Capeworld Comics

The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Blog Episode 2

 

Prediction 2

 

She-Ra vs Wonder Woman

 

Eh. It’s sort of a snoozer for a pre-break episode. This feels like an undercard fight, you know? 

 

I mean yeah. This is a classic fight. You google She-Ra vs Wonder Woman you’ll find a plethora of fanart. Kids in the 80’s naturally wondered who would win in a fight between Superman and He-Man just like kids in the 40’s wondered who would win a fight between Superman and Captain Marvel. She-Ra is girl He-Man. Wonder Woman is girl Superman. They invite comparison.

 

But I think it’s like Michael Myers vs Jason Voorhees. People might think it’s a cool fight (and it is), but not the people that watch Death Battle. He-Man vs Lion-O didn’t get a lot of views and I doubt She-Ra vs Wonder Woman will either. But maybe all the NOOOOO HOW CAN DC HAVE A WINNING STREAK AGAIN guys will give the fight hate-clicks like the Naruto guys gave Kakashi vs Obi-Wan. We’ll see.

 

Because yeah. For all those having conniptions about DC being on a winning streak again this season, it’s time to pop a xanax because nearly all signs point to Wonder Woman winning.

 

Let’s go over the signs.

 

Strength 

 

Wonder Woman once deflected the combined powers of the Greek pantheon as part of ritual when they decided to nuke the Olympus dimension and start over somewhere else. Keep in mind Gail Simone had Zeus, just Zeus, kill Kane Milohai who created universes in the puddles of his home dimension.

 

She also once fished Martian Manhunter out of a black hole created by Kyle Rayner’s evil tulpa ( ain’t comics great?) with her lasso.

 

She-Ra’s greatest strength feat is kicking a planet away.

 

Advantage: Wonder Woman.

 

Skill

 

Diana is an immortal from an island of warriors who, depending on the writer, range from being a race of healers and scientists that practice martial arts for their positive psychological benefits to being a race of female Gokus. Either way, Diana is far more skilled than She-Ra just on being an Amazon. She-Ra spent years mind controlled as a captain in Hordak’s army, which means her combat training would be about what COBRA grunts receive. She’s Crimson Guard level if we’re being generous.

 

And then there was the time Joe Kelly had Wonder Woman and Superman spend a lifetime fighting Ragnarok while only a day of time passed on Earth. It was sort of like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe but with more violence. 

 

(You know, the Ragnarok Wonder Woman and Superman fought was implied to be the same the JSA fought in as a way to keep them in stasis so they could still fight in WW2 without being too old in the present, sort of like Captain America’s iceberg but with more violence. This has disturbing but interesting implications about the JSA’s skill and combat experience level.)

 

And there was the time Denny O’Neill took Wonder Woman’s powers away and made her Emma Peel but in white instead of black. It was actually a pretty fun time for Wonder Woman, and likely would have continued if Gloria Steinem didn’t complain that they depowered her and call it sexist. She took it back when she actually read the O’Neill run and thought Emma Peel Wonder Woman was kind of cool, but by then the damage was done. It goes to show you that the worst thing about comics are the people that don’t read comics.

 

So on top of Amazonian training Wonder Woman learned 70’s super-kungfu from I-Ching.

 

When Batman says that Wonder Woman is the best melee fighter on Earth, he means it. You could take her powers away and she’d still probably kill Richard Dragon in hand-to-hand.

 

Advantage: Wonder Woman

 

Speed

 

In Wonder Woman Plus Jesse Quick, (Yes, that’s actually the title) Wonder Woman ran into the speed force.

 

She-Ra can’t even fly.

 

Advantage: Wonder Woman (And by a whole lot as befitting a DC character)

 

Durability

 

See strength, but here’s where we have to address a caveat. Wonder Woman has a weird weakness to edges.

 

Some superheroes can’t stand yellow. Some can’t stand fire. Wonder Woman folds against points.

 

You see, Diana doing the bullets and bracelets thing made writers think she’s not bulletproof. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she just let the bullets hit her? This was at the same time they had Diana trade blows with Superman (Famously over the Manhattan Project on Earth-2 in Superman vs Wonder Woman which puts Batman v Superman to shame). So you ended up with a character that couldn’t take a bullet but still had superhuman durability. The best recent example of this is Coates’ Justice League where Diana nearly dies after getting shot by a little African boy with an AK that he likely built in a sweatshop. 

