Introduction
Hello ladies, gents and non-binaries, it’s been a while since I used my old website. Two years ago, I made a prediction blog about LittleBigPlanet’s iconic knitted knight, Sackboy, against Scribblenauts’ rooster hat notebook wielder, Maxwell. I concluded Sackboy would win this matchup thanks to his immeasurable speed, extensive experience, nigh-killable immortality and time manipulation that can give him enough opportunities to win.
The reception was mostly positive and even a lot of people changed their viewpoint of this matchup to a close fight but still believed Maxwell would win, inconclusive with the result or even changed their viewpoint and believing Sackboy would win after the blog was released.
After two years, a lot of my opinions have changed from this matchup, ranging from things I disagree with the blog and stuff I missed for both. (Hey, opinions change after all) So, without further ado, I shall show you if I still agree with my old verdict or not.
Oh, yeah this blog will just be me yappin’ about stats, abilities and other stuff they have. No prediction blog, saving that for later.
I’m Fast as Frick, Boy!
Starting with speed, in my prediction blog, I had Sackboy Immeasurable via controlling his kart when using the Fast Forward Weaponator and perceiving others using it. At the same time, Maxwell was Massively Faster Than Light by keeping up with Larfleeze, who travelled from the Vega System to Oa, where the former is basically where the star Vega is and the latter is stated to be at the centre of the universe according to the game itself.
Upon a further and proper look at both series, I have discovered more Immeasurable and Infinite speed feats for Sackboy and actually some for Maxwell. Sackboy can spread a sensor’s radius from zero to infinite in an instant, can run around Craftworld and can perfectly travel out of Craftworld and across the Imagisphere with his Pod. You’ll understand why the Craftworld speed feats are that impressive later down the line, LBP’s cosmology is wacky.
Meanwhile, Maxwell can write as fast as the Flash’s running, can use a Flash costume and even tap into the Speed Force. This is impressive because the Flashes can run so fast that they can time travel and even escape death.
Consistently, Sackboy has more Immeasurable feats, but both Sackboy and Maxwell are Immeasurable, so they’re about even in that category. Although, technically you can argue Sackboy is normally Immeasurable in travel speed from running around Craftworld while Maxwell needs to rely on speed amp Adjectives and Flash Costumes to travel as fast as him.
Maxwell’s DC Crisis
After looking through more in-depth and actually buying Unmasked, there are a lot of things to point out for both Sackboy and Maxwell. Although a bit of a smidge upgrade for Maxwell in his base by just adding a plus to his level, he should be Universal+ via harming Imperiex, the Batcomputer stated that Imperiex has the power of a big bang, backed with his motives to destroy the universe, so he can create a new one, which is backed up with Maxwell surviving the Anti-Monitor’s death explosion mentioned from my prediction blog. Neat stuff to have a feat within a computer belonging to Batman and the universal feat backing up.
Multiversal+ still only applies to Hope & Determination Maxwell from the Anti-Monitor absorbing the energies of the multiverse that his towers erased, which we do know has infinite universes. However, he would be downscaling from the Anti-Monitor in this state as he was with his three siblings and was still losing the fight until he brought the Monitor into existence. However, one can argue that Superboy-Prime being stated to be a threat to creation could be a reliable multiversal+ feat. However, the wording of ‘enemy’ instead of ‘threat’ makes me not believe it’s saying he’s a threat to the multiverse but rather an enemy to the people in the multiverse, so I wouldn’t use it as a “Holy shit! A multiversal feat!” viewpoint.
Of course, I still don’t buy Maxwell scaling to the Canon DC counterparts. There are so many holes to point out like how many DC characters act very zany in their N52 appearences, N52!Wonder Woman says she was sculpted and the father of Zeus in her origin story (when in the actual New 52 of DC Comics, only the latter was true) and a statement from the writer of Imagination of Crisis stating the Scribblenauts’ DC continuity and the mainline continuity are separate, even bringing up how characters act as I mentioned. (Question 7)
Just because it references alternative versions of characters and Earths doesn’t mean they’re the same as the real deal, unless you consider the Flashpoint Paradox movie happened in DC Comics and the Spider-Verse soon-to-be trilogy’s (as of writing this) Earths to be the same as the ones in Marvel Comics.
“But Josh Elder said the Scribblenauts’ DC timeline is a split timeline of the canon DC timeline because he said he based it on New 52! Also, he wanted an N52 comic with Maxwell in it!”
There is no indication he explicitly said that the timeline split. Especially when you account for Josh saying he was aiming for a broad demographic and compared it to the Injustice game and its comic series. He is obviously expressing that the comic was aimed at children, which most DC Comics are not aimed at. (This page of a comic I have owned since I was 10 years old sums up my point, graphic warning) Also, he said he was trying to make it “feel like a legitimate crossover event” and not be a part of the canon continuity. This is without talking about the Batman Who Keks and the Dark Multiverse being mentioned in the Mega Pack, which contradicts the timeline split argument.
Before we move on, I want to bring up one final argument for Maxwell that a few people used: Maxwell reading a DC Comic is the same as viewing the DC multiverse as fiction. Maxwell’s universe is labelled as Earth-i much like how universes in DC are labelled as Prime Earth, Earth-One, Earth-Two, etc. It doesn’t help the argument that the Phantom Stranger, Anti-Monitor and even Darkseid entered Earth-i like normal.
