Capeworld Comics

All supervillains have origin stories. This is mine.

This is the one (and only, because I got on the bad side of the powers-that-be by insulting the honor of their waifu) death battle prediction I did for the G1 blog.

The G1 blog is prestigious among vs battle circles. You see, guys that used to be associated with the blog were “promoted” by Death Battle into official researchers. Thus the blog is seen as something of an extension of Death Battle itself.

When I got into writing about Death Battle, I joined the blog. Then I got exiled from the blog due to discord drama.

Presented below is the prediction I wrote for the blog.

Two things to note:

1. I estimated Cable as being far more powerful than he really was. Savior Cable didn’t fight evenly with Silver Surfer, he got swatted when Norrin got serious.

2. I can’t believe Death Battle didn’t give the LOSH so much as a mention. Way to snub, guys.

Well, this is a fight that’s going to come down to how Death Battle sets the rules. But for now, let’s just look at the fight as being standard Booster Gold vs standard Cable. No Waverider, no TO-free X-Man power levels, just Booster vs Cable as they’re typically imagined.

Booster destroys Cable.

What you have in Booster is a guy with a LOSH flight ring and Brainiac 5’s forcefield belt. That’s more than plenty to do in Nate. I don’t think the top speed of a LOSH flight ring has ever been stated. It’s not as fast as superspeed as characters with superspeed (Mon-El, Superboy) are said to be faster than their teammates. Still, it should be plenty fast–far faster than Cable.

It’s been said that in Booster Gold v2 47 Booster keeps up with the Flash and taps into his speed force. In context what happened was that Booster activated chronal energy to do a time-jump but needed to borrow some of Barry’s energy to finish it because he was drained trying to time travel to a place that didn’t exist (long story, comics are weird). It’s less that he matched the Flash and more he got Flash to jump his batteries.

Still, the flight ring should make Booster far faster than Cable. It also comes with kinetic alterations programmed into the ring to keep characters like Matter-Eater Lad from pulping themselves by going too fast. This means Booster has added protection to getting knocked around be it by laser beams or TK.

Though with Brainy’s belt, he hardly needs the boost.

Booster’s said before that Brainy’s belt is the greatest thing he’s ever stolen and he’s absolutely right.

Brainy’s belt is by farrrrrr Booster’s greatest power. To understand how powerful the belt is, you have to understand its history.

 Brainiac, the dude that fights Superman and collects cities-in-bottles, had a forcefield famous for keeping out Superman. Supermans typically had to use guile to overcome the shield. For instance in its first appearance (Action Comics 242) Superman had to sneak into Brainiac’s ship by letting Brainiac shrink Metropolis with himself inside it as Clark Kent and get the jump on him. The shield has only ever been overcome by force twice. The first was in Action 275 where Superman with a third eye in the back of his head (long story involving red and green kryptonite, comics are weird) spun so fast his triple heat vision hit as one and broke the shield. The second was in Action 491 where a berserk Superman breaks through the shield (after it survived Superman inhaling a supernova and breathing it out on the shield. Eat your heart out Kirby). Superman’s power level being tied to his emotional state isn’t something post-crisis came up with, and writers used it to explain why for instance Brainiac’s forcefield could keep out Superman who could also travel through time and survive the big bang going off in his face. Thus I don’t think we should scale Brainiac’s shield to Superman’s more cosmic feats, but it’s still quite a sturdy invention if it requires Superman totally taking the gloves off to crack.

Brainiac’s belt was so OP that obscure supervillain Grax, who had a 20th level intellect to Brainiac’s 12th, had to steal Brainiac’s belt because he couldn’t make a copy himself in Action Comics 342.

Grax proceeded to hook the belt up to a red sun so that Superman would have to deal not only with a wall he couldn’t break but a wall that reduced his powers on contact. This shows that the belt, though not perfectly immune to physical damage, should at the very least be star level for durability.

