[williamssl]

Who is the greatest superhero EVER?!!!!?! It began as some banter over Thor vs. Superman, but it has exploded into a voting-based contest to crown the ultimate Superhero.


How It Will Work – The Simple Version (and for the people who aren’t comic book dorks but are highly encouraged to play along)
16 superheroes – 8 each from Marvel and DC- will duke it out in a NCAA-style bracket where your voting determines who moves on each round, and who is the ultimate superhero.

Nominations
Anyone interested in playing should nominate up to 16 superheroes, 8 each from the Marvel and DC families. Rank order your nominations, meaning if you submit 8 from the Marvel side, rank them 1-8, and same for the DC side. PM nominations and rankings to me (williamssl) by Saturday, October 28.

What if I don’t know of that many superheroes? I’m not a comic dork. Nominate as many as you like up to 16.

Marvel? DC? I don’t know what “family” these people belong to. Remember – I’m not a comic dork. No problem. Just nominate up to 16 people that you know, and number them in order of rank priority.

What about villains? Can I nominate them? No – this round is heroes only. Depending on how this goes we may do a villains run later. And if you don’t know if they’re a villain or hero (or they’ve done more time as hero than villain) and you want to nominate, do it and we’ll sort it out.

If I don’t nominate anybody, can I still vote? Absolutely. This is not closed. You can nominate and not vote, not nominate and still vote, vote on some and not others, etc.

Do Wendy, Marvin, Wonder Dog, the Wonder Twins, or Space Monkey Gleek count? No. Please do not nominate any of them.

Brackets and Seeding# of votes and priority ranking will determine both who gets into the tournament as well as their seeding in the brackets. The top 8 Marvel and top 8 DC heroes will be entered into the tournament. In the event of ties for entry or seeding, we will do another round of voting for those heroes only.

Brackets will be finalized and posted on Friday, November 3.

The Voting
Basis for voting: You are voting based on who you think is the greatest superhero ever. Your basis for that might be powers, fancy costume, the fact that he/she is a badass, their do good / never do wrong truth and justice mindset, etc. But to be clear, this is not about who would win in a fight between the two. We may do a voting contest on that one down the road, but that is for another day. Also, if your logic for greatest superhero ever is driven 100% by “who looks best in spandex”, I guess that’s ok but please stay away from me and my family.

EDIT: this does not apply to Wonder Woman.

We will post polls every 3 days with new matchups for you to vote on. Voting is anonymous and everyone can only vote once, so there are controls built in to prevent fraud (unless the admins fuck with this or get bribed).

Majority vote wins. It’s as simple as that.

A Superhero Showdown Guest House in the House of Stupid will be the home for all voting and updates about this. Check back frequently for news, results, updates, etc.


How It Will Work – The “Devil’s in the Detail” Version (for all the comic dorks and/or anal retentive folks)

Nominations
Flash is Flash, and Green Lantern is Green Lantern. It doesn’t matter who wore the mask or ring or spandex. In the future we may do a version that is person specific, but this is all about the generic hero him/herself.

Villain vs. Hero – we’ll look to how the person has predominantly been regarded to determine status. Sure Magneto has been aligned with heroes in the past, but 9 out of 10 comic readers are gonna say “villain” when they hear his name, so that’s what he is. No hair splitting please.

What if they’re dead? That puts a chink in the “greatest ever” argument, don’t you think? But this is about greatest ever, not greatest currently alive, so go ahead and nominate.

Brackets and Seeding
The initial brackets will have the top Marvel hero facing the #8 DC hero and so forth, looking like this:




This assures that the top heroes on both sides could only meet in the finals, if they make it that far. Brackets are locked NCAA style – there is no shuffling of brackets after each round a la NHL or NFL to ensure that the highest ranked is always facing the lowest ranked each round.

Entry and seeding will be determined by simple math: a first place vote earns 8 points, a second place vote earns 7 points, etc. The top 8 on either side are in, and the top vote getter on either side is #1, etc. Full results of nominations and scoring will be made public so you can see where your special project landed in the mix and how lame nominating Namorita really was.


Voting
People will have 72 hours from the time the matchup has been posted to cast their votes. Winners will be determined by majority vote, and in the event of ties, we will first extend voting another day, and if a winner is not determined, we will reset the poll and open it to all voting for 2 days. And if it is still a tie, I will ask my 6 year old who he likes better.

