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

Airboy (Hillman Periodicals/Eclipse comics)

 

 

The only reason I wanna talk about an Airboy mu is because I think it would be cool to have an aerial dogfight for DB. Especially since Airboy’s plane, Birdie, has such a peculiar way of flying. Flying more like a bird than a plane. Currently the only mu I can think of for him is Captain Midnight but that character has so many different versions that are radically different that compositing them is ridiculous. There’s probably some character from an aviation manga that could work as an opponent but I have yet to find them.

 

The Heap (Hillman Periodicals/Eclipse comics)

 

 

Another character from Hillman’s Airboy comics. So a quick backstory: During WW1, German pilot Baron Eric Von Emmelman was shot down, leaving him to crash on a swamp in Poland. Clinging on to life through sheer force of will (and/or divine intervention), the Baron’s near dead body merged with the surrounding plant life. When awoke for the first time in years, the memory of the Baron was no more, he had now become the Heap, neither man nor animal. Now unlike Airboy, I actually got a few mus for the Heap but none of them clicked. First off there’s Blanka from Street Fighter, it’s got fine connections with both of them being lost in the wilderness and adopting traits of the life found there. Then there’s Jack Baker from Resident Evil, again it’s got good connections with both of them being soldiers turned nigh unkillable swamp monsters. Then there is toxie from the toxic avenger movies since both are kinda muck monsters. Swamp-thing and Man-thing are there, but it’s a merciless stomp. Then there are the many of Universal’s monsters which could work considering many of them are tragic figures like the Heap, but they don’t interest me all that much. There is Jason Voorhees which is okay. And since everyone is making Springtrap mus why not. You can probably stretch it enough to have good connections. Actually, let me try.

 

Connections and Contrast:

Both are men that came back to life through a combination of sheer will and supernatural means, originally for the heap is was just willpower but they retconned it having divine intervention, for William it was just him possessing the suit but they changed it to remnant

Both are too stubborn to stay dead

Both responsible for the deaths of their family members

Both have followers, for springtrap its an unwilling one in vanny and for the heap it both willing and unwilling with Ricky Wood being a reluctant “sidekick” and there is a Shaman who worships the heap 

Emmelman’s body is covered and disfigured by natural material while William is merged with man made materials.

William is a child murderer while one of the few creatures the heap cares about is a child

The Heap tries his best to cling to his fleeting humanity while Springtrap abandons it. 

William is a being of pure evil while Emmelman while is one the inflicts righteous retribution upon of those more evil than him.

 

Doc Savage

 

 

One of the grandpappies of the superhero genre, being a combination of Superman, Batman and Indiana Jones…while predating all of them. And as you can imagine, there’s a lot of potential MU’s. First there’s Indiana Jones, I don’t really like it all that much because Jones doesn’t bring much to the table and he gets bent. Then there’s batman but I think we can all agree that we’ve had enough batman (Though I wouldn’t mind someone else covering the mu). There’s Tarzan, but it feels wrong having Tarzan fight what is essentially Tarzan with guns. Conan the Barbarian is in a similar boat. There’s Joseph Joestar which is passable. There’s Gina Diggers from Gold Diggers, but it’s a little jarring seeing a pulp character armed with weapons from the 1930s fight an amerimanga character armed with crazy sci-fi stuff. The only character I can think that would be a good mu for Doc is Nyctalope from the French novel series but I don’t know enough about him to make a proper judgment.  

 

Magnus Robot Fighter (Gold key/Valiant/Dark Horse/Dynamite)

 

 

Magnus robot fighter is a comic book character that, from what I read from his Valiant years, he’s pretty great. However, once again, I can’t find many opponents. Tarzan kinda makes sense since he was a massive inspiration for magnus but something about it just doesn’t sit right. There’s serial number N from murderdrones. The connections boil down to both being created to destroy robots but in the end they befriend the robots they were made to kill. The problem is murder drones is still in its infancy and both characters clash aesthetically so much that its kinda jarring.

 

X-O Manowar (Valiant comics)

 

 

Despite only reading the first omnibus, X-O Manowar quickly became one of my favorite comic book characters. He’s like a weird combination of Iron man, Thor, Venom and Captain America. The thing about his mus is that they’re mid. Iron man is okay, so is Blue beetle. I found an MU for him against a super sentai character but I know nothing about him so I can’t make a fair judgment. Currently the only opponent that makes sense to me is Dreadstar but his power fluctuates so much that what can be considered ‘Standard’ would be hard to narrow down. There’s Darth Vader and who knows, he might have great connections, but I would need to read a lot of X-O to see if that’s true.

