Poll Question: FLASH vs SPIDER-MAN

This is just like with Green Lantern vs Hulk, of course Green Lantern wins. And of course Flash wins this one. Spider-Man has great powers but for Flash they are slow.

[First Match]

FLASH
29 Votes (67.44%)
SPIDER-MAN
14 Votes (32.56%)

Spider Man has beat WAY more powerful dudes with WAY more powerful powers.. You Flash fans don't give Spidey his proper respect.. All Flash can do is run fast right? Or does he have other powers I'm not aware of? I'm not saying he's weak by any means but Spider Man has got so many abilities and isnt slow in the slightest.. How does Flash catch him if he's web slinging? Can Flash fly? The Spider Sense wouldn't trigger? I just think you guys don't think these fights out at all.. Spidey for the win!

@HulkbusterNYC, you are WAY off base. Flash can travel FASTER than the speed of light. There is no way the Spider Sense would even detect the Flash before the Flash was all over Spiderman. Flash doesn't just run fast either. He can think just as fast, which almost allows him to see the future, making him virtually unhittable. Flash can vibrate so fast that he can vibrate though things, in some instances an enemy, or in other instances a wall or building. Can he fly? He moved so fast that he traveled through air to catch a plane that was falling, and vibrated himself and the plane so fast so no one was injured on the bridge or plan when it landed. So yeah, Flash is pretty powerful.

Oh, and he can run so fast that he can time travel. Preplanning this fight, Flash would just time travel back to before Peter Parker got bit, and kill the spider.

yeah, flash would whoop spidey before he had a chance to blink, spideys fast but this is the flash were talking about here. no contest flash wins for sure

i can see this turning into a dc hatefest, looks like spideys catching up in the votes...

@Hehemata Overpowering doesn't make lousy stories, bad writing does! The New52 Flash has been setting a very high standard.

Plus this whole "Overpowering" argument seems silly when these heroes and villains have been beating each other, plus some would argue that these great powers open up greater story potential because of where they can go, if it be reality, time or place.

HulkbusterNYC I agree with u besides spidey has his spider sence so he can evade flash and easly defeat him by webbiing

@Hitboyj...are you kidding? I am a huge fan of Spidey, but let's be real here...there is NO WAY that Peter could beat the Flash..NONE..NO WAY..UH UH..CAN'T DO IT!! Yes, Spidey is fast and yes he has his spider sense, but this is the Flash..he can think and move at the speed of light..he'd be all over Spidey before he could throw the first punch...and as far as webbing him up? NOPE..won't work, Flash would just vibrate out of it..in fact he could just as easily catch the webbing in mid air and run it around Peter, webbing him up in his own webs..sorry, as much as I love Spidey...Flash wins this, hands down

Surely Spidersense is a "pre-cognitive" function, if it were to go off too late, then it's kind of not working.

Must admit not up on Flash, but whenever i see him in cartoons, he seems a bit of a joke, and every character (no matter how slow) seems to be able to knock him out.

Flash seems to be able to beat anyone now by "vibrating" i better get the rampant rabbit out to beat intruders with...

I've lost count of the amount of times i've seen flash run into punches, even from enemies as slow as Solomon Grundy or Grodd, Spidey has the advantage over them in that he knows the position he is in at that moment is in danger so could easily get Flash to wear one.

i really think spider sense gives Petey the edge here, long with his super strength. Land one punch, instant tko for web-head. The flash has no super strength or durability. The only way I can see flash winning is through time travel, which is a bitch move every time he does it. But wouldn't spider sense negate time travel anyway? I guess it comes down to what is faster, spider sense or the flash's fist. I feel like spidey's brain is faster than flash's hands and feet

I must amend my previous comment to include. Except by Batman.

There is NO debate. It's all Flash here.

Huge Flash fan. While the Flash's only power is the ability to move and think at super speed, it allows him to be much more versatile than most people think. The writers keep him (for the most part) grounded in physics and scientific theory while exploring what someone with his particular power would be capable of doing. This has been what I found so interesting about his stories.

A knockout blow is a simple matter of Force = Mass x Acceleration. A fist accelerated to light speed hits with the force of thousands of nuclear bombs. A punch like that would disintegrate whatever it contacts. While the Flash has never hit anyone with a blow like that, because he doesn't kill, he has intentionally placed enough acceleration on a punch to deliver a devastating knockout blow to powerful opponents on many occasions.

