Top 10 Death Battle Ideas I Like
Well, it looks like Top 5 Death Battle Ideas I Don’t Like got some positive feedback.
If this is what you guys want, alright, I’ll do more of these.
Let’s start with a response to the last one, a yang to go with its yin. You’ve read ideas I don’t like, now how about ideas I do like?
Table of Contents
10. Jason vs Michael Myers
This classic who-would-win discussion has gotten some flack for being one-sided, and it is one-sided, just look at my own take on the match where I stuck Jason to his pre-Part VI “human” form and he still feeds Mikey his mask. But one-sided fights can still be fun, and I think this one could be very fun, especially as a Halloween episode. This could look great in live action, and you wouldn’t even need to call on the Red Hood vs Winter Soldier guys. If they leaned into low-budget camp and filmed it like an AVGN Halloween episode, you could get something really memorable and fun.
Imagine Ben and Chad pretending to be teenagers as two guys in masks chase them around the woods then feed them to a woodchipper before fighting each other. It’d be a blast! It’s a shame no one working at RT looks good in a bikini, but them’s the brakes.
Plus, this is one of those classic matchups that’s been debated since before the internet. It’s like Godzilla vs King Kong and Frankenstein’s monster vs the Wolfman. If you’re doing a show about who-would-win fights, eventually you got to talk about it.
9. The Predator vs Kraven the Hunter
Two infamous hunters of man with codes of honor. Both use gadgets, but when they have the opportunity, both prefer to face their prey on equal footing.
Just think of how cool it would be for them to tear up a jungle hunting each other, throwing poison darts and smoke bombs and plasma caster bolts at each other, only for them to make eye contact, acknowledge each other’s honor, drop their fancy gear, and square off to fight spear vs wrist blades.
I really feel like this fight could be one of the best if they take their time with it. Have it start very slow paced with them trying to locate and find each other, make it like a sniper battle, like how Black Widow vs Widowmaker should have been instead of generic action schlock. Then you then decide it face-to-face, man-to-alien, hunter-to-hunter, and bonus points are awarded if it takes place in a mudhole while Kraven starts to do crazy man narration. “THEY SAID MY MOTHER WAS INSANE…”
This is another one I’ve already covered on my site. Check it out here. I went through all their gear and even did the work of figuring out who specifically among the Yautja race Kraven should fight.
8. Jiren vs Martian Manhunter
Okay, don’t click away, don’t click away, believe me, I know this one looks at first glance. When I first saw this pitch my eyes rolled, but this one is actually legit as a death battle idea.
“What do you mean Otto? They’re big bald aliens that don’t talk much, how is that a theme?”
Jiren and J’onn are aliens that lost everything and joined a superteam. Jiren closed himself off to his teammates and became their crutch and pitch hitter. J’onn opened himself to his teammates and became their therapist and wi-fi. And then you have the hammer vs Swiss Army knife aspect. Jiren is all about brute force and raw power while J’onn has one of the most diverse powersets of any superhero. He’s like if someone took Superman’s character sheet and exchanged a few ranks in strength and endurance to buy as many powers as they could.
This fight could be great, and it’ll scratch that “Dragon Ball Super vs DC” itch a lot of people have without having to bring out Superman vs Goku III. Jiren goes at J’onn with all his power, but J’onn keeps regenerating, going invisible, going intangible, and finding ways around his moves. J’onn’s zeptosecond telepathy is probably going to be what kills Jiren, but I hope they don’t just have it end like the opening to Scanners. I think the best way for this match to end would be for J’onn to read Jiren’s mind, learn about his mentor, and shapeshift into him. Dragon Ball characters have their stats plummet when they drop their guards, and that’s exactly what Jiren would do when faced with his old master. He could eye beam Jiren through the heart to reference that one time Goku-the-blue got taken out by a Frieza goon with a laser ring.
7. Tarzan vs Conan
Ah, dig that John Buscema art!
Fun fact–we don’t actually know Tarzan’s Christian name. It’s not John Clayton Greystoke. In the first book we learn that John Clayton Greystoke is just what Burroughs (he exists within the fictional Burroughs-verse like how Gardner Fox exists in the DC universe) calls him to preserve his true identity. Tarzan, which in the language of the Mangani ape-men (Tarzan wasn’t raised by apes, but missing link like ape-men) means “the white one,” is the only name we know the character by. Make of that what you will.
