The saga of Marvel’s highly debatable power-level cards

polygon.com:

How close is Daredevil in strength to Spider-Man? Could Wolverine’s stamina handle the energy projection of, say, Galactus? Could Deadpool’s durability withstand the full force of Bishop’s energy projection?

In the early 1990s, Marvel Comics released a series of popular trading card sets called “Marvel Universe” that changed fan debates forever by using power rankings to assign relative ability levels to different characters. The rankings gave enthusiasts concrete numbers to point to when arguing over character attributes and helped fuel the crossover comic trading card business.

Marvel’s foray into trading cards paralleled the company’s boom and bust fortunes of the ’90s. Without the stats and ratings on the back, the cards likely wouldn’t have been as successful, even with the rabid comic fans at the time. And history suggests the success of the cards changed the course of Marvel’s history.

The comic book industry was booming in 1990, and nowhere was that boom felt more than at Marvel Headquarters. The company was riding what was, at the time, an unprecedented high. A speculator’s market in comic books was behind it all; lower print runs of popular stories in years prior made scarcity mean value. The advent of the trade paperback as a universal part of the comic reading experience was still a ways off, leading collectors to snap up first issues and special editions of various comics. Marvel dominated, grabbing around two-thirds of the market.

With sales up across the company and new titles and traditional top line characters both doing brisk business, Marvel looked for other ways to make money. One of those ways was the trading card market. A parallel boom was going on in cards. It was a natural fit.

Marvel’s