The TWiT network’s NSFW Show recently did a Combatic-esque episode featuring Brian Brushwood, Justin Robert Young and the Totally Rad Show’s Jeff Cannata. They took viewers suggested heroes to face each other in viewer suggested challenges. Most scenarios were insanely mismatched, but they won me over when Batman and Optimus Prime were tasked with saving Mel Gibson’s marriage. Yeah, that happened.

Although I thought Firefly was the better show overall, Echo edges out River as the more interesting character.

Ground Rules: Both characters will face off at their most powerful as seen in their respective programs. Echo is aware of and has access to all her personalities and River is in control of her pychic abilities. The arena for this match-up is an empty bar room. Both women are unarmed, but the room is stocked with items that can be used as weapons. No guns are available.

Fight! Echo takes the initiative, going into a chain of jujitsu attacks. She is stunned to see each blow is systematically countered resulting in River using Echo’s momentum against her, hurling her over the bar. Echo rolls into a crouching position. She takes a wine bottle and breaks it on the floor, arming herself with a sharp weapon for River’s return.

River leaps onto the bar, taking the high ground. Echo lashes out with the glass dagger, but River sidesteps the attack. Echo comes to the conclusion that River somehow knows her mind so well that she can predict her attacks. She moves into a different personality to mix things up.
River kicks the bottle out of Echo’s hand after her second strike. Echo rolls out from behind the bar, leaps into a stance and takes up a stool for protection for River’s oncoming charge. Just before Echo goes for the stool, River slows her charge and hops down to go for a bar drawer full of knives.

Echo notes that her opponent wouldn’t have had time to change her charging tactic if she didn’t somehow know Echo would go for the stool before hand. The realization that River must be reading her thoughts comes just as a half-dozon blades narrowly miss her face.

Echo attempts to crowd her mind with as many active personalities as possible, shifting control constantly to confuse River’s psycic ability. It works. Echo’s next move of coming in low for a tackle was not foreseen and River goes down, fumbling her remaining two knives.

Echo grabs hold of both her opponent’s wrists and braces her to the ground. With a final head butt, River is knocked unconscious.

Results: Echo wins. River may have enough combat training to defeat your average warrior, but her main edge in battle is her ability to read minds. When Echo learned to throw her off with too many minds to read, Echo’s extensive combat skills base uploaded directly into her brain prevails.

Ground Rules: The fight takes place in the X-Men Danger Room without any obstacles. As the combatants are from different universes, they are unaware of each others’ powers and weaknesses until they are made evident. The X-Men line up is Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, Storm, Iceman, Jean Grey and Professor Xavier.

Fight! Wolverine gets a read on the Martian Manhunter as an alien threat similar to those the X-Men have met in the past, such as Gladiator. In an attempt to shut down the threat immediately or at least test the alien’s abilities for the others, he springs into action. While Wolverine pounces on MM, Cyclops calls for the X-Men to hold the line to protect Professor X.
The Manhunter swats Wolverine away before his claws had the chance to connect, hurling him into the far Danger Room wall. He then scans the minds of his attackers for weakness, noticing a strong mental presence in the woman called Jean Grey, when suddenly a psychic shadow falls over his mind. Professor X is attempting to take over his body. Martian Manhunter’s own telepathic abilities hold the attack at bay, but it distracts him from the physical onslaught of the remaining X-Men. Iceman condenses the air around the Manhunter’s legs, freezing him in place. Cyclops opens fire with his eye beams and Colossus rushes their trapped prey.

The trap doesn’t last long. Cyclops’ blast lets up to allow for Colossus to tackle the Manhunter, but MM turns immaterial just before the point of impact and Colossus fumbles right through the ghostly state. Martian Manhunter then goes from immaterial to invisible. He returns Cyclops’ eye beams with those of his own “Martian Vision.” Jean Grey telekinetically pushes Cyclops out of the path of the attack. Feeling Professor X’s mental power weighing on him, Martian Manhunter decides to make quick work of the rest of the team in order to disable Xavier. MM grabs the unexpecting Colossus by the ankle and hurls him towards the X-Men. The hit takes down Jean Grey and Iceman like bowling pins, leaving Professor X wide open to attack. MM primes to fire another blast towards Xavier when Wolverine sinks his claws into the Manhunter’s back.

Wolverine’s heightened sense of smell allowed him to locate his invisible foe, but he isn’t quite strong enough to dig his claws deep enough into Martian Manhunter’s super dense tissue to reach the heart. The Manhunter retaliates with spinning his body at super speed until Wolverine is flung out of him and into the shadows.

