Here’s a cool new video from the Wild Cards event at the Jean Cocteau in August of 2017, wherein our wild card authors discuss their favorite comic book superheroes… and whether their own Wild Cards characters could take them in a fight.
Yes, it took us quite a while to get this edited and on line. Sorry about that. What can I say? We’re busy.
I wasn’t interviewed myself, since I was busy running around herding cats and running the whole shebang. But if I had been I would have said my own favorites were the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, and a few oddball titles like the Challengers of the Unknown, Space Ranger, and Cosmo the Merry Martian. How would my Wild Cards characters have done against them? Hmmmm… well, depends on the match-up. Doc Strange could probably wipe the floor with any of my guys, him being the Master of the Mystic Arts and all, but Lohengrin and the Turtle could have given most of the others a good fight, and Popinjay maybe couldn’t defeat them, but he could send them to another planet light years away, which would be distinctly inconvenient for most of them. Oh, and any of my guys could take Cosmo the Merry Martian.
Comments permitted… but ONLY on superhero death matches, please.
Current Mood: 
amused
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Bloodraven vs. the Turtle ?
Almost kidding 🙂
It’d be interesting to see a fight between The Sleeper and Batman, since Batman wouldn’t know that to prepare for, assuming The Sleeper had just woke up.
I’d say Golden Boy could take a lot of them in a fight as long as the couldn’t fly. Actually Golden Boy vs The Hulk would be a great match up
You’re a Marvel guy through and through, huh, Mr.Martin
Not entirely. In the old days I read DC as well… and even the off-brands, Charlton, Gold Key, ACG, and so on. But Marvel was always the best.
dear mr. martin, i apologise in advance for the OT comment, but your post on Ripple didn’t have the comment option. feel free to delete or move it to the appropriate post.
the video resonated with me for three reasons:
a. the lyrics made me immediately think of my favorite asoiaf AND got character, 6 time exile, 3 time deserter and 4 times traitor ser Jorah Mormont of bear island.
b. among the many musicians are 2 israelis. i found it fitting that the next post is about recieving an israeli sff award.
c. the israeli singer stands on top of old Jaffa hill overlooking the Med and Tel Aviv in the background. the park is called summit garden. about 50 feet away i kissed my wife for the first time 22 years ago (about the time AGOT was published). we’re still going strong.
thank you and best wishes from the holy land.
I can’t judge by the entire series, since as of now I’ve only read the original book, but in the first WILD CARDS aces seem to be largely on the low stakes end of the superpower lottery, no? Nothing like Superman or Galactus or Darkseid, capable of wiping out the entire planet single-handed? No Dr. Manhattan to completely distort the course of history as we know it?
That, plus what seems to be a greater focus on realism in WILD CARDS against the over-the-top comic shenanigans sometimes seen in Marvel/DC, puts the ball firmly in the Marvel/DC court in most superhero showdowns.
Though I could easily see Puppetman as a Batman villain.
True enough. As a general rule, most WC characters have powers several ordrs of magnitude less than your average Marvel of DC character.
But there are exceptions. Fortunato and the Astronomer both had a huge range of powers. Little Fat Boy only had one trick, but it was one helluva trick. And a mind controller like Dr. Tachyon or Blaise might be able to take control of Superman and bend him to their will.
The devil is always in the details.
Oh, yeah. Mind control is a super broken power, in any superhero match-up.
Again, only finished book one a week or two ago. But I’ve picked up some basic ideas of where the series goes from here, and an upcoming villain has been described to me as, ‘Like Professor X, if Professor X were an utterly depraved sociopath.’
Depraved or no, that sounds like a recipe to be a serious contender in any match-up against someone who can’t defend against mind control.
Wild Cards description reminds of the Marvel X-Men comics. Hope Mr. Martin drew some inspiration from there. As for superhero death matches they are just figments of the imagination and can go anyway depending on who is doing the imagining. Mind controllers and telepaths are the most controversial as theoretically they could defeat an enemy psychically even before a physical battle commenced. (Damn my imagination is running wild).
But an example of what not to do would be Batman v Superman. 😀
Too bad you cannot leverage characters outside your own creation. Would love to read (not comic, but novel) of a battle between Galactus and Unicron.
I always wanted to see Black Panther pop his claws out against Wolverine.”You call those claws? these are claws”,popping out those admantium blades….
In this duel of DC vs. Marvel I prefer go with both! 🙂