Two big names of early 20th century pulps–perhaps the biggest names. Both are extremely strong, extremely resourceful men whose physical talents have been honed by their merciless environments. Both are often considered, both in-universe and out, to be musclebound meatheads, but are actually extremely intelligent.
Conan and Tarzan have been adapted countless times, but I don’t want them to be composited. I want this fight to be Howard book vs Burroughs books, no cartoons, no comics, no movies, just the books that started everything.
Who wins? Gun to my head, I think Conan, if only because he never had a period of down time. Tarzan is immortal (yes he is), but he spends a lot of time either chilling with the Waziri on his African plantation or in London at his ancestral estate. But Conan was always on the go. If he wasn’t a pirate, he was a thief, and if he wasn’t a thief, he was a soldier, and if he wasn’t a soldier, he was a treasure hunter. The only time he stopped was when he became king of Aquilonia well past his prime and he was so damn miserable he nearly wanted to die.
Admittedly though, I got a bias here, as I’ve read most of the Conan books and only a few of the Tarzan books, so maybe Tarzan’s got some really solid feats that’ll put him over.
6. Galactus vs Unicron
This one has been teased since what, season 2? Come on Death Battle, at this point you simply owe the fans this. A lot of people are going to be pissed, myself included, if they get through this “fan favorites” season without it showing up.
I don’t think much needs to be said about this. It’s two cosmic planet eaters who make heralds. They even occupied the same universe once back when Transformers comics were published by Marvel (Spidey once webbed up Megatron, it was great). My autistic headcanon is that in 616, Unicron was the Galactus of the previous universe who refused to go down with the ship and became corrupted. Now he seeks to destroy everything, not just what he needs to destroy to satisfy his hunter. That makes him an even more interesting match for Galactus. Galactus is Shiva while Unicron is Kali, for those of you who know a little Hindu mythology.
Galactus wins the fight handily. At their “cruising speeds” without bringing any esoteric lore into it, Galactus can just do more. He’s got a huge list of powers and abilities. Amusingly, his biggest advantage over Unicron is that Galactus can create, and be creative. Plus, when he fights other big cosmic people, he can munch their energy and grow stronger while they grow weaker. He did it to Mephisto once while Mephisto was in his own realm. If we bring esoteric lore into it, Galactus still wins. Yeah, Unicron can turn into a black hole that in time will eat the multiverse, but Galactus has the ultimate nullifier in his closet. When the Korvac of Earth-82432 got ahold of his universe’s UN, the Living Tribunal stepped in and sealed his universe off from all others\, and it’s a good thing he did because Korvac turned the UN on the universe, destroying it and himself. Given the LT’s actions, I think it’s safe to say the UN has the capability to destroy not just a universe, but at the very least several universes.
I think a direct shot from the UN will destroy the Unicron singularity, especially if Galactus shoots it as it just forms. Even if we give the singularity the benefit of the doubt and say it’ll survive being shot, there’s no reason Galactus can’t spam the UN. Sometimes the UN comes with the caveat that if you use it to destroy something, it also destroys you, but sometimes this isn’t the case (Dr. Doom recently used the UN to destroy a universe with no repercussions, and the UN from the Marvel Adventures universe works differently, it doesn’t destroy anything, instead it nullifies the differences between cosmic beings and mortals so they can fight on equal footing), and even if we take it as the case for this fight, Galactus can get around the restriction by either creating herald patsies to pull the trigger or life ex nihilo.
The dude eats inhabited worlds. He’s not going to bat an eye at creating life just to have it die for him. I think it was Rom that called Galactus a rapist?
Yes. Yes it was. Rom 26.
Based Rom. Cuts Galactus’ pretensions to the quick and then nukes his museum of dead races to stick it to him.
5. Mazinger Z vs Getter Robo
You know what’s sad? We haven’t had a single mecha fight that hasn’t involved Power Rangers.
Come on RT, don’t you have your own crappy mecha show with Michael B. Jordan? Pick another real robot show out of a hat and have them fight. Put them against Chirico. He pilots a teeny tiny mech. What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of the real DANNY BOY?
Anyway, we need some /m/ on Death Battle, and there’s no stronger /m/ pill than a double dose of Mazinger Z and Getter Robo. The Dynamic Pro duo are the ham and eggs of super robots, the salt and pepper. Mazinger Z is the world’s first piloted giant robot (unless you want to get really, really obscure) and Getter Robo is the world’s first giant robot created by combining separate machines.