(For those wondering why a villain smarter than Brainiac is so obscure, note that he got his ass kicked by Wendy, Marvin, and Wonderdog in Super Friends 8. It goes to show that no matter how powerful a villain you are, no writer wants anything to do with you after you’re defeated by Scooby-Doo standins)

Booster doesn’t use Brainiac’s forcefield. Instead, he uses Brainiac 5’s forcefield. Brainiac 5 is a descendent of a Brainiac 1 from the 30th (sometimes 31st) century. Brainy is a good guy version of Brainiac 1 with an intelligence level on par with his ancestor, so one would think his forcefield scales to his, especially given how Brainy modeled his forcefield belt directly on his ancestor’s own.

Brainy’s belt might be just as strong as Brainiac 1’s, but it is worth mentioning that Brainy technically doesn’t have tech feats on par with the first Brainiac. We don’t even have to go into modern stuff like Convergence and multiverse-level Brainiac to prove this. Back in the Bronze Age Brainiac 1 accidentally created Unicron years before Unicron (Action 528). That’s well beyond anything Brainy’s ever done. It’s reasonable to assume that his forcefield would be a step down from his ancestors. But it does have several impressive feats all its own.

In LOSH 303 Brainiac uses his forcefield to contain the Emerald Eye of Ekron, though he says his forcefield can only hold the Eye for a few minutes.

Now, what’s the Emerald Eye of Ekron?

Basically, a proto-green lantern ring. It’s a little more complicated than that and involves a space giant (comics are weird), but that’s the long and short of it. Still, given the things lantern rings are capable of (as I’m sure Ben 10 fans are acutely aware of) holding the Eye for minutes should count as, at the very least, star level.

Now we can’t say that Booster’s belt is exactly like Brainy’s–even though technically, it is–because of two caveats. The first is that Booster is powering the belt off 25th century batteries. You try powering your computer with a powersource from five hundred years ago. This leads to the all-too-common scenario where Booster’s shield is taking damage like it’s supposed to when “OH NO! MY POWER’S GOING DOWN!” happens and Booster gets taken out. The second is that Booster is using the belt after its been gathering dust in a museum for centuries. How a belt made in the 30th century wound up sitting for centuries inside a museum in the 25th century is quite a tale, and I’m sure Death Battle will explain it. But if they don’t, know that it involves Ronald Reagan (who also gave Booster Gold his name). Booster lacks a 12th level intellect, so it’s very doubtful he’s been keeping the belt in tip-top condition.

Still, even with these caveats, I feel it’s safe to say that Booster’s forcefield–which also ties into his strength–is far more than Cable can handle. Even with the batteries running down as Booster fights, the speed of the flight ring means that he’s going to be able to missile-slam Cable until he dies.

I know what some people might be thinking–to hell with forcefields. Cable is a telepath. He tells Booster to turn off the forcefield and then frags him. I thought that to. But surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly. Say you’re a green nerdboy with a crush on Supergirl. You really want her girlfriend Saturn Girl to read your thoughts?) the forcefield gives some serious telepathic resistance. When Maxwell Lord used his mind control powers to wipe his existence from the world (a feat which was so powerful it worked on other telepaths) Booster was unaffected because of his shield.

There was a comic where Cable fought a flying forcefield user sort of like Booster. In New Warriors 46, Cable goes for a ride on a mind-controlled Cannonball (the mutant, not the projectile) whose power is that he can cover himself in a kinetic force field and blast around. Cable nearly dies, and only survives because he sends a desperate telepathic command to Cannonball to STOP.

His fight with Booster will be like his fight with Cannonball, but this time STOP isn’t going to work.

Here is where we get into the “going to come down to how Death Battle sets the rules” stuff I mentioned.

