Ivan

The bit-scroll resolution is limited to about 8K tripixels per inch, but if you turn off the interferometry you can get a bit more with good content fillers. You lose the 3D, obviously, so no Academy trained res-modeler would think to do it, but down in The Belly we learn to make do. While the nix are wringing their hands over density readings don't make a lick of sense, Nell and I have one clear picture, half a name, and a ninety minute lead before the hardsuits think to ask why the floor is sticky. There's a bloody fine line between futility and art. The gheist they pulled out of there looked like he came out of a warzone, not a basement. There's a whisper of a chance that we get to him before they wrap him in red tape and seal his file, but I'm feeling Irish and Nell is good at hospitals. Her current host body was originally a surgeon I think, good organic hands, soft and cruel, with the kind of porcelain features which suggest the quality of the work is on display, somewhere in the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" tax bracket. It's hard to tell if this guy was agency or a rover, but between Nell's perfect tits and her savage hands, we'll probably get more out of him than the hardsuits ever do, and in half the time. The light finally changes, and the on-ramp hums beneath the wheels of the Jeep. I have to close my eyes when we're driving, else I process too fast. I have a stretch of the 91 burned into my memory from when I was six years old; fractal mountains, diminishing Antisin curves, and seventy seven license plate numbers which haunt my dreams, all because I risked sneaking a split-second peak at 200 kph. Even with my eyes closed, even with headphones on, with the ionic air filters on full, I record things. My nose tells me the man Nell shook hands with was a smoker. My vestibular sense records eight lane changes. My proprioception tries to calculate our precise altitude using cell phone tower triangulation, but I do have SOME self control. The hospital is a massive affair, glass and stainless steel facade with a beaded hologram waterfall, sort of Frank Lloyd Wright meets Pale Horse, and we're headed underground. Nell hates labyrinths and mazes, getting lost scares her I think, but I have no idea what it's like to not know precisely where I am. Nell talks us past security, I'm never sure if it's her silver tongue or her cleavage doing the work, but I suspect the former, when we were eighteen she tried a male body for about a month, and it didn't slow her down. I spend a few moments with a pen and crank out a rough copy of the bit-scroll image, detail accurate to about a 4x zoom, which should be enough for this guy. Just in case, we've got badges too, a nice bit of digital forgery which, when scanned, calls up an obscure error message which suggests, without outright saying, that we're above the paygrade of whoever scanned us. Like I said, futility and art.

Late 1999. I did an internet search for "Thanos vs Darkseid." Wound up reading through the comments of the classic "Apocalypse vs Darkseid" CBUB match. (You CBUBers have to remember this was the late 90s- Apocalypse had tons of Street Cred, there was no such thing as The Sentry, and demanding "feats" for anything would still get you laughed off the internet. It was a better time.) I wound up intrigued by the idea of a "create your own superhero" site and clicked over to the FPL. It was possibly the single most influential link I've ever clicked on. I lurked on the site for a few weeks, reading message board posts which lamented the loss of The Simulator (a very old program which would predict the results of a match between any two FPL characters based solely on powers, an idea which is laughable today.) There were discussions about piercing, and reinforced defenses, and a whole thread of math to try and quantify Standard vs Superior vs Supreme vs Ultimate power levels. I decided to register and vote just as Stella Aurorae was just starting her Main Event run, and create my own character. Oh god, my first character was a mess. He was a port from a fantasy RPG, and he had an amulet which shot magic beams at people. The character was straight-up rejected for lack of content. I got over it, rewrote him and resubmitted. The new version was 10 times better, which meant he was still pretty terrible, and I had the luck to enter the FPL during a period when everyone was congratulating themselves on how great the writing was. I did my best to step up, and my next major effort was part of a group project called The New Management. At the time the FPL was flooded by group projects where creators got together to create related characters, and for a while the voting trends heavily favored being part of a group. Writing quality grew by leaps and bounds, and nostalgia for this period still exists today, (even though every single one of those characters straight-up sucked by today's standards.)

I think you can collectively take the EF community with you to those sites- I followed some friends from the FPL to a now-defunct creative writing based social networking site called Consummating.com, and we had our close-knit group and made new friends (one guy even met his wife there!) I understand the social aspect of the site. The FPL has had conventions in Vegas, I've attended two of them. I've- at the very least- had dinner with a dozen or so people from this website. Many of them have moved on from the FPL but we've stayed in touch- one electricferret alumnus even got his novel published and nominated for a John W. Campbell award. The basic functionality of this place exists elsewhere. You can take the family with you when you move.

