Black Canary vs Black Widow

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Welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, where we discuss all things DC and Marvel related, we review superhero films, and we debate who would win in Marvel vs. DC matchups. I'm Jonny DC. And I'm his twin brother Marvelous Joe. We're formerly known as the DC Marvel Battlecast, so ignore all references to that in this episode. And note that our new email address is dyna You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram.

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by searching for Dynamic Dual Podcast. Let's start the show.

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today is Black Canary versus Black Widow. Yeah that's gonna be a close one. Of all the matchups that we've had so far I think Black Canary and Black Widow is probably going to be the closest match just from putting in the stats. They're even more similar than Batman and Moon Knight were. Yeah I think so. So yeah look forward to that later on.

01:12
Black Canary is part of a super team called the Birds of Prey. Another one of those team members was Barbara Gordon aka Oracle aka Batgirl. Yeah, so this wasn't officially released by the studio, but Warner Brothers kind of goofed. For people who have seen the movie, they gave them this survey that was asking them questions like oh, you know, how would you rate the actors in the film?

01:42
was Jenna Malone which we know has been cut from the film. She'll appear in the rated-r version. So they're showing people the rated-r version? No. No? No. But they left it in as part of the survey by mistake. So people were like taking screenshots of that. So I mean again this hasn't been officially released but the likelihood of it being true is it's she's pretty much Oracle which is pretty cool. I remember when they first announced her casting I would

02:12
Kelly. That's what my guess was too. I think that would have been awesome because it's a different way to portray Robin. Robin has never been you know taken the most seriously out of all the superheroes. There's you know there's always a lot of jokes so it made sense to me because it felt like that was the easiest way to kind of get around that kind of stigma that's attached to the character. But it's all about like continuity and when you started reading comics I'm pretty confident in saying that probably most people's favorite Robin was Dick Grayson but a lot of

02:42
that role into Nightwing. So once you take Dick Grayson out of the equation, what Robin are you left with? What Robins? People either like Tim Drake or people like Damien Wayne. Everyone loves The Dark Knight Returns. And doing Carrie Kelly's, I thought it would have been a nice way to appease fans who sort of have one Robin preference over another, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I think it would have been cool. But I'm equally as happy with her being Barbara Gordon. Yeah, it would be cool if they eventually

03:12
do make a Birds of Prey movie or something. My theory is that she's probably not going to be Oracle in the rated R version. My theory is that they probably do a flashback with the Joker, the rumors of them having a scene with the Joker where he's beating Jason Todd to death, the scene where he's shooting Barbara Gordon in the spine, paralyzing her, that famous scene from the killing joke.

03:35
And speaking of Commissioner Gordon too, Mortar Brothers recently knows that J.K. Simmons has been cast as Commissioner Gordon, which is awesome. I think you'd make a good Commissioner Gordon, not as good as a J. Jonah Jameson, but he'll make a good Commissioner Gordon. I kind of bummed because I think a lot of people wanted J.K. Simmons to come back in the role of J. Jonah Jameson for the new Spider-Man movie by Sony coming out. And now that's not going to happen, obviously. So that's a little bummer. But I think that's pretty good casting. It can't wait for.

04:05
whenever they make the Batman movie, I mean, whatever it's called, if it's just called The Batman, just like the Ben Affleck directed standalone Batman film. Think of how many Oscar winners you're gonna have in there. You're gonna have Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons. The Oscars mean nothing to me, so I'm not impressed. You're gonna have Jared Leto. You're gonna have Jeremy Irons won an Oscar. Maybe Chris Terrio, if he goes back to write it. It's gonna be a very high caliber film.

04:34
It's gonna be great. Just when you have that level of talent, it has to be phenomenal.

04:39
Yeah, that budget's going to be almost as big as the $400 million by BBS. That's not true. How is Bad Members Superman doing? Actually, it has the second highest pre-sale record of all time after Star Wars, which is awesome. A lot of the way they track pre-sale tickets is like in the first 24 hours, what percentage of the available tickets are sold. For Star Wars,

05:09
75% in the first 24 hours. Why do they track it that way? Why don't they just track it in terms of dollars? I don't know. Because they would have a record of that. I'm sure they do. That's weird. But yeah, so Star Wars has the highest number. I think it was 70, I think it was, like it was around 75%. Third place goes to Jurassic Park, which had 50%. Fourth place.

05:37
was I believe Avengers Age of Ultron. I mean, in Civil War tickets have gone on sale and I'm actually sure how that did. I know it didn't do as good as BBS, but Batman v Superman did close to 60%, I believe. So it's doing really well. Do you think it'll break 200 million opening weekend? Over under. I think it's gonna get close to 200 million. Yeah.

06:04
And that's what a lot of, you know, like, film industry commenters are now changing their prediction to. Yeah, because it used to be like 130 or something. It was between 100 and 140, essentially. So it should be Deadpool, at least. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll be Deadpool.

06:24
If it doesn't, I will laugh. It's going to be definitely mention it on the next podcast. It should be beat dead. It's the two biggest superhero icons in the world. Yeah, but that doesn't just because they're icons. It doesn't equal box office revenue.

06:41
Familiarity as well. Otherwise Man of Steel would have done way better than it did. Familiarity brings a lot to the table though. I mean, that's one of the reasons I think Marvel does so well. Is because people are familiar with that Marvel brand. People are familiar with Batman. Those movies have always been successful. DC doesn't really have a cinematic brand right now though. No, but we have the familiarity of our characters.

07:07
Well, people didn't go see Man of Steel because of the bad taste of Superman Returns. But when you bring Batman into the mix, Batman has always sold well. So... Yeah, I guess that's true. What about the familiarity of Sandman? I heard that movie got delayed. Uh...

07:28
Well, I mean, there was no like official start. I mean, you could say it was delayed. You could say that, you know, it's still in development. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was attached to definitely direct and possibly star. Or I think he announced that he was going to star like the day he announced that he was departing the project. He's departing the project. So I can't imagine him as an anime. I don't know why. Can you?

07:57
It's weird because I always imagined him as Nightwing and I was really pumped when he was in the Dark Knight Rises. I kind of hoped that they would have done something with that. In my mind, I'm still kind of hoping that he's gonna be Nightwing somehow, somewhere down the line. He's a pretty... he... no, I don't think that would ever happen. No. Just because of the Dark Knight Rises. Yeah. But he is a pretty broad range. I couldn't...

08:22
If you give him like, you know, some 80s hair, dark, long hair. Like a seagull's hair? Not bad. The Cure hair? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I could see him as a dream. You know who I really saw though was probably like Tom Hiddleston. Oh, he would be fantastic. He would be a great dream. He's like almost the new Johnny Depp. And I say that because, did you ever see Crimson Peak?

08:49
It was the new- No, I saw the trailer for it though. The Guillermo del Toro movie. Right. That was very much- it was such kind of like-

08:56
the spiritual successor to Sleepy Hollow by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp. I almost consider them companion pieces because they have a very similar setting and kind of just really creepy kind of feel. If you haven't seen it, you should see it. But yeah, I think Tom Hiddleston would be great because his character kind of reminded me of if this movie were made in the early 90s, it would totally be Johnny Depp in the role. So yeah, that's a good idea.

09:26
Tom Hiddleston is Loki, he'll probably be Loki for a while maybe. Yeah. But Sandman is so... I mean, it's part of the DC universe just because in the comic Sandman, aka Dream, aka Morpheus interacted with some of the...

09:47
the characters, like Marshall Manhunter, like the Scarecrow, like Dr. Destiny. But he's kind of like, if anyone's not familiar with Sandman, it was a comic written in the 90s by Neil Gaiman. And it was basically just about these...

10:14
gods, essentially these just sort of abstract concepts. The primary character, his name was Dream, and he was basically the embodiment of thought, essentially, creativity. And so his stories were really way far out there, and you could do almost anything with him. Yeah, I almost think it would make a better series because of that fact. Oh, absolutely.

10:44
within one plot arc with a series, you could have a new arc each episode. Yeah, no. Anytime there's this big new comic book film announcement, I always tell Barbara, my wife, don't let me die until this comes out. If they ever did an announcement for a Sandman TV show. Oh my gosh, yeah, totally, I just go into like.

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hyper sleep hibernation. Oh, speaking of, and speaking of Johnny Depp, you just made me realize Tim Burton would direct like the most unbelievable, unbelievably good version of Sandman or Guillermo del Toro. Yeah. Or him. I, I don't know. I think Guillermo del Toro would be better because he, he's just as dark as Tim Burton, but he's even more mature, I think.