Sackboy: A Little Guy in a Big “Planet”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better for Maxwell as getting a buff comes at a cost to Maxwell in his Hope and Determination no longer being comparable to Sackboy after discovering some interesting things about LittleBigPlanet’s wacky cosmology.
Levels are just straight-up universes with their own time-space continuum and are infinite in size, (Also gives Sackboy an impressive range) going beyond the borders from the start and end of the level. There are an infinite amount of levels in a single Craftworld. (referred to as possibilities as levels were Wonderplanes before SABA made it a part of the world map, which are called possibilities. However, that’s not always the case when different actions like creating can cause possibilities inside these levels) Mind you, Craftworlds or the planets and moons you see aren’t actually planets, they are their own plane of existence. This is without talking about the Imagisphere containing countless to infinite Craftworlds within its infinite space.
I was going to bring in potential points about… dimensional tiering for LittleBigPlanet. Yes, I know, gross. But with how I find it all confusing and just the fact it makes my brain become jelly, it’s best to leave it out unless people are curious. Best for the professionals to look at it if you don’t trust yourself with this tiering. Without it, Sackboy is stacked with countless to infinite numbers of infinite universes. All in all with this section:
Imaginative Intelligence
And we go into everything else besides the stats. Of course, starting with this category because you know, imagination. Maxwell is a pretty smart lad for someone who is still a kid, able to outsmart actual geniuses like Brainiac and Lex Luthor. Very impressive considering Brainiac is a literal super-intelligent computer. Unfortunately, there aren’t many intelligence feats from Maxwell, though it does make him incredibly smart with what we have seen.
But, when we compare that to Sackboy… oh lort. He is described as a Master Creator and a Genius at play. Compare him to Newton, a dropout of Popit Academy, who invented a Dimensional Doorway to bring Sackboy back to Craftworld. The academy must be rigorous for some reason, but Sackboy passed both terms of the same academy Newton didn’t.
And then we go into other creators like Liquid Ocelot, (yes, the Metal Gear character) who created a level machine that creates identical levels 24 hours a day, you know, universes I mentioned above and an infected N.A.O.M.I., an omnipresent (in her world) supercomputer within an entire Craftworld-sized interstellar civilisation separated from Craftworld known as the Interstellar Junction and inventor of time travel toilets and virtual reality suites. Sackboy has even beaten her despite N.A.O.M.I. being dedicated to killing him to the point of activating her Anti-Sackboy Measures.
And then you go into Sackboy or just sackpeople in general: Sackpeople can create reality-warping machines. A group of sackpeople kidnapped by Vex were forced to create the Topsy Turver, the machine responsible for turning not just Craftworld, but the Imagisphere itself into a nightmarish realm where Vex would be the world itself so long the machine remains intact. And they used logics to create machines that change the daytime to nighttime and the world’s colour, so… yeah, paints a clear picture of both their intellect.
And before you bring up the “Omniscient” Adjective, no, it does not make Maxwell truly omniscient. In gameplay, Omniscient works by doubling the user’s sight range and removing blindness. An example is by adding the Adjective on Medusa, she can turn people into stone further away from her than before, but it can’t work if the person is too far away from her. And even if the Adjective truly did mean its actual definition, the Adjective alone would have solved all of Maxwell’s quests from the games and easily saved the DC world against Brainiac and the Anti-Monitor before they could temporarily achieve their goals.
If you’re all wondering about whatever happened to the “smartest being in the Imagisphere” mumbo jumbo I mentioned in the prediction blog. Turns out I am flat-out wrong about that: Higginbotham is and I do want to apologise for the misinformation I gave you, my bad.
Punching you right in the NautSack
Maxwell has gone around his Earth due to his motivations to make people happy and help them with their problems so he can collect Starites and even save the DC Multiverse twice from Brainiac and the Anti-Monitor. Maxwell has detected Ra Al Ghul’s henchmen’s disguise in Wayne Manor, teamed up with Batman to infiltrate the Anti-Monitor’s Citadel to input Brainiac’s virus so they can disable the security, and has escaped prison. (what the hell did bro do) Finally, Brainiac describes Maxwell as an anomaly and a limitless wellspring of creativity that can be neither quantified nor contained.
Maxwell in Unmasked can fight hand-to-hand against experts and masters of martial arts while also knowing two techniques like the Gnarly Nerve Blow to strike the enemy’s nerve to knock out opponents and the Atomic Wedgie of Ultimate Destiny… which just knocks an enemy unconscious with a wedgie.
Well, that is nice. Yet again, Sackboy outmatches him. Remember everything in LittleBigPlanet and the community is a part of that too. But, let’s slow down a bit, let’s show Sackboy’s many, many training sessions and skills he underwent.
- LittleBigPlanet: After being defeated by Sackboy, Ze Dude was impressed by Sackboy’s skills and gave him a flight to meet Grandmaster Sensei, teaching him ninja skills to defeat the Terrible Oni, Sackboy did both in under a day.
- Metal Gear Solid DLC Pack: Sackboy would undergo VR Training by Hal “Otacon” Emmerich to learn how to shoot with the Paintnator and take cover in such a short timeframe. Right afterwards, Sackboy went into a ruined town in the Middle East to a level factory through his training and sneaking skills.