Colossus regains his footing to see the Manhunter shape-shifted to appear as Wolverine. Professor X warns Colossus of the shift, but the moments confusion is all Martian Manhunter needs to blast Xavier out of his wheelchair. Colossus stands with Cyclops and a quickly healing Wolverine to carry on the fight, but with Manhunter’s telepathic ability now freely available in him, they don’t stand a chance. Martian Manhunter invades their minds and makes them fight each other until they are weak enough to restrain.

Results: The Martian Manhunter wins. If the X-Men seemed a little slow on the uptake, envision this entire fight taking place in the span of a few moments. Martian Manhunter is the only fighter with super speed, so he could easily deal with multiple opponents. The only chance the X-Men really had was to discover the Manhunter’s fire vulnerability, but again that is hard to do in a manner or mere moments. Lucky for the Manhunter, Pyro is not a X-Man.

The two characters have a great deal in common–both are children with the fate of their kind resting on their shoulders. I have read the entire Ender series and have loved every book. I have read the Harry Potter series, but have never seen the films. It is hard to say which series stands out as my favorite, but my character bias leans toward the more conflicted and driven Ender Wiggin.

Ground Rules: The Goblet of Fire follows Harry into a series of trials that place him in a mindset that parallels Ender’s nicely. For my purposes the version of Harry with the skills and experience gained from this book and previous will be used. The Ender will be the one post Ender’s Game and before Speaker for the Dead. This will also allow the two combatants to be roughly the same age. Ender will not have the assistance of his friend and database intelligence, Jane. The surroundings will compliment Ender in that the arena is the Battle School’s gravity free training room complete with “astroids” for cover. Ender will have a blaster and Harry will have his wand. They enter the arena at opposite gates, neither with a clear view of the opposing gate.

Fight! Harry enters the room apprehensively. With all his broom flight experience, floating in Zero-G feels more like swimming than flying. The gate behind him closes and he is forced to step forward. Harry isn’t clear how to move, but knows that floating motionlessly makes him a target. Harry points to the asteroid ahead and exclaims “Engorgio!” The obstacle grows until it makes contact with the four walls and divides the room in two. The asteroid doesn’t completely segregate himself from his opponent, however. There are two openings between the walls and the asteroid that are still large enough for a boy to pass.

At this point Harry has drifted far enough to make contact with the giant asteroid. It occurs to him that he can push off the side of it for propulsion. He grabs hold and push upward sending him down to the “floor” of the room and near on of the openings. He points is ward back and forth to the two passages to the enemy’s gate.

Just then Ender shoots out of the far passage and flips over to survey the room. A string of light comes from Harry’s wand as he yells “Stupefy!” and gives away his location. The spell misses its target. Harry is amazed the boy can move so fast in this environment without a broom.

Ender fires two shots before landing on the wall of Harry’s gate and pushing off again. The first shot misses and the second clips Harry’s leg. Harry ducks into the passage to the other side for cover. Ender hurtles toward the giant boulder intending to push off at an angle for the kill shot when “Reducio!” the asteroid shrinks back to its original size and leaves Ender exposed in the air for the first time.

Harry takes aim slightly ahead of his drifting foe and says “Expelliarmus!” Ender’s weapon is flung from his hand. Ender grabs ahold of another asteroid for cover.

He spots his weapon floating out in the open directly above Potter. Ender figures that his opponent could easily retrieve the gun by either jumping to gather it or by some form of magic. Ender believes that the blaster is being used to bait him out from his safe haven. Forsaking his weapon, Ender kicks off the asteroid and reorients himself with the enemy gate. While Harry is focusing on his trap, pointing his wand at the gun, he is tackled by a quickly descending Ender from the opposite direction.

The two boys hurdle off the wall, Ender holding Potter in a half-Nelson. Harry begins a spell, but Ender rips the wand out of his opponent’s hand. Harry turns in an attempt to kick Ender in the groin, but their bodies are pulled too close for any leverage. Ender deflects Harry’s last effort to push away and head butts Potter with all his strength, knocking him unconscious.

Results: Ender wins. One might say having them fight at the Battle School was an unfair advantage for Ender, but having them fight anywhere else with Harry able to use his want would also be unfair. I imagine any fight with both boys totally unarmed would end with Ender as the last boy standing.

Ground Rules: Neither party in this fight wants to harm innocents, so the fight will take place in an abandoned Metropolis. All characters will have the tools and weapons generally carried on their person. As Manhattan doesn’t have pockets…or pants…this applies mostly to the Justice League.