11:40
Cause like it would be hard to imagine Tim Burton directing like a Blade 2 type thing. But Guillermo can do everything Tim Burton can do and more, I think. That's probably true. Plus Tim Burton would probably try and change it to suit his own story. Like Superman, uh, lips or whatever. Didn't, um, didn't Guillermo Detorlo was he attached to direct Justice League Dark? Is that still in development? Yes. Yeah. With like, uh, Deadman and Constantine and. Yeah, that's another big one. I'm ever since he mentioned that he was writing.

12:10
That's the one I'm looking forward to a lot just to see Constantine on film again done I mean, I don't want to say done right because I actually liked the cannot reuse Constantine film Yes, but you know just more like the comics I guess more like the Hellblazer character. Yeah. Yeah, my wife loves The Constantine movie and the TV show was great too. TV show is really good. Yeah, I was kind of bummed Well, I kind of it kind of got kind of well it

12:39
It kind of suffered from the same issues that kind of like the Daredevil show did, I think, where they were trying to spread out too much story among too many episodes, or too little story among too many episodes. So you kind of wanted to keep getting back to the arc that was introduced in the first episode of Constantine, I think. And they kept going off like on different tangents and...

13:00
and some of the actors annoyed me and stuff, but it was a good show. It was a good show. Is he going to, has he showed up in Legends of Tomorrow yet? Constantine? Yeah. The actor? No, he was in Arrow. Arrow. That's earlier. Yeah. Which was, which was a nice cameo. It's so hard to say goodbye to Matt Reeves, the actor who played Constantine as Constantine because he was spot on perfect. Cause they do adjust this like dark movie. I mean.

13:27
They'll probably go for like some big name actor like Ewan McGregor or something like that, which would be fine. Yeah, he would be good. But, uh, I'm gonna miss... I'm gonna miss that Constantine. Well, hopefully he like joins... ..the...

13:40
The Legends of Tomorrow team, down the line or something. Hopefully. They have that option. They need a magic user on that. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. That'd be a pretty cool way to use them. So yeah, hopefully Justice League Dark comes out. You know what's not coming out this year? Gambit. Gambit. And who called it? We called it. I think you called it. Yeah, I think everyone called it. Yeah, it was definitely not, it was originally scheduled. Fox had a schedule for October 7th, 2016 this year.

14:10
I think in our first, very first episode, as we were going down the slate of movies, we mentioned that it probably was not gonna get released this year because it doesn't, you know, as I haven't started filming. They have a director and a star and a romantic lead, but that's about it. That's right. Yeah. So it was pushed back. They haven't said to where yet, although Fox did announce two untitled Marvel films. One of them being,

14:40
pretty much the same date next year, 2017, October 6th, 2017. And another one on January 12th, 2018. So, do you think either of those will be Gambit? My guess is that, well, okay, so Wolverine 3 is scheduled for March 3rd, 2017, about a year from now. And that's kind of, it seems kind of behind in production. If...

15:09
If I had to guess, I bet you Gambit might take that March 3rd spot. Or if it sticks with... No, but Wolverine's the March 3rd. If Wolverine 3 sticks with March 3rd, then I bet you Gambit's gonna be released on that October 6th, 27th date. As far as the January 12th, 2018, I can only guess Deadpool. That would be my guess. Deadpool 2? Deadpool 2. Or X-Force? Uh... or X-Force. Yeah. I wonder what they're gonna do with that.

15:37
Do you stick with Deadpool, which has done so well? Or do you sort of put him in a team dynamic? I think they'll put him in a team dynamic. He certainly can join the current iteration of X-Men because those actors are so young. And it's still in the past, what is it now? It's in the 1980s. And Deadpool takes place in the current time. So I figure the only way they can have Deadpool meet up with this current generation of actors is to bring...

16:06
them from the past into the present. I didn't even realize that. Like just skip over the 90s or something. Super tricky. Yeah, they really screwed themselves over. They did? Wow. They kind of made their own continuity gap and they're gonna have to pull like a crisis on infinite earths or something. But I mean they brought the original X-Men team from the comics into the future. Yeah, I wonder if they would. X-Factor. They can totally do that.

16:31
Yeah, and maybe that's what they'll call it. They'll bring all those younger actors, they'll just skip over the 90s or something. And did you hear my phone? Yeah. I just never read it. I don't know if you could hear or not. They'll probably skip over the 90s maybe and just bring them right into like 30 years into the future, into the present time. And the 2000s. And the 2000s, yeah. I don't know what they're gonna do. But I mean, going back to the release dates, I bet you.

16:58
They've got to be thinking about working on a Deadpool movie sometime soon, so I bet you it'll take place in January 2018. And I bet you it'll be with the team. They already said that Cable is going to be in it, so... Yeah, yeah. Well, I also remember that the Fantastic Four movie, the sequel to the Fantastic Four reboot, that was originally slated for July 14th.

17:24
2017, so middle of next summer. So I wonder if they'll...

17:32
move Gambit or Wolverine to that date? Probably. There's so many. Sometimes I just can't believe how far in advance they're they're, you know, planning these films. I mean, you look at Marvel's slate, you look at DC's slate, Justice League, and then, you know, Yeah, we're going to be old men by the time Green Lantern comes out. I know. Yeah, they they announced that.

18:00
Green Lantern may not be appearing until Justice League 2 at like the earliest. Like he may not even appear in Justice League 2. It may be because Justice League right now I think is slated, Justice League Part 2 at least is slated for 2019, and the Green Lantern movie was slated for 2020.

18:20
I think that's right. The Green Lantern Corps movie. What am I saying? Did I say Green Lantern Corps? Green Lantern Corps is slated for 2020. Justice League Part 2 for 2019. Which I heard rumors that there was a cameo.

18:37
Green Lantern of Hal Jordan in Batman v Superman So to hear that it's still gonna be you know like almost half a decade Before we actually get to see another film version of him kills me why why are they doing that? Don't do that Yeah, well because really you want to see like the big DC 7 you want to see the Magnus Vincent 7 You know on screen at the same time right which I don't know. I I don't know if we were ever gonna see that in in

19:07
in Batman Reveals Superman just because like they sort of leaked like what the flash's cameo is. Oh they did? Have you heard about that? I haven't heard about that. I don't know if I'll say. Well okay here's a spoiler. Okay so jump ahead like two minutes or two three minutes. Two minutes. You don't want to hear this. It won't take long. Okay. Alright and jump. Okay so his cameo is he appears in Batman's nightmare sequence.

19:37
He appears to warn Batman. So it's sort of like... So Flash can go into dreams? Well, no, I think it's sort of ambiguous as to whether or not it is a dream or if the Flash takes him to the future to show him what the future's gonna be like if Superman takes over or something like that. Why would Superman take over? I don't know. That's a good question. Wait, is, okay, so is this a rumor or is this confirmed, this cameo? This is...

20:06
confirmed. By whom? People who have seen the film. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Yeah, it's so hard to stay off the internet and not read these things.

20:19
So I don't have the willpower. I don't do it anymore. I completely spoiled myself on the first Avengers movie, and I knew everything that was going to happen, including up to like all the good parts. Everybody has such a good reaction to like when the Hulk like said, puny God and everything like that. I already knew that was coming because I read every little thing that I could about the movie. And so I was not surprised. It was like I was watching it for the second time when I watched it the first time. But I mean, it's still enjoyable. The thing with spoilers for me is I mean.

20:47
I'm still able to enjoy the film when everyone cries foul for showing doomsday or or now even with Spider-Man Which we'll get to later. I don't care. I'll still enjoy the film I think there's something to be said for letting the surprises happen when they're meant to happen though yeah, and I purposefully stayed away from all spoilers for the second Avengers movie and

21:12
But even like that flash, it's okay if you're here from when I said to jump ahead, because I'm not going to mention what it is again. But even me telling you about that, does that ruin the film for you? Do you think it will? Yes. No, it won't. I don't know, maybe. I still don't believe it, I don't think. I have trouble... I hope they don't write themselves into a corner, because...

21:40
That kind of scenario seems like you might write yourself into a corner with that. I have faith in Chris Terrio. There was an article recently done by the Wall Street Journal where they interviewed him and the guy...

21:55
He's a great speaker and he really sounds like he knows, he did a ton of research for these films. And he's really trying to, he was saying about like how he wasn't sure he was gonna do Justice League until he went on set and he saw Jesse Eisenberg do a scene with Holly Hunter. And he was like really moved by it, I guess he was saying. Was it a love scene? No, it's just so moved by the love making, you just have to keep writing these characters.

22:25
He said he felt like it felt like this really like indie cool film and he was like I have to keep writing these characters. Which is cool. The things he said in that Wall Street Journal article, which I haven't read the entirety of because it's behind a freaking paywall, which sucks. I've read snippets and I want to read the whole thing, but it seems like a really good article. They interviewed Chris Terrio and Charles Rovin and Ben Affleck.

