is 1 greater than i? I'm not sure this question even makes sense because complex numbers are a plane instead of a line. The magnitudes are obviously the same because i is a unit vector, but is there any inequality you can write about an imaginary number and a real number without just using their magnitudes?

When we go from real numbers to complex numbers, we lose ordering of values.
You cannot compare between two non-real values or between a real and non-real value. So, you cannot compare $i$ and $1$ since $i$ is non-real while $1$ is real.
The only thing you can compare is their absolute values.
$$|i|=|1|=1$$
But that doesn't give any comparison between $1$ and $i$.
