dr. Nemesis (Another size changing villain) he was able to use cybernetic sensors to determine the origin of Nemesis’ size changing powers, and send cybernetic feedback through the size-changing circuitry in his helmet. Hank has shown the means, tech and ability to decode and decipher the Bio-Belt (Or rather, other size changing tech) during combat, whereas Ray would have no way to stop Hank's naturally occurring powers that emanate from his body.
Is Hank actually the Scientist Supreme?
When Hank journeyed into Overspace for the first time, he met Eternity, who deemed Hank the Scientist Supreme. Invaders Now! #4 (December 2010) and Avengers Academy #8 (January 2011) both refer to Hank as the official Scientist Supreme. These are 3rd person omniscient statements made in regards to Hank as the Scientist Supreme.
The reason why this is usually called into question is because Loki said he disguised himself as Eternity to trick Hank into hubris in Mighty Avengers #34 (March 2010). Invaders Now and Avengers Academy both happened after Loki’s lie, and recognize Hank as the universes scientist supreme.
To further add to the context and validity of Hank’s title, the point of this arc in the comics was to show that Hank is usually right and knows what he’s talking about. After Loki attempts to manipulate the avengers against each other, Hank offers him a spot on the team. Everyone treats him as crazy for doing so. Later on, when Loki is fighting against the Void on the side of the Avengers, everyone who called Hank crazy before admits that he was right all along.
Who is smarter?
Though intelligence is a bit subjective, Hank should overall be the smarter of the two, which is something that both sides of the debate were generally in agreement on prior to the episode.
Hank is one of the top 5 minds in the marvel universe. Arguably he could be put at top 3, seeing as he’s even given Reed Richards a run for his money in a showdown between geniuses and is one of the top three minds Eternity lists when describing the universe's smartest men. He has feats such as constructing the Infinite Avengers Mansion within higher-dimensional spaces like Underspace, creating super-genius, herald level machines like Ultron (and the Trojan infiltration virus that defeated Ultron), and being somewhat comparable to Reed Richards, who is more knowledgeable than the most highly-advanced alien species in the universe, among many other absurd intelligence feats. Discovering Pym Particles is also worth mentioning, considering how insane those are.
Ray in comparison isn’t quite on this absurd level. He is exceptionally intelligent, capable of creating and perfecting the White Dwarf technology in his suit, on top of other intelligence feats such as the ones listed in the episode (creating Kryptonite inside of Superman, coming up with the plan to turn the fire demon Surtur into a black hole). He is described as “the next Neil DeGrasse Tyson”, learned an alien language by listening to it, and has a brain comparable to a hard drive. While impressive, none of this really measures up to the kind of brain power that Hank has shown.
Some have argued that he is comparable to Lex Luthor via this scan, which would put him on a more absurd level of intellect through scaling, similar to Hank’s comparability to Reed, but this is a bit of a baffling argument. Lex is explicitly listed as being above him, by two degrees in fact, with no clarification on the scale of the difference. This ranking is also explicitly not including anyone who isn’t from Earth (hence why Brainiac isn’t on there), and excludes individuals like Batman and the Flash who are “haunted by troubled childhoods” (top left), as well as lesser-known thinkers who are considered “mad scientists” (right side of the page). Because of this, it is difficult to glean from this scan exactly where Ray ranks compared to the greatest minds on Earth, since many of them are excluded. Albeit, it might be possible to compare him to some of the individuals ranked below him.
Would Hank take the fight to Overspace? Would it be detrimental to him as well? What effect would it have on Ray?
There’s not really any reason why Hank wouldn’t take the fight to Overspace if he could. He’s gone to it in the middle of battle, and while growing at such a rate has the potential to kill him, he’s been in the Overspace for minutes at a time. The important question here is if in the Overspace, would Ray be overwhelmed?
This is gonna involve a little bit of cosmology here, but don’t worry this’ll be pretty simple.
We actually have a good idea of how Ray could deal with the overload of information found in the Overspace. In The New 52: Futures End, Ray shrinks so far he starts perceiving the information in Brainiac's mind. He compares the information overload to that of the Bleed and the Flash, and says he's never perceived so much information at once before and nearly blacks out. (Source)
The Bleed is the limit to the multiverse, essentially the red fruit punch bowl in the middle of this map. Being subjected even momentarily to something comparable nearly made Ray pass out. For reference, the Bleed has several statements indicating that there are infinite spatial dimensions contained within it. The Overspace, meanwhile, transcends the Superflow of Dreamtime, which is a similar informational space containing infinite spatial dimensions. Because Ray was overwhelmed and nearly knocked out through being forcibly subjected to something on the level of the Bleed, it stands to reason that Overspace, which is beyond something comparable, would have an even greater effect, as it similarly causes mental strain that overwhelms an individual’s mind.
