It’s there major characters Tengu and their cartoonish powers. For every Robin you have “Batman if he is prepared” or Superman realigned the solar system back in 1951 etc. It doesn’t appeal to me and I think a lot of readers agree with that. Thor is one of the exceptions in Marvel and is made out to be so. This is what sets him apart and what offers a nice contrast to other characters.
Okay, I admit I was a little snarkier than I should have been in some of my own posts but can we get off this “DC’s overpowered and Marvel’s whiney” hijack, please? If nothing else, start a thread about the two universes, their strengths, weaknesses, and sucky concepts and allow this one to go back to the JLA and X-Men fight.
Even though it’s obvious even to the most rabid X fanboy (myself included) that they have little hope due to the power of the JLAs, I still love reading this sort of thing and it’s hard to do when there’s more posting about how Superman and Batman suck instead of how they’d stack up against Xavier and Wolverine.
Sorry. I only watch superhero cartoons. I don’t read comic books, the exception being the 4 out of the 6 parts of the Emerald Dawn series that my mother of all people had for some reason. I get my information via websites, like this. I can’t find the thread I mentioned, but I could have sworn that the Flashes’ power level declined thru the years. Maybe I got it backwards…
The last three years or so, Marvel has had a larger portion of the market share, thanks to strong selling Spider-Man and X-Men titles. Guess which ones had successful popular movies during that time?
Checking the figures for the top 300 sellers for last month from diamond, Marvel had 70-odd on the list, while DC had 96. Seems they’re doing allright for themselves.
Incidentally, “rabid fanboy” is a personal insult, and we’re not in the pit.
I like the DCU because of its more Earth-centric focus, myself.
Anyway, back to the task at hand… I’ve been giving it some thought, and I think I could take out the whole X-Roster with just Superman, J’onn, and Wally. The players arrive on the battlefield suddenly. Wally is the first to react, natch. Wally lends speed to J’onn. J’onn is no slouch in the speed department, but we want to notch him up to make things smooth. J’onn scans the opposition - just a casual telepathic graze at super-speed - he doesn’t try to penetrate the defenses of any psychics, merely noting that he can’t read those people - and notes the pwoers of anyone he can read. Based on the threat assessment, anyone who is unreadable or has dangerous (in J’onn’s opinion) powers is roudned up by Superman and Flash at superspeed. They kick up a whirlwhind to suck the air from around these fellows… a handful of seconds pass as the X-Men get the equivalent of near vacuum. Now, relatively few of them might still be up. Wolverine, if he went out, will be back in a minute or less. Cable, as a telekinetic with years of quick-thinking battle experience, might be able to save himself from unconsciousness - maybe. Juggernaught doesn’t need to breathe.
I can’t think of anyone else who’d be likely to resist the tactic. After that stunt, Juggy’s the only real threat left. Cable can’t do much to J’onn, and Flash just has to dodge Wolverine until J’onn or Superman are available to finish off the Canuck.
All of those characters (or in the case of multiple Robins, the original) were in print before Marvel existed in its current form (by which I use Fantastic Four #1 as the benchmark). If you’re going to use DC’s entire history (starting with, say, the original Detective Comics which started in 1937), you should acknowlege that DC has a 24-year head start. DC simply had time to create more characters in every category, many of which have been lost to obscurity.
Adding to your list of unpowered DC characters that pre-date Marvel, I’ll throw in the Crimson Avenger (and sidekick Wing), the Star-Spangled Kid (and sidekick Stripesy), the Tarantula, Firebrand, the Vigilante, the Whip, Mr. Terrific, the Guardian, Wildcat, Manhunter, Liberty Belle and I’m sure a bunch of others.
In the early days, the writers drew inspiration from pulp fiction and serial movies rather than science fiction. The hero was more likely to be a highly-skilled adventurer, rather than someone with powers; more Zorro than Superman.
I had some of those (SSK (there’s also two of these - the current one AKA Stars and Stargirl)), Wildcat (again, 2 of them, although the second had powers, IIRC), Liberty Belle), but pared the list down a bit, to keep it to the top levels of popularity/influence.
Yeah, most of them predate Marvel (hell, a couple of them predate DC), but the ones I list have, for the mostpart, headlined at least one book in the last 10 years. (Less Atom, one Robin, the Canaries and Speedy/Arsenal - although Arsenal is currently a major player in Outsiders, and Black Canary’s a major supporting player, particularly in Justice League and Green Arrow. Atom should have been pared, and I couldn’t very well mention Dick, Tim and Steph while skipping Jason.)