Because of his speed, he is also capable of other scientifically plausible feats such as running on vertical surfaces and upside down, super heating enemies and items by using friction, and even swinging his arms to create "super fans" or vacuums (which he has used to remove the air from the lungs of his opponents). He can also time-travel, vibrate through objects, heal at a super-human rate and steal speed from others to freeze them like a statue (Wally West), although I am not sure that those are as scientifically sound as the others. That isn't even scratching the surface of the Flash's abilities.

I don't know as much about Spider-Man aside from what I would consider rudimentary knowledge of his abilities. I do know that unless his "spider-sense" is "magic," that it would not help him perceive a super-speed attack from the Flash.

His spider-sense, unless it is "magic," would have to work like all of our other senses in that a stimulus is perceived, a signal is sent the the brain, and the brain returns a response signal. I'll even assume it is a reflex, and that the return signal is an involuntary behavioral action in response to the threat (like your eyes darting towards a moving object that appears in your line of sight). This still requires time for a signal to travel to the brain out to whatever areas of the body are going to move.

Giving Spider-Man the benefit of the doubt and saying that he also has "enhanced signal propagation" in his neurons, there are only two ways to increase propagation speed: 1)Myelination of unmyelinated neurons and 2) Increased diameter of the axons of the neurons.

Myelination will substantially increase conduction speed, but unfortunately only for things like the pain pathways (meaning he will feel pain faster) as the sensory and motor pathways are already myelinated. This means that his axons would HAVE to increase in diameter.

Larger diameter axons are better conductors of signals in the same way that thick wires are better conductors of electricity than thin wires. The problem with that is that increasing the size limits space within the brain and body, otherwise we would all have huge neurons because they conduct signals faster. The nerves in our body are actually bundles of neuron axons, so you can see how increasing the diameter of every axon would create a problem.

Let's say that, after being bitten, his increased size also somehow gave him more room inside of his body for larger neurons and they that increased to the largest known size in the animal kingdom - the giant squid. Their axons are an average of 0.5-mm in diameter. This is 100 times greater than the axon of a typical neuron.

The giant squid's axon conduction velocity is about 25 meters/second, which doesn't sound like much, but the axon is also not myelinated (typical unmyelinated conduction velocities from 0.5-10 meters/second). Conduction velocity of myelinated axons scales linearly with diameter of the axon. The fastest conduction velocity in humans is about 120 meters/second in a myelinated axons 20 micrometers in diameter. This means Peter Parkers "super" axons, that are 1 millimeter in diameter, would have a conduction velocity 50 times greater than that of normal humans, or 6000 meters/second.

That is incredibly fast, however, the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters/second. That means that in the amount of time that it takes Spider-Man's spider-sense to send the signal to his brain (1 impulse), the Flash's nervous system has conducted over 49,965 impulses. He has conducted close to 100,000 by the time Spider-Man's brain finishes sending out the reaction signal.

The only way Spider-Man could possible have time to react to the Flash's attacks would be if his spider-sense allowed him to see the future (magic) and had no basis in science and was not bound to the stimulus/response pattern all other senses follow. I find it highly unlikely that his spider-sense wouldn't be biological since Stan Lee has spoken about how he tried to ground Spider-Man in science.

Everything said, the Flash is certainly not unbeatable. Deathstroke once EASILY defeated the Flash as well as the entire Justice League. Being a brilliant tactician, he attacked based on movement/attack patterns of the Justice League was able to anticipate their every move. He employed an explosion directly in front of himself which he knew would force the Flash to slow down and attack from behind. Shrapnel would go through the Flash if he ran into it moving at high speeds. He thrust his sword into the space from where he knew the Flash would attack and impaled him.

I don't think that Spider-Man is even half of the strategist that Deathstroke is. I don't think he is good enough to memorize attack patterns and confidently predict enemy movements/reactions. I think he would lose due to the overwhelming speed disadvantage.

*****I am sorry for the long comment, but I love science and like examining these things beyond "Nuh-uh, this guy would win" I hope some people might find some of the stuff I posted interesting.*****

@buckycap, once again we find ourselves on the same page my friend...bravo

Once again. If it it were Batman vs flash all you DC fans would give it to bats with prep time. But the far more brilliant Peter Parker gets no love.

Yes. I am.

from spider-man's perspective: his spider-sense would alert him of danger, and then he would wake up in a hospital bed.

the only way spidey could win this is with help from mr fantastic or dr strange to stop time

I voted Flash, but there are a lot of ways Spidey can win this, especially with Spider Sense and his 40x normal reaction time combined with his brains and ability to set a trap. Flash has it in overall power and speed, but Spiderman has the ability to win this, and most likely will 60% of the time.