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Worst comic book superfight ever


FenrisUlf

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Punisher vs Wolverine' date=' and other marvel good guys, and the Punisher wins.[/quote']

 

Was that in the Ultimate Spiderman a couple of years back? Punisher vs. Spidey, Wolverine and Dare Devil?

 

Yeah, that sucked. Because the writer couldn't figure out a good way to have the Punisher come out ahead, so they came up with stupid ways.

 

(Or maybe it was in the Punisher comic book, but part of a US cross-over story? I put it down after reading that one issue, it was bad, bad, bad.)

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

NO ONE has yet mentioned Spiderman vs Firelord?

 

I will remember that steaming pile of elephant dung on my death bed!

 

See, that one never bothered me. Spidey was outclassed the entire fight, mostly because he was trying to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, and it at least made for a good read ("Man, how's he gonna get outta this one?!?"). I think people forget that Spidey's a powerhouse, despite him handing out the humbleness to bricks like Titania and the Iron Man from the future.

 

As for truly bad... I don't recall the name of the characters- I've blocked out most of the details, it was so bad- but there was a trio of Cadmus (?)supers that took out Superman. In about two pages. With a taser.

 

Lame.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

But the Flash? Come on... I don't care how upgraded Slade Wilson is, with Wally West we're talking about someone who moves so quickly that the explosions Slade supposedly "channeled" Wally with would be nothing more than fancy lightshows, and the sword thrust would have been a quite easily avoidable STATIONARY object.

 

I will grant you that sceen was pretty over the top. It was also, by all accounts, a power up for Deathstroke. But I've heard this argument dozens of times over the last year or so in regards to the Flash. I just don't buy it. And this is coming from a HUGE Wally West fan.

 

Yes, the Flash can dodge bullets casually and run at damn near the speed of light. But he also get's hit in his own book by complete normals like Weather Wizard and Captain Cold. Hell, he gets hit by Girder, who by all accounts is slower then either of those two and lacks any kind of area of effect attacks. When it comes right down to it, the vast majority of Flashes rogues gallery consists of people that should never touch him even if hell does freeze over.

 

Slade, however, is a low level super human thats fought Wally for years. As an added bonus, his power set actully includes improved reaction time. If a rusty brick like Girder can back hand the Flash once or twice a year, then a combat god like Deathstroke can stab him when the plot demands it.

 

Wally just wouldn't be Wally if he wasn't getting jobbed out in dramatic ways to people that shouldn't even be able to see him move. The best way I can explain it is the man has 3d6 Unluck in his own damn book. I figure part of the JLA package deal is also -10 INT and an extra 2 dice of Unluck, but only when more then three members of the JLA are present.

 

Now, would I have done that sceen differently? HELL YES!

 

Punisher vs. Spidey, Wolverine and Dare Devil?

 

That Marvel Knight's Punisher, not an Ultimate book. Garth Ennis wrote it.

 

Check it out the comments here (spoilers): link.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Yup' date=' those Marvel Vs. DC fights were bad - most especially the ones decided by reader votes. I mean, hey, I love the X-Men too but Wolverine and Storm were out of their league. They should have lost.[/quote']

Yeah, pretty much the same here.

 

I like Wolverine... I think he's a more complex character than most people (and, indeed, most writers) give him credit for. But I do NOT need to see him win all the time. I don't need him to be the best, I don't need him to spank Cap, I don't want him to be unbeatable.

 

I like Black Panther -- there's one villain, Killmonger, who he has NEVER beaten. He's come out on top, mostly... but because Killmonger gets taken out by someone else, or something like that. He's never actually won in a stand-up fight.

 

That rules.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

While Deathstroke vs the JLA was certainly lame (and I dig Deathstroke)...

 

Wolverine vs Lobo is, hands down, the absolute worst. It was so bad, not even the writers/artists could come up with a bad depiction. They had to hide it, entirely (matching them up was pretty stupid, to begin with).

 

I try to console with the thought that down behind the bar, this happened...

 

Lobo *while choking the hell out of Wolverine* -- "Not so tough now, are ya, ya bastich?"

 

Logan -- "... ten thousand bucks... to throw this..."

 

Lobo -- "You think the Main Man can be bought off?!?"

 

Logan -- "... and I pick up yer tab at this joint."

 

Lobo -- "... AND you don't go around later talkin' smack about how you won. 'Cause you didn't."

 

Logan -- "Won't say a word."

 

Lobo -- "OK, deal."

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

I'm gonna weigh in with Uncanny X-men #213, where Sabretooth grabs rogue by the back of the head and smashes her face first through a big ol' boulder. I remember being angry with that one back as a teenager and it tastes just as rancid now as it did fresh off the shelf. I just refuse to beileve Sabretooth is strong enough to do that and still loses to Wolverine. After all, he could just swat the runt with an SUV or some such if he can pull stunts like that.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Prepared is ok.

