This fight is by Baron Karza. Check his stuff out here!

 

 

Stardust vs Fantomah

 

This is a weird, and probably one of maybe five capeshit fights worth caring about. So before I explain Stardust and Fantomah, I gotta talk about their creator, Fletcher Hanks. You see Fletcher is a strange figure in the history of comics,you see he was an alcoholic who abused his family, as a result they kicked him out. There’s more to Hanks but that’s about the gist of it. As a result of his alcohol addiction and his bitterness, the superheroes he created were strange and cruel and accompanied by bizarre plots. A good chunk of your enjoyment from these stories are the general weirdness. Who could forget Stardust’s iconic victory over destructo

 

Connections

The connections are pretty simple. They basically boil down to-

Two nigh omnipotent superheroes created by the same guy

Both use their near limitless power to inflict cruel and unusual punishments.

Simple but effective

 

Animation Potential 

 

I think that in order to make this fight stand out, DB is just gonna have to go full ham, using both Stardust’s and Fantomah’s power in the most insane ways. How many powers do they have? Let me copy paste here 

Stardust has-

Boomerang ray: The boomer make machine to on themselves

Suspension ray: Suspects objects in the air

Skeleton ray: Can summon the skeletons of the people someone’s killed

Anti gravity ray:

Anti Motion rays:Makes objects become inert

Reducing ray: Shrinks objects

Retarding ray: Which can slow down an object’s momentum

Extinguishing ray: Extinguishes fire

Fusion rays:It destroys technology by essentially turning it inside out

Disintegrating ray: Does exactly what it sounds like

Radiophonic thought recording Ray: to manipulate people’s thoughts 

Magnetic rays: Draw objects closer to him, and you’d think it only affects metal but it affect anything stardust chooses

Transporting ray: Send people to over places

Transforming ray: Can turn people into stuff like rats, icicles and worms. It can also change peoples shape like making them bigger or turning them into giant head, which lead to this iconic moment

Concentrator ray: Fuses multi people into one, fun fact this would be referenced in a fan made reboot.

Propelling ray: Sends people flying into space

Invisible ray screen: Makes objects invisible

Shadow Transfer Ray: I don’t know how to explain 

Agitator Ray: can create tidal waves

Geeze, with so many ray related powers you’d think his name was Rayman. It’s important to know that Stardust can fire multiple rays at once in any direction, though he can only do this with one ray type.

Miscellaneous powers:

Ability to change size? Stardust’s size is inconsistent and since he can grow and shrink other people, I think it’s not out of the question that can change his own size. He can turn his hands in weird tentacles to get a better grip on criminals and I have no idea why he has this power to be honest. He can incase people in crystal prison. Has some kind of spider sense that warns him if something is aimed at him. He can shapeshift like that time he turned into a panther. He can create acid proof smoke. He can deflect the sun’s rays to incinerated people.The Stardust flash creates a star shaped object that can cut through things and turn into a planet size shield. He can also give his powers to other people which is honestly kinda terrifying, just imagine an army of Stardusts, oh wait you don’t have to, it happens in the comics and they call themselves the sixth column. You know what’s the worst part about all these powers? There’s probably a few powers I forgot to mention

 

While Fantomah has-

Telekinesis, which allows her to move all sort of heavy objects, this even allows her to give jungle wildlife the ability to fly 

Invisibility

Jungle restoration ray: Essentially returns jungle life back to its natural state. Basically if an animal goes through any sort of unnatural change, like transformation or being infected by some abnormal disease, the jungle restoration ray will bring them back to normal.

Can communicate with animals to give them commands, though it more like namor the submariner’s mind then aquaman who can straight up control them

Paralyzing ray

Manipulate the weather to create tornadoes, clouds that can destroy planes and thunderstorm

Turning rocks into clouds and back again

Transform people into over kinds of creatures

Turn people into skeletons

Super willpower ray:Control the actions of other people’s action which made someone crash their plane

Flashing ray: Sets things on fire

Become invisible

Manipulate people’s dreams

Shrink objects and people

She can record thought vibrations to read minds

Her analytical ray can separate someone’s chemical elements

Superiority waves render someone motionless

With the power of the gods she can summon spectral elephants and snakes

Fuse multiple people together like stardust

Control mud, making it flood a good chunk of the jungle

Control water well enough to redirect a wave

Summon moonstones from the group

 

Set-up

 

The set-up would be a simple misunderstanding. It would start with Stardust hanging out on that star he lives on, then suddenly, his crime detector goes off(Yes, that is something he has, just roll with it). The scene cuts to two men drowning in quicksand in the elephant graveyard; they disappear before Stardust arrives. Stardust is then greeted by Fantomah, saying that he is trespassing into sacred land and the fight starts.