Fight! The Flash immediately takes off to run a perimeter around the city. Superman scans the area with x-ray and telescopic vision. Martian Manhunter turns invisible and takes to the sky. The Flash and Superman convey to Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern their recon intelligence via Martian Manhunter’s telepathic link. They learn that Dr. Manhattan is walking at a steady pace in their direction from about a block away. Green Lantern’s ring determines Dr. Manhattan power level to be “above the readable level.” Superman and Wonder Woman fly to Manhattan’s position with the rest of the team watching concealed.

Dr. Manhattan sees how this conflict will end and acts accordingly. Manhattan raises his hand and Superman is teleported to the moon. The Flash bolts to the scene with Wonder Woman’s unbreakable lasso and does donuts around Manhattan. Green Lantern encases the now tied foe in an emerald tomb. Manhattan grows, increasing his size ten fold and shattering GL’s construct. The lasso holds, but it is stretched to capacity. Noticing, the lasso’s limitations, Manhattan dematerializes and rematerializes directly in front of Wonder Woman. She roundhouse kicks Manhattan with all her might, causing him to fumble backward and her leg to burn. A green dinosaur appears to take advantage of Manhattan state and eats him whole. Green Lantern smiles with this apparent victory.

It is a short lived victory as the green dinosaur turns blue just before Manhattan blows it apart. Manhattan glances at the source of the beast and turns Lantern’s power ring into harmless steel. Green Lantern falls from the sky and is caught in an air pocket formed by a vortex of Flash’s creation.

Batman informs the team telepathically that Manhattan is too powerful and they need to break off the assault and come up with a viable plan. The League begins to fall back when Green Lantern and the Flash are vaporized. Wonder Woman lashes out in anger and charges Manhattan. She is also vaporized. Batman, now forced to commit to battle, suggests a psychic attack to Martian Manhunter.

Dr. Manhattan looks to Batman, then pauses as his mind is infiltrated. Manhattan fights to alter his own brain waves to a frequency immune to the Martian’s attack. Just then Superman returns from space and rams into Manhattan at Mach 10, knocking him deep within the Earth’s crust. Superman and Martian Manhunter use their heat vision to melt the stone around him. The one Manhattan struggles to free himself from the molten rock while three more Dr. Manhattans appear, each facing one of the remaining leaguers..

Superman punches and swipes the closest Manhattan at such speeds that Manhattan dissipates from the vibration. Martian Manhunter phase shifts to avoid an attack of the second Manhattan, but that Manhattan matches the shift and connects with his second attempt and vaporizes his target.

Watching Superman’s success, Batman employs a sonic gun from his belt in hopes of vibrating away the approaching Manhattan. Before he fires, the weapon becomes inert and Batman vaporizes.

The remaining Manhattans unify into one being to stand against Superman. With a wave of a hand, Superman disappears.

Results: Dr. Manahattan wins.

I do admit, the Mario titles were more fun to play. Super Mario 3 was the best game of its day. Even now, the Mario game for the DS is one of my favorite titles. Mario also was the first to lead me into a digital 3-D world with Mario 64, which is still one of my all-time favorite games.

Ground rules: Each character can use a wide variety of powers based on power-ups. It wouldn’t be fair to put Mario up against a Mega Man with full access to all the various boss power-ups across all his titles, so I will limit his powers to those available in the classic Mega Man 2. Likewise, Mario will have the abilities he sported in Super Mario 3. No dinosaurs or robot dogs allowed. The arena is similar to the first level of Super Mario Bros. sans baddies.

Fight! Mario uses a mushroom right out the gates to become Super. Mega Man jumps onto the highest green pipe to survey the land. He spots Super Mario and fires his blaster. The first shots miss the target due to the great distance between them. Super Mario takes cover behind bricks where he finds a kopa shell.

Mega Man takes control of Air Man’s power and uses a gust of wind to blow his rival out of his hiding spot. At first the wind isn’t strong enough, but Mega Man keeps pushing until a small tornado forms. Super Mario launches the kopa shell into the tornado and watches it sling shot directly toward Mega Man. The shell’s impact knocks Mega Man off the pipe as he loses Air Man’s power.

Pushing his advantage, Super Mario takes the high ground of the pipe and leaps onto Mega Man who accesses Wood Man’s power for defense. Super Mario is deflected off of the leaf shield and now on level ground with his adversary. Never missing a beat, he become Fire Mario with a pick of a flower and hurls three fireballs into the leaf shield. The shield ignites and Mega Man is forced to discard it.