- LittleBigPlanet 2: Sackboy is taken and saved just to be trained by Larry Da Vinci. Sackboy succeeded. Afterwards, Sackboy is then taken to learn to pilot Avalon’s various weapons, succeeding again to the point of passing Avalon’s Advanced Armaments Academy with an A (for Avalon).
- LittleBigPlanet PS Vita: He was taught by Colonel Flounder through acrobatics and the power of touch, an ability where Sackboy can control obstacles without him physically moving them.
- Cross-Controller DLC Pack: Helped a group of Space Pirates escape their prison. (don’t worry, Warden is a corrupt cop.)
- DC Comics DLC Pack: There are two of them.
- PS3: Sackboy is trained by Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Flash. He also saved the latter two, Green Lantern and Superman.
- PS Vita: Sackboy is trained by Wonder Woman, (again) Batman, (again) Superman and Green Lantern. He again saved the latter three and the Flash.
- LittleBigPlanet Karting: Sackboy instantly learnt how to drive in a race with the Narrator even stating that driving the Hoard’s kart would be no problem. Albeit, he did struggle a bit with how to drive. (can relate man)
- PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale: Won the goddamn tournament, meaning he won against Big Daddy from BioShock and Polygon Man. (Yes, the game is even canon to LBP, funniest shit ever)
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure: Sackboy trained his way through being a Knitted Knight by an old Knitted Knight called Scarlet. Even gets gold trophies for completing Knitted Knight Trials… even the Ripsnorter, After finally defeating Vex, Scarlet declares Sackboy, through true bravery and living up to his potential, a Knitted Knight of the Imagisphere.
And this is without mentioning the community levels, the fact Sackpeople can adapt to continue their adventure, how they can train themselves in Versus Levels and how each training makes him stronger, which would give Sackboy an even bigger stat advantage by upscaling from the Imagisphere feats and any of the Immeasurable feats. Yeah, very safe to say that Maxwell is beaten in this category. Maxwell can fight with his hands and is easily adaptable with any weapon he grabs, but Sackboy would dominate him in hand-to-hand combat without utilising their abilities. And with countless adventures Sackboy has experienced in the community, Sackboy isn’t going to be surprised once he knows who he’s dealing with.
To give Maxwell credit, he has fought combatants way older, more skilled than himself and Sackboy, even ones as old as the universe’s beginning. So, this leaves us with the very thing we came for.
Unlimited Creativity
We’re finally here: their powers and weapons… holy shit there is a lot.
Okay, let’s be real. Instead of blabbering about their abilities with no care in the world, they will be categorised going down how they function and if they resist them. However, before going in, I would like to say that Maxwell can’t stop time when writing, that is a game mechanic. So is dragging his creations to a bin and so is clicking a character to know what they want. What isn’t a gameplay mechanic is Sackboy’s ability to create as it is explained by the Narrator the reason he can create is his Popit is charged with an astounding amount of creative power. With all that explained, let’s move on.
Dimensional & Time Travel and BFR
Sackboy’s methods of travelling through dimensions are both simple and weird. Because of how the world of the Imagisphere functions, Sackboy’s Pod can take him to a level (a universe) and even different Craftworlds (A plane containing infinite universes) like his. He can use other methods like level links, which lead to other levels. Even Sackboy’s checkpoints function the same as shown in Run Sackboy Run and then there are wormholes that Sackboy can create or summon via the Digital First Mate. Some wormholes can send people into the Non-Imagisphere, basically the same size as the Imagisphere but made of anti-imagination and puts anyone in stasis once they have entered. And finally, my favourite, travelling through TVs, computers, arcades and portable consoles. Remember, everything do be canon in LBP. Sackboy’s Pod can even transport him through a different point in time and a sackperson has made a time machine in the History DLC trailer.
On Maxwell’s end, his sister’s globe can take him anywhere within a multiverse so long he has the right amount of Starites and can use it to send people away without him travelling. He can also summon DC Heroes and Villains who can dimensional and time travel but that’s for later. Maxwell can summon a portal or Boom Tubes from his notebook to travel as well, though his portal summoning is used to summon creatures. As well as a time machine to travel through eras of time and even meet his past self. He can wear the aforementioned Flash suit, allowing Maxwell to time travel by running and finally, Maxwell can summon the Phantom Zone Projector, sending anyone into the Phantom Zone. Depending on how long the person stays, they start to forget who they are until they are nothing but a Phantom. This effect can be reversed if they recreate a memory they start to lose or look at photos.
It’s safe to say that time travel is ineffective against them due to having a form of acausality as Maxwell has interacted with his past self and Sackboy is comparable to Creator Curators, who were aware of Sackboy’s time rewind, aware of Sackboy replaying their fight and predated linear time to create the first idea in the Imagisphere. If Maxwell ever used Lily’s Globe to send Sackboy to a faraway universe, Sackboy would simply come back with his checkpoints or level links and Maxwell can do the same by using his sister’s globe if Sackboy drags Maxwell to any world… except for the Non-Imagisphere and the Phantom Zone.
As soon as Maxwell enters a wormhole that leads him to the Non-Imagisphere, the animation of his body would all be frozen still and it’s game over for him. If Sackboy gets shot by the Phantom Zone Projector, he will need to act fast to get out, otherwise, he will turn into a Phantom. But, as mentioned previously, Sackboy will always think about leaving the place as soon as he’s hit and even if he stays here for who knows how long, he can recreate a scene from his previous adventures or use any of the photo stickers to remind himself of the fun times and once he has enough time or Sackboy can just pop himself with the retry function in his Popit.