 

Actual Animation

 

Okay, this matchup could be really chaotic and I believe it could be a really memorable fight if Death Battle decided to use both combatants’ powers in creative ways. Fantomah could turn the clouds above Stardust into boulders to crush him or stardust could summon the skeletons of the people Fantomah has killed to distract her.  Fantomah sends about animals made airborn to attack Stardust but stardust turns them to people and mind controls them before giving them his powers. Fantomah counters this by using her jungle restoration ray to turn the animals back to normal. When the animal attacks stardust again, he uses one of his many rays to helplessly suspend them in the air. There could also be a moment where Fantomah propels stardust to mars and sends a moonstone to crush him but Stardust uses his stardust flash to protect himself. Plus since both Stardust and Fantomah are famous for inflicting strange punishments, this fight might have one of the best deaths in the series. 

 

Banter

 

There isn’t much you can do with banter since neither of these characters have much of a personality, but I think if handled well it can actually be pretty funny. Have the characters take all the weird stuff happening around them seriously. When Fantomah summons some giant lizard to attack stardust and says something “it’s the most fiercest creature in the jungle” or something like that.

 

Music

 

It’s a little hard to think of how this hypothetical track would sound like since both come from comic books. But I have a rough idea on how it would sound. It would be a typical superhero theme but it gradually becomes more and more chaotic as the fight progresses. 

 

Who Would Win

 

Though both characters have absurd powers that could instantly end the fight, I’m gonna have to give it to Stardust, he’s much faster, being able to move millions of times faster than light and he’s got two planetary feats under his belt. In the end, the power of stardust was too much for the jungle woman.

 

Conclusion

 

I love match up because its stupid and simultaneously epic and I would love to see really any versus show cover this due to its sheer what the fuckery. 

 

Otto’s Comments

 

Now this is a fight after my own heart!

 

In the Capeworld universe, Stardust would beat Fantomah handily. I got him as a threat to the entire multiverse and her as just one of the many superheroes in his way. I haven’t written down her origin yet, but the idea is that she’s one of those triplicate goddesses–you know the kind, like the Morrigan, the Fates, the Mahadevi, etc, but her problem is that she’s missing one of her components. She’s got her blonde self who is all-loving and her skull-faced blue-skinned self who is merciless justice incarnate, but she doesn’t have an intermediary to balance the two leading to instability. She’s Shakti and Kali without a Durga to balance them out. Eventually, she retires to a universe of primal jungles, dinosaur riders, and ruined temples called Gigipal, strips herself of her power, and through the experience of being a mortal creates a third persona to complete herself–her “Fantomah, Daughter of the Pharaohs” version for you golden age comic nerds out there. But Stardust never had any imperfections–at least by the standards of his home universe. He’s a perfect being who is made imperfect by being transported to the wrong environment. That puts him way above Fantomah.

 

But enough on my stuff, lets talk about the OG Fletcher Hanks versions. Like Karza, I got to give the win to Stardust, and I think what gives him the edge is his setting. Fletcher didn’t care about power levels or rules or even general logic, its what made his stories so weird and memorable. He probably didn’t think “Okay, Stardust is this powerful and Fantomah is this powerful.”, he just had them do whatever he wanted. But while Stardust had Earth and outer space as his setting, Fantomah was firmly in the jungle genre, which meant she had to keep to her jungle. So she doesn’t fly out across the universe like Stardust, and when she encounters evil super-gangsters, they’re threatening her jungle and not the entire United States. Her setting and stakes were just a little bit smaller than Stardust’s own, and when you got to decide who wins between reality warpers, little differences decide the win.