Seeing no way to completely avoid taking damage in the enclosed area between pipes, Mega Man takes the next round of fireballs to the body, but not before connecting a Crash Man bomb to the pipe behind Fire Mario.

The bomb explodes taking the pipe and Mario’s Fire power with it. The two face off in close combat, both needing a power-up. Mario takes on the Taokkie Suit and spins his newfound tail towards Mega Man–who is already out of reach. Quick Man’s speedy powers have once again put a distance between them. Taokiee Mario withdraws to the sky, Mega Man fires upon him with his plasma cannon. Taokie Mario turns to stone to shield himself from the blast, which also causes him to fall from flight.

Mega Man can think of no way to harm Mario in his solid state, so he decides to keep him that way. Using Flash Man’s ability to freeze time, Mario is unable to transform from his stoney self.

Results: Mega Man wins by immobilizing his opponent indefinitely. No doubt Mario will make a fine conversation piece in Dr. Light’s trophy room.

Personal bias: I watched I Dream of Jeannie as a child, and I liked the show until I outgrew it. The bickering between her and Major Nelson became too much for me. It was also far too unbelievable. I could never see how they could have so many problems when she could fix everything so effortlessly. The movie Beetlejuice actually scared me at first, especially the séance scene. The character played the line between creepy and funny quite well. Of course, the nerd in me will always side with Mxy and Q as my picks of this bunch.

Fight! The only character not confident in their own power level in this fight is Jeannie, who will first attempt to find Major Nelson for guidance. She blinks and disappears. Q is generally disgusted with Beetlejuice’s appearance and turns him into a goat. Beetlejuice stays in goat form and slithers out a forked tongue a mile long that wraps tightly around Q. Q vanishes out of the trap.

Mxy uses his magic to command the ground to swallow up the goat. Q returns after convincing Jeannie that in defeating Mxy and Beetlejuice, she will be reunited with Nelson.

The goat bits its way back to the surface and grows ten stories tall. It’s tail whips Q and Jeannie out of the way as it stomps on Mxy. Mxy dies. Jennie blinks an enormous cage around the giant goat. Beetlejuice reclaims is normal form and escapes between the bars of the gate. Jeannie blinks and he is frozen in glass. Q, satisfied that Beetlejuice has been dispatched, turns on Jeannie. He tells her he will banish Nelson unless she gives up her powers. Jeannie pouts, then complies. Q makes Jeannie disappear.

Q’s victory is cut short as Beetlejuice turns the glass into sand and digs his way out. Mxy materializes between them, now knowing the secrets of the Netherworld. Mxy exclaims “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” and sends him to the realm of the sandworms.

After watching how easily Mxy dealt with Beetlejuice, Q becomes worried. He is not used to dealing with anyone this powerful other than fellow Qs. The battle wages on with the more imaginative devices of victory coming from Mxy. They freeze time at one point so that the remainder of the battle takes place between two ticks of a second.Eventually, the doubt in Q’s mind settles and he comes to term with the idea that they may well fight to an eternal stale mate. The same thought occurs to Mxy. So, he asks me to write him in as the winner.

Results: Mr. Mxyzptlk wins by request. Beatlejuice’s power comes from being a ghost, so he is still bound to the Netherworld. Jeannie’s power comes from being a genie, so she is bound to her master in both love and genie code and must do what is best for him. Q’s power comes from the Q Continuum, which is still bound to the universe. Mxy’s power comes from magic, but more importantly, the 5th Dimension. His extra dimensional nature isn’t bound by the 4 Dimensional universe. This allows him to bypass taking part in the story and interact directly with the writer. So he won.

The earlier Bat flicks had more of a fantasy element. There were conscious penguins, healing cats, and a brain-draining Riddler. (I’m pretending Batman & Robin didn’t happen.) This Batman could do stunts that wouldn’t work in the real world in order to deal with his more supernatural rogues gallery.
Adam West pioneered the character in a more light-hearted fashion. He was just as concerned about teaching lessons to his boy companion as he was about saving Gotham. The dark motives behind the character seemingly ignored as he played a role more cop than vigilante.

To give you an idea of what the comic book’s Batman is capable of, I give you his most recent story line. Bruce countered an attack on his psyche by preparing a back-up consciousness to save himself. (See Batman R.I.P.) He then single handedly saw through an illusion created by evil Gods meant to steal his memories and confronted the most powerful alien/God/villain in Superman’s universe and shot him for enslaving the majority of the human race. Dying, temporarily, in the process.

