DEATH BATTLE

And Thor all but winked at the camera and said “maybe I’d win next time”

It’s a very Marvel way to weasel out of deciding a rivalry.

Which is good because the story was about mashing up the two different feels of Avengers and Justice League stuff

Crossovers specifically will typically tend to go about things that way. No matter how large of a “feat” disparity there is their home series, they’re probably going to make them on roughly equal ground in a fight that either ends in a narrow victory (to make the other side not look like a chump), or a draw/have the battle interrupted.

I can put Goku and Ryu in a crossover and they’d either team up to defeat Frieza, who has recently harnessed the power of the Satsui no Hado, or one barely beats the other and says “Wow Goku/Ryu, you sure were strong. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it through that one”.

Except Flash and Quicksilver. Quicksilver beat Flash in a situation where Flash didn't have his full powers. Once Wally did, he absolutely smoked Pietro's ass.

That same crossover had Batman absolutely manhandle The Punisher offscreen.

Though I'll always love how that crossover handled Batman vs Captain America. Cap and Batman square up. They assess each other's abilities. They decide they're evenly matched, and a fight could go either way, and... they simultaneously come to the realization that the whole thing was ridiculous.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 27th 2024 at 12:08:39 PM

One of the best moments in a story full of great moments

https://g12dbfg.blogspot.com/2024/03/shiki-vs-kat.html?m=1

Shiki vs. Kat blog is out!

Honestly, given what Death Battle established for Flash, I think he solos the Avengers. Probably every single Avenger that’s ever Avenged, even Triathlon

And that’s before even getting to Superman who probably can also solo most of the Avengers

Cinematic Justice League vs Cinematic Avengers is more interesting to me but there’s also the question of who the Avengers get because they have more movies and a much more fluid membership

The easiest selection there is to just go with the six featured in The Avengers, and this does put them at an even six on each side. That said, I’m not really a fan of this one because I just reaaaally don’t like the DCEU Justice League version of these characters all that much, and thus I’m not really itching to see these versions get in.

Though, deciding on a roster for the comics versions runs into a similar problem for The Avengers. The Justice League has a pretty common base roster across most continuities and runs (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter), though Cyborg usually replaces MM in some more modern incarnations of that roster.

The Avengers? Now they’re all over the place. And unlike DC where most of its most popular characters are in the Justice League, Marvel has multiple popular characters who aren’t/are only rarely affiliated with The Avengers. Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Captain America are probably locks, Ant-Man could be too. Though that’d like one or two extra slots that are a bit harder to decide. Captain Marvel? Vision? Hawkeye or Black Widow? Scarlet Witch is often on the roster.

Strange thing is now that I actually think about it, most of the Core members of both the Avengers and Justice League have inherent resistances to people trying to remove them from time to the point it would honestly be easier to just kill them through conventional brute force.

And another weird thing is that almost everyone of the core members have multiple stand-alone instances of achieving Immeasurable/Infinite Speed feats, its actually not even funny. Which itself meant if it weren't for the fact that Flash (Barry Allen) also had more in his kit than just being a really fast brick, he would be near completely useless for the battle.

So the only character that would be able to survive or avoid destruction on such a scale would be Superman and possibly Flash depending on how fast he is cause he'll still need startup to Time travel. Thereby changing the whole dynamics of the entire battle in favor for the Avengers.

Would you say certain Death Battles damaged perceptions of characters? Man of Steel and Goku vs Superman 1 coming out the same year did not look good for Superman. In the former, he's a destructive savior, and in becomes pretty mopey in Batman vs Superman before being killed. In the latter, Superman is pretty dismissive of Goku, he and Goku caused the Earth to be destroyed, and it took like two years for Goku vs Superman II where Superman used the Dragon Balls to fix everything in the beginning, and is super pissed at Goku, and sadly kills him again while holding his corpse afterwards. Compare that to Goku vs Superman III where Goku and Superman treat each other with full respect and smiles.

If you knew nothing of One-Punch Man, but saw Mob/Shigeo vs Tatsumaki, you'd think Tatsumaki is a psycho bitch who would kill a kid thought she was a middle schooler.

Stuff like that.

Edited by ImmaLelouch on Mar 27th 2024 at 11:19:02 AM

Only for really impressionable kids who started watching the channel. Most who knew of the characters before then usually have a bone to pick with portrayals like that.