And while Ray has technically traveled to the Sphere of Gods before, doing so through specific methods such as Boomtubes allows an individual to acclimate to their destination and exist there without strain. Hank forcing Ray into Overspace would not have the same effect, as seen by the example with Absorbing Man.
While you could argue Ray could eventually adjust to the overload of information with enough time, similar to how Hank himself did, this would certainly not be the case for his first journey there. It would overwhelm him long enough to give Hank just enough time to act and take advantage of the situation. A significant lapse like this would cost him the fight, since Hank is at least comparable in stats and has many ways to follow up with something fatal.
Not to mention the Underspace also has the very same effect on the human mind that the Overspace does. And Hank has had no issues formulating plans or staying for extended periods of time in Underspace.
What about Atom’s Ignition Point feat?
For this feat, Ryan uses Aut’s Bio-Belt to stop the ignition point, a huge surge of energy that threatens all of reality by destroying the microverse and everything else with it. This is because the microverse is the foundation of the DC universe, and if that goes, everything goes.
While Aut’s Bio-belt stopping the ignition point is impressive, the issue with this feat is that Ryan could only stop the explosion at its absolute smallest point. Meaning the point where the energy threatening all of reality was much more manageable. When he uses the Bio-Belt to stop its energy, it destroys the belt, and would have taken Ryan with him if it weren’t for Ray saving him just in the knick of time.
So that level of power is something of a final, sacrificial limit. While the belt stopped that level of power, it destroyed the belt and would’ve destroyed Ryan. In addition to that, the destruction of everything would have been more of a domino effect than full on destruction, so it would have been hard for Ray to utilize that level of power against Hank and be okay afterward.
Hank’s Overspace Feat
Hank can handle the physical strain of pumping a quite literally infinite amount of pym particles into himself to grow into Overspace at a moment's notice. There is a clear limit usually brought up with how far a pym particle user can grow before they begin to collapse under their own weight. Generally speaking these two are very physically comparable, but Hank has shown to have a tiny bit more of a limit when it comes to his toughness.
What about Ray killing Anti-Life Equation Darkseid?
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/JLA-1997/Issue-14
This is a feat that we were aware of, but there are some unclear aspects surrounding it that kind of make it hard to qualify. The obvious one being that Atom kills Darkseid by entering his brain as a beam of light, and firing an unspecific laser from the Bio-Belt which causes a “neural storm” that consumes Darkseid’s brain. It’s pretty clear from all of the surrounding context that Atom and the other heroes present could not actually match or overpower Darkseid directly, and in context the scene is presented as more akin to bypassing his defenses.
Obviously Darkseid’s brain should still have some degree of impressive durability, but the fact that Ray was phasing at the time doesn’t help, nor does the fact that we don’t know the exact details of the attack he used to do it. Given how much of Atom’s kit is centered around hax, and the fact that this is a future Atom who could have tech we don’t know about, the feat is fairly nebulous. And the argument isn’t even that Ray scales to Darkseid himself because of this, it’s that he scales to the full Source-Wall-level power of the Anti-Life Equation, which is an even bigger leap since he isn’t matching that power directly.
Granted, this is still a really cool feat, and we might have included a tab for it in the episode if we had known that people would lean into it as much as they did, but hindsight is 20/20.
Who can shrink smaller?
This one is certainly very close, but all signs point to Hank again in this category.
Scaling to Scott Lang from an alt universe, Scott had to shrink smaller than actual concepts in order to avoid erasure attacks from a celestial. Hank has shown he can shrink into the Underspace, a plane of existence below the microverse, which is usually the limit to how small something can go in the DC universe.
Even when in Underspace, Hank could still shrink and use his powers. You can comparably say Ryan shrank to a similarly small area below his microverse, but his limit seems to be a tiny bit less than Hanks, ironically. Pym Particles (which can grow that which they touch, something Ray hasn’t resisted) are too small to see even while in Underspace, so Atom would not reasonably be able to see or dodge them. Hank’s body is surrounded by Pym Particles, so phasing through his body would require Ray to come into contact with them.