Dear CBUB: CBR, Comic Vine, KillerMovies, Screw Attack... all these sites are virtually identical to what you do on this site, with the possible exception that one or two people on those sites have actually read the comics about which they're arguing. You might try signing up for one or all of those.

Might want to choose a new name, as "Who Is More Powerful" doesn't lend itself to a particularly flattering acronym...

Treach got that video from WalMart, apparently.

I'd be interested to see methos vs sirmethos on this one. http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles/7/lucifer-morningstar-vs-saint-of-killers/26121/

Here are a couple bosses I really enjoyed. I'm an extremely casual gamer, so this list makes no claims to being definitive or even containing choices I will agree with tomorrow. GLaDOS from Portal deserves a spot. She's with you the whole game, and more importantly she's the only voice you hear. The sense of betrayal when you cross the threshold from the "training" part of the game to the backstage area is something that stayed with me. Elaine, the final Boss from a pretty obscure SNK/Sacnoth RPG, Koudelka, is on my list. (It's a prequel to Shadow Hearts.) James, the priest, rounds out your party of 3 early on in the game, but he's a total dick to both Koudelka and Edward even onto the third disc. Finding out who Elaine is and why James is at the Monastery is a big part of the final act, and caps off an emotionally resonant story, but the main reason she makes the list is that if you kill her, you get the bad ending, and if you let her beat you, you get the good ending. That's really counterintuitive for an RPG final boss, and is one of the only times in any game I've played where the morality of the character's choices actually felt like it was in my hands (To be fair, I always beat her to within an inch of her life before letting her win.) Galamoth from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I have fond memories of this game, but the first time I faced Galamoth I almost quit playing. That dude is far and away the most difficult boss in the game (at least until you find the Beryl Circlet,) and I got far more satisfaction slaying him than I did Dracula. Also, beating Galamoth the second time, as Richter is an unrivaled exercise in precision and patience. Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid. I loved this fight. I bought and played this game in high school, before anyone had ever dreamed of relying on a walkthrough for a first play-through, and the first time this boss read the contents of my memory card out loud and started messing with my controller, I flipped out. There was a perfect balance of puzzle element to this fight, while maintaining the sense of urgency that a boss battle needs. Of course, it's not nearly as much fun after you know all his tricks, but the first experience was exactly what the game makers intended me to have, and I'm glad I didn't have any spoilers. Death Adder/Death Bringer from Golden Axe. After dumping over $20.00 in quarters into the Golden Axe machine at Skate World, my buddy and I finally killed Death Adder, and were treated to a clever (and long for an era when games usually just ended with "Thanks for Playing") cinematic. After beating him in the console port, a door opened and I KEPT PLAYING which totally blew my adolescent mind. It's sad the console version didn't come with the same ending as the arcade version. Bowser. Beating Bowser was a badge of honor in the 3rd grade, something that set you apart from the other kids on the playground. Some people like to make the boast that games have gotten better since the 8-bit era. They've gotten longer, certainly, and improved the graphics and sound, but the entire point of playing video games has also changed significantly. Modern games, like the aforementioned Fallout 3 and Arkham City, require the player to follow a storyline, those games are (admittedly awesome) interactive movies. In the distant past, the point of playing a video game was not to make the character accomplish storyline goals, it was simply to solve the little puzzle in front of you without dying. This is why there is such an explosion in the casual games market, and why Temple Run and Bejeweled attract more players than Skyrim. Comparing Mario to Master Chief is like comparing pizza to a full-course Italian meal. Sure, the meal is preferable in the right setting, but pizza is more popular for a reason.

Ahem. I HATE that people pretend like these are defined categories that make sense. Cartoons, but ONLY CARTOONS MADE IN JAPAN, vs Superhero comics FROM ONLY TWO SPECIFIC COMPANIES vs AN ENTIRE MEDIUM OF DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT That's like saying Sri Lankan Cage Fighters vs British Boxers vs American Boxers vs Film Characters. The four things DON'T MAKE SENSE TOGETHER. Also, ignoring that many people are going to give the DC characters the victory based solely on Superman, even if you leveled the playing field (John Byrne Superman, Kingdom Come Martian Manhunter, Flash without Speed Force, etc) the DC team still takes it because they're the only group that's an actual team. The Marvel folks may hang out, but they haven't worked and trained together, and the cartoon and video game characters are meeting for the first time. Meanwhile the DC team has a history, they trust one-another implicitly, and they've prepared to work together. The rest won't be pulling even simple team tactics like "switch dance partners" meanwhile the JLA folks are going Attack Pattern Delta or whatever.