Never thought I would see stickers be useful in a fight scenario, but here we are. This category goes to Sackboy by a hair.
Reality Warping
Oooo, wacky, wacky stuff incoming. Yeah, it’s no secret that Sackboy’s Popit and Maxwell’s Notebook can manipulate the laws of their world.
Sackboy has um… quite the list when it comes to his reality manipulation. He has been shown to summon water from the ground out of nowhere, change the laws of gravity and physics, change the sounds, change the lighting of a level, change the level from sunny to night and even its appearance to whatever he desires. He can make terrains out of the ground and alter the materials of the landscape. And then outside his Popit, Sackboy has the ability of chronokinesis. But, Sackboy isn’t just manipulating time at a basic level, bro is manipulating the temporal continuum itself either by stopping it, rewinding back or even fast forwarding it to speed his creation up which…
But, wait, there’s more! Sackboy can manipulate the gameplay mechanics of a level and the perception of the game’s camera. Yes, I am not joking, Sackboy can do that.
With Maxwell’s notebook, the Object Editor allows him to create any subjective being into the world, his Doppelganger can summon the moon and sun simultaneously and he can change the colour of the sun. And we can’t forget when writing down “Everything” in his notebook, he brings back all the “DC” multiverse and all its people including the dead. He just needs a universal worth of Starites to do it.
…Yeah, Sackboy’s reality-warping powers are a bit overpowered. Sure, the multiversal reboot is impressive and has great range, but Maxwell can do so with a universal amount of energy. Anything Maxwell can reality warp, Sackboy can also do and more.
And although the Imagisphere can be affected by Maxwell’s writing “Everything,” it will only take a small portion out at most, a Craftworld at least. It doesn’t help that Sackboy can survive the reboot blast as Sackboy is completely fine from the Topsy Turver’s reality-warping the Imagisphere, which is way bigger than the multiversal recreation from Maxwell’s notebook.
On a related note about the Topsy Turver, Vex needed Sackboy’s Dreamer Orbs to fool him and take them to power the Topsy Turver. Before facing N.A.O.M.I. and meeting Vex in the Interstellar Junction, Sackboy would have at least 130 Orbs and there are a total of 329 Orbs in Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Sackboy’s ability to create relies on a great amount of creative energy, more than likely to have more than 329 Orbs, which the Dreamer Orbs are made of… even Sackboy himself is also made of this energy, hmmm, how strange.
Basically, you can argue that Sackboy’s creative powers are superior to the Topsy Turver’s power to warp the Imagisphere, making it much superior to even Maxwell’s multiversal reboot. Regardless, Sackboy takes this.
Also, no, Maxwell did not resist Mxyzptlk’s time stop, Mxy just stopped everyone but Maxwell within his time manipulation. The whole point of that scene was to show that Mxy wants to leave challenges for Maxwell and show off that he’s superior to him. To say Maxwell is immune to time manipulation because of this is blatantly ignoring the point of that scene.
Mind and Emotion Manipulation
Simple stuff, Sackboy’s Popit Cursor can change the behaviour of a person and their emotion. Although this is used for Sackbots, mechanical versions of Sackpeople, the Popit Cursor can affect any enemy with a brain. Pretty self-explanatory. Maxwell can use any Behavioural Adjectives upon a person to change how they act, one of the most useful ones is making them loyal to Maxwell and… making people commit suicide, how lovely for a children’s game.
And that’s about it. They’re about equal even in this category, But there’s also their resistance and that’s where Sackboy takes it. Sackboy has a very strong defence against mind manipulation, let alone on the same scale as the Imagisphere thanks to Vex’s Topsy Turver spreading the Uproar to corrupt it, the same source that Vex can bend any creature to his will and drive anyone into madness. If Sackboy didn’t have any defences against it, he would’ve been Vex’s puppet.
Maxwell has his own defence as well stemming from a tin hat that blocked away Gorilla Grodd’s mind manipulation. Still, the mind manipulation seems like it only affects one person and even if it’s as good as Sackboy’s resistance, Sackboy can just snatch the hat away and use his mind manipulation on Maxwell, turning him into a potato.
Existence Erasure
Sackboy’s Popit Cursor can delete anything while Maxwell can apply anything with the Gone Adjective. Simple stuff. When it comes to erasing one or the other, erasing Sackboy would still not be enough to take him down as anything that’s deleted is still recycled to the Imagisphere.
It’s debatable if Maxwell has any resistance towards existence erasure, some of his creations can survive getting hit by the Anti-Monitor’s beams and Maxwell in his Hope & Determination form can survive the same beam afterwards, these beams are so potent, they can erase the Phantom Stranger. However, it is unknown if Maxwell added resistance to his creation and in Unmasked, Maxwell himself can resist the Anti-Monitor’s beams in gameplay anyway.
Oh, hey. A tie, neat!
Size Manipulation
Again, from Sackboy’s Popit Cursor, he can change the size of anything, both objects and characters and even has the Destroyer that allows him to shrink his opponents so small that they disappear and die. In commercials, Sackboy is shown himself as a giant, even as big as Craftworld itself… freaky. And like before as well, Maxwell has a variety of Size Adjectives, The biggest he got was barely as big as a small building, while at his smallest can get himself at subatomic sizes.
