Capeworld Comics

The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 33

 

Prediction 12

 

Hulk vs Broly

 

…Seriously?

 

What’s with the booking this season? It’s not even that we’ve had an overload of cape characters, not really, it’s that we’ve had an overload of really crappy cape matchups.

 

Look, I’m not saying that they didn’t overload on capes. Look at my original fights. I’ve done 20 fights. None have been Marvel vs DC. 6 involve superhero related characters in the broadest sense counting characters like Billy Butcher and the Masked Mutant from Goosebumps. 3 involve a Marvel or DC character, 4 if you count Isis (though as I covered in her fight, she’s not actually a DC character).

 

My website is called Capeworld Comics, and I do fewer cape battles than Death Battle.

 

But cape overdose isn’t the real problem.

 

The problem is the cape matchups suck.

 

Sindel vs Black Canary? Spider-Gwen vs Batgirl? Venom vs Crona? War Machine vs Genos?

 

What is this, DanCo? DC needs to give Ben and Chad a call, they’d fit right in with the current stable of writers since they have absolutely no idea what to do with the characters.

 

Regardless of what their goals were this season, they failed spectacularly.

 

Was their goal to get clicks? Then why didn’t they go something like “All of Batman’s power armor vs all of Tony Stark’s power armor?” Why didn’t they do DKR Batman vs Old Man Logan? Why didn’t they do Piccolo vs Martian Manhunter–by god it would have sucked as a theme, but you can’t argue that it wouldn’t have attracted normies like soy boys to Nintendo products. The same could be said of fights like Supergirl vs Sailor Moon.

 

Was their goal to make really cool looking fights? Then why didn’t they do Atom vs Hank Pym? Imagine all the cool ways they could have represented two subatomic fighters. Or imagine they did Shang-Chi vs Richard Dragon and shot it like a 70’s grindhouse film complete with film grain?

 

Was their goal to curate characters and introduce normies to cool stuff, to lean into the “I can’t believe they did a fight with Bucky O’ Hare” hype? Then why didn’t they do Rom vs Tekkaman Blade? Or Fin Fang Foom vs King Ghidorah? Or Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy in a team fight against Spear and Fang from Primal?

 

Pick your criteria, they blew it.

 

And now, to cap off this awful season, we get Broly vs Hulk.

 

God, poor BvS guy. First Butcher vs Stain gets cucked into what would have been the worst death battle of all time if not for Red vs Blue and now Asura vs Broly gets cucked into this disgrace.

 

Ben and Chad deserve coal in their stocking this Christmas.

 

So Who Wins?

 

I think this might be my most hated fight this season. 

 

Even beyond the booking angle, this one is just frustrating to figure out because my prediction relies less on comparing the characters and more on trying to figure out how Death Battle will interpret its own rules.

 

Okay, look. Let’s put aside Ewing’s creepy pasta version of the One Above All for a second and the respawn power it gives Hulk. Let’s say the fight is to whoever dies first.

 

Broly wins in that case.

 

Go ahead and wank Hulk. Go ahead and say that the time he clashed with Ironclad of the U-foes and sent shockwaves through nearby interdimensional portals counts as blowing up a multiverse. Go ahead and say that Hulk destroying the Night Crawler’s (not Kurt Wagner) pocket universe within the Dark Dimension counts as destroying a universe–look to Death Battle to use this feat since they already ruled that Sailor Moon purging a witch from a mirror counts as destroying a universe. Go ahead and say that Umar telling him and Red She-Hulk to stop fighting because they were wrecking her realm counts as universe busting. Go ahead and talk about the time storm, and the Beyonder saying he had infinite power.

 

Go ahead and scale him to Thor, and Sentry, and Maestro Hulk, and Silver Surfer.

 

I don’t think it’s going to be enough.

 

Strunt math is going to put base Broly at somewhere above 9 universes worth of power. Then the voodoo math starts, and I’ll bet you anything it’s going to end with a Broly with the power to destroy more universes than actually exist in his own setting.

 

Is it stupid?

 

Oh yeah.

 

But they did it in Beerus vs Galaxia and they’re going to do it here.

 

So if it’s just a matter of “first to die loses,” Broly wins.

 

But if you’ve read Ewing’s recent run on Hulk, you’ll know that there’s a complication. 

 

You see, it turns out that in the Marvel Universe, the cosmic rays that created the Fantastic Four emanated from the One Above All, the supreme power of the Marvel multiverse (when Starlin isn’t wanking his waifu Thanos), and the gamma rays that created the Hulk and other gamma mutants like She-Hulk and Abomination emanated from the One Below All, the evil counterpart to the One Above All. The One Below All resurrects Hulk whenever he dies because the One Below All wants to use the Hulk as a meatpuppet at the end of the universe to cuck Franklin Richards out of becoming the next Galactus and oh Christ, remember when Hulk was just a nuclear monster? What the hell was wrong with him just being a big strong nuclear monster?

 

Immortal Hulk sucks. There’s my hot take.

 

Basically, a big evil super-god brings the Hulk back to life every time he dies now, usually with a quote so Ewing can pretend to be intellectual.

