I voted Tarzan, but with the understanding that I mean BOOK Tarzan, not MOVIE Tarzan. Book Tarzan is super-powered.
I concede that Buffy has an initial advantage – not in strength, but because her size and gender will make Lord Greystoke both underestimate her and hesitate to hit her in the first place. But I also think that the fight only starts when Buffy mouths off to Jane, Lady G. puts her in her place, and Buffy demonstrates her poor impulse control by hitting her. That’s pretty much suicide.
I’m assuming that Tarzan wouldn’t even try to take on the superhumanly strong Buffy mano a mano and would call in the elephants. Has Buffy ever taken out anything as powerful as an elephant?
Did Buffy EVER punch a civilian (other than under the influence of magical thingummy)? Note: I watched the show straight through to its finale at the end of Season 5; anything beyond that is mere rumor.
Seriously. I’m pretty sure at one point in the first book he breaks a massive tiger’s* neck with his bare hands. No, it could have been a massive ape - the tiger could have involved a knife. Anyway, also, he can take a serious beating and still win the fight, crawl off, lick his wounds for a week or two, and come back stronger. Book Tarzan all the way.
*Let’s not talk about what a Tiger is doing in the African jungle to start with.
I don’t recall Buffy ever punching a civilian either, and I don’t think she has poor impulse control: I think a lot of her impatience comes from a mixture of cockiness and frustration- she deals with a lot of evil stuff, and low-level evil in the Buffyverse is implied to be pretty long-winded and self-obsessed.
Already fanwanked. When Burroughs fictionalized Lord Greystoke’s life, he deliberately and systematically inserted factuall inaccuracies to make the stories seem entirely made up.
You may mean “Tarzan not cheat on Jane, Oak. That big part of what “Tarzan” mean.” Or, you may not.
The other problem is that they are both good guys, so the inexorable laws of the universe would cause them to have a misunderstanding at first meeting, punch each other to a bloody draw, and then team up to beat the real bad guys.
Yep, and using a “a primer, some child’s readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary” he teaches himself what written language is and how to read and spell in English. I’m pretty sure he first learns to speak French, and then English later. You could draw some pretty strong parallels to Frankenstein’s monster, if you wanted to.
In the first book, as a boy he’s attacked by a gorilla and by sheer dumb luck manages to stab it in the heart with a buckknife before it can tear him to pieces. He still is pretty badly hurt and his ape mother spends weeks caring for him until he recovers. As an adult, he defeats the alpha male ape of his tribe by managing to get it in a chokehold from behind; I don’t remember if he breaks it’s neck or merely chokes it into unconciousness. I don’t remember which book it took place in, but I know at one point he did kill a lion, but again with a knife not his bare hands. Still pretty damn impressive though. In the second book, a Russian nobleman whom Tarzan’s offended tries to arrange his death: Tarzan’s lured to an apartment in one of the worst sections of Paris, where he’s cornered by a gang of a dozen or more hired thugs, armed and intent on beating him to death. Five minutes of screaming later, the thugs who are still mobile run for their lives. Now THAT’S impressive.