Typically, Cable has tremendous telepathic potential limited by his TO virus. If he uses too much telepathic power his TO acts up and he gets a seizure. But Cable’s been through a lotttt of stuff throughout the years. Here’s a guide to the changes in his power levels taken from a post by 8fenristhewolf8 on reddit:

Cable’s powers have fluctuated fairly frequently and sharply over the years, making it tricky to describe his power levels with accuracy. While I have combined feats from several different periods in Cable’s life under the same categorizations, the following dates (very) roughly outline some of his power fluctuations. Mouse over feats in the respect thread to see when they occurred.

(I love it when I don’t have to do my own research!)

Putting Cable at his Savior Cable power level drastically changes the game. In Savior Cable, you got someone that can fight with the Silver Surfer and scales to Dark Phoenix by scaling to X-Man, his alternate timeline self that never got infected with the TO virus. Yes, he does burn out at this power level, but his cosmic might should be enough to drain Booster’s batteries and frag him.

But I don’t think we should use Savior Cable.

Some people think that Cable should be at Savior Cable power level because the rule is that Death Battle takes characters at their peak. But this goes against the rule that we aren’t supposed to use nonstandard forms of characters. Captain Marvel (Billy) doesn’t get his Wizard Shazam mode or his God of Gods mode. Superman doesn’t get the Sword of Superman and he doesn’t get to split into Superman Red and Superman Blue. Batman doesn’t get the Hellbat armor.

I believe Savior Cable qualifies as a nonstandard form. He’s been debuffed to being without telepathic powers far longer (2007-2015) than when he was at his Savior levels. Him being without telepathic powers is more “standard” than him at Savior power levels.

But say we twist the rules to allow Savior power levels (the rules have been bent before such as when they gave Thanos the Infinity Gauntlet even though he typically doesn’t have it and has actually used cosmic cubes more often). But if we bend the rules for Cable so we can use him at his max power even if its with a nonstandard form, then we should do the same for Booster right?

Booster has his own superpowerful nonstandard form in Waverider, who is sort of like his version of Superman Prime (the one from DC 1 Million, not PRIME TIME). Waverider is a future version of Booster who merges with the timestream and becomes a god who not only can control time, but is time.

Waverider should be able to handle Savior Cable, especially since his powers don’t run out and Cable’s do.

And given his durability feats in Zero Hour, it’s likely that Waverider could not only defeat Savior Cable but every X-Men related character at once.

There’s a lot riding on this fight. If Cable loses then it means not only that DC is kicking off another winning streak but that X-Men characters kicking off a losing streak (and really they should already be on a losing streak. Wonder Woman vs Rogue was bogus and everyone knows it).

Assuming the rules work like I think they work, we’re going to see both streaks happen.

Booster is just too fast and too durable. Cable’s best bet would be to try and get Booster to waste energy by bodysliding as often as possible and taking advantage of Booster’s grandstanding and ego until the shield is depleted, but that’s not as likely to happen as Booster tackling Cable into the sun.

My vote: Green Lantern

I’m going to go out on a limb here, but am I the only one that feels as if the Death Battle team went into this one thinking Booster and Cable were far less powerful than they are? I think they went into this thinking that they were both essentially guys with future weapons. They had energy shields and energy guns and they’d do a little math and see who could pew pew the best. I don’t think they anticipated Cable’s messianic mode or Brainy’s belt being as powerful as it is.

Barring some shocking serve no one sees coming, DC once again tramples over Marvel and kicks off another streak to boot. I don’t think Death Battle likes streaks. As hype as they can be, I don’t think they like it when the audience sees a DC character and goes “oh boy, here we go again.”

If Death Battle wants to balance fights against DC characters, they need to do a bit of prep work before hand and ask questions such as “does this character have a device invented by a 12th level intellect?” Yes, “dials go up to 11” and all that, but DC can easily stock up defeats if they started picking from the lower-power levels of the universe. Take Booster’s teammates for example. Blue Beetle, Fire, and Ice aren’t exactly cosmic level.

But I have no doubt Ben has a file called “Sidekick Match” on his computer set aside if they need to quickly serve DC a defeat.