 

Then she fights death for her soul.

 

Death < little boy with an AK.

 

I don’t know why writers had to take bullets and bracelets as a vulnerability. Say you’re bulletproof and superfast. Wouldn’t you pull off stuff like bullets and bracelets just because you could? I know I would. I’d do that Superman feat where he deflects the bullets to make them write out YOU CAN’T BEAT THE LAW every time.

 

But it is what it is. It’s just one of those weird comic book things like how the Human Torch is casually hot enough to melt steel beams and as hot as a supernova when he really tries but a bucket of water hands him his ass.

 

She-Ra has a very large and sharp magic sword.

 

Advantage: She-Ra

 

 And so…

 

She-Ra has to land a blow on someone that’s vastly more skilled and fast. If she guts Diana, Diana will die, but she has to hit her first. Diana has plenty of ways to parry–her own sword, her hoplite shield, her aegis shield, her lasso, and her bracelets. She’s been doing bullets and bracelets since the 40’s and writers have upgraded it to bullets and lasers, even bullets and Omega Effect.

 

It’s just far more likely Diana adds She-Ra to the snapped neck collection than She-Ra stabbing her.

 

Winner: Wonder Woman.

 

Now let’s look at some arguments I’ve seen for She-Ra winning…

 

But what about Swiftwind?

 

She-Ra has a pegasus, because it was the 80’s and Mattel wanted to cash in on My Little Pony back when it was a franchise for little girls instead of grown-up weirdos. It’s name was Swiftwind, and it was sapient and could talk. It could fly and was much faster than She-Ra to the point that it could travel back in time with She-Ra by doing the  fly-around-the-Earth Superman movie thing. The argument goes that Swiftwind closes the mobility gap between She-Ra and Wonder Woman. She-Ra is now fast enough to time travel and has a flying mount, and without the mobility advantage on Wonder Woman’s side she gets gutted.

 

There’s two problems with this.

 

1. I think Swiftwind violates Death Battle rules as a sapient ally with powers beyond that of the character he’s fighting for. Brining in Swiftwind opens a can of worms. Why can’t Wonder Woman call in Artemis and a girl possee if She-Ra gets Swiftwind? Why can’t Batman press his Superman call button (yes, he actually has one) ? It sets a bad precedent.
2. It won’t help much. If Swiftwind starts to build up to time-travel speed Wonder Woman just does what she did in Wonder Woman Plus Jesse Quick when Jesse Quick chased another time travelling speedster into the speed force. She matches Swiftwind’s speed and lassos him. Then she does horse + a hatred of necks=Godfather.

 

But we’re using comic She-Ra who’s stronger than Filmation She-Ra!

 

She-Ra fans don’t want to do the composite thing. Masters of the Multiverse showed that the DC comics Eternia War She-Ra is different from the Filmation She-Ra. That means that if you give She-Ra Eternia War feats, then Wonder Woman gets to bring in powers and abilities from Earth-1985 (the old Earth-1).

That Wonder Woman’s lasso could mind control anyone it touched.

 

Now you have a speedforce character that can exert mind control with a Simon Belmont flick. She-Ra is super toast then.

 

But what about the star seed?

 

Okay, some context first. Brace yourself.

 

Back in the Filmation cartoon, there was an episode about an artifact that gave you cosmic power if you held it. This was the star seed, named so because it contained a fraction of the original big bang. It was basically a cosmic cube from Marvel but round instead of square.

 

In the recent Masters of the Multiverse comic which is a big crossover adventure featuring all the different versions of He-Man, Anti-He-Man goes to the Filmation He-Man’s world to steal the star seed. But Filmation He-Man foils him by getting Skeletor involved. The star seed remembered when Skeletor possessed it (it has a bit of a One Ring thing where it pushes people to use it) and went to him, but because Anti-He-Man can corrupt others through the star seed because the star seed was part of the birth of the universe and thus contains a little of the anti-truth that constitutes Anti-He-Man he started to corrupt Skeletor to his side, but because Skeletor has a strong will and refused to be corrupted and ruled by a He-Man, even an evil He-Man, he let go of the star seed long enough for He-Man to shatter it.