(Sidenote, only one GA and BC, and neither Batgirl are that old. Connor’s from the 90s, I don’t think Dinah II was established as separate from Dinah I until the 80s, and Barbara’s first appearance was in 1967.)
It’s a SUPERHERO COMIC of course they have cartoonish powers (or fantastic abilities in mundane skills, a la Batman). That’s the point.
Anyway, I apologize for my last anti-Marvel outburst. It’s a fine company and many years has has better written comics than DC (and they are just kicking ass in the movie department, although DC’s cartoons are better). I still think DC has a better stable of characters.
Tengu:
I’m not sure I agree. Wally certainly has more powers than his predecessors (many of which he’s taught the othere speedsters, I know he’s taught Jay that speed-stealing thing), but Barry was just about as fast. Barry was also much smarter. He had plenty of neat tricks he could do with physics and his speed. I think he may have been more formidable in a fight than Wally, even without the extra bonuses.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing, realy. Just emphasising different aspects of the characters.
Wally does have more powers than Barry, and is somewhat faster. Barry was more handy with what he had.
And when Bart grows up, he’ll probably leave both of them in the dust.
I agree, and it’s something I’ve noticed about the younger generation in DC these days. They’re green and inexperienced now, but really impressive for their ages, and will be terrors when they come of age.
Robin solved Batman’s ID when he was 8 and is a world-class fighter, already doing well against heavyweights like Batman and Shiva.
Superboy’s powers are growing daily, plus he has several others that Clark lacks.
Bart was born in Wally’s speed class, is a hidden genius to boot, and has that nifty “immune to changes in spacetime” thing.
Since it takes a few seconds for the heroes to black out, Nightcrawler is TPing handfuls of them out, on top of J’onn.
The moment Flash stops and sees J’onn in trouble, and their trap not working, Nightcrawler is on him and TPing him several hundred feet up in the air and leaving him there.
While J’onn is fighting and psyching into the ‘bricks’ thrown at him. Prof. X is already in Superman’s mind, turning him. Once turned, Supes flies straight up, not to catch Flash (who can land on a cushion of air his circling arms create), but to clobber him into unconsciousness (Flash can’t run away in free fall.)
It doesn’t take long for all the X-Men to then subdue J’onn.
Just three JL’s ain’t going to cut it. And TP is faster than fast.
Peace.
You might enjoy this email response from my father, who owns a fair number of JLA and X-men comics:
"…they are ignoring most of the X-Men. Northstar is much faster than Flash – exceeding light speed routinely, not occasionally – and can fly. Phoenix could take the JLA by herself.
"There are to many X-Men and too few JLA. Professor Xavier would reduce all of the JLA to a puddle.
“Batman could not handle Wolverine. Wolverine is too quick, too strong, his claws will shred any weapon batman has, his healing factor eliminates any poison or gas or whatever, and he has been fighting for over a hundred years and piling up corpses every time.”
And now that I think about it, the last appearance of phoenix (right before Magneto killed her again :rolleyes: and wolverine killed magneto again :rolleyes: ) she used her tk powers to reform the molecular structure of Asteroid M into a spaceship to fly her and Wolverine away from the sun. I’m kind of thinking a power damper would last more than a second on her pretty lil head assuming she didn’t just stop Flash before he got close.
I think that more than three JLA will be needed.
I just thought of an issue for both sides. How can anyone claim victory when none of these people will stay dead for more than a month? 
Flash can steal speed. And does Northstar usually move (as opposed to just travel) at faster than light?
Given. She could also take the X-Men and the Avengers by herself. She’d have to be alpha struck by the combined might of several JLA heavy hitters.
Except half of them (Batman and Superman have training, J’onn and Aquaman are themselves telepaths, Plastic Man’s immune, Green Lanterns develop powerful wills as job requirement) are hardened against psychic assualts. Besides, knock 'em out before the fight begins is the kind of sensible tactic (like Superman going into orbit and picking folks off with heat vision) that nobody ever uses. I concede, however, that the psionics are the X-Men’s best, perhaps only, chance.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure there’s been more leaguers than X-Men. Their current rosters may be smaller, but practically everyone in teh DCU has been a leaguer at one time or another.