That's probably why they're trying to stay as true to the characters as they can with modern fights.

The Bifrost is also capable of teleport cutting things, as seen in Ragnarok.

Geez, I hadn’t really thought about what it means for Thor to just have at-will Bifrost through Stormbreaker

Edited by Bocaj on Mar 27th 2024 at 4:48:40 AM

I don't care much for their DBZ or Hellsing portrayals... mostly because they get Team Four Star to voice them and instead treat them like their abridged characters.

Edited by Spirit on Mar 27th 2024 at 9:53:01 AM

Alucard outside of one line had none of his abridged self pop up and they haven’t pulled from abridged that hard since season 2

I really don't think any Death Battle has damaged the perception of characters. At worst, there have been times where characters are Flanderized or not really accurate to their canon counterparts, but I'm not sure how much of that you can blame on Death Battle itself.

While I'll admit the show didn't have the best portrayals in the early days, when it comes down to it, Death Battle was far from the only show to make these portrayals, with various parodies and abridged series having a tendency to change a character for comedic value. Death Battle has gotten much better at portraying the characters much closer to how they are in their source material though. For example, though Vegeta and Frieza both had their abridged voice actors return, they both stay true to how their character was portrayed in the original Dragon Ball.

Edited by ejmenendez on Mar 28th 2024 at 4:53:11 AM

Hyperion. I only know his name because of Marvel Exiles.

Would the brief Fandom Rivalry over Dante vs Bayonetta count?

I've seen more talk from Superman fans about how the DCEU damaged his reputation than people who actually hate the character because of those movies. Superman fans are a very dramatic and insecure bunch, if I do say so myself.

As far as the Death Battle episodes impacting his image, I doubt enough people even know about Death Battle to be bothered by his depiction in any of these episode.

Edited by windleopard on Mar 28th 2024 at 2:34:47 PM

I HAVE heard complaints for many years about how boring Superman is as a character solely on the basis that he’s “too overpowered and never faces any challenges”, which I feel COULD have been influenced by Goku VS Superman 2, though it’s hard for me to actually tell if that was specifically the cause, or just VS debating in general portraying this image of Superman that’s not really true (at least, not for 99% of cases for the character).

I remember seeing clip from the Pokemon Vs. Digimon battle and people's reaction to it were "They were too afraid to use Ash because he definitely would have fought back against Tai" and "They did Red dirty in the battle". I do agree with the results (and Ash wouldn't really work for that specific battle since he never got a Mega Stone for Charizard), but I do agree that they made the worst take with the Pokemon Trainer.

If I had to take a later case of a character interpretation that bothers me, I would say it would be Blake because, I don't know, they couldn't get Arryn Zech to record new lines?

If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re kids and I wouldn’t want to see them subjected to *Death* Battle, I’d love to see a kid hero battle or two.

Like, Gosalyn Mallard vs Jade Chan or Penny Gadget.

Except the characters are kids, and that’s no good for Death Battle’s choice in violence level.

The perception of Superman as boring just because of his powers while ignoring literally everything else about him isn’t new (imo, it stems from how the films keep writing him in an incredibly boring and unrelateable way), but Death Battle definitely didn’t help things.

As as Superman fan, I really dislike how Superman vs Goku 2 handled the character. I ended the video feeling like the character was being insulted, and as a Dragonball fan I ended the video feeling like I was being patronized.

I think, if you take his powers super seriously in the way Death Battle does, Flash probably solos the entire Justice League, not just the Avengers.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 28th 2024 at 10:59:23 AM

Flash Vs Marvel + DC

Contrary to the "Speed Force is bullshit" mentality, Flash wouldn't solo both Marvel + DC. Like, Galactus would just use the Ultimate Nullifier on the Speed Force itself and there'd be nothing even Wally could do about it.

And by posing the question, I’ve now learned it would work out like that

But frankly the fact that you have to go THAT high on the power scale to deal with the Speed Force really should say a lot about how out of hand it's gotten.

Yeah, power creep is bad in comics. Especially with speed force stuff or anything where a writer with enough scientific knowledge can start thinking how things would REALLY work if they worked and go 'oh but he can punch with infinite mass'

The problem is pretty bad with some mutant powers too. Magneto used to be able to make magnetic shields and throw metal around. Now he can shift the Earth's axis and punch with Jupiter or whatever.