Gleek vs Hit-Monkey

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you

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Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in stat-based battle simulations. I'm Johnny DC. And I'm his twin brother, Marvelous Joe. And welcome to the 2021 holiday animal battle, that sounds weird, charity episode. Yeah, every year around Giving Tuesday, which is today, Jonathan and I like to host a charity duel between two of the more whimsical Marvel and DC characters.

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This episode, we're going to find out who would win in a fight between Gleek and Hitmonkey. They're both monkey characters for their respective universes, and we think it'll be pretty funny considering, you know, monkeys are just hilarious. Yeah, especially little tiny monkeys like these guys. You know what's not hilarious though? COVID-19. Which I have right now recovering from. So if it sounds like I'm out of breath, it's because I am. And if it sounds echoey, it's because I'm in my quarantine space recording.

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So apologies for the audio this time. Yeah, I mean, I told Jonathan that we could skip this week, but he was willing to push forward and keep our record of never missing an episode of this podcast going on six years now. Yeah, I mean, I don't feel terrible. I do encourage anyone who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated. I think that's really helped me. So yeah, I didn't want to miss this episode, especially this one, because this one's gonna be fun. Yeah, I can't wait to get into it before we go into the histories and backstories of Gleek and Hitmonkey.

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we're gonna go over the comic book movie news from the past week, of which there was just one news item, and that's the DC League of Super Pets official trailer. So we'll talk about that, then get into the duel. As always, we list our segment times and our episode description, so feel free to check out the show notes if you wanna skip ahead to a particular topic. And guys, if you listened to one of our charity duel episodes before, you know that every year we give to a different organization. For the past couple of years, we've given to Pop Culture Classroom, but this year, in light of COVID, we're switching it up a bit.

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What we're going to do is raise money for the HealthWell Foundation, which is a leading nonprofit dedicated to improving access to care for America's underinsured. If you're listening to us from outside of the US, you probably don't get this, but we have a shitty healthcare system and some people can't afford to pay for the healthcare services they receive, especially during these trying times. So with this organization, when health insurance is not enough, they fill the gap by assisting with copays, premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses.

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through their crowd-sourced disease-related funds. What this podcast is gonna do is set up a Facebook fundraiser. So if you guys aren't following us on Facebook, go ahead