22:54
some interesting just sort of like inside information about the whole DC Cinematic Universe in general, not just Batman v Superman came out through the article and it was pretty cool. Cool. So if you do have that, if you are a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, Send us that article. Email us that shit because I want to read it. Another movie that's in development that we heard this week is Venom.

23:23
Right. But the big thing about that is that it will be unrelated to the new Spider-Man. I remember when I... because I heard this information first, this news first, and I chatted it to you, or I texted it to you. I just remember your reaction. I forgot what it was. I was just like, bullshit or something. You were like, nooooo! It doesn't make sense why Venom is such... I mean, he's a good character, and while you could, I guess...

23:54
I imagine that if they're making it unrelated to Spider-Man, they're going with the new Flash Thompson agent Venom route. But I mean, even then, do you do Flash Thompson? Because he's related to Spider-Man, they're probably going to use... Because Spider-Man is still in high school. Right, so they're probably going to have Flash Thompson in the new movie. It's kind of ridiculous. It's not going to be related to Spider-Man. Right. So... It probably can't... I mean, how do you explain his look without Spider-Man? Maybe it'll be Eddie Brock or something as the agent.

24:23
Which would be stupid. I think... It can't be related to... It's not related to Spider-Man. I don't think... I think it's gonna be an original character. You know, I think this is gonna be... It can't be an original character. This is gonna be... Fans will write it. This is gonna be Marvel slash Sony's version of Catwoman. Oh, like Catwoman in name only? Right. With Halle Berry. So, but see, when you just have that, then it's just a guy with like an alien symbiote who's just like a suit... He, like, kind of like spawn or something. Which in itself is not...

24:52
a terrible concept, it's an interesting concept, but it's not a venom. You're ruining the potential for the character in future Spider-Man movies, I think.

25:02
Yeah, I mean, I've heard people say, some insiders say that they're speculating the only reason that this isn't happening, which makes sense to me, is because Marvel has probably, you know, said like we're not interested in Venom, like, anytime in the near future.

25:23
So, I mean, Sony's probably like, well, we have this great character in our stable. We might as well do something with it, make money off of it somehow. But it's like... Stupid Sony. They're really stupid. I don't understand. They're really stupid as studios. Like, if you read, did you read any of those leaked emails? I've seen, yeah, I've seen them. I saw so many just bullshit emails. Like, they have no idea what the fuck they're doing. It pisses me off sometimes. I'm hoping this will turn into a case where...

25:51
like, you know, fans bitch about it so much that it ends up just getting pulled. That's what needs to happen. If you're if you're listening to this bitch about it, bitch about it. Be the bitchiest bitchiest bitch on the whole bitchy planet. Be the biggest bitch that you know. Boss bitch. Be the hashtag. Be the head bitch in charge. You we have to complain. We have to. If we want. It makes no sense. You want to save the character, even if they have no immediate plans with him in the future.

26:21
Eventually they will. I mean, now I can't remember. Who's playing Spider-Man? What's his name? Tom Holland. You know, he's a young kid He's probably in it for the long haul. You know, we're gonna see him grow from a spider boy to a spider-man I'm assuming so I mean Save that use that potential save that character For future movies. Well, you know and make it when people have long art already long forgotten

26:50
the Topher Grace Spider-Man 3 version. Yeah. Because there is a good story to tell there. So... How long do you wait? I mean, do you wait Green Lantern long? Or... No, 10 years is fine. Spider-Man 3 came out in 2007, so if they wanted to... Even if they threw Venom in the next movie... Holy cow, I didn't realize it was that far. Yeah, time's good by quick, man. But even next year, I think that's fine. It's a whole decade past. So... yeah.

27:18
Just when did I talk about fan pitching? It was like our second or third episode. Yeah. And it does make a difference. Totally. Yeah. That's how I think that's how we got Apocalypse. It's how we got Apocalypse. It does not look like Iva News. It's how we got Deadpool. It's how we got the movie Deadpool made. So, yeah, go out there. And even to an extent like Batman v Superman, like just, you know, addressing the whole like this mass destruction issue, you know.

27:49
I don't think they could ever be fixed. Unless Superman flies around the world and goes back in time. I don't know. We'll see how it's addressed in Battle for Superman, but I have a heart, I just don't see how he could redeem himself, I don't know. Well, Howard, I mean, okay, so the new Civil War trailer came out, and right from the beginning of the trailer, they talk about the destruction that has been wrought in the past Marvel Cinematic films.

28:18
They could be redeemed, but Manifestale can't. They could be redeemed because they didn't show an apparent lack of regard for human life like Superman did. It was his first battle. Actually, there's been a few interviews. I forget who did the interview. Who did it? With Henry Cavill. He was just talking about that and how this film is sort of a response to that.

28:44
When the guy talks about Superman, it just makes you really appreciate him as the character. He really understands the character and it's interesting to hear his approach. When he was explaining the destruction, he was basically agreeing that he was an amateur, which sort of makes the fight against Batman and Batman v Superman more interesting because he was saying he's an amateur going up against someone very well versed in the art of war. And that's why when people say that Superman...

29:14
should always be able to beat Batman. There's no way Batman should stand a chance. That was sort of his argument saying, you know, Superman is still very much new in this universe. But I mean- Shh, Superman would win. I still... Anyway, I've always been the advocate every time I read the Dark Knight returns or something like that. What are you doing, Superman? Just freaking kill the guy.

29:42
If any, he won't because he's Superman. But I'm always never quite interested in seeing how those two fight because I always think it should go another way. It is interesting to see that they are addressing consequences in film. I mean, not only with BVS, but with the new Civil War trailer. It was hard for the characters to even look at the past. The damage. The damage, which, I mean. What? Wasn't...

30:11
If they can't handle that kind of, those kind of consequences, they couldn't stand it. They couldn't handle the DC universe. DC universe is too much for them. You know what's surprising? How many people do you think died in Zod's attack on Metropolis? It's no less than five million. No. That's not... What? That was a joke.

30:35
If you had to put a number on it, how many people do you think died? Actually, I think they gave a number for at least the Wayne Tower collapse. It was in the thousands. So it was in the thousands? Yeah. Looking at the Civil War trailer, they did give the actual figures for each of those battles. Let's see. Alright, so if you had to guess how many casualties were in the attack on New York, how many would you guess?

31:00
Marvel is so wussy. I mean, they were like, oh, our heroes have to save everyone. There can't be any consequences for this alien invasion. It's because they're good heroes, unlike some people. That's bullcrap. How many people? What's your guess? 50. How many casualties? 50. Higher? 100. Lower? Are you shitting me? 74 people on the attack in New York. New York is a big ass city and there are a ton.

31:26
of the Leviathan monster going through building. Really, Marvel Universe. 74. You know why? Because they evacuated and they got people to save ground. How many people do you think died in the Winter Soldier DC Helicarrier crash? None. 23. All right, and how many people do you think died in the Sokovia in Avengers 2? Like one, and that was Quicksilver. I would have thought it would have been the fewest, because, you know, they...

31:52
They went out of their way to show how many people there were. 177 people. 177 casualties. So overall, it's just a mere fraction of the people that died in Metropolis. I just thought that was kind of funny. So go Marvel heroes. Am I right?

32:11
I'm looking up the current number for what the newspaper and the second Batman v Superman trailer showed the death toll as. Oh. It's got a... There was just one building. Thousands in one building. Yeah, in the thousands. I forget the exact number. Yeah. Overall... I can't remember if it was just one building, or if it was the... I think it was actually the entire ordeal. It would have to be in the thousands. Just... I remember thinking...

32:41
Oh, thank God they've knocked down all the buildings. There's nothing left left to knock down. Then all of a sudden, you know, like they'll come from like, or they go into outer space and I'm like, oh, thank God that they're done knocking down buildings. They'll find space now. And then they found space. And then they crashed into the satellite. And then they brought the satellite down right back onto the exact same city. And the satellite knocked down like another 10 buildings. It was it was just nuts. Anyway. I put thousands of people die when stuff like this happens.

33:10
I mean, look at 9-11. That was what I think, like 3,000? Right, yeah, and I think it's kind of weird that 9-11 had such a huge impact on society, in real life, and in a movie where you have, it's 9-11 times 1,000, and all that results from it is...

33:34
Senate hearing with Superman. It's a congressional hearing. Yeah, but that's not legislation. That's just a hearing. I mean, they need to start somewhere. I guess. I don't know. Hopefully we'll see more along the line. I'm sure we will. In Civil War we're actually seeing...

33:52
legislation and laws being passed to put these guys in check. We're not seeing laws being passed in Batman versus Superman. You don't know it. I don't know that. But I'm going to assume that because that's what I do. What would you think of the trailer of the Civil War trailer? Yeah. It was. It was OK, I think. It was not it was not my favorite trailer. I know people are going.