 

God, I miss good comics.

 

Should Hulk Be Allowed To Resurrect?

 

Death Battle might consider the Hulk that Emos “outside help.” Technically, the Hulk isn’t bringing himself back to life, another character is. This isn’t like Darkseid vs Thanos where Darkseid brought Darkseid back to life through the power of Darkseid. It’s a little like arguing that the Specter can’t die (and thus can’t lose) because if he did the Presence would just bring him back to life.

 

The counter-argument for the One Below All not being allowed to bring Hulk back to life is that the Hulk is now powered by the One Below All. He’s irrevocably tied to the One Below All. Cutting him off from the One Below All for this fight would be like cutting Wally from the Speed Force or Sonic from the Chaos Force or Obi-Wan from the Force. 

 

Is It Unfair To Allow Hulk To Resurrect?

 

Personally, no, I don’t think it is. There are still ways to defeat Hulk without doing something cosmically drastic like traveling to the One Below All’s hell (man, Marvel has so many hells, doesn’t it? They got more hells than heavens. It’s actually kind of disturbing on an existential level) and fighting the big edgelord himself. In his own comic, Hulk was cut into little pieces and held in jars. Several characters have ways to incapacitate Hulk to win the battle. Say Hulk fought a Flash. They’d just steal his speed and make him into a statue. Say Hulk fought Dr. Fate or Dr. Strange. They’d just stick him in an extradimensional void or put the mind whammy on him. And defeating an immortal being through incapacitation does have precedent in Death Battle. Autism awareness horse defeated Starscream by eating him. He was still “alive,” but not in a position to do anything but satisfy Ben’s vore fetish.

 

Can Broly Take The Incap Win?

 

If Broly wasn’t a giant rage monster, he’d have a chance of winning through incapacitation. But the problem is that he is a giant rage monster. He’s going to keep going for the kill again and again and again, that’s very bad for him because it gives Hulk a lot of ways to beat Broly.

 

Ways Hulk Wins With Resurrection Powers Allowed

 

He could beat Broly by blowing up the planet they’re fighting on. Hulk can survive in space, and while it may sound really weird to say after Beerus and Goku fought in the thermosphere where the atmosphere consists of distantly spaced particles (so distant that, though temperatures can hit 2,000 degrees celsius, you would feel extremely cold if you were up there because the particles are too far apart to transfer heat to your body), but Saiyans officially die when you take them out of an atmosphere. 0% oxygen means dead Broly.

 

Hey man, I don’t write this shit.

 

Hulk probably wouldn’t be able to survive long enough normally to try smashing the planet, but with Ewing creepypasta resurrection powers, he can.

 

Broly’s counters to the planet getting smashed involve taking Hulk to a pocket dimension to fight, a temporary measure, or by putting up a ki bubble, which will run out of air. Death Battle is probably going to wank Broly’s speed to interstellar, but Broly is a space hobo who has lived almost his entire life on a backwater planet. I don’t think he readily knows another nearby planet with a breathable atmosphere.

 

The fight very well might end with Broly’s dead body floating amid planet debris while Hulk pops out of a green door portal and goes TH-TH-THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

 

Another way Hulk beats Broly is to use the same argument that made him lose to Doomsday.

 

Do you remember why Death Battle had Hulk lose that one? They argued that, though Hulk gets stronger the madder he becomes, he has a limit on how mad he can get. Eventually, his anger will hit a wall created by the physiological limits of hormone production. But Ewing’s Hulk is a body horror monster. He can grow a hypothalamus the size of a durian. He can grow another hypothalamus. He can grow whatever organs he needs to facilitate his growing anger.

 

Anyone remember dogscape? Welcome to Hulkscape.

 

You were a Hulk once, a Hulk!

 

Eventually, Hulk is going to regenerate into a form that’ll overtake Broly, and that’ll be it.

 

Another way Hulk beats Broly, and my personal favorite way for how funny it would be to see, would be for Hulk to dry gulch Broly while his guard is down.

 

Ewing’s Immortal Hulk (technically called Devil Hulk) is a devious little shit and would totally think about ambushing Broly after the second or third respawn. And it’s not like Broly would expect a giant green door to suddenly show up behind him and a giant green fist to come out of it.

 

Dragon Ball characters rely on their guards being up to withstand damage. They become very, very weak when they aren’t in battle mode. This is how a Frieza goon was able to blast a hole in Goku-the-Blue’s chest with a laser ring. His guard was down, so an attack that would have otherwise have done nothing to him put him on death’s door.

 

Hulk knocks on the green door and says he has a candygram for Mr. Broly. 

 

And Broly like candy.

 

Broly only pawn in game of life.

 

So Who Wins?

 

I’m going to say Hulk.

 

Of all the fights I’ve predicted, this is the one I’m least sure about. Part of me thinks they’re going to say “Hulk doesn’t actually bring himself back to life, a big gamma devil does it, so he can’t come back to life and kill Broly.”

We shall see.

 

At any rate, I hope G1 backs Broly. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a fight.