 

Maxxor (Chaotic)

 

 

Since I already talked about the Underworld’s leader (see Chaor vs Asgore,) I might as well bring up the Overworld’s leader. There isn’t really much I can say here, I just can’t think of any mus for him. Which is a shame considering how cool he is, plus it would awesome to see him use fortissimo to turn into a giant. But the only matchups I could find for him are Blanka and Chaor… Eww 

 

Nexus (Darkhorse comics)

 

 

The spacefaring vigilante who suffers nightmares of the horrors committed by mass murders and probably the hero of one of my favorite comics next to Rom. Now because Nexus is a flying brick with the power of multiple stars, it’s kinda hard to think of an opponent that would be exciting. The only opponent I could find for him is the Plutonian from Irredeemable, which makes sense since its a superpowered mass murderer vs a superpowered man who kills mass murderers. But it’s just flying bricks. Also I think that Plutonian wins, which just doesn’t sit right with me. That psycho might be worse than Homelander and him winning against a hero like nexus just feels like unlocking a bad ending for a video game.

 

Max/Paddle Pop and Shadow Master (Paddle Pop adventures/Max Adventures)

 

 

Here’s a little relic from childhood and one of the few cartoons that aired on cable channels during Portugal in the summer that lasted more than a year. Upon doing research for this blog out of curiosity, I discovered that this cartoon in fact started as an ice cream commercial which in hindsight would explain Max’s presence in ice cream ads. Did it convince me to buymore paddle pops? hell no. Magnum supremacy. Anyway I think Max and his nemesis, Shadow Master should receive some vs coverage considering how much material they have, just look at how many movies they’ve been in. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_Pop_Adventures  

 

I would especially love to see Shadow Master be covered in versus because wizards are cool and considering all the crystal macguffins he’s gotten over the years, dude would have an infinity gauntlet worth of crystals if he came to death battle. Plus the guy just won’t stay dead, if you beat him, at most it’ll take a year for him to come back, the guy was trapped in a loop outside of time and the fucker still came back.  

 

Now I have an idea on who these two could fight but it’s been so long since I watched anything relating to these characters that anything I have to say on these two is subject to change the moment I find the change. But for opponents, I give Max the protagonist from Darkened Sky, that skittle video game. For shadow master, I’m gonna go with the cop out answer, say Salem from RooWaaBeeY because they both have armies of shadow monsters or Voldemort because they always cheat death.

 

Otto’s Comments

 

Airboy

 

Ah, Airboy. For some reason, he’s always been beyond me.

 

Get it. Because he flies?

 

He’s got a critically acclaimed series by James Robinson, lover and expert of golden age superheroes and one of the key architects of the JSA section of DC’s universe, and I’ve been meaning to read but I just never get the time. I liked the character enough to use him as a supporting character in a story about the Lev Gleason Daredevil I was working on, but I ended up scrapping the story because I wasn’t satisfied with how it was turning out.

 

Well, I got good news. Because I know exactly who to pit him against.

Captain Midnight is a good choice. But I think I got a better one–The Rocketeer.

 

Okay, okay, the Rocketeer is not strictly speaking a retro character. He’s like Indiana Jones, he’s a modern character cast from an old mold, but damn it, he works. And the jetpack allows for a lot of cool moments–plane vs jetpack dog fighting, Airboy and Cliff throwing hands on the wings, Airboy holding onto Cliff for dear life as the jetpack shorts out, fun, fun, fun, you can do way more with jetpack vs plane than plane vs plane.

 

The Heap

 

The great grandfather of all of comics’ veggie people.

 

In the inevitable Man-Thing vs Swamp Thing match, he deserves to be the referee.

 

As for who he should fight…you know what, I got to back the Jason option. Maybe it’s because I’m a horrible Friday the 13th fan. I can’t help it. The series is like horror movie comfort food for me. I love the series something fierce. I got the damn Tom Savini skin for the video game. He is the only character I’ve made two matches for. I’ve beaten the NES game.

 

What can I say? Everyone has favorites. Mamma Voorhees’s pride and joy is one of mine.

 

But beyond my love of Jason the matchup appeals to me–two monster men tearing away at each other, making a huge mess, it sounds really fun. Like imagine Jason getting his machete trapped inside the Heap and him trying to find it to get it out. Imagine the Heap growing vines through Jason’s body and they erupt out of the mask sockets, man the fight could be cool!