This category is… weird to say at the very least. Sackboy can enlarge himself as big as a multiversal plane, but Maxwell can shrink on a subatomic level. But, Sackboy doesn’t use his size-shifting in his adventures at all and Maxwell can potentially use his Adjectives to shrink him to get a size advantage. On the other hand, Sackboy can do the same, but the Destroyer’s shrinking effect can actually kill Maxwell and Maxwell’s enlarging Adjectives are unimpressive. Hmm…
All in all, Maxwell wins when it comes to being little, (unless we’re going offensive) while Sackboy wins when it comes to being big with their size abilities. But, considering Sackboy never shows his enlargement outside commercials and sometimes community levels, I’m just gonna give Maxwell the category.
Transmutation and Petrification
Sackboy has a variety of transmutations: He can turn anything into confetti and with the Prize Bubble Roundup, he can turn all his enemies into bubbles which gives him a variety of weapons to collect as well. Let’s not forget that Medusa’s Head, Sackboy had that in PSASBR. Maxwell has his other forms of transmutation such as the Necronomicon turning people into skeletons, a wand turning people into frogs and a spell book turning people into bunnies. Doppelganger’s notebook, which is objectively inferior to Maxwell’s, can transform a person into a beast, like a gorgon, a minotaur and an octopus. And of course, the gorgon’s head, Spider-Man pointing meme.
Not only do both have the same head as a weapon, but both have methods to turn one into an object, while also both being resistant to the two abilities, ironically from Sackboy (And other PlayStation fighters) can break out of it and Maxwell is just ineffective by the Gorgon’s Head, though his clones have been turned into stone. Sackboy is also resistant to Vex’s Uproar, which Vex has used to turn sackpeople into monsters and Maxwell has resisted spells from the aforementioned magical weapons from witches and magicians.
Yet, another tie. Moving on.
Duplication
Popit Cursor can duplicate objects and anyone, yada yada yada. Sackboy can also duplicate himself by going into a meat grinder and merging himself back together, weird stuff but it’s unique. And as usual, the Cloned Adjective can duplicate a clone of Maxwell as well as the clone machine, but that isn’t as effective as the Adjective. There’s also the Mitotic Adjective, cloning the character and then splitting the clone at the cost of their size.
Ironically, their duplication functions slightly similarly, even Sackboy splitting into smaller versions of himself resembles the Mitotic Adjective. I got nothing, a tie.
Life and Death Manipulation
Sackboy has given life to inanimate objects with the brain and can inflict enemies with the Kill Tweaker by instant killing them through different effects, even every person at once. Meanwhile, Maxwell can use any Behavioural Adjective to bring inanimate objects to life to the point of even giving them limbs and the infamous Death Adjective, don’t need to say much.
It is safe to say Maxwell’s death hax is better, but it is obviously getting countered by Sackboy’s immortality. Maxwell can resist Sackboy’s death hax as well since he got hit by Silver Banshee’s hypersonic cries. (you’ll know very soon) Leaving us with another draw.
Okay, now let’s go into everything besides two categories.
Everything else lmao
Before we go into the last two important factors, I want to dedicate this factor to show the non-important abilities or abilities one has that the other doesn’t. Starting with a collection of DC characters Maxwell can summon with varied haxs and abilities according to the Batcomputer with links.
- Time and Space Manipulators: Time Commander, Time Trapper, Kid Quantum, Liri Lee and Taikon.
- Death Manipulators: Silver Banshee and Nimbus.
- Probability Manipulators: Major Disasters, Faith and Vext.
- Precognition Users: Rose Wilson and Dream Girl.
- Time and Dimensional Travellers: Epoch, Extant, Shade the Changing Man, Sideways and Darkseid.
- Matters Manipulators: Captain Atom, Firestorm and Major Force.
- Dimensional Manipulators: Four D, Folded Man and Red King.
- Swamp Thing: Can control plant life and can transport himself anywhere across Earth through a spiritually interconnected plant network known as the Green.
- Amazo: With the help of his mechanical “absorption cells,” he can copy any ability from any superhero or villain, he already has the combined powers of the Justice League themselves.
- Doomsday: An unstoppable monster that can resurrect to the point even Death’s touch can’t put him down for good. But, there is a limit to how much he can come back as erasing his existence will stop his resurrection.
And this is without mentioning the abstract beings or beings made of energy, who are non-corporeal, which Maxwell can harm. Another misconception I made was Maxwell needs to use the “Interactive” Adjective to harm incorporeal beings when even before going to the DCverse, he can still harm ghosts or phantoms without help.
Maxwell also gains a lot of weapons from the Scribblenauts version of DC such as the Joker Venom, Crimson Avengers Gun, Mystical Lantern, Sandal of Hermes and lots of Kryptonite. Also, Maxwell is completely fine without a head or body, though he can still be killed by normal means.
With all that let’s blitz through every category not as important as the ones above and below:
- Sackboy’s Digital First Mate and Maxwell’s X-Ray Goggles can see through invisibility, negating any invisible beings or attacks from one or the other.
- Both have multiple forcefields, but they can always be negated by simply removing them with their erasure. Dreamer Orbs would’ve been an option as they dispelled Vex’s barriers, but that worked because the barriers were made from the Uproar.