 

A lot depends on your interpretation of the scene. Many fans take offense to Deathstroke "beating" the Satellite JLA (even without their toughest members). I don't, because I don't see him as having beaten the JLA. Slade had every advantage of preparedness, and all it garnered him was the ability to hold off the JLA.

 

Note also that these JLA characters were, as noted previously, tired and emotionally drained. They also had not worked together for years (some of them at all). IOW, this was Slade at his best, and the JLA at its worst, and all he could manage was to briefly hold them off.

 

Laser pointer? No.

 

Laser pointer modified by Dr. Light - that I can buy into.

 

He doesn't have to have the kind of reactions to detect for it to be bad.

 

Slade has fought Wally many times. That's not the point. The point being that Slade is now(?) fast enough to draw his sword and stab Wally that fast... no, not really... the point is that Slade's sword is only like 3 feet long and held under his arm, meaning its length is diminished by the depth of his torso and that he stabbed Wally in his own torso. The question being... what was Wally trying to do? Run up and give him a hug? There's no reason for him to be that close, at all, and to run into a sword. Wally isn't what you would consider a grappling kid of fighter. Incredibly stupid.

 

I buy into the fact that Slade has been able to hold off Wally + teammates since his Teen Titans days. he hasn't gotten a lot faster. And a standard Flash tactic through the years has been to grab an opponent, whisk them off to a jail cell and run back to the scene of the battle, so Wally has used a lot of Grabs over the years. Should he have tried it on Slade? Probably not. But, again, we have the "tired and emotional" factor.

 

"Gee' date=' he just wiped out everybody and I have the universe's most powerful weapon. I guess I better punch him." Anyone writing him as that dumb isn't worthy of being called a fanfic writer let alone a professional.[/quote']

 

Again, none of them are fighting at their best, and here I agree GL was underplayed. I also don't like the "broke his hand" aspect of that scene. I would rathewr interpret Deathstroke's move here as a desparation play. He had a solution to everyone but GL, so he's clutching at straws. He certainly couldn't have overridden Kyle's control of t6he ring, but he didn't know that, and he had no better options.

 

Like the rest of the JLA, Kyle was running emotionally hot and tired, which would logically cost him some focus. That means the willpower that feuls the ring, as well as hius creativity weren't at near normal levels.

 

Deathstroke can hear Canary's jaw click' date=' but he can't hear Ollie's footsteps coming up behind him or the arrow being drawn from its quiver. He can react fast enough to shoot a guy the size of a photon, but not fast enough to get an ordinary human (who is fatigued and stressed out) off his back before that guy can stab him in the eyehole? Lame.[/quote']

 

Deathstroke's power rational has been set as using a much greater percentage of his brain than is normal. It's also been established, early on, that enhancing that usage can kill very quickly. One could argue he is pushing his own powers to get as far along as he did, and after holding the JLA off for a whole 15 second,s this was taking its toll.

 

Now, my bias is generally not to say "that couldn't happen", but to acknowledge the story as published by the owner of the characters, and ask "how could that have happened". My explanations for a lot of these issues aren't in the book as written, and weren't likely the writer's explanations. But I can see it happening. Look at some satellite era JLA stories and you'll see lots of less physically capable combatants who manage to hold their own against the League, at least briefly.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Now' date=' my bias is generally not to say "that couldn't happen", but to acknowledge the story as published by the owner of the characters, and ask "how could that have happened". My explanations for a lot of these issues aren't in the book as written, and weren't likely the writer's explanations. But I can see it happening. Look at some satellite era JLA stories and you'll see lots of less physically capable combatants who manage to hold their own against the League, at least briefly.[/quote']

 

 

Sorry, but no. I don't buy any of these supposed "justifications" for a moment. "They were all tired and stressed out". Yeah, just like in every other issue of their books where they had to fight an enemy more powerful than Deathstroke and WON! So don't hand me "stressed out and tired", because it flies about as well as a man with 10x the reaction time of a normal human being able to skewer a man with 10,000,000x the reaction time of a normal human, or a man wearing the most powerful weapon in the universe forgetting it was on his hand at all so he could throw a punch.

 

The ONLY reasonable explanation is Editor Fiat: they needed to pump Deathstroke for future use, and used the J-freaking-LA as the chumps. What sucks is that there's nothing to be done about such a problem.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

As for the Slade fight -- no, it still makes no sense.

 

And it's not just 'tired and emotionally drained', either. People were growing weaknesses they never actually had, and Slade was moving at velocities enormously faster than he'd ever before or since achieved. Not to mention making errors that were so basic that merely being exhausted still wouldn't explain them, they'd have to actually be suffering high fevers or delirious comas.