Batman handling Wolverine depends on how fast Batman realizes he can’t kill him. While he’s still just a punk with claws, Batman will go for the martial arts takedown (which he might lose unless he gets some devastating nerve shots in). If he can figure out that Logan can bounce back from just about anything, then he’ll use exploding batarangs to the gut, missiles from a Bat-vehicle (including just hitting him with the vehicles themselves), massive amount of drugs. Batman held his own against the Shaggy Man, who’s stronger and regenerates even faster than Wolverine. The only thing holding Batman back is his inability to kill. Once he realzies that he can’t, the fight’s his.
Besides, Wolverine has been bested by human opponent (the Punisher has, at least). If they could do it, so could Batman.
The question is if the JLAs training is good enough. Professor X is as close to phoenix level as a human can get, and managed to down phoenix for a while during the dark phoenix saga. Plastic Man and J’onn I can see being okay. Batman, Superman,and the Green Lanterns would be hard pressed to resist an alpha level telepath.
I still think people are discounting the magnetic set too readily. All three are capable of stopping the X-Men in their tracks by themselves. Joseph is possibly more powerful than Magneto due to his lack of protective mental blocks. Magneto has ripped apart the planets magnetic field on a daily basis. Joseph has put it back together again.
I’d also forgotten about Strong Guy, who can absorb kinetic energy and use it to get stronger, and as candid mentioned ole Doc force field which is not only a strong defense but can be gruesomely offensive.
Her force field can be spread around multiple people and Kitty Pryde can phase multiple people.
Now I’ve lost track, are we counting the various X offshoots or not?
Lastly Candid Gamera, you forgot the lamest X person of all: Doug Ramsey. His power was to talk to people, no matter the language. Yeah, he was a hard core ass kicker :rolleyes: Practically wins the battle for team Marvel
Actually, Wolverine has a fair amount of martial arts training himself. He’s a bit more than a “punk with claws.” I know he has military training, secret forces training, martial arts training.and the like. Also, Wolverine has very few compunctions about killing. That gives him an early edge that the Bat doesn’t have.
[hijack]
TPing’s always meant toilet-papering to me; as in, “I’m going to toilet-paper someone’s house this Hallowe’en…”
Now I’m getting weird mental images.
“The Incredible Nightcrawler–now with quilted softness and two-ply!”
Sorry. blue 
with elf ears
[/hijack]
We are. The real question is are we counting all the JLA’ers ever? Only seems fair but if we are, we’re screwed.
He may have but I didn’t. I mentioned Cipher (or was it Cypher?) in one of my last posts to Gamera, equating the two when it came to a fight between he and I in a Trek debate. I’m out of my depth here so I had to think of *some *way to preserve my ego.
Which is higher on the geek chart? Comic fanboys or Trekkies?
Me too. I had to read his post about half a dozen times before I figured out Nightcrawler wasn’t rolling the JLA.
I love the mental image though.
Y’know, if we’re going to let the teams get ruthless, it’s a much less uneven match, but much, much messier.
The one that comes to mind immediately is Wally vibrating through Wolverine. He’d be out of the match for a couple days (unless his healing factor has amped to an insane amount since I last read X-Men) and it’s an open question if he’d have the Adamantium after he pulled himself together. Not that that would matter much - by the time he was intact enough to need it again, the battle’d be decided, anyway.
Do the same to the psychics, and the X-Men’s biggest advantage are removed quickly - it’s a question then of whether he could take enough of them out before Northstar started running interferance.
Green Lanterns getting both brutal creative is a scary idea, is all I can say.
Let Atom pop into the Telepaths’ heads and start squishing/tearing blood vessels, if Flash can’t take them all out.
On Marvel’s side, the magnetic and telepathic parts of the team could hit the Leaguers from the inside. (Holy hell, Plas is immune to both…hate to think HE might be a deciding factor.)
And the superstrong members of both crews letting loose on the weaker members… It’s a matter of who gets initiative and thus who’s left running interferance - whoever gets the first shots in can pulp a few of the opposing squishies before the opposite bricks start keeping them busy. I have to give this one to the League - most of their tanks also have superspeed, whereas I can’t think of any mutants with both strength and speed to match Superman, Power Girl, Captain Marvel, etc.
Can’t really say who’d win under these conditions, but I wouldn’t want to be the one cleaning up.
I didn’t mean to imply that, and Batman’s a seasoned enough fighter to recognize another pro early in the game (as is Logan). The question is, how quickly will Batman recognize Logan isn’t *just * a skilled martial artist with a unique weapon? Because then (and only then, after he established that they’d be non-lethal) he’d break out the heavy stuff any JLA Batman carries for fighting tanks.
Logan isn’t a tank. He’d make a big mess. He’d get better, but be incapacitated long enough for a Batman win to be fairly declared.