34:15
just completely nuts over it. It was not better than the last trailer. The first trailer was so good. I think it had to do the music in this trailer. The first time I saw it, I was actually getting kind of bored. But it didn't really show that much new footage. It didn't show that much new footage. The music was kind of somber and it was just like a lot of just really serious sounding dialogue spoken just line by line by line. It was kind of monotone.

34:42
The thing that I was really looking forward to and I knew was coming because Marvel had announced it the day prior that they were going to show Spider-Man at the At the end of the trailer. That's that's what I was looking forward to so By like, you know two-thirds of the way through I'm like, okay, just get to Spider-Man already that's that's really interesting gear your take on the whole trailer because I You know just co-workers and stuff. They they you know come to me and they're like, oh what you think?

35:09
It was so good, it was the greatest thing ever, wasn't it? It was so good, I'm like, yeah, it's Marvel. Don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong. I think it had some amazing wow moments to it, but overall I don't think the trailer was as cohesive as the last one, I think. The last one, which is really the first one, the last one, yeah, the first one really clearly defined the themes and I was excited to see it.

35:39
and it had well moments too. Like at the end when Captain Bucky or taking Iron Man and stuff like that. This one had a few well moments too. This one had more well moments I would say. It had more spectacle. We got to see Ant-Man on one of Hot Guy's arrows. I kind of wish they would have saved that for the movie.

36:05
I didn't want to see that now out of context or anything, but that was an incredible shot in the trailer. I watched that over and over again. It was like fake. I was actually surprised how much from this film looked fake. Well, I'm sure the effects aren't done yet. Yeah. I think that, I mean, the standout for me other than Spider-Man, I guess, is Black Panther. Yeah, you get to see...

36:33
Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa. He's in one of those blasts at the beginning of the trailer. You think his father died right there? Yeah, I think T'Chaka died right there. He just became the new king? Yeah, and I think that's why he's going after the Winter Soldier. See, what confuses me is occasionally you'll see in later shots, like when Iron Man hits Captain America and says, you just started war, there's this figure in a tube in the background, and it looks...

37:01
really similar to the container that Winter Soldier was being held in at the beginning of the trailer. So, and this is just speculation, I don't think this is a spoiler, but it makes me wonder what... Do you think they cloned Bucky and maybe it's a Bucky clone that's causing all this damage and stuff, and that's why they think he did it and why they're going after him and all that stuff? Would they be able to do that? I don't know. I don't know if they would...

37:27
go that science fictiony with that. It's interesting. I've never, I haven't heard that anyone speculate that. Yeah. No one speculated that. That's me speculating that. I think it would make sense for why they would suspect the Winter Soldier's doing all this stuff. I do have to admit, like just watching the trailer, the Winter Soldier's a dick. I don't know if it's just like clever editing. Like when he shoots down war machines, like, oh, that guy's. Well, he had a rifle. It was just kind of, that's the way it was cut. We don't know wherever that energy beam came out.

37:56
where that came from, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it was someone on Team Cap. It almost looks like one of Vision's blasts. Really? I wonder if Scarlet Witch, again, we don't know anything about this movie, this is just- You think she hijacks him? Yeah, I wonder if she mentally manipulates him. She hijacks him into loving her? Because we know that she can read his mind, because she read his mind in Avengers Age of Ultron.

38:25
Back when he had Ultron's mind and she saw that he was gonna cause like damage and destruction and that's when they eventually turned on Ultron So we know that vision has a mind to read so maybe I'm wondering if she manipulates that somehow Because that would definitely turn the tide, you know, there are not a lot of heavy hitters on team cap You can go up against someone like vision. Yeah, I was always wondering that I was like Well, who's team is vision on because that's the thing that's gonna win

38:51
Right, and when you combine that with the Ithmore machine and Iron Man, I think I can see it going that way.

38:58
Um, but yeah, so going to the other big moments in the film, we saw the, um, it looked like the raft, um, in coming out of the water. It's the super, the superhero, supervillain, uh, prison. It looks like, you know, instead of the negative zone, because they don't have the negative zone nor do I think they have the rights to the negative zone. I think that's a fantastic four thing with Fox.

39:24
But so instead of being in the negative zone, it looks like the prison is like deep in the middle of the ocean. And so that was pretty interesting. What is that? Is that in the comic? A prison? In the Civil War series, Mr. Fantastic created a prison in the negative zone to put people who violate the superhero registration act. Okay, yeah. So yeah, that was pretty cool to see.

39:54
You know what else was cool to see in the trailer? Spider-Man. That's really what I was looking forward to, as I just said. And what did you think of him? I wanna get your thoughts before I give my thoughts. I didn't know he was actually gonna be in the trailer. I didn't see the news saying that he was gonna be in there. Oh no? I wasn't like...

40:20
excited when he was there just but I just don't care about Spider-Man. He's sort of he's only had like two movies like good movies out of five movies. I don't know I'm kind of over the character really and I think Iron Man has kind of supplanted him as like the main Marvel uh you know flagship kind of character sort of like what Superman is or or you know maybe Batman to DC. Um I

40:49
Okay, so where my first reactions the costume looked super CG it it did Yeah, I don't know how I feel about the customer. I I feel like Andrew Garfield's so I ran costume in in the second one amazing spider-man 2 is better Just because I had the really big eye Lens lenses. I don't like the small

41:18
spider on his chest. I didn't really care about like the sort of like the updates to the suit or I had like the blue like bands or stripes. Oh on the on the deltoids and on the on the elbows. Yeah I also wasn't a fan of his web shooters the the wrists the bracelets. I keep going on and on about what I how much I did like those I mean those are just nitpicks. I'm glad he's in the movie.

41:48
it's gonna be really cool to actually see, you know, the, I think, you know, it's gonna be Marvel's Spider-Man. Just the voice, that was a perfect voice. Really? I thought so. I mean, it's young, it was kind of like borderline cocky, borderline like unsure, I thought. It's a lot to read into one line, but I thought he nailed it. Really, because I didn't get any hint of cockiness to it. I thought it was almost a Andrew Garfield kind of take, where it was almost kind of like,

42:17
a little shy, maybe, like, here, everyone. Maybe I just kinda got the implication of the cockiness just because like his squint at the end, maybe. Which is so cool. Okay, the one thing I really did like about seeing Spider-Man is the way they interpreted his, they found a way to make his eyes show emotion, grow big and grow smaller. But it wasn't, I thought they were probably gonna go like the Deadpool route.

42:47
where his eyes were essentially just CG, but they incorporated something that makes sense with the story, some kind of tech, because you could hear the whirring sound. Yeah, because if you think about it in Deadpool, that didn't make sense, the way his eyes moved with the mask. No, it worked. It worked maybe because the tone of the movie was, it's not something that you thought about because he's kind of such a cartoony character and breaks the fourth wall.

43:17
You can't really nitpick it like that. I honestly wonder though, like, I mean, in all the Batman films, they never really gave him lenses just because they wanted to be able to see his eyes so that he could emote. But I think if, even if he did the Deadpool route and something like that, it would still work. I don't think people would care if Batman's eyebrows moved. I think they would get over it. But I think you sort of avoid that controversy.

43:46
whether they would care with what they do with Spider-Man. Yeah, I'm a big fan. So here are my thoughts. I was super excited when I first saw the web. I was like, oh, OK. Well, first of all, they nailed the web. I don't think they've ever got the web wrong, though. The look of the web looks pretty cool. Yeah, it's always.

44:08
After I watched it in hindsight, so he does the superhero landing, the pose. He looks really sweet holding Captain America's shield. And I wonder, it's such a cool visual. And I wonder if it would...

44:23
be such a cool visual if he wasn't holding cap shield. I thought the costume looked fantastic. I was like, oh, that's exactly how we should look. It looks like Marvel Spider-Man with a modern updated suit. But then, of course I'm going back and playing that part over and over again. And the more I watched it, the more I kind of...

44:48
Obviously the CGI isn't finished, but I was kind of disappointed because the suit looked like rubber to me. It looked kind of balloon-y. And when you have a character like Spider-Man, whose face is... very bulbous, you know? I think it's a weird choice to give him a rubber suit because it makes it look such like a balloon. It looked flat. It did look a little flat. I think...

45:16
you know, obviously the special effects aren't finished, so it'll look different in the final cut. I did get, I did download, you know, the super, super high res and I maxed it out and I looked, got a really good close look at the suit. And actually to my surprise, what I first thought was rubber and no texture, turns out that it's texture. It's not rubber. There's a lot of texture actually. The red portion of the costume, it's almost like a denim. It looks like, it looked like a red.