 

A partial list of the things that just didn't add up about that fight:

 

* Atom retains his full mass when he shrinks. Doing so has been the entire point of his powersuite, his primary shtick, since his character's inception. Suddenly being shoved around by a laser pointer is as much a piece of bad writing as suddenly having Wonder Woman display a vulnerability to Kryptonite. (Leaving alone how ridiculous it is that Slade Wilson, who does not have microscopic vision, accurately hit a subatomic-particle-sized target in midair with a laser pointer in the first place.)

 

* The sword thing is triply stupid because... OK, right after Flash starts his attack run, Slade has his sword held out in front of him. (Check the panels) But when Wally finishes, Slade has switched the sword to being held directly backwards.

 

So Slade Wilson has supposedly swung his weapon through a full semicircle in a shorter span of time than it took the Fastest Man Alive to run across sixty feet of ground. Even assuming that Wally was using only a /tenth/ of his full speed, that still requires Slade's hand to have been achieving velocities in excess of 0.1 c. Do I even need words to express how truly ludicrous an idea that is?

 

* Black Canary is one of the six best martial artists on Earth-DCU. I can just /barely/ buy Slade Wilson (who has metahuman reflexes) slapping a bag over her head... if he's already adjacent to her. But he wasn't. He was almost 20 feet away.

 

So we're supposed to believe that he was able to *first* defeat the Atom, *then* defeat the Flash, and *then* cross 20 feet of ground, handcuff, gag, and bag her -- all faster than she could simply finish taking an inhale and twitching her vocal chords. This requires either him to be operating at Quicksilver-like velocities, or her to be slower than the Turtle Man.

 

That's the list of truly ludicrous speed feats for Slade. Now, we move on to the stupidity and gross out-of-character-ness:

 

* Black Canary, a woman who can literally attack as fast as she can speak, actually had a chance to speak a full sentence (when the JLA first arrived)... and she used that sentence to go 'Can't we all just get along?' when facing the rapist who had violated and then supposedly murdered Sue Dibny, and his metahuman thug bodyguard. Instead of using that speaking opportunity to, oh, cut loose with 180 db of Canary Cry and leave both of them on their knees clutching their ears. (And note -- by this point, Dinah had already faced Deathstroke as an opponent in BIRDS OF PREY, and then fought alongside him in an extended sequence later, so she knows exactly who he is and what he's capable of. This knocks the 'wouldn't take him seriously' objection on the head.)

 

* The utter ludicrousness of Kyle (edit -- whoa, Freudian slip) Rayner trying to punch Deathstroke in the head instead of using any one of the standard GL attack options (giant green EB, giant green fist, force bubble, etc.) has already been mentioned. I merely add the additional note was one of the two JLA'ers here /not/ emotionally exhausted, as him and Wally were not members of the original satellite JLA, and thus had not been pulling the all-nighter wake and guilt session the night before.

 

(add) Besides, it would have been more in-character for Kyle to have Slade get stepped on by a 50-foot-tall green Sailor Moon. :)

 

* Green Arrow deliberately stood there and didn't take a shot while Deathstroke pounded down every other JLA'er on the field. He stood there and held his action /for the entire fight/. The heck? Ollie has shot down incoming LAW rockets in flight with golf ball arrows! It's not like he needs extended aiming time! Even if he'd had Deathstroke parry or dodge his shot (both entirely possible outcomes), the fact that he's still not even trying to make any makes me severely wonder at the writer's sloppiness. Not to mention that making Slade use up actions taking a defense would have, you know, given his teammates more opportunities to hit him.

 

This is just a partial list, but I'm going from memory. Comics are at home.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

See' date=' that one never bothered me. Spidey was outclassed the entire fight, mostly because he was trying to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, and it at least made for a good read ("Man, how's he gonna get outta this one?!?"). I think people forget that Spidey's a powerhouse, despite him handing out the humbleness to bricks like Titania and the Iron Man from the future.[/quote']

Spider-man is strong, fast, and lucky. But against a Herald of Galactus who is one heartbeat away from being one of the Elders of the Universe, he is simply outclassed. Spidy should not have survived that one.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

The current Defenders series also has some pretty bad mystic battles. The combatants are top notch mystics (Dr. Strange' date=' his doppleganger, and Doramamu) but all just end the battle with big honking energy blastes: no strategy or subtlety.[/quote']

 

Apparently someone is channeling Dragonball Z.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Spider-man is strong' date=' fast, and lucky. But against a Herald of Galactus who is one heartbeat away from being one of the Elders of the Universe, he is simply outclassed. Spidy should not have survived that one.[/quote']

 

I can buy Spidey *surviving* it -- as in, 'Firelord beats him unconscious and then walks away from his limp form, not being particularly interested in slaying his foe, but merely wishing to make the insect stop annoying him.'