Also, you are encouraged to smacktalk in each of the voting threads (like I need to point this out). Half the fun is going to be talking shit about some of the heroes.

Other
I’ll be the main guy running this, with help from OpTard along the way.
If you have any questions, please post them in this thread so that everyone can see the question and our answers.

Thank you and let the nominations begin!

[The Canadian Content]

williams -- thanks for taking this on. Should be a lot of fun. EXALT!

[Batman]

This freaking rules! Great job, Texas. I figured this would rule, but I had a lot of questions about how it would work, and you answered almost all of them.

Just one more question (with a suggested answer): What about non-Marvel-or-DC heroes? chreteinbabacool mentioned being interested in nominating the Maxx--an Image Comics hero.

My idea is that you can give up whichever slot you choose, so if you give up a Marvel slot for the indy guy, you can only nominate 7 more Marvel heroes, and you would rank the indy guy along with the Marvel guys to determine how many points he gets. Or you could do the same on the DC side. Or both if you have more than one indy guy you want to nominate. Of course it only matters if you're planning to nominate a full slate of 16.

What do you think? And, one more time, awesome work, Texas!

[OpTard]

i vote against indy guys. 1) it fucks up the teams. 2) it makes the game less accessable to the casual viewers

[The Canadian Content]

3. It opens the door to Star Wars and Transformers characters, among others, who are primarily from other media but have appeared in comics over the years.

[OpTard]

4. sergei is gay

[Pun]

Yeah, I had some questions about including some Image characters, but OpTard makes a good point. Most of the Image characters are not very well known to the casual fan (outside of Spawn, maybe). For example, how many of the casual fans know who Grifter is? While I would love to pit him against Punisher, I think myself and a couple of the other comic "geeks" would be the only ones voting on that one.

[DevSop]

Marvel:

1)Jean Grey/Phoenix, 2) Iron Man, 3) Wolverine, 4) Spider Man, 5) Captain America, 6) The Punisher, 7) Strom, Daredevil


DC:

1) Batman, 2) Superman, 3) Green Lantern, 4) Wonder Woman, 5) The Flash, 6) Huntress, 7) Green Arrow, Nighthawk

[Lucky]

Ok, I have a question that I probably know the answer to. But I figured I'd ask.

Its the Heroes Showdown but what about Teams? Don't get me wrong, I'm presuming I can't pick the Avengers or the Justice League. That's just absurd. But what about smaller, more specific teams? Ones that really are identifiable as themselves rather than supergroups. The Fantastic Four is the first that comes to mind as I love them but I can't see myself nominating The Thing or Human Torch. But I'm also thinking other sort of combos. Like the core Teen Titans.

Or how about one that might appeal to Optard? What if I wanted to vote on the Giffen Justice League/Super Buddies? The Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire and Ice, Elongated Man guys?

Or presuming the answer is no to teams, what about partnerships? Not that I'd vote for them, but what about Cloak and Dagger? Or one I might vote for, how about Beetle and Booster? Or Batman and Robin? See what I'm saying?

Just looking to clarify.

[OpTard]

it's all single guys, lucky. you can vote for batman AND robin.

[Loki]

(moving this from the other thread)


After this is done, what about doing teams? We could have a couple of showdowns:

1) Teams
2) Duos
3) Best of the Rest (non-Marvel and DC)

[The Canadian Content]

Teams I could see, but are there enough "duos" to do a tournament?

[williamssl]

There are a lot of different options that have come up for future iterations. In no particular order:

Villains
Who could kick who's ass
Ultimate person (where multiple flash's are their own entry)
Overall / Best of the Rest (where not confined to Marvel/DC OR focused specifically on non-Marvel/DC)

Teams would be interesting but somewhat challenging given the fluidity of team affiliation. But I'm sure we could find way or ways of doing it, so definitely viable.

Duos sounds a lot harder. Are there enough? And what constitutes a duo? Kitty Pryde and Wolverine were a 6 (?) book miniseries but are they a duo? If it is doable, this would probably fall down the priority list if we put all of these to a poll vote on what's next.

So I would see a next step after this iteration would be to see if there was interest in another round...and then put the options to a vote and run with the winner.

[Loki]

(this is in response to Gay4Thor's post)

I'm inclined to agree - I can't think of more than a few (Batman/Robin, Batman/Supes, Hawk/Dove, the Green Arrows, GA/GL). But one of the other comic geeks might have a bunch from the Silver Age or something.