That said, if I put Nolan’s vision of Batman against Adam West, Bale would kick ass. (Unless West used an anti-Christian Bale spray from his utility belt.) However, if the Batman who is accustomed to leading the Justice League faced off against a doppleganger, he would find a way to win against any Bats from the silver screen.

An explanation as to why I am usually specific in my choices. That is all.

The first contestant is C3-PO. Today’s best computer can’t best today’s top professional, but in a galaxy far far away the technology is no doubt more advanced. Using the speed in which my favorite droid calculates odds, C3-PO will have the poker math down pat. However, he never did seem to understand human motivations well, which hurts his ability to read bets. At least he doesn’t have to worry about the ol’ jedi mind trick.

Speaking of jedi mind tricks, the next contestant is the son of Vader himself, Luke Skywalker. Luke will avoid the dark side of the game and keep everything on the up and up. Therefore, no mind tricks. Cheating leads to money, money leads to greed, greed leads to suffering! And all that. It is this geek’s opinion that barring jedi tom foolery, Luke would be a lousy poker player.

Poker takes practice and I believe Han Solo has made his rounds with the type of alien crowd that would partake in “vices” such as poker and other games of risk. Han knows how to stay cool under pressure which translates into a good poker face. He also exhibits a good sixth sense which means he may know the best time to fold. If C3-PO goes all-in on a paired board, expect Han Solo to have a “bad feeling” about that.

Moving on to another jedi, we may have found a little green ringer. Yoda has all the advantages of Luke only more defined. No, Yoda won’t resort to mind tricks, but I doubt he would need to. Yoda is so connected to the force that he can see glimpses into the future and may know the outcome of the hand before he contributes any time and money. He is also very old with hundreds of years worth of life experiences to draw from. And like the best jedi’s he is without fear, a game if risk is a walk in the park to him.

Finally, what is any Star Wars game without Chewy. Like Han, he has probably played the game before, but unlike Han, I don’t see Chewbacca as the smartest Wookie in the galaxy. But then again droids don’t tend to pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose.

And the winner is…Yoda! A jedi in a game that tests the players’ will and mind is a shoewin, and Yoda is just closer to the force than Luke. C3-PO is a contender if luck is with him, but in the Star Wars universe it could be argued that luck and the force are either connected or the same thing. If that is true, then luck would always be favoring Yoda.

Personal bias: I never really understood why Boba Fett was such a praised character considering his short time on screen along with the fact that Han Solo dispatched him by so easily it was by accident. In my mind, he is the only original character to benefit from the prequels. His father’s battle with Obi-One was pretty sweet and I’ll assume those traits and weapons were inherited by Boba.

So Boba is cool, but Batman is Batman. Bruce Wayne is one of my top five favorite characters of all time. The Dark Knight, the comic book “The Killing Joke” and nearly every episode of Batman: The Animated Series is solid gold.

Fight! Batman blends in amongst the gargoyles above the city as he scans to the horizon with his bat-noculars. He notices a slight glow from a rooftop about a block westward. Batman suspects the glow is not an oversight of his opponent and takes it as a lure into a trap.

Boba Fett scans the cityscape with the scope of his sniper laser, paying special attention to the low-light flare he placed on the neighboring building. Fett is set up in the window of a dark room overlooking the flare. The opposite window and door of the room are fitted with trip wires. He watches in silence as night approaches when he hears a quiet thud.

Fett curses himself for missing it. Was that the sound of Batman landing on the roof? Then he sees a figure descend upon the flare. Fett takes his shot, and then another. His target rams into an antenna tower and collapses onto the flare. With a burst from his rocket back, Fett leaps from his nest and towards the rooftop to confirm the kill.

On his way down he has a clearer view of the happenings. There is a cable hooked onto the antenna tower which could account for the thud when it connected. The Batman must have rode the cable down from another building. Fett lands directly onto his prey and feels no substance. It is only his cape, no man!

Seemingly out of nowhere Batman is on Fett. Fett reaches for his blaster, Batman kicks it away. The two brawlers wrestle each other to the ground with Batman retaining the advantage. Fett engages his rocket pack to avoid being pinned, and to his surprise, Batman takes a cue to discontinue the brawl and roll for cover. The rockets ignite the severed fuel lines. Fett notices the nitro-soaked Batarang too late. Ka-boom.

Result: Batman wins with only a burnt cape and cowl for damage.