Now Getter and Mazinger have been around since the seventies, and have been adapted and reinterpreted god knows how many times. They have upgraded versions and super versions and versions powerful enough to destroy the universe, but for this fight I want to stick to basics. That means no Great Mazinger, no Getter Robo G, no Mazinkaiser, no Shin Getter, no Mazinger Zero, and no Getter Emperor. This fight is strictly between Kabuto Koji’s iron fortress Mazinger Z and the Getter Team’s first Getter.
Original manga versions only.
And make it in black and white.
If you have no idea who Mazinger Z or Getter Robo are, lets see, what’s a good way to dive into their mad, mad universes…
Does that not work for you? Then how about
Be strong. Swallow that /m/ pill whole.
4. USS Enterprise (OS) vs Space Battleship Yamato
The big ship of American space operas vs the big ship of Japanese space operas. Bonus points will be awarded for animating the crews in the style of their respective series.
I got this one on my to-do list, and I’ve already crunched the numbers. Having seen both shows, I can safely say the Enterprise wins. If Death Battle ever does this one, I pity the poor researcher, because if you think superheroes and shonen are inconsistent, try space opera. Photon torpedoes range from “just a tiny bit of antimatter can blow apart this planet” to “maybe this payload will blow up this asteroid.” The Yamato’s wave motion gun ranges from blowing up continents to blowing up planets.
Still, headache-inducing inconsistencies aside, the Enterprise wins. The big reason is that the Yamato doesn’t have shields, just a sturdy hull, and that means nothing can stop the Enterprise from beaming their bridge into the brig, or if we’re using Death Battle’s OOC rules, into space. Now the remake version of the Yamato does have shields, and if we use that version Lt. Kyle can’t teleport Kodai into space, but the Enterprise still wins on other elements.
While the Yamato’s warp is much, much faster than the Enterprise’s warp, it’s like a teleport jump move with a cooldown. They use it to cover vast distances, but then they’re stuck at impulse until the jump comes back online. Meanwhile, Sulu can bring the Enterprise through its warp numbers at will, there’s no cooldown, and what’s more the Enterprise can fire into and out of warp. When the Yamato warps, it only warps, it can’t open fire on stuff outside of warp, but the Enterprise can. The Yamato vs the Enterprise is like Nightcrawler vs Quicksilver. Nightcrawler can BAMF away from Quicksilver, but when it comes time to throw hands Quicksilver destroys him.
The Enterprise also has the advantage in sensors and weapon range. Star Trek sensors are just stupid good, able to pick up targets light years away. Their weapon range are far less impressive, but still far outranges the Yamato’s weapons outside the wave motion gun. The Enterprise was able to hit this uppity little beep-boop with a god complex while it was floating in space 90,000 km away. That’s a point not just for range but for accuracy since Nomad isn’t exactly the size of a ship.
The Yamato’s wave motion canon could give the Enterprise a very bad day, it’s the granddady of all those fancy “big beam of energy” attacks anime likes to pull, but it’s not going to hit. The wave motion gun isn’t a fast attack. When Okito calls the order, they go through the whole business of routing the engines and charging and putting on the cool flash protectors. While this is happening, the Enterprise’s sensors are going to see a huge spike of energy concentrating on the aperture at the Yamato’s prow. You don’t exactly need Spock to figure out what they’re trying to do, but they actually have Spock just in case. The wave motion gun isn’t used to bullseye targets going through lightspeed evasive maneuvers, and that’s exactly what the Enterprise is going to do.
A couple of things I want to see in the fight–I want it to start with Trelane bringing the two ships together to fight for his amusement, I want Kirk to try pulling the corbomite maneuver only for Okito to call his bluff, because Okito is known for putting his all behind even the thinnest chance, I want the Enterprise crew to show off their history nerd cred by identifying the Yamato as the Yamato, I want the big climatic move to be the Enterprise conking out while the Yamato charges the wave motion gun to finish them and Scotty scrambling to get the engines back online, I want the Yamato to fire and it make it seem like they vaporized the Enterprise only for it to drop out of warp behind the Yamato and blow it away, and I want the Enterprise to salute the Yamato as it explodes.
At the very least, Death Battle, don’t shaft the fight’s budget and give us two still ship sprites shooting SFX at each other.
3. Doc Savage vs The Shadow
Oh yes. Proto-Superman vs Proto-Batman. The two big guys of the pulp set. A man with a public persona forged by science into a paragon of humanity vs a man who may or may not be Lamont Cranston (no man knows–but the Shadow knows) forged by eastern mysticism into a shadowy manhunter.