45:45
denim type of fabric, but thicker than like what's on your jeans. So that's pretty cool. And in the blue parts, I thought those are flat too, but if you zoom in close enough, it's actually like a Jersey type material, like a thick Jersey, not like with all the holes, like a, like a, like one of those new Reebok hockey jerseys, if you're familiar with those, the ones that Reebok made like a three or four years ago.

46:10
So yeah, it's like a jersey material, a denim material. It's very fabric-y. I think it looks pretty cool. And I hope that texture really stands out during the course of the film, because I think it's that texture that keeps it, you know, really from looking cartoony. Yeah, I don't think I realized how important texture was in a superhero suit until Man of Steel. I think, I mean, I think it started with- Yeah, comparing Superman Returns and the Man of Steel costume. Well, I mean, no, if it's- Because Superman Returns didn't have-

46:40
any on the blue part. It was all a really flat and bland. And like, I think it started with Sam Raimi's version of Spider-Man because I really liked that costume. I liked the texture on it. I didn't understand why they had it. I had read articles that it was for like. And sort of like a dimension to it, it makes it look a little bit more interesting if you had a texture to it. I didn't see that texture in the in the Captain in the Civil War trailer on Spider-Man. I think you'll see in the movie.

47:07
I mean, I don't know if I saw the super high rise version. Like I had to take a really good close look to even see that there was texture even there. I think that's sort of.

47:17
And you know, I thought like the black webbing was really, it wasn't as pronounced as it was in previous films. Like in the Sam Raimi- No, it's thinner. It's a thinner, yeah, thinner line. Yeah, it was in the Sam Raimi version. Like it was almost like upraised. It was, yeah. But in this version, it's not as- It's a little inset almost. Almost kind of similar to how the Andrew Garfield suit was. I think that was inset as well. Although I didn't like-

47:42
If I'm ranking the Spider-Man costumes, I will put the first Amazing Spider-Man movie, that costume that he had there. The texture was cool, it kind of reminded me of a, kind of like basketball, but the design of the Spider-Man outfit was horrendous. I hate it. Every time I went to the store and I saw that stupid Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, with the stupid yellow eyes, I just wanted to break stuff. That was a really weird choice.

48:07
Yeah, I thought you were saying that that was your number one ranked costume. Oh, no, no, it's my... You're starting from the bottom. Yeah, starting from the bottom. Okay. Yeah, I hated that costume. You could ask my wife. I was pissed off every time I saw those stupid yellow eyes. I'm like, Spider-Man does not have yellow eyes. What the hell are you thinking? Well, I love the eyes. Fanboy bitching. Yeah, they changed it for the second one. I think if I have to pick the very best version of the Spider-Man costume in movies, it would be...

48:32
The amazing spider-man 2 yeah, I agree because he had the big eyes It seems like they took a lot of the cues from from Remy's spider-man costume they give it that texture and it was it was very the classic design and the blue was a little bit darker and and Yeah, I think it looks fantastic And this this suit that they have is much less the classic look he He has the external web shooters, which actually kind of like the look of

49:02
but his belt is very much different and his sleeves look a little bit different. They went much wider on the sleeves than they typically do. Well, on the red part on the sleeves, I should say, because Spider-Man always has the inside of his bicep area and inner forearm is always blue and the outside is the red with the webbing. Well, like at the glove area, he does this. Right, and at the glove, it becomes full red. It's full red. So this one...

49:31
They went much wider with the outside red web area. And it kind of reminds me of Captain America's suit, the way they did the sleeve design in the first Avengers movie. He had like, most of his sleeve was blue and they had a small patch of white around the inner bicep area. And it looks like they're doing the same thing with this costume. So that's pretty interesting. I mean, that's not a nitpick. I think it's a good choice just because it's different. And we haven't really seen it before.

50:01
I guess if I have any gripe, it's probably the spider. The symbol, yeah, really small. The belt. The belt, while functional, because it looks like it holds as spare cartridges of webbing, it is black. That was my guess as well. I'm guessing that this suit is- It wasn't black, it was dark blue, wasn't it? Was it dark blue? I thought I saw dark blue. I thought I saw black. But then again, you saw a high-res version. I didn't. It was black. Really? Well, that's disappointing. Yeah, it's black.

50:29
But it's black containers over a red belt. So there's hints of red in between. Yes. Really? Yeah. So I think this suit is the one that's designed by Iron Man. I don't think we'll get a version of the Iron Spider like that was in the Civil War comic where he had kind of like, Yeah. Doctor Octopus spider legs coming out of his jaw. Which I have to say, I liked that suit. Oh. It was a cool suit for, You know a suit I really liked? It was a temporary suit, so it was cool. Yeah.

50:57
I really liked the superior Spider-Man when Doc Ops took over Spider-Man. I loved that suit. That was a fantastic suit. That was a fantastic story, I think. But no, I mean, just going back to the suit in the trailer, yeah, definitely had some tech with it. I'm definitely interested to see how much involvement Tony Stark had with helping Andrew Garfield.

51:25
kid with low on resources who survives by his wits, you know, sort of. So to have him, I don't know, his Marvel debut, you know, come out with some fancy tech suit, I don't know how I'm kind of- I'm sure that's not his first suit. I'm sure the first suit that he shows in the film is probably before Iron Man, you know, gets ahold of him and brings him onto his team. I'm betting his first suit is probably-

51:53
kind of like the concept art that we've seen. I don't know if it's fan art or concept art, but it's kind of like a hoodie with like goggles and stuff. It looks pretty cool. Yeah, I hope that's it because- I totally forgot about that. For some reason I was thinking that, you know, when he says underoos in the trailer, which was funny. It was funny. I was thinking that that was probably gonna be the first time we see Spider-Man in the film, not Peter Parker, but Spider-Man, just because it seemed like some kind of like grand entrance kind of thing. Yeah.

52:22
I don't think so. I wonder how much involved he is. It would be too out of left field if he just kind of appeared.

52:30
And there's not anybody who's not familiar with the character of Spider-Man, so I don't think people would be like, who the heck is this guy? But I mean, if there ever was a person who wasn't familiar with Spider-Man, and they'd be like, what the heck just happened in this movie? Where did this guy come from? Who is he? What's going on? So it wouldn't quite make sense. So I'm pretty positive that's not the first time we see him. I'm pretty sure we will see him in his first, the first incarnation of his homemade costume. And then it'll go from there.

52:59
One last thing about the eyes. I have always been a huge fan of the thick.

53:06
black line around the eyes, like the Alex Ross style of eyes, as opposed to the really Todd McFarland, the huge... I like big eyes, but I like the thick black line around the eyes. I never liked the really pencil thin around the white. They had that in the Sam Raimi films. They had that in... Yeah, the Sam Raimi films, I feel like that's different. Those felt very much...

53:32
You know, they were designed by Oakley. They felt very much like lenses. Yeah. In the Amazing Spider-Man, they felt less like lenses and they had a little bit of texture to them as well. And those are good. But I think these will be my favorite eyes just because I really love the Alex Ross style.

53:49
of the eyes, I think you can express more with them. And I'm glad that they've taken that route because yeah, you'll be able to show emotion with the eyes and with the mask, as opposed to the thin line in which you don't, you can only do so much with the expression. I was kind of, I kind of opposite. I was like the big white eyes.

54:07
But I mean, yeah, it's a good look. As much as I griped on it at the beginning when we first started talking about him, he looks great. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. Yeah, I can't wait. I hope he's in the movie.

54:27
more than just kind of like a cameo. Like he's, it looks like he's at the end of the big fight scene at the airport. And that might be it. I hope that's not the extent of his action. I don't know if he'll actually get into, you know, fisticuffs and or fight anybody else or if, but- I wonder how much they're gonna show him in like marketing material. I at least want to see him like take down some like burglars or something like that, you know? Yeah. Hopefully. I don't know how much the, they haven't shown him-

54:54
anything about him until this trailer. So I don't know how much he'll actually appear in marketing materials. Mike is his own poster. Mike, he'll move. That's right, because they come out with those posters. Yeah, he wasn't part of it. He wasn't a part of it. Those were terrible posters. They were terrible posters. It was just the profile of the face. Yeah. Without any masks on anybody. Yeah, that was interesting. I would have.

55:16
why they chose that direction. Was it just to humanize the whole thing? I would have preferred to have seen their masks. The Black Panther costume is still, I think...

55:27
It's amazing. It's great. It's great. I really like it. Yeah, I think they just came out. Sometimes I think they don't put a whole lot of thought to the marketing materials. They just put something out there, you know, to keep the buzz going. Yeah. I can't. I kind of wondered how much like because, you know, the day that the trailer came out, the movie posters came out a few days before. And it's like, no tickets are on sale. Why are tickets on sale so far in advance for the film?