 

No way Spidey should have *beaten* him. No remotely possible way nohow. We are talking 'Daredevil vs. Namor' levels of mismatch here.

 

BTW, note -- Firelord originally appeared in Marvel Comics as a *Thor* antagonist. The list of people who have failed to render him unconscious without an extremely challenging and prolonged fight includes (in addition to Thor) the original Phoenix.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Galactus vs. In-Betweener--the slugfest/WWE brawl. Ah, leave it to Steve Engelhart to ruin a good premise.

 

Spiderman can lift 10 tons, and has reflexes 15-30x normal. If he really wants to, he can throw 20 haymakers a second.

Firelord has been consistently shown to be less tough than the Surfer; if his physical resilience is low enough for Spidey's punches to have any kind of effect, then it's possible(albeit highly implausible) for him to be knocked out by a couple hundred of them.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Firelord has been consistently shown to be less tough than the Surfer; if his physical resilience is low enough for Spidey's punches to have any kind of effect [...]

 

Given that Firelord has bounced direct hits from Mjolnir, I'd say not. 'Less tough than the Surfer' still leaves you an enormous amount of room to be ridiculously durable.

 

(add) Please note, the single least durable Herald of Galactus ever, the absolute bottom of the Herald ranking ladder, was the damaged and only partially-functional Air-Walker automaton that showed up in an EXCALIBUR one-shot. Emphasis -- damaged and only partially functional. (And Firelord was superior to it even when it was whole, as it only had a portion of the original Air-Walker's power to begin with.)

 

That same automaton took Captain Britain's best haymakers (when he was in his 'Class 100' phase, not his 'Spider-Man strong' phase) and laughed them off. Repeatedly.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Given that Firelord has bounced direct hits from Mjolnir' date=' I'd say not. 'Less tough than the Surfer' still leaves you an enormous amount of room to be ridiculously durable.[/quote']

well, it is a comic book. Consistency isn't a strong suit of the medium. If it works for the story for Spidey to show how much of a bad@$$ he is by going all out and beating up Firelord, then that's how the story will get written.

I also remember the Spidey of that era putting a pretty solid hit(well, kick) on the Gray Hulk, and it look like the Hulk felt it. So, if he can hit the Hulk(even the slightly less tough Gray version) hard enough for him to feel it, it's not too much of a stretch to say he can hurt Firelord if he punches him all out a couple hundred times in a short period of time.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Spider-man is strong' date=' fast, and lucky. But against a Herald of Galactus who is one heartbeat away from being one of the Elders of the Universe, he is simply outclassed. Spidy should not have survived that one.[/quote']

 

I wonderfully argumentative thread on this topic already exists. Is it really necessary to repeat it here. We've already heard, for example, how:

 

- Firelord and Thor battlked to a standstill

- Firelord and Titania battled to a standstill

- Spidey cleaned Titania's clock

 

You either buy the story or you don't. Marvel has never contradicted it (in 20+ years since its publication), and they own the characters. Therefore, Spidey beat Firelord. Don't like it? Marvel is publicly traded - buy up a controlling interest and use it to force a retraction.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

well' date=' it is a comic book. Consistency isn't a strong suit of the medium.[/quote']

 

Yes, but the purpose of this thread is to list superfights that were gapingly inconsistent. Spidey-vs-Firelord is practically the iconic example of such.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Ahother of the Marvel vs DC ones, one that wasn't voted on, was Namor vs Auquaman.

 

The whole "You don't cheat". Namor would cheat like the dickens if it meant winning.

 

Side note: Golden Age Aquaman did have super strength; writers just sort of forget it on and off, kind of like Captain Marvel's wisdom and Superman's, well, everything.

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

Yes' date=' but the purpose of this thread is to list superfights that were gapingly inconsistent. Spidey-vs-Firelord is practically the iconic example of such.[/quote']

 

Well, not just badly done superfights or badly written ones but when they were badly used. As in, you can tell the writers ran out of ideas at this page, which is where the completely meaningless and gratuitious slugfest begins (and runs for the next 10 pages). Any nominees for that?

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Re: Worst comic book superfight ever

 

I can buy Spidey *surviving* it -- as in, 'Firelord beats him unconscious and then walks away from his limp form, not being particularly interested in slaying his foe, but merely wishing to make the insect stop annoying him.'

 

No way Spidey should have *beaten* him. No remotely possible way nohow. We are talking 'Daredevil vs. Namor' levels of mismatch here.

 

BTW, note -- Firelord originally appeared in Marvel Comics as a *Thor* antagonist. The list of people who have failed to render him unconscious without an extremely challenging and prolonged fight includes (in addition to Thor) the original Phoenix.

 

BTW, speaking of super fights, the Daredevil vs. Namor fight was one of my favorites.

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