Or we could do best team ups...?

[The Canadian Content]

Even a lot of those are team-ups rather than "duos", I think. Batman and Robin, Cloak & Dagger, Hawk & Dove are all duos because they exist(ed) as full-time teams. I don't think Batman/Superman counts, even though they've got their own book. Same for GA/GL.

I like Tex's ideas, though. I'd like to see a "best villain" category in the mould of the "best hero" we're doing now. I also think a who'd kick who's ass would be fun, but in my mind, it comes down to Supes & Thor in the end because I think they're the unstoppable forces of their respective companies. It could still be fun getting there, though, and maybe someone's got a trick up their sleeve to pick one of the two of them off (i.e. Batman kicks Supes' ass using brass knucks made of kryptonite).

[Modified to break up the ginormous block of text.]

[OpTard]

stop getting ahead of yourselves, people. let's play this one first, then figure out what's next.

[williamssl]

What are you talking about? You know the FIX is on and who the winner is going to be already.

[OpTard]

i'm confused. who's talking about a fix?

i'm just saying lets play this game first, THEN fight over what the next catagories should be.

[DevSop]

Give Batman 3 days warning and he'd kick everyone's ass.

[Loki]

Seconded. Marvel can have their stupid Reed Richards who can think up new inventions to pierce the veil between dimensions. I'll take the crime fighting detective who can make mincemeat out of his enitre team and created a scenario that when enacted damn near took out an entire city as well.

[Lucky]

psychofish said:

I also think a who'd kick who's ass would be fun, but in my mind, it comes down to Supes & Thor in the end because I think they're the unstoppable forces of their respective companies.

Man... I could come up with like 25 people who could kick both of their asses at the same time.

Tardy's right, there's no reason to fight. I was just curious. I thought fulltime teamings could theoretically be considered in much the same way a "hero" does. So I just figured I'd check. No Wonder Twins for me, I guess (and they so were in the comic books so they'd be elligible).

IF we did duos I'd absolutely vote for regular teamups to be cool. Green Lantern and Flash teamed up for 50 years or something and got a "Brave and the Bold" moniker. They teamed up through at least 3 different variations of each hero. You could nail a ton of regular teamups that are really a part of the heroes' history. Cloak and Dagger, Hawk and Dove, and Batman and Robin are all deeply linked but there's still tons linked heavily. GA/GL, GL/Flash, Spider/Torch, Wolvie/Kitty, Booster/Beetle, etc. They all had years of teamups, a rich history, multiple stories, and in some cases their own series.

[salmonjunkie]

Don't forget Wolvie/Jubilee (More of a pure duo than Wolvie/Kitty, IMO), Kitty/Lockheed, Warlock/Ramsey, Power Man/Iron Fist, Captain America/Falcon, Arrow/Canary, Arrow/Speedy.

Could we count Surfer/Galactus? They were a duo for millions of years before hitting Earth.

[Loki]

luckylopez said:

Man... I could come up with like 25 people who could kick both of their asses at the same time.

First one I thought of was the Beyonder. Then Galactus. Some of the New Gods. The Spectre. Kyle Rainer when he was Ion. The Celestials. Molecule Man. Maybe Shazam.






(And, of course, either Optimus Prime or Megatron, but that's only because I'm totally marking out for Transformers today.)

[Lucky]

All fair ones. I'd immediatly add The Phoenix, Onslaught, any of those weird space gods from Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Darkseid, Monarch, Parallax, Phantom Stranger, Doctor Fate, and Thanos. Are we at 25 yet? Although Captain Atom may just be an equal.

Of course that brings up the point that I do think there are others on a similar power level as those two such as the Gladiator, Silver Surfer and most every Herald of Galactus, Martian Manhunter, Black Adam, Magneto, Juggernaut, Captain Marvell (the DC SHAZAM one), Captain Mar-vel, and Doctor Light.

[salmonjunkie]

Hulk and Drax The Destroyer are also on level with Supes and Thor. Maybe Adam Warlock. And to be honest, I've always thought that the Green Lantern (more Kyle or Hal than John or Guy) could take Supes as well. But maybe not, simply because their reflexes won't be sharp enough.

Is Dr. Fate really that powerful? Is he more powerful than Dr. Strange? And while I like Phantom Stranger's character, he's not really a fighter, more of a mystical guide. What could he do?



But this one would destroy all of those mentioned, hands down, and would look cute doing so.