55:57
They're trying to bite into the Bambi B Superman sales tickets, I think. But whatever. That's just paranoia, man. Those posters aren't helping them sell tickets. I mean, yeah, for sure. They'll probably come out with more posters before the release. Yeah. But you know who had some pretty cool posters? The Daredevil ones. Those Daredevil posters were pretty sweet. We finally got a look at Frank Castle's Punisher Skull on his shirt.

56:22
Finally. And I think the skull looks fantastic. I think it's the best iteration of it. We didn't get to see it fully, but I mean, from what we saw, it looks really, it's big, it's like dark. Yeah. In War Zone, it was kind of subtle and it almost looked like it was printed onto like a mesh that he wore over his Kevlar. And it was very angular. It was very angular. As opposed to like the Thomas Jane one looked very like organic. Thomas Jane was very organic. It looked very spray painted, kind of graffiti style.

56:49
This one has kind of that same style, but it's a good combination of the two. It's not angular, but it's spray painted over this very angular body armor piece. Yeah, it's about a body armor. And it kind of incorporates part of the shape of the body armor. That's what kind of forms the eyes of the skull. Yeah. I think that's badass. I think this is the best looking version of the Punisher to date, especially hands down the poster version where he's holding that minigun.

57:13
with the big bandolier bullets that's going through it. That's straight out of the comics. I was so excited when I saw that. I cannot wait until the day that these characters show up in a Marvel film. Although you know what I want? I just realized this the other day when I was driving on my way to work. The Defenders show. What story arc are they gonna go with that? I have no idea. You know what I want them to do? What? Secret war. The secret war where Nick Fury recruited them to overthrow Latveria.

57:41
Yeah, the Italian artist did that comic. Yeah, Gabriel D'Otto. Yeah. I never read the comic, but I remember seeing the artwork for it. He's a phenomenal painter. I think that's the way to incorporate them into the mainstream Marvel Universe if they're not going to be in the Infinity War. I think if you do a smaller story with them where Nick Fury shows up and he recruits the small band of people that most people don't know of. They're kind of out of the public eye. Who was it? Black Widow Daredevil Punisher. Oh, in the comic? Yeah.

58:09
In the comic it was Wolverine, Spider-Man, Black Widow, Luke Cage, Quake. Who the hell that is? Daisy Johnson, who's in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She's the main character. Oh, nice. That's a nice way to tie in all the different properties. Yeah, I think that would be fast. I've never heard that mentioned anywhere, but I think about these things. I'm like, what a way to work. Well, what are you going to do after Infinity War? Well, my tie into that is if they're not a part of Infinity War, because, you know, the budget or whatever.

58:37
I think that people will be like, well, how come these characters, the Netflix characters aren't in the movie? And it's like, oh, because they're on their own secret mission that no one's supposed to know about them. No one's supposed to know they exist. No one's supposed to know about their mission. I think I think that's the way to do it. You'd have to do it probably with a black widow, though. Right. Yeah, that's fine. I'm kind of like sad. If it doesn't happen now, I'm going to be disappointed because I feel like my idea was better. Anyway. Well, I mean, how do you feel about the rift between the cinematic universe and the television universe?

59:05
Like, are they even tied together anymore? They are tied together, yes. Because they make direct references to things that happen in the films. But with the films, like, I don't know if the films would ever use any of those characters. That's the question. If they, I mean, if they ever did, it would have to be in a big, wide, massive crossover event, which the Infinity War is. Yeah. So if they don't show up there, I don't know how, where they would show up unless they eventually got their own film. If you really want to expand your universe, I mean, and make like the biggest impact you possibly can.

59:35
with spoilers when Thanos will probably, should I say, I think we've said that in a previous podcast. Kills half the universe. If you show someone like Charlie Cox's character sitting next to Alexia, then all of a sudden, he disappears. It's a great way to pay some kind of tribute to people who watch the shows. To have them show up in a film. Only to disappear at all. Yeah, but I think even fans will appreciate that because...

01:00:03
There were a lot of characters that disappeared in the comic book story. Like I remember Hawkeye disappeared and Cersei, I think, was with him. Although nobody knows. Very few people know who that is. And if you do, kudos. I don't know who she is. She's a she's an eternal. I know who the DC Cersei is, but. Oh, yeah, that's right. She's a Wonder Woman bad guy. Yeah. She'll be in the movie. I remember Mary Jane died as part of the Infinity Gauntlet. There were a lot of people that disappeared.

01:00:30
If they go along that lines, I can see that working as well. Is that it for the news? I think that's everything. I mean, there's a lot more, but we can't cover everything in the podcast. I think that's all the big stuff. OK, all right. Well, as we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, we're doing a battle cast for repeating Black Widow against Black Canary. Should be exciting. Yeah. Let's get into it. All right.

01:01:10
Attention! Attention! Can you hear me? We come from the future. We are interrupting this transmission. We are here to save you from shitty audio quality and just really bad planning overall. I don't know. At first you sounded like an alien right there, but you kind of saved it. Alright, so yeah, what we're doing here is we are going back to some of these earlier episodes to redo some of the duels that were initially not very well plotted.

01:01:38
and it was not plotted at all. It was a different format and poor audio quality. So we think you, the listeners, deserve better and also the characters deserve better than what we initially did in the early days of this podcast. So we're gonna go ahead and redo the duel between Black Canary and Black Widow. The way we do this on this podcast is we take the characters and we provide you with the history and powers behind each one. Then we take their stats and run a thousand simulations using those numbers.

01:02:06
and the Monte Carlo method to sort of randomize them along a bell curve that accounts for all the variables that happen in battle. Once we run the simulations, we come back to you guys with a winner. Now we're not going to go ahead and redo the results of this match, but we are going to provide you with more in-depth backstories of the characters as well as go over our speculative scenario on how we think a fight between the two would actually go.

01:02:30
Our stats are based on the official Marvel Power Rankings, from which we extrapolate the DC character stats and to which we also incorporate a few additional stats that we think are important to these matches. Right, right. Let's get started with the histories of the characters. I think you go first with Black Widow. Alrighty, so Black Widow is the perfect balance between superhero and spy, in that she often goes up against larger-than-life villains and world-ending threats, but often does so from the shadows, where she operates most effectively.

01:02:59
I think her appeal mainly lies in her ability to complete any mission, no matter how insurmountable the odds, as well as her crossover potential between fantasy superhero stories and more grounded tales of crime and espionage. Not much is known about Natalia Romanova's life prior to her recruitment to the KGB as a young woman. As a child, she was an orphan raised by a Soviet soldier named Ivan Petrovich, who trained her from an early age in how to fight and defend herself. She was a gifted athlete and scholar and gained recognition.

01:03:28
by the Soviet government for her skill as a dancer in the Russian Ballet. Shortly after World War II, she was drafted alongside 27 other young females into the covert Red Room facility, where she was arduously trained in advanced combat and espionage. They psychologically manipulated the women into absolute obedience and utter callousness for enemies of the state. They also chemically tampered with them through a Soviet version of the Super Soldier Serum that would grant them longer lifespans.

01:03:56
Which is why although Natasha is around 80 years old, she only appears to be in her early 30s. Dang! One of her trainers in the Red Room was James Bucky Barnes, who at that point was brainwashed into the Winter Soldier. They shared a brief relationship before the KGB arranged for her to be married to a Soviet test pilot, Alexei Shostakov. Though soon after, the government stole Alexei away and told Natasha he was dead. In reality, they were preparing him to become the Red Guardian, Russia's version of Captain America.

01:04:26
In the grief over losing her husband, Natasha dove into her KGB espionage missions and became known in intelligence circles as the Black Widow. Her first mission to the United States was to locate and assassinate Anton Vanko, also known as the Crimson Dynamo, an enemy of Iron Man who defected from the USSR. Iron Man foiled her attempt and consistently stopped her schemes against him and Stark Industries. She eventually encountered and recruited Hawkeye in her fight against Tony Stark, and the two fell in love.

01:04:55
weakening her loyalty to her country when Hawkeye switched sides and joined the Avengers superhero team. After the KGB tried to have Natasha gun down for wavering, she also switched sides and fought alongside the Avengers as well. Although she was offered membership to the team, she declined and was instead convinced by Nick Fury to join the international espionage organization known as SHIELD. She was equipped with a new sleek black costume and personalized equipment such as her bracelets.

01:05:23
She helped S.H.I.E.L.D. gain intel on organizations such as Hydra, The Hand, and even her old allies Communist Russia and China. Russia tried to get her back on their side, through the revelation that her husband Alexei was still alive. However, the offer turned out to be a ruse, and they tried to kill her again. She destroyed the Russian intelligence headquarters and returned to the US to join the Avengers and even become the team's leader alongside the Black Knight, after many of the original team disappeared after the Onslaught Saga. When the heroes returned,

01:05:52
Natasha rejoined SHIELD. Later, while on a mission, Natasha came into conflict with a Russian spy named Yelena Belova, who was also trained in the Soviet Red Room. Natasha defeated Yelena, completed her mission, and brought her into SHIELD custody. They swapped faces just like in the movie Face Off, and Natasha went undercover as Yelena to stop a rogue Russian general from restarting the Cold War. Wait, is she the blonde one? Like the short-haired blonde Russian spy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yelena is the short blonde-haired black widow.

