Best Hero
Marvel: Spider-Man
Spider-Man is one of Marvel's earliest characters, and their most well-known. Spider-Man's alter-ego is mild-mannered photographer, Peter Parker. Parker gained his spider powers via a bite from a radioactive spider. His powers include spider agility, proportionate spider strength, a precognitive "spider sense" that alerts him to imminent danger, the ability to cling to and climb walls, and the ability to make women scream "Kill it! Kill it!" whenever they see him. As a result, Spider-Man spends much of his time running from shoe-wielding boyfriends and husbands.Peter Parker, a brilliant scientist in addition to being a pretty OK photographer, designed a pair of wrist-mounted web shooters which produce a strong, sticky web-like substance, allowing him to sling webs all over New York City. It is these web shooters that make him truly recognizable as "Spider-Man," rather than "Sticky Bendy Guy." Spider-Man is haunted by Personal Demons, which force him to fight crime to atone for allowing a thief to escape a crime scene and eventually kill his dear Uncle Ben.
To sum up:
Powers: Spider agility, spider strength, spider sense, wall-crawling, implausible inventiveness, guilt.
Weaknesses: Rolled-up newspapers, redheads
DC: Superman
Superman is the archetypal superhero. His inception predates Spider-Man by almost 30 years. Superman is actually Kal-El, the last son of the explosion-prone planet Krypton. His home planet orbited a red sun, so somehow the radiation from Earth's yellow sun gives him amazing powers. He is invulnerable. He can fly. He's super strong. He's super fast. He can shoot beams of concentrated heat from his eyes. He has X-ray vision. He has super hearing. Basically, Superman can do anything, and nothing can hurt him. How's that for drama? Oh, wait. Superman has one fatal weakness. Chunks of his home planet (known as Kryptonite) landed on Earth, and their radiation is harmful to him.As you can imagine, it's hard to build suspenseful stories based around a hero who has seemingly infinite power and only one weakness. There are only so many "villain with a chunk of Kryptonite" stories that can be told. Sure, Doomsday "killed" Superman, but Supes only considered that to be a temporary setback. He and his new Super Mullet were back in action quicker than you can say "Christ-like figure."
Superman's human identity is Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter (superheroes like working at newspapers, because that's the quickest way to get news. Or at least it was, 40 years ago. I suppose nowadays it'd be more efficient to monitor the blogs. But honestly, I don't think anyone wants to read a comic where the hero hangs out with Perez Hilton while waiting for Amy Winehouse to start lighting kittens on fire). Kent works at The Daily Planet, along with his on-again off-again girlfriend/wife Lois Lane. His childhood sweetheart was Lana Lang. His nemesis is Lex Luthor. There must've been a heck of a deal on the "L" blocks for typeset printers back in the '30s. Superman's main problems include feeling sad about not being able to save everybody all the time, and having too many women fall in love with him at once (more on that later).
So here's the breakdown on Superman:
Powers: Invulnerability, super strength, super speed, flight, X-ray vision, heat vision, super cold breath, easy-to-print primary color scheme
Weaknesses: Kryptonite, accident-prone reporters, Jesus complex
If you're asking who's more powerful, it's Superman hands down. But if you're asking who's more of a hero, it's got to be Spider-Man because he's actually risking injury when he fights evil.
Winner: DC
Worst Heroes
Marvel: Daredevil
Daredevil's superpower is blindness. That's right. He's super-blind. Great power. Now, I'm not going to say that blindness is a disability (though I suppose I could. I guarantee there are no blind people reading this blog), but calling it a superpower is a bit of a stretch. Daredevil can fight crime, but he can't legally drive a car. So I suppose he could attempt to drive, and then bring himself to justice. It doesn't help that one of his more prominent villains is named Bullseye. As in, "I wear a bullseye on my head so it'd be super easy to take me down IF YOU COULD SEE ME!" That's just distasteful.Powers: Blindness
Weaknesses: Pretty much anything he would have to see to avoid. Bullets, knives, baseball bats, trash cans, steel chairs, angry cats, cars, bikes, trains, joggers, etc.
DC: Aquaman
Aquaman has the worst superpower in the DC universe. Or rather, the worst set of powers. He can talk to fish, and he can't breathe air. Pretty useful, eh? Not even Batman, a guy with no superpowers, would trade abilities with Aquaman. It's a wonder the Justice League ever brings him along on missions (see below). Aquaman also has an uncanny ability to be captured. All the time. He's the universe's answer to Harry Houdini (law of averages and whatnot). I'm pretty sure he accidentally captured himself a few times. Not that he's missing out on much, of course. We're talking about a guy whose idea of a fun Saturday night is going to Red Lobster and hanging out by the lobster tank to catch up on gossip. It's super hard to believe that the CW network opted not to develop the Aquaman TV series.Powers: Talks to fish (not that they listen), can swim almost as fast as Michael Phelps.