For characters older than Superman, there’s been a lot of different versions, so the researchers are going to have to decide what makes it in. Does the Shadow get his power armor (that was a thing)? Does Doc get his magic gemstone (that was another thing)? Will they be from the same continuity, because they’re both owned by Street and Smith, and sometimes they cross over? You can think of them like Transformers and GI Joe where they sometimes share a universe together, sometimes not.
Even if you stick with just material published in the 30’s, Doc probably wins this one. Doc was trained to not only to have peak human fitness, but a peak human brain as well, and that’s a good counter to the Shadow’s mesmerism. The Shadow is no slouch in combat, but he’s up against someone that’s his physical superior and then some. He can only win if he can pull a mind whammy on Doc long enough to ventilate him with his .45’s, but I don’t’ see that happening. It’s even worse for the Shadow if we bring in more modern stuff like the Justice Inc miniseries by Dynamite which crossed over Doc Savage and the Shadow with the Avenger, a more obscure Street and Smith character. In that story, the Shadow got taken out by an evil mesmerist who then tried to put the mind whammy on Doc Savage. Doc just powered through the psychic attack and punched him into a time warp (where he somehow got shot by the same bullets that killed Lincoln, MLK, and JFK). That’s proof positive the Shadow’s mesmerism won’t work on Doc.
2. Ray Palmer vs Hank Pym
Also known as the Atom vs Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellow Jacket. Pym’s been through a lot of identities.
This one I like for several reasons, the most important one being that the fight could look really, really good. We got two fighters that can give use visuals no other fighters can. They’re going to be kicking molecules into each other, hitching rides on electrons, going through trippy microverses, and cutting into Adventures Through Inner Space.
And of course, you’re going to need a scene where Ray takes out his sword from Sword of the Atom and fights off an army of ants.
Just imagine they’re fighting and they shrink into a microverse. They’re the size of galaxies and they’re still fighting. They shrink to the point they’re tossing stars at each other, then planets, then they crash into one, and still they shrink, on and on–there is simply no other match where you’re going to see stuff like that.
Just please Death Battle, one thing, no cracks about Pym slapping Janet. “Hank Pym, wife beater” is one of the most bullshit and overblown memes to ever infest comics. Let me tell you something–the reason Hank was kicked out of the Avengers wasn’t because he slapped Janet, it was because he went crazy and tried to pull Syndrome’s plot from The Incredibles–the one where he tries to get people to like him by creating an evil robot only he could defeat, not the one where he systematically kills off retired superheros. Hank probably would have been punished a lot more if he tried that one, but then again, Marvel superteams do have a nasty habit of just not carrying how much homicide their members get away with.
Fans cheered when he hit Janet because let’s be real, no one liked Janet back in 1981.
“Oh She-Hulk, I know we’re fighting the Masters of Evil, but don’t tear those clothes I made for you! They’re high fashion!”
No one.
So who wins this one? Atom. Big surprise, the DC version wins, I know. Ray wins because he’s got the edge in hand-to-hand combat, not only because of his off-beat Sword of the Atom series where he got to play a Mighty Max sized John Carter but because Ray is kind of a reckless crazy man whose idea of relaxation is to shrink down and wrestle subatomic monsters.
There’s a reason he’s best friends with Hawkman, another reckless crazy man.
See? What did I tell you? This comes from Atom and Hawkman 44.
There’s also a critical difference between how Hank and Ray shrink and grow that clinches it for Ray. Both can use their gear to grow and shrink, and both can use their gear to grow and shrink others, but Pym particles don’t make your atoms explode in 2 minutes (conveniently, about as long as a death battle lasts) if you don’t return to your original size. Yeah, Ray’s white dwarf matters puts you on a death clock when it affects you, with Ray himself being the one exception due to an “unknown force” or a “compression matrix” installed in his costume depending on the continuity. As soon as Ray hits Hank, he’s met his Kend. He’s already dead. Even if Hank somehow figures out what Ray’s done to him, the solution is to return to his original size, and in this fight whoever gets big first just makes them a giant target for the other. The first one to stop shrinking is going to get their brain tap danced on.
The Holy Grail–Rom vs Tekkaman Blade
“Otto, who are these guys?”
Spaceknights.
They’re Spaceknights.
They’re the greatest of spaceknights.
If “two spaceknights jousting” doesn’t sound cool to you, I’m sorry, we just can’t be friends.
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