01:06:19
A short while later, Natasha was nearly assassinated by the Russian government who decided to eliminate all former Red Room spies. Her investigation into the matter led her back to her old training facility where she learned that she and the 27 other young women were implanted with false memories and chemically manipulated to follow orders through pheromone-activated triggers. She also learned that Nick Fury knew about this and used this control mechanism to get her to join SHIELD all those years ago.

01:06:46
Pheromone Science was being used by a modern cosmetics agency to manipulate women around the world, which Natasha put a stop to by killing the Russian operative behind the conspiracy and the CEO of the cosmetics company. She sided with Iron Man during the Civil War event and subsequently rejoined the Avengers where she's mostly been since. Though she still often spies for S.H.I.E.L.D. and even at one point assumed command of the organization, being the highest ranking agent present after Nick Fury and Maria Hill were both incapacitated.

01:07:14
As far as abilities go, Natasha is among the top tier of martial artists in the Marvel Universe, alongside greats like Cat in America and Daredevil. She is a master in multiple styles of fighting, including Savat, Muay Thai, Judo, Ninjitsu, and Kung Fu. Her biological enhancements grant her peak human physicality in terms of strength, speed, agility, endurance, and durability. She is an experienced spy, tactician, hacker, markswoman, and seductress. Her costume provides resistance to small arms fire,

01:07:43
and allows her to stick to walls via micro suction cups. Her specialized bracelets contain a variety of weapons and gadgets from which she can shoot grapple lines, gas pellets, and her signature weapon, a blast of 30,000 volts of electricity called the Widow's Bite. On her person, she also often carries combat knives, explosives, handguns, and occasionally a sniper rifle. That is a lot of versatility. Yeah, it is. It's like an entire arsenal. Yeah, she's kind of like the female Batman. Seems that way.

01:08:11
That would actually be a really good fight, I think. Black Canary used to carry like all those gadgets, but since then she really hasn't. She's relied more on her fighting skill in general and her superpower, which I will get into. Sweet. Yeah, I don't know too much about Black Canary. So I just always see her as the blonde DC black widow with a sonic voice. I don't know. You have that turned around. No, I don't think so. All right, so Black Canary in pre-New 52 continuity, Dina Laurel Lance.

01:08:37
was the daughter of the Golden Age crime fighter Dina Drake Lance, aka Black Canary. Wait, they have the same first name and last name? Yeah, so Dina Laurel is like a mini, which is like the female version of Junior. Dina Drake Lance, aka Black Canary, was a member of the Justice Society of America. The younger Dina was trained in fighting and acrobatics from a young age by her mother's colleague, Ted Grant, a boxing champion and martial artist who fought crime as the hero Wildcat.

01:09:06
Dinah eventually grew into her mother's fishnet stockings and took up her mantle as the new Black Canary against her mother's wishes. Having been born with a metagene that granted her an ultrasonic scream known as the Canary Cry, Dinah quickly established herself as an adept crime fighter in the streets of Gotham City and was one of the first members of the Justice League of America, where she met her longtime romantic interest Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow, who you can learn more about in our Green Arrow vs Hawkeye episode.

01:09:36
Dyna fought alongside the Justice League for several years, advancing her martial arts skills by training with heroes like Wonder Woman and Batman. Eventually, however, her mother died from cancer caused by her earlier days fighting alien creatures with the Justice Society. And Dyna gave up her crime-fighting career for a time to move to Seattle with Green Arrow and run a flower shop called Sherwood Florist. During her time in Seattle, Dyna was kidnapped and tortured by a drug dealer she had been investigating.

01:10:05
she lost her canary cry, and the ability to have children. Green Arrow killed that man that tortured her while she recovered in the hospital, and he was with her as she went through counseling. Though traumatized by the event, she could nevertheless not stop herself from interfering when innocents were in danger, and she resumed her crime-fighting career, though it wasn't long before her and Oliver parted ways romantically. Eventually, Dinah was contacted by Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl.

01:10:32
but now the wheelchair-bound genius hacker known as Oracle. The two formed a partnership that would become the covert superhero team known as Birds of Prey. Throughout the team's many rosters, Dinah served as the lead field agent, equipped with an array of gadgets, including Canary Cry bombs, that acted as a replacement for her former power until one of their missions brought Dinah to a Lazarus pit, and its healing properties restored her ultrasonic metahuman ability and the ability to have children.

01:11:02
During her time on the team, she also advanced her martial arts skills by training with some of the world's premier assassins and martial artists like Lady Shiva and Cassandra Cain. After training with Lady Shiva, Black Canary quit the Birds of Prey to care for a young girl she adopted from Asia named Sin, who beforehand was being groomed to be Lady Shiva's successor. She soon rejoined the Justice League and was appointed its leader due to her strategic talents.

01:11:32
and eventually the two were married, though they separated after Oliver was found guilty of killing the villain Prometheus for destroying his hometown of Star City. Dyna stepped down from her role in the Justice League and rejoined the Birds of Prey. In post-New 52 continuity, there's only been one Black Canary, Dyna Drake, who was a runaway orphan taken in and raised by an ex-Special Forces agent and martial arts sensei named Desmond Lamar. After he died from brain cancer,

01:12:00
Dina became the new Sensei of his dojo and was forced to defend it from street gangs seeking protection money and ninjas wanting to take down the dojo. Though she failed to save the dojo, her talents were recognized by a man named John Lynch, who recruited her into a covert special ops unit named Team 7, which included Slade Wilson, who would later become Deathstroke, longtime Wonder Woman love interest Steve Trevor, Amanda

01:12:29
and Kurt Lance, whom Dyna would marry in secret. During her recruitment to Team 7, Dyna had been secretly tested and found Medi-Gene positive, so Lynch put her in the most difficult, dangerous missions in an effort to trigger her innate power. And it worked! While on a mission to recover a powerful magical artifact known as Pandora's Box, she saw her husband Kurt get shot, and she unleashed a canary cry equal in power to an array of

01:12:58
to the surprise of Lynch, who initially predicted her power to be akin to a sonic bullet. Her scream destroyed the small island they were working on and seemingly killed her husband. Team 7 disbanded after the incident and Dinah started her own crime-fighting team named Birds of Prey, recruiting members such as Batgirl, Kitana, and Poison Ivy, though the team later disbanded after it was revealed that Dinah was being manipulated behind the scenes by an amnesiac Kurt Lance with ties to Amanda Waller.

01:13:28
Dyna later joined a rock band named Black Canary and fought crime as they toured the country. After which, she met Oliver Queen for the first time, formed a relationship with him, and was recruited to the Justice League by Batman. Powers-wise, Black Canary can use her voice to emit ultrasonic frequencies capable of disorienting foes or shattering steel. She could also use it to launch herself into the air by aiming her voice toward the ground. Additionally- So, like Banshee, can she fly?

01:13:57
It's more of like a glide. Additionally, she's one of the most skilled martial artists on the planet, having mastered multiple forms of martial arts, including Judo, Jujitsu, Taekwondo, Wing Chun, Krav Maga, and Dragon-style Kung Fu, to name a few. She's an agile acrobat and well-trained in weaponry, espionage, and tactical analysis. Oh, that's Black Canary. It's always interesting hearing like both versions of their origin, like both pre-New 52, post-New 52.

01:14:26
All the post-New 52 stuff is eventually gonna go away, right? Or what's gonna happen? Uh, no, I think they're being merged. Like, that's essentially what happened with Superman. Both of his continuities have been merged. Like, literally into one Superman. Oh, okay. Yeah. Personally, I prefer the New 52 origin for Black Canary. It seems like she was more of a spy.

01:14:45
in the new 52 universe with Team 7. Yeah, along with like new characters like Slade Wilson and Amanda Waller. It's like, you know, those are well-known characters in DC for being like spy characters. Yeah, as opposed to just, you know, growing up as the daughter of a crime fighter and then, you know, going into her shoes. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So now that we've gone through their histories, we go ahead and speculate on how we think a fight between the two characters would go. The rules that we set out for the match are that the characters start out about 50 yards apart from each other.

01:15:12
They don't know anything about each other other than that the other one is a threat that needs to be put down. Mm-hmm. We also don't account for the environment. Or at least we like to speculate that this match takes place in an environment that has no bearing on the battle. Because environments can be too variable. Right. And some characters can win in certain environments and not in others. Right, the environment plays too much of a factor on the fight and we don't take stats for it, so we just say.