Even more ironically, Hank being bigger than Atom in this case would make Hank more powerful of the two. Ray would never be small enough for Hank to take advantage of his small size, and Hank has stated that his powers are compensatory with other density shifters like Vision. In addition to that, Hank while in the Underspace was still capable of hurting Ultron and his Jocasta bots. So Atom’s density shifting would not significantly catch Hank off guard.
Couldn’t Ray just use his resurrection to come back to life?
So this is a little bit weird and complicated. In a nutshell, the situation in the comic was as follows:
After Ryan is murdered by Deathstroke, he subconsciously wills a portion of his mass to the Mass Zone, where he’s able to survive.
After this, Ryan is able to “lend” his mass to Ray via the mental connection between them, allowing Ray to increase the size of his limbs to punch with giant-sized fists and such, composed of Ryan’s mass.
Though Ryan can send his mass back, he needs to send it to Ray, and can’t just build himself a new body because he doesn’t know how to separate himself from Ray.
Therefore, to bring Ryan back, Ray enlarges his hand with Ryan’s mass, and then tricks an enemy into cutting it off, leaving only a giant, severed hand made out of Ryan’s mass.
Ryan then forms this mass into a new body, allowing him to return.
This is clearly not something that Ryan can do on his own, but there is an argument that Ray has abilities that Ryan does not, which could allow him to do it on his own. Namely, the fact that he can control his powers and his belt with his thoughts, and use said belt to summon mass from the Mass Zone. The argument is that because Ray can summon his belt and control it mentally, he would be able to add mass to himself to reform his body on his own.
In all honesty… this argument is kind of confusing, because there’s not really a clear throughline in terms of what Ray would be doing exactly, and why it would supposedly work.
If the argument is that the Bio-Belt would remain on his corpse while his consciousness is in the Mass Zone, and that Ray could activate it from there to recall his mass, then that’s making the assumption that Ray can mentally control the Bio-Belt while located in a completely different plane of existence from it, which there’s no evidence for.
If the argument is that Ray could summon the Bio-Belt to his location in the Mass Zone from his corpse, then that’s once again assuming an interdimensional connection, and also doesn’t really explain why the Bio-Belt within the Mass Zone could add mass back to his body in reality, which it would no longer be connected to.
If the argument is that Ray would have a mental link with his own corpse the way that Ryan had a mental link with him, that wouldn’t make sense because his corpse is dead and doesn’t have a functioning mind to link with, and there’s no indication that Ray would have a link with his own body instead of Ryan’s mind.
Perhaps the argument is just explained in a confusing/unclear way, but there is no explanation that we can come up with which wouldn’t be making large or outright faulty assumptions in Ray’s favor. Which kind of brings us to a larger issue in which this is something that Ray has never done before, far too theoretical to be a reliable argument, even setting aside issues with the process.
And at absolute worst, assuming very generously that it would work out for him and that he could/would do it, breaking the Bio-Belt would still hard counter it as an option anyway, since the belt is the crux of the argument. As a result, it is not a game changer.
What about Ray’s probability manipulation?
His probability manipulation isn’t really as impressive as it may seem at first glance.
He first used this ability to shut down a bomb that would’ve destroyed a city, and in order to do so he had to shrink himself inside the bomb at a specific point from within it in the trigger mechanism, and when he finished all it did was shut the bomb off. So Ray had to travel to a specific point at a specific time to get the specific outcome he wanted during a process that took a whopping 17 minutes (give or take a few minutes) to pull off.
Ray would not have 17 minutes with Hank. Ray would have to shrink into Hank in order to pull off this probability feat. But in order to do that he’d have to somehow bypass Hank's pym particle field, which even in as low a space as the Underspace, are microscopic in scale. Not to mention Hank would just match Atom’s size preventing any probability shenanigans on his person or his tech.
Miscellaneous Advantages & Counters
Q: Could Atom destroy Overspace or kill Hank by busting the Microverse?
A: No. The Microverse exists on a cosmologically lower scale than Overspace, and is technically not even connected to it because the two are from separate cosmologies (thus any sort of chain reaction that the Microverse’s destruction might cause would not reach it). Destroying the Microverse would kill Ray, and Hank could travel to Overspace or Underspace to avoid the AoE, at least temporarily.
Q: Could Ray’s scanners, which can scan the Microverse, see past Hank’s image inducers?
A: Likely not, given that the image inducers have fooled similar scanners from Ultron. Scanning the Microverse is more a feat of range than “scanning potency”, and technology that can trick scanners should not be any less effective against large scale scanning than small scale scanning.