 

Whew!

 

So basically, He-Man broke a cosmic cube. Thus the argument goes that He-Man can overpower nigh-infinite cosmic power…even though the power granted by this cosmic cube was stated to be vastly in excess of what He-Man or Anti-He-Man, who wields the power of several He-Men whose power swords he’s stolen, has. Anti-He-Man had like 12 power swords and still wanted the star seed as his trump card. 

 

The star seed isn’t super-durable even if it can grant your wishes. Ever seen Captain America shatter a cosmic cube with a punch? Think that. The power of the star seed is so beyond He-Man’s own power that Zodak, a cosmic enforcer of balance, had to go to great care in selecting Filmation He-Man’s Eternia to hide it on. He feared that any He-Man less pure of heart than the Filmation He-Man ran the risk of being corrupted by the star seed’s power. It’s that beyond He-Man.

 

There would have been no need for He-Man getting the star seed away from Anti-He-Man with someone he knew would end up dropping it if he could have just overcome all its power at will.

 

 Anti-He-Man wouldn’t have wanted the star seed if one power sword already made you more powerful. Why would he want a discount power sword? If he wanted discount power swords, he would have hunted down She-Ras instead of He-Men.

 

Ramping He-Man, and thus She-Ra, to the level of the star seed only works if you gut all the context out of the feat.

 

But let’s go ahead and give her the star seed feat. Diana has her own bullshit “macguffin buster” feat in the form of Cronus staff. Cronus used that staff to absorb and collect the powers of all the gods, including ones that can create universes in puddles (Kane) and those that can kill those that can create universes in puddles (Zeus). With this power, Cronus invaded the Silver City of Heaven with the intent of beating up the Presence itself. But Diana broke his staff in her hands, returning the power he had stolen.

 

Under the same rules that ramp She-Ra to cosmic levels because He-Man broke a cosmic macguffin, Wonder Woman also ramps to cosmic levels.

 

And unlike She-Ra, Wonder Woman actually broke her macguffin. It wasn’t Superman breaking it and then we scale Wonder Woman to Superman. She actually did the feat herself.

 

But what about scaling She-Ra to He-Man?

 

Let’s be honest. She-Ra is not as strong as He-Man. Yes, they both get their power from Greyskull. No, it is not the same power. The powerset granted by FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL is not the same as the one granted by BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL. She-Ra is the Martian Manhunter version of He-Man. She trades in ranks in power for an array of special abilities. She can heal, make forcefields, and her sword transforms. He-Man can’t do all that. But that’s okay, because He-Man is stronger.

 

People don’t scale He-Man to She-Ra, but they do scale She-Ra to He-Man. I HAVE THE POWER indeed.

 

Did She-Ra ever stop time and become multiverse level like He-Man? Nope.

 

In Masters of the Multiverse, which She-Ra backers use for the scaling+star seed combo they hope will net them the win, Anti-He-Man never went after She-Ras. He was fine gunning for the power possessed by 1987 film He-Man but not one She-Ra made his kill-list. That should give you an idea of the gap between She-Ra and He-Man.

 

But okay. Let’s scale She-Ra to He-Man. Wonder Woman scales to Superman. Superman beat the crap out of He-Man when they fought in DC Comics Presents. Checkmate, MOTU-ists.

 

Wonder Woman isn’t as powerful as Superman, but that’s the point. If you want to ramp She-Ra through flimsy scaling then you have to be fair and use flimsy scaling to ramp Wonder Woman even higher.

 

Wonder Woman Wins

 

If you take the characters as they are with just the feats they show, Wonder Woman wins.

 

But even if you use dubious macguffin busting and scaling arguments to ramp up She-Ra, Wonder Woman still wins because you then have to apply those lines of though to her and create a monster that’s basically Superman but with a magic sword…and shield…and lasso…and bracelets…and tiara (though no one ever remembers the tiara).

 

Next time is DBZ’s cosmic chihuahua vs please-god-don’t-let-it-be-Galactus-he’s-for-Unicron. I look forward to being disappointed.