01:15:41
that it has no bearing on our speculation or the simulations that we run. Right. So let's go ahead and start this match off. 50 yards apart. Who goes first? I'm gonna say Black Widow's gonna go first with this because she's gonna have a sniper rifle. And so right away she's gonna set up from 50 yards out, bring her gun up, and then start firing off shots with her gun. Black Canary used to carry firearms back when she was a covert soldier, but since she started her superhero career, she really doesn't do that anymore. She just, you know, again, relies on her superpower.

01:16:11
But she's no stranger to being shot at. You know, like dodging bullets stuff. Yeah. As to what, you know, whether it's from other covert organizations or from street crime. So she knows how to move in a way where she's not going to be an easy target. Okay. And so she's moving across the terrain. And she also uses her, her Sonic screen pointed downward to sort of like launch herself into the air and kind of like move faster that way. To become like a harder target. Yeah. Okay. So she closes the distance between her and Black Widow. Right. Okay. So they get in close and they start their fight.

01:16:39
Black Widow is still holding the sniper rifle, so she's kind of like fighting with that, almost kind of like a bow staff kind of weapon. Uh huh. Okay, so yeah, they're fighting, but Black Canary manages to grapple the rifle away from Black Widow, and then aim it at her, and fire off a few rounds. Okay, so she takes the gun from her, Black Widow does like a few backflips to dodge these rifle bullets, and fires her widows by at Black Canary to kind of stun her arm to drop the gun. Okay. She drops her gun.

01:17:07
And that's when she just fires off her canary cry. Can't make her drop that. So the canary cry, is it gonna hurt Black Widow's ears or is it gonna hit her like a car or something like that? It's a disorienting cry. So it's like a low frequency canary cry just to incapacitate Black Widow. Just to start off? So they're both kind of stunned from their respective abilities kind of. Black Canary from her widow's bite and Black Widow from the canary cry. So at that point, Black Widow, I think she has more stamina than Black Canary because she's undergone those chemical experiments.

01:17:35
So she shrugs off the canary cry pretty quick and she pulls out a pair of handguns and she starts shooting towards a black canary with the handguns. So black canary fires off another canary cry that warps the medium that the bullets are traveling in so they they go off course. Oh really she can do that. Yeah, she can sonically force bullets off course. So the guns are pretty much useless. Together, you're- I don't know she could do that. She could do a lot of stuff. It's a pretty versatile power. All right, so black widow also has to deal with the oncoming waves that are going toward her as she's shooting the gun toward a black canary.

01:18:05
So Black Widow does a cartwheel out of the range of the Canary Cry, and at which point she closes the distance again with a flying kick, and like wraps her legs around Black Canary. Yes, she does. And like spins around and like throws her through the air onto the ground. OK, well, Black Canary just kind of rolls out of it and presses her own martial arts attack. So they're going to get it hand to hand again. OK, I can see like Black Widow is trying to stun her again with her widow's bite, but Black Canary already being aware of its existence, keeps like moving her arm and stuff and.

01:18:32
And I could also see Black Canary trying to use her Canary Cry at close range, but Black Widow keeps attacking her from behind and grabs her in a chokehold from behind so that she can't use her voice. Okay, well that's when Black Canary just aims her Canary Cry downward and launches them both straight into the air. Oh yikes. How are they gonna get out of that? Well Black Canary can definitely just fire another blast down to land softly. So as they're in the air, Black Canary lifts Black Widow over her and throws her down to the ground.

01:19:00
Oh man. Alright, so Black Widow is falling toward the ground and I assume that Black Canary is kind of like slowly gliding down toward the ground with her Canary Cry. Right. At the very last second she like shoots a grapple line that wraps around Black Canary's, I guess, ankle or something like that. Uh huh. And like lowers herself gently to the ground so that, you know, she doesn't splatter. But with that cable line attached to her leg, Black Widow yanks Black Canary out of the sky and slams her into the ground. Okay, but not like hard because, you know, she just has her Canary Cry to lessen the impact. Right. Okay.

01:19:29
So they're both on the ground now except now Black Widow has Black Canary by a grapple line. And so with Black Canary somewhat restricted like that, Black Widow shoots a tear gas pellet into her general vicinity. Does she need a gun to do that or does it fire from her bracelet? It fires from her bracelets. Okay. Yeah. So now Black Canary is on the ground, wrapped with a cable around her ankle, and surrounded by tear gas. Okay, well again, Black Canary's had special forces training so I'm sure she's been in that kind of training situation before where she's had to endure tear gas.

01:19:59
She kind of like holds her breath and like unwraps her leg from the cable and then she leaps out of the gas In a like a handspring front flip flying kick towards Black Widow real quick to close the gap All right, so they're back to hand-to-hand combat at this point Yeah, but Black Widow pulls out like one of her knives and straight-up stabs Black Canary this time. No Black Canary isn't the most well armored of superheroes. The knife thing is hard. I wouldn't say she gets stabbed Maybe she gets like sliced a little bit. Okay

01:20:28
But yeah, I mean that just comes with the territory of hand-to-hand fighting with someone with a knife. So Black Canary is sliced a little bit, it kind of like slows her down just a little bit, at which point Black Widow straps a explosive sticky bomb to her back, then- What?! Kicks off of her, does a few black hand springs as the explosive goes off, and kills Black Canary. Okay, but she's wearing a leather jacket. Okay. So, as she hears the beeping like about to go off, she takes off the leather jacket and throws it towards Black Widow. Hehehehe. And to top it off-

01:20:57
She unleashes like a freight train of a sonic scream towards Black Widow. Okay, so Black Widow is gonna suffer the bomb explosion and the canary cry? Right. Except that I say that Black Canary didn't get the jacket off in time and it blows up before she could actually throw it. Agree to disagree. Alright, let's go ahead and take it to the stats. So we're gonna go ahead and go back to the future and leave you guys with the original results of this match so you can find out who exactly got out of this situation alive. Awesome. See you guys.

01:21:26
Anyway, let's take it to the computer show. Let's run the figures. All right. The fuck was there a duck in the simulation runner? I don't know how the machine works, man. Sometimes ducks run there. So the results are in. And looking at the risk solver add-on, it's going to be really close. I know that.

01:21:53
It is very close. It's 52.3, which makes this the closest battle that we've had yet. How is there ever going to be a closer battle than that after a thousand simulations? Well, here's the thing. When I was putting in the numbers, I ran an average of all the stats, and they came out to the same number, actually. I'm not surprised. So, I mean, random numbers are generated between a standard deviation of that stat number. But if you just average the base of what we put in...

01:22:19
the average came out the same. So essentially, they're as equally powerful. So if we were to run the simulation again, it's possible that Black Canary would come out on top. Wait, so Black Widow came out on top. Black Widow did win. By 52%. Yeah, she won 52.3% of the 1,000 simulations. So we're taking that as the truth. What the heck? As gospel. That is what happened, and that's what we're sticking to. So in your face.

01:22:48
Whatever, that's not, that is not in your face. I'm not running the simulations again. That was, it's pretty much a coin toss. So close, it is a coin toss. Wow, will we ever have a match that close again? Probably, but we'll see. It would have to be like Hyperion and Superman or something, I don't know. Just people that are clones of each other. Yeah, clones. I mean, they're sort of clones. I thought her canary kite would have put her out on top, but it's probably the lethality of Black Widow. It's not the lethality, it's the...

01:23:18
Let me look at the stats again. Yeah, Black Canary certainly ranked higher in projectile damage, but Black Widow's Edge was in, she was slightly smarter and had a greater accuracy at long range. Oh, that's, when I say accuracy, I mean marksmanship. Because Black Canary doesn't use guns. She always uses Oracle, and Black Widow is kind of her own Oracle. She's like a master hacker and she's super smart. She led the Avengers, she's good at tactics, things like that.

01:23:46
Black Canary, while she's had a leadership role before, I don't think it's quite to the same extent. No, no. So there you have it. That was a good match, holy cow. That was pretty good. So if you're keeping tabs at home, Marvel is up two one. That's like a split down the middle win. So it was like 1.5 versus 1.5. Technically this one goes in the Marvel books and we'll see what happens the next time. So next podcast. Next podcast in two weeks.

01:24:13
we are going to be reviewing Batman v Superman. Are you nervous? No, I'm so excited. I just, uh, I'm nervous for you. You know, I can't believe it's only two weeks away. It's coming up soon. It's going to be a really long two weeks. Kick off to the DC Extended Universe. It'll be exciting. Yeah. Well, we'll join us for that. Definitely tune in on the next podcast. Looking forward to it. Yeah, totally. All right. Without further ado, up, up and away. True believers.