Q: Could Ray increase his mass and density enough to supersede Hank’s strength?
A: Nope. Hank’s ability to change his own mass allows him to match Hercules, who lifted the immeasurable weight of the heavens. He can also take on enough mass to enter Overspace, which would also be infinite. No amount of mass changing that Ray has demonstrated would allow him to match that, and conversely Hank could always match Atom’s mass.
Q: Could Ray phase into Hank’s body?
A: Likely not, since Hank’s body is surrounded by an energy field of Pym Particles that can change the size of that which they come into contact with. Pym Particles are small enough to be infinitesimal even while in the Microverse and Underspace, so Ray would not be able to phase or shrink past them effectively. Something that was missed during the waiting period is that Hank is also capable of phasing.
Q: Ray gets stronger and faster as he gets smaller, would that help?
A: Not really, since Hank can match high-tier characters like Ultron even while small, he should still be able to contend with Ray’s increasing strength.
Q: Who is more skilled in hand to hand?
A: They’re likely relative. In addition to the fact that both are trained in Judo, Hank was trained by Captain America while Ray picked up martial arts skills from Batman and Hawkman. Their training should be fairly comparable, having learned from world-class martial artists who have mastered every fighting style.
Q: Could Ray’s AoE options take out Hank’s ant army quickly?
A: Nope. Some options like the 20-mile bomb would be useful, but there are way more ants on the planet than there are in a 20-mile radius, and Hank can always call on more if his immediate army is exhausted. Hank also has a mic that can communicate with every ant on Earth. The ants are also all outfitted with Pym Particles, so they could potentially shrink small enough to be unaffected by the blast, or increase their strength to the point of surviving.
Q: Could Ray’s mental suggestions mess with Hank’s head?
A: Nope. He has various mind resistance feats such as resisting Ultron’s encephalo-beams and a mind-attacking crystal ball, as well as enduring the mental strain from both Overspace and Underspace.
Q: Could Hank’s aging gun age Ray to death?
A: This gun actually doesn’t belong to Hank, he just took it from a villain and there’s no reason to call it standard. Regardless, Ray has resisted similar aging effects from Chronos, so it would be ineffective.
Q: Is the Katarthan sword’s poison a good win-con for Ray?
A: Probably not. Hank would simply dodge bro.
…In all seriousness, Hank has many ways to avoid lethal hits, from shrinking too small to hit easily, to phasing through it, to playing keep away with his ants and image inducer tech, to blocking or destroying the sword with various weapons and abilities. And yes, just dodging. In a fight like this with so much hax and variables at play, a poison sword is really not a major factor.
Q: Should Ray get the Indigo Lantern Ring?
A: No. Including non-standard equipment like this is usually only done when the character either wins regardless or loses regardless, such as was the case with Black Adam and his Yellow Lantern Ring. In this case, the Indigo Ring gives Ray a ton of abilities that are very divorced from his normal power set, which would turn this into essentially a completely different matchup. People are here to see the Atom, not an Indigo Lantern. This standard is consistent with other episodes, such as Lobo with his Red Lantern Ring, or Harley with her various Lantern Rings.
Q: Are there any other details related to altering each other’s sizes that the episode didn’t cover?
A: Something worth acknowledging is that Ray has shown no resistance to being grown (only shrunk), and that Pym Particles technically work differently than the shrinking that the Bio-Belt has countered before. Whereas Hank’s ability to alter his own biology and such is more broadly applicable to various kinds of size alteration, and he has countered specific, unique methods separate from his own such as Anti-Pym Particles.
Conclusion
To keep things brief, the fight is extremely close with a lot of interacting factors and give and take on both sides, but most aspects either balance out or favor Hank to varying extents. He generally has ways to match or counter just about everything in Ray’s arsenal, and should edge him out in aspects like strength and intelligence at peak. Ray’s abilities are more reliant on his suit and belt, while Hank’s are intrinsic to him, and Hank has various means of messing with Ray’s tech to disrupt his powers. Hank’s ant army gives him much better options for keeping his distance, overwhelming Ray with numbers, controlling the pace of the battle, and working out strategies around Ray’s abilities. Their size alteration is probably comparable enough when it comes to shrinking, with Hank maybe having an advantage to some nebulous extent. Finally, Hank’s ability to grow and take the fight to Overspace grants him options that Ray has no easy equivalent or counter toward. In conclusion, GG short king.