Weaknesses: Air, loneliness, freedom, network mergers
I've got to give the edge to Marvel for having the slightly less useless character. Somehow, despite having superpowers, Aquaman manages to be less effective than a blind man. He's the John Tesh to Daredevil's Ray Charles.
Winner: Marvel
Best Team
Marvel: The Uncanny X-Men
Marvel's flagship team of superpowered individuals is the X-Men. The X-Men are a team of mutants, whose powers are the result of natural evolution. They are led by the handicapable Professor Charles Xavier. The X-Men regularly deal with the prejudices of a society unwilling to accept mutants into their ranks. Their main nemesis is Magneto, who has the power to manipulate metal and really mess up computer monitors and TV screens if he touches them. Prominent team members include Cyclops, who blows people up if he opens his eyes, and Wolverine, who is known for his healing powers, adamantium claws, and inability to beat Ohio State (that's right. Whatcha gonna do 'bout it, Michigan?).DC: The Justice League of America
DC's all-star team, the Justice League, has had many different members over the years. From Batman and Superman to Guy Gardner and Booster Gold, the JLA has wavered in its prestige. A typical JLA mission consists of identifying a giant alien monster, throwing Superman at the monster, waiting for him to finish throwing the monster into space, rescuing Aquaman (somehow, he ALWAYS gets captured), and going back to their satellite headquarters to talk about how antisocial Batman is. Fun stuff.I'll give this one to the X-Men, because they use more of an actual team mentality. The Justice League is basically just Superman and some other people. If the JLA were a band, Superman would leave and put out a solo album.
Winner: Marvel
Other Media
Marvel: Marvel has released many more movies over the last decade than DC, but many of those were clunkers. Yes, the Spider-Man movies were great (Spider-Man 2 is arguably the best comic book movie ever), but that doesn't excuse Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Elektra, Hulk, X3, or the atrocious Fantastic Four movies. Iron Man earned Marvel a lot of the goodwill it lost with its many bad films, and it looks like the company is trying to interconnect its films in the future (I'm already excited for the Avengers movie, and Iron Man 2 hasn't even started filming). As far as TV shows, Marvel has faired much better with cartoons than live-action shows. Many people of a certain age fondly remember the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons of the '90s. Marvel has yet to create a viable live-action TV show based on their characters. It's time to step up.
DC: DC hasn't had much luck with its superhero movies, and since they only use a few of their characters in movies the bad ones really stick out. We had to deal with 10 years of terrible Batman movies (yes, even the Tim Burton ones). Finally, though, Christopher Nolan has gotten the franchise where it should be, with Batman Begins and the upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight. Fanboys have been arguing about Batman Begins vs. Spider-Man 2 as the Best Ever for a few years, and The Dark Knight will likely be added to that debate. The Superman movies, well...oh boy. The original Superman movie would have been great if not for the ending, involving Superman flying backwards around the Earth, reversing Earth's rotation, and therefore somehow reversing time, which apparently is tied to the rotation of the Earth. Try not to think about it too hard, or your brain will bleed. Superman 2 was OK (enough so that I aped one of its more famous quotes for my blog title), except for the part where the President of the United States giving General Zod control over THE ENTIRE PLANET. I'm sure the U.N. was THRILLED about that move. The less said about the other Superman sequels, the better. Superman Returns could've been great, but since Brian Singer doesn't actually READ Superman comics, he based the movie on a pre-Crisis framework. To translate for you non-nerds, that means that he made a movie based on the 1970s Superman lore, rather than the very-different canon of the new millennium. It'd be like if Batman Begins had been based on the 1960s Batman series. Bad move. Not many other DC characters have had their own movies, so the company lives and dies by Batman and Superman. How many times do I have to ask for a Green Lantern movie? RotoScope it. It'll be awesome. TV-wise, Smallville has been going strong for seven seasons now. For those of you who haven't seen it, Smallville follows the problems of a young Clark Kent. Most of his "problems" revolve around the premise that pretty much every woman he knows is madly in love with him. Yeah, I know. I feel sorry for him, too. It's just more proof that Superman has never had a real problem in his life.
It's tough to call this one, because of the variety of media and the differing amounts of output between the two companies. DC, though, has produced quality results in movies, live-action TV, and animation, whereas Marvel has more mixed results in movies and has had virtually no success with live-action TV. I'll hand this one to DC.
Winner: DC
So it looks like it's all tied up. I guess I'll have to break the tie here. Guess what folks? Gorilla Grod is NOT a Marvel character. He's straight outta DC, and since I'm aping his name I'm giving his creators the edge.
DC FTW.
No comments:
Post a Comment