I love original Gru Crossbones. Not thrilled about head-on-fire-shoots-flames Crossbones. Never liked Domino.

Phoenix Wright vs a team of She Hulk and Daredevil

I'm way over people complaining about bad comics on the internet, without actually saying anything of value, but man that guy mispronounced "tryst" which just erases all nerd credibility. He also just mispronounced "brazen."

Harry Tanner alone escapes, but it is later revealed that Batman One Million allowed him to escape in order to lead him to The Carrier, but it is later revealed that Harryknew Batman would follow him and led the detective right where he needed him to be to help save The Carrier from destruction, but it is later revealed that Batman anticipated this because he is able to recapture Harry afterward, only it is later revealed that Harry foresaw this inevitability and had put plans in place to ensure he had bargaining chips once he was recaptured, only it is later revealed that Batman correctly predicted this would happen... blah.

To be fair, Hourman One Million was awesome, and Superman One Million worked specifically because it set up a whole future course for Superman continuity that could have been amazing. The problem is that no other writer can be Grant Morrison.

Hey Grant Morrison! Where is our Mr. Miracle One Million?

The Ragdoll who is a member of the Secret Six does NOT have any power similar to Mysterio. (Additionally, the other Ragdoll's hypnosis would not cancel out Mysterio's illusions.) Also, being "quite possibly immortal" is meaningless in this instance. Those characters can be incapacitated through injury. Additionally, Bane's tactical genius is of limited use without preparation, against opponents he has never seen before.

I'll argue that. In my opinion the best Tennant episodes are Family of Blood and Human Nature. Of course, it's all opinion, but that's mine. I personally like both writers. I still feel like Davies' season climaxes are better than Moffats'- comparing apples to apples I enjoyed The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords reset button magic more than The Pandorica Opens/Big Bang reset button. I also though that the reunion in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End was far more emotionally significant than the one in A Good Man Goes To War.

Gail Simone's Secret Six was a really good comic. Just throwin' that out there. Without Mockingbird, the DC crew can only win by getting the Marvel dudes to fight among themselves. They're not ready for Mysterio.

The Phantom has supernatural powers. he says stuff to his ring like "by jungle law I call forth the power of 8 gorillas" and then he has the power of 8 gorillas. Also his ring shoots lasers. Defenders of the Earthearthearthearthearth

The writing is only unclear out of context, because it relies on the visual arrangement of the comic book panels to make sense. Manhattan says it to Rorschach after the masked vigilante breaks in to warn him, although Manhattan reveals he was already made aware of the situation by his handlers. His expression of apparent apathy is not- as the out of context quote would seem to suggest- a detached condemnation of the human race. Rather, it is specific to the topic at hand: Dr. Manhattan's pan-temporal awareness meant that Blake's deceased status is meaningless to a being who exists simultaneously with Blake alive in Vietnam in 1971, at Blake's funeral, and at the moment he's being told about about the Comedian's death. It's very Slaughterhouse Five.

Is Morrigan merged with Lilith?