 

Imagine if they jump into the lake and started throwing down underwater and the hapless campers (there must be hapless campers) at the shore are freaking out because its causing enormous waves.

 

The battlefield will be littered with their collective mass at the end, but I think the Heap would win. Jason has a limit on how much abuse he can take before shutting down (see the cyborg girl blowing him to bits in Jason X) while you need to do some serious scorch earth tactics to put down the Heap.

 

Ideal ending is that Jason regenerates after losing and the two bond over a toy airplane Jason kept from his childhood in his killer shack.

 

Doc Savage

 

I already put down my vote in my most wanted article–the Shadow.

 

Proto Batman vs Proto Superman. Tibetan mysticism vs a man raised by super-scientific principles. It’s too good not to do. Tarzan, Conan, Gina Diggers, they’re all good choices–but you can’t beat the Shadow as the yang to Doc’s yin.

 

Nyctalope isn’t a bad pick at all, but the problem with him and other French Shadowmen characters is that information on him is INCREDIBLY hard to find. I tried finding information on, for instance, Fascninax, because debuting in 1921 he’s a candidate for “first superhero.” I honored that distinction by placing him in the Circled Square–the council of magic guys in The Power of Stardust. That guy in the cloak and big hat? That’s him. I really wanted to learn more about Fascninax because he sounds fascinating, but the most I could find was, I kid you not, a powerpoint on the influence of Rosicrucianism on early 20th century pop culture.

 

Anybody speak French in the who-would-win community?

 

Magnus Robot Fighter

 

I feel so bad that my earliest memory of this character was being disappointed that he came in a box of comic books I got for Christmas.

“Magnus Robot Fighter? I want X-men and Spider-Man!”

 

Tarzan is a very thematic and viable matchup considering the Russ Manning connection and the fact that Magnus was envisioned as sci-fi Tarzan with a future city instead of a jungle and robots instead of mangani. But there is the matter of fairness to consider. Magnus rips metal apart with his bare hands. That’s a bit beyond what Tarzan can do.

 

So who should he fight?

 

Now keep an open mind–the Fugitoid.

 

Yes, the TMNT one.

 

Outlaw robot (okay, guy with his mind in a robot’s body) vs a guy that fights outlaw robots.

 

Not working for you?

 

Just have him fight the Terminator then. Robot hunter vs Human hunter, there you go.

 

X-O Manowar

 

Two words:

The Guyver.

 

Two guys bonded to living space armor who weren’t intended to have said space armor.

 

Can’t do better than that.

 

Who wins that one? X-O Manowar.

Why?

 

Because he welded together a planet’s tectonic plates, traveled 4.3 lightyears in a day, and once used a black hole to slingshot him around the galaxy, so that black hole weapon Guyver Gigantic has? He knows how to get around it.

 

Sorry, Guyver. You can always pick on symbiotes.

 

Maxxor

 

Hold on…was Chaotic the card game cartoon with the catgirl?

 

…Yes, yes it was.

 

…You sure you don’t want to use the catgirl instead?

 

Okay. The way I see it, there are two ways to go about this. The first way is to pick another “good faction” leader. Just pick an action series from the 80’s, you’ll find one easily. Why not White Leo from the Battle Beasts/Beastformers? The second way is to make it card game themed.

 

In the show, some kids from Earth find themselves transported to the world of the Chaotic card game and get the power to transform into the card monsters.

 

You know who had a similar setup?

 

Magination.

 

Tom Majors vs Tony Jones. It solves the Maxxor vs who question and every other Chaotic/Magination question.

 

Nexus

 

Space Ghost.

 

Like for real, its that easy.

 

I think Nexus was even inspired by Space Ghost.

 

Paddle Pop

 

Okay, woah.

This calls for some research on my end.

 

Huh. And I just got done talking about White Leo.

 

Maybe Paddle Pop can fight him? His catgirl sidekick could join the burgeoning catgirl catfight matchup with the Chaotic catgirl. The two of them, Tigra, Cheetara, now you the Mega Man battle royal but with catgirls.

 

And yes, that’s four instead of five, because lets not pretend Volnutt wasn’t there just for show.

 

But really, I don’t think you’re going to top the protag from Darkened Sky. That’s another thing I didn’t know was a thing until it was brought to my attention. Thank you for that, Karza. Part of what I love about this hobby is that it brings so many weird corners of pop culture to light.

 

A skittles video game…my god…

 

…Wait a second, you said you watched Paddle Pop Adventures when you were a kid? The wiki said it started in 2005…

 

…Oh Christ, I’m old…