- Can make themselves invulnerable to specific attacks like Sackboy’s Gameplay Tweaker (Invulnerable to Fire, Electricity, Plasma, Poison, Explosions, Sharp Weapons and Physical Damage) and Maxwell’s Adjectives (Like Fireproof, Shockproof, Immune [Although through specific diseases like ebola, plague and bacteria] and Immortal or Inseverable [Invulnerable to any attacks besides the Gone Adjective and Black Holes] Adjectives) making them nearly even with Maxwell being slightly ahead.
- While Maxwell can amplify his stats with some Speed and Hard Adjectives, and DC Suits, Sackboy can do the same with the Gameplay Tweaker, many PSASBR items and his Popit Cursor can decrease Maxwell’s speed.
- Maxwell has no counters to Sackboy’s chronokinesis and wouldn’t know as Sackboy doesn’t need to use it with hand gestures or speak and can do it while in stasis. (see the Non-Imagisphere) Even if he can resist time manipulation, Sackboy’s manipulation over time has affected Creator Curators, as mentioned earlier, the Mystic predated time itself when he made the first idea. Not even characters that Maxwell can summon who control time can affect Sackboy. Also, Sackboy can slow down time as well.
- While we’re on the topic of Taikon, Sackboy can resist matter manipulation at a quantum level as Sackboy has survived getting hit by N.A.O.M.I.’s lasers, which are stated to reduce people into quantum dust.
- Inaccurate Adjective won’t work on Sackboy as he has resisted probability manipulation from Killer Frost’s experiment and Vex’s Wheel of Uproar, the same can be said for the DC character who can do that.
- Maxwell could summon Brainiac to make another Brainiac Virus to disarm Sackboy’s creations much like the Anti-Monitor’s security system. Still, Sackboy has dealt with viruses that corrupted N.A.O.M.I. with his Plasma Pumps, who can control a multiversal-sized civilization plane.
- While Maxwell can give anyone and himself telekinesis, Sackboy has multiple options for telekinesis with the Popit Cursor, Brain Crane and the Touch. (With the Touch capable of being utilised for a quicker method of using the Popit Cursor)
- Both can summon a variety of characters, Sackboy can summon his Bunkum allies, Sackbots from his Popit, his Sackfriends, the Justice League and even Marvel Heroes while Maxwell can summon various creatures, the Five Horsemen of Apocalypse, Mario characters, Zelda characters and DC characters. However, it doesn’t help Maxwell that most of Sackboy’s summons have the same physiology as Sackboy, like Bunkum’s heroes Justice League and Marvel Heroes, sharing Sackboy’s immortality, manipulation over time, and superior strength and durability.
- Sackboy has some great counters against Maxwell’s summons like his Prize Bubble Roundup. While Maxwell is resistant to transmutation, his summons are not. You can guess how that would go. Ignoring PSASBR, Sackboy has tweakers that can transmutate everyone.
- With Sackboy’s intangibility from Hover Mode, he can avoid many of Maxwell’s attacks, including the Crimson Avengers Gun as he is normally incorporeal much like his world.
- Precognitive abilities from Rose Wilson and Dream Girl won’t work on Sackboy owing to the Creator Curator’s acausal nature.
- The S.H.I.E.L.D. Interceptor Sackboy ridden can shoot a beam that absorbs the enemy’s health while healing Sackboy and the interceptor via the Rogue Beam.
- Sackboy’s Pod can erase levels, I don’t need to explain why that’s impressive.
- Missiles Jammer do be jamming all of Maxwell’s missiles.
- Maxwell can create a sponge that reduces water levels against Sackboy… I just thought that was funny.
- In one ad, Gundam Wing is featured and the actual level shows Sackboy piloting it… not much of a counter, I just wanted to bring it up so my friends who are Mecha fans can be happy.
Sackboy’s Gundam Wing vs Maxwell’s Mech.
And with all that out of the way, let’s go into the last but important two categories.
Conceptual Manipulation
Getting closer to the end, Sackboy’s manipulation of concepts is straightforward. The Imagisphere is made of the energy from every Dreamer in the omniverse’s imagination, ideas, joy and dreams, from a piece of code that operates the creative function of a Dreamer’s mind. Sackboy, the moon and the two Craftworlds are made of a single Dreamer’s endless imagination, levels, ideas and dreams. (No, Sackboy does not embody everyone’s imagination in the omniverse.) It’s a common theme for an opening to all LittleBigPlanet instalments ignoring the mobile ones.
Even the villains are conceptual, the Negativitron is made from the negative aspect of the Alliance and Vex and the Uproar is made from fear, chaos, despair and nightmare. Besides these two, the rest of the characters are again, made of the same thing as Sackboy. Interestingly, an infected Creator Curator, N.A.O.M.I., threatens to rewrite Sackboy’s “personality files” and alter his “programming” similar to how Sackboy can program his Sackbots. To put it simply, everything in the world of LittleBigPlanet is made of concepts, dreams, creative energy, etc.
On the other hand, Maxwell can use Adjectives, which he can apply to any concept on him, anyone and objects. That being said, it’s questionable if Adjectives are truly conceptual rather than being similar to something like status effects. Here are some flaws to name a few.
- After exploding, the explosion of the Nuke radiates Maxwell with the Glowing and Toxic Adjectives.
- Painting a person with a paint bucket gives them any colour Adjective the paint is.
- The defibrillator and Elixir of Life can bring people back even with the Dead Adjective.
- Darts can add various Adjectives to anyone.
With all these listings, I have a hard time believing they are concepts and more just natural status effects, though they can affect conceptual beings so it could count in a way. And no, the Conceptual Adjective doesn’t make anyone a conceptual being, it just simply makes them interested in philosophers and anything historical. You can’t say every Adjective shares the same meaning as the actual word unless proven otherwise.
Okay, but let’s just say the Adjectives are conceptual, that would be effective to anyone including Sackboy, right?
Haha… yeah, nah, that would make Sackboy just resist every Adjective, silly. Any attempt of manipulation like Vex and Negativitron sucking up the creativity out of Sackboy, the Uproar’s influence, etc. are all conceptual, no exceptions. And Sackboy has resisted all of these.
Finally, since he’s made of the creativity of a person, you could argue that he has resistance to the abilities he has. Negating most of Adjectives Maxwell has in his notebook, leaving Maxwell to rely on his summons and even worse, Sackboy actually affecting Maxwell with his abilities that Maxwell would normally resist since they are conceptual while Maxwell’s resistances are not… yeah, that’s going to be a huge oof from me. It’s fine if you don’t agree with this.
Immortality, Power Nullification and Weaknesses
At last! The finale: the category where we will find out who will snuff the other’s life forever as dark as it sounds.
It’s nowadays common people know Sackboy is immortal, where checkpoints bring him back from the dead and if all his lives are gone, he comes back from his Pod and even the destruction of his Pod wouldn’t be enough because the Imagisphere will always bring him back to life.
Another thing I should’ve been brought up, Sackboy with his creative powers can come back without a checkpoint in an instant and Sackboy’s checkpoints contain multiple life forces for him and his allies, which makes sense considering you can see a blue ethereal-like of your sackperson float out of their body and then disappear, implying a life force dies with them. And when you account for the infinite checkpoint, Sackboy or anyone part of his summons can come back indefinitely unless said checkpoint is destroyed. It makes Sackboy nigh-impossible to be killed. Also, noteworthy, but Vex has the ability to take Sackboy’s lives from his checkpoint, it can’t take away Sackboy’s lives if it’s the infinite checkpoint.
While normally mortal, Maxwell can bestow anyone and himself with the Immortal and Ressurective Adjective. Obviously, the Ressurective Adjective brings Maxwell back from his death besides being killed by a black hole. The Immortal Adjective makes Maxwell invincible, not even Death can kill him, only erasure can, which Maxwell can resist.
Now, damn. It’s about nearly even. Keyword: Nearly. There are some ways one of them can bypass their immortality. But, before I can explain, I want to address some claims from some people including the comment from the beginning of this doc. They said:
“Sackboy’s checkpoints will not work because the Death Adjective isn’t “killing” him, Maxwell is making his information change to ‘dead.’”
I find this a bit weird. Ignoring the funny defibrillator and Elixir of Life revival Maxwell uses on someone with the Dead Adjective, it doesn’t matter if Sackboy’s “information” is changed, it still counts as a death. He will always come back. The Gone Adjective won’t bypass the resurrection as well as mentioned before, the Imagisphere will recycle him back to life. Besides, information manipulation is just diet conceptual manipulation and I don’t need to explain that he has resisted these abilities.
The next point that I think is very flawed is his nullifying Adjectives like “Powerless” or “Unchanged.” They would not affect Sackboy as none of them work on the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, who all embodied their respective concept (Pestilence, War, Famine and Death) much like Sackboy is the embodiment of a Dreamer’s imagination. A difference is that the Horsemen die when Maxwell helps the people from their influence… or just kills them without bothering to help the people. This is without mentioning Sackboy has resisted power-nullifying abilities before, especially ones at a conceptual level from Vex and the Negativitron, so even without the flaws of the Powerless and Unchanged Adjective, it would not work because of Sackboy’s resistances.
Next, we go away from people’s arguments and look back at my arguments that could make Maxwell win. If you can tell from my views on Sackboy’s stats now, I no longer believe Maxwell can erase the Imagisphere by writing “Everything” now due to how massive it is when mentioning Craftworld’s size. And even ignoring the cosmologies’ size, when we’re going verse equalisation, something DEATH BATTLE! has used, the Imagisphere is made of everyone’s imagination including Maxwell himself, adding to the fact that the more Maxwell creates inside the Imagisphere, the stronger and bigger it becomes. Finally, Crisis of Imagination shows that ideas can’t be created or destroyed. This is very important since not only is he a battery for the LittleBigPlanet world, but the Imagisphere, along with everything in this world, is made of ideas. Ergo, the notebook cannot destroy the Imagisphere. And it’s unlikely that Maxwell would want to wipe it out considering it would probably make Dreamers braindead, including himself.
Finally, finding Sackboy’s Dreamer is like finding a needle in a muliversal-sized haystack, Taikon’s cosmic awareness could help, but considering Sackboy’s time rewind, his own cosmic awareness and we don’t know how impressive Taikon’s cosmic awareness and the cosmological structure of the Imagisphere, it is very, very unlikely it would work.
This now comes to the question of whether Sackboy can kill Maxwell with the Immortality and Ressurective Adjective. And to that, I say yes.
As mentioned earlier, Ressurective can be bypassed by simply erasing Maxwell’s existence. I believe it’s safe that Sackboy can delete him because Maxwell is only resistant, not immune. Before you say it, no I am not being unfair about Maxwell potentially being killed while Sackboy can’t have his immortality stripped away, Sackboy’s immortality stems from a person’s imagination vs Immortal Adjective making Maxwell ageless and nigh-deathless without resurrections. Hell, Sackboy just outright ignores it because his erasure is conceptual. Very different to the Anti-Monitor’s erasure, likely from his anti-matter.
If that’s not enough, with Maxwell’s lack of time resistance, Sackboy can rewind time where Maxwell wouldn’t have these Adjectives at all and take the notebook away before Maxwell can add them back. Or if you want something interesting, Sackboy can summon the Tea Tin. Yes, it belongs to the people of Bunkum because of the Titans, but considering Sackboy can summon it in his Popit, he will be able to seal Maxwell and leave him there no matter what. Or how about Sackboy sending Maxwell the Non-Imagisphere? Once he’s in, it’s game over, good luck trying to create your imagination in a world made of anti-imagination.
Finally, Sackboy is a character who goes after enemies’ weakpoints. Sackboy’s ability to sense anything that disturbs the Imagisphere would help him go after Maxwell’s notebook, which has been taken on three different occasions from Toyman, Sinestro and a Shadow Demon possessing Batman. Once Sackboy has it, he will break it so Maxwell can’t create more weapons or summons. Magical items given by Maxwell’s parents much like the notebook have been broken before like Lily’s globe, so to suggest it won’t be destroyed is silly. Even if it was somehow unbreakable, Sackboy could use the Powerup Remover to remove all of Maxwell’s objects, leaving him no choice to fight back.
And with all that, Sackboy can indefinitely come back as many times as he wants without any worry. While Maxwell would be desperately finding clues to kill Sackboy for good until he realises it’s impossible or his notebook is taken away and destroyed.
Scribbling The LittleBigConclusion
And that’s about it, my original result remains the same for a new reason while admitting my wrongdoings. Ultimately and ironically enough, while both are even in speed, Sackboy’s outstanding strength, unbreakable immortality and a few of his creative tricks were yet again enough to beat the Scribblenaut.
Now, this would’ve been where I make a low-tier pun about Maxwell’s loss, but I’m not doing that. Ever since I made my prediction blog at the end of 2021, I was happy to be done because it was what I once thought to be my final vs debating project and I can focus more on my life. However, as time passed, despite my disdain for anything with vs debating nowadays, debating about this matchup is a very, very rare occasion where I feel enjoyment out of vs debating.
An important reminder is that I wasn’t originally going to make a prediction blog about Sackboy vs Maxwell. It was going to be me looking in depth into LittleBigPlanet’s powerscaling because I thought the series wasn’t properly looked into as the series back then was at planet level and relativistic and I wanted to give a series I absolutely love a look back.
What prompted me to make the prediction blog was that people in the VS community believed that Maxwell scales to DC Comics in general rather than thinking it was an alternate version like DCAU, DCEU, etc. (And also Mario and Zelda) So, I went out of my way to look into what was right and wrong, which led to my blog back in December 2021 and allowed me to evaluate both Sackboy and Maxwell’s stats and abilities. In retrospect, after seeing Scooby-Doo vs Courage, I wish the battle’s result was a tie, but that doesn’t seem to be the case unfortunately. You’re free to disagree and argue against my points, which is completely fine, but please, don’t act immature about your comments and say that I “wanked” Sackboy or “downplayed” Maxwell in the comments. I prefer people who civilly argue against my points.
Ignoring vs debating stuff, LittleBigPlanet is a series that means a lot to me. Ever since I saw my cousins playing the original back in 2009, I wanted a PS3 just so I could play the game. I hold the series very high with its fun gameplay, exploration with creativity, etc. LittleBigPlanet 2 is my favourite game of all time and this is coming from someone who enjoys video games the most out of all media. (Unrelated, 2011 had lots of bangers with video games) While I don’t hold as much love towards Scribblenauts as much as LBP, I do enjoy it and had fun watching it when my friend played Unlimited on his iPad, those were fun times. I also like to spread chaos and do a little trollin’ in the game too.
Will say, ever since I released the prediction blog, my blog has garnered a lot of attention as mentioned from the start of this blog, getting a shoutout in a top 10 (if you’re reading this Larrywinwood, your animation brought a smile to my face) and even getting so popular in the community, DEATH BATTLE themselves added the match-up into their Tournament of Champions, which felt so surreal to me even if it lost the first round, ironically enough against the winner of the tournament. If the episode ever happened, I would love to see it be a finale with how powerful they are and that we only had one video game-themed finale, but I’m fine if it isn’t a finale.
Unfortunately, as of right now, DEATH BATTLE! is in a state of uncertainty about whether to come back or not as its parent company that owned the show, RoosterTeeth, has been shut down by WarnerBros. All I can say about the situation is I hope everyone who has worked in the company can find a job they can enjoy while also being treated with respect. And while I had fallen off watching DEATH BATTLE! a bit, I did bounce back after watching some of season 10’s episodes, they produced some bangers and I hope they can come back.
Take care, everyone. There might be a prediction blog on this website, surprisingly, so hope you look forward to that.
Metal Gear Excelsus:
Nano's Death Battle 