Looking at that Atomic Robo scan, I never realized how similar Scott Wegener and Rob Guillory's art styles are. You guys should all read Chew (and Atomic Robo.) My ten favorite characters from comics (at least today): 10. Any great ensemble book like Astro City, Fables, or Top 10. A lot of what makes a story great is not the individual characters, but the relationships between them. 9. TIE: Blue Devil (Mishkin/Cohn/Cullins, DC) and Jack Knight, Starman (Robinson/Haris, DC) and Renee Montoya, Gotham Central These are three of my favorite representatives of the "secondary cast" of the DC Universe. See, there isn't always room at DC for the little guy. The Mishkin/Cohn Blue Devil, a goofy romp about a character whose main power was being a "weirdness magnet," was essentially a spinoff of something that happened in one issue of Firestorm. Similarly Starman was about the previously unknown son of a marginally popular original JSA member, and Gotham Central focused on the police officers who appear occasionally in single panels of Batman comics. The higher ups at DC have spent a lot of time and energy over the past couple years trying to reinvent the Justice League, without acknowledging that the best part of the DCU is the depth of the secondary characters. The Justice League needs Blue Beetle and Booster Gold just as much as it needs Superman and Batman. The fact that any of the above-mentioned books got made is a testament to the fact that EICs occasionally DO find their own balls. 8. TIE: Groo, Groo the Wanderer (Sergio Aragonez, Dark Horse) and Miyamoto Usagi, Usagi Yojimbo (Stan Sakai, Dark Horse) UY has never had a bad issue. Ever. Groo is also consistently awesome. While superficially these series are both about a sword-wielding wanderer, they are tonally very different. I love them equally. 7. Magneto, X Men (Lee/Kirby, Marvel) A testament to the depth of Chris Claremont's work on the character, (and Grant Morrison's genius,) "Magneto Was Right" has taken the X- Men, a comic about whiny teenagers with wings and laser-eyes, trying to be a metaphor for civil rights, and really built an ongoing philosophical discussion about objective morality within the fan community. Let's see Dr. Doom do THAT. 6. Rick, The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman, Image) Making choices is never easy. Kirkman is one of the best writers at letting his characters fail (and fail hard,) and Rick's journey has been one where being the one strong enough to make the hard choice plays against a man's own identity. The series is kept on its feet by exploring this without wallowing in it. Rick has enough downtime to question his decisions, but not enough to ever find any real answers. 5. Spider Jerusalem (Warren Ellis, DC/Vertigo) Fear and Loathing in the Future. Spider's another one of those hard-line characters who doesn't make compromises, and Transmet is by turns funny, political, weird, and just plain vulgar, largely thanks to the inclusion of the Hunter S. Thompson of comics. 4. The Bone Cousins, Bone (Jeff Smith) Imagine The Lord of the Rings starring the Marx Brothers, as drawn by Walt Kelly. That's a good starting point for Bone, and the interplay between the three Bone cousins is a big part of what makes the comic work. There aren't a lot of comics I can keep on my coffee table and hand to any adult or child reader, but Bone is at the top of the list. 3. Batman, Detective Comics (Bill Finger/Bob Kane, DC) The best thing about Batman is that he's incredibly malleable. Whether he's a loner or a leader, a super sleuth or an ass-kicking ninja; whether he's fighting Darkseid or organized crime, he's still recognizably Batman. A lot of characters seem strained when you take them out of their original context, but Batman works in Sci Fi, he works in Horror, in Superheroics, in an Agatha Christie style whodunit; in an exploration of psychology or a story about poisoned fish. He's also, without a doubt, the easiest popular superhero to transition to other mediums. He works in Schumacher's goofy over-the-top campiness just as well as he works in Nolan's dour, mumbling, hype machine. He rocks just as hard in Batman: The Brave and the Bold as he does in Batman The Animated Series. He is just as much fun to play in Lego Batman 2 as he is in Arkham City. Batman just works. 2. The Thing, Fantastic Four (Lee/Kirby, Marvel) Benjamin J. Grimm- a time-traveling, rock monster Jew from the lower east side who talks like Jimmy Durante- is, in many ways, the quintessential Marvel comic book character. He balances power, humor, and angst; a formula that many popular characters struggle with. He's the guy you count on when the chips are down. He's also got a great poker face. The Thing is, for me, the heart and soul of what can be great about Marvel, and what is too often lost in the shuffle. He's also got this great meta-layer to him, writers struggle with Ben because they can't get past the surface of the characters (his speech pattern and his powers,) which is reflective of the struggle he himself faces in the Marvel Universe. 1. Morpheus, Sandman. (Neil Gaiman, DC/Vertigo) Sandman showed me another way to look at comics, and another way to look at the world. It's hard to compete with the King of Dreams, the God of Stories, a character who can literally encompass every story ever told. What gets me most about Morpheus is that he still has a strong sense of character, that his personal decisions are motivated by a code of ethics and his personality. For a consummate creator whose palate is ideas themselves, Morpheus is a surprisingly somber, occasionally didactic figure. In all the Sandman comics there is never an expression of Dream's pure raw power, simply because that would be wholly out of character. Even at the climax of the story arc, Morpheus acts like Morpheus.

Kanedaaaaaaa! Tetsusooooooo! Kanedaaaaaaaa! Tetsuooooooooo! A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. .... Tetsuoooooooooo!

The one fight that seems interesting to me is Doc Manhattan, because of John's pan-temporal nature a confrontation between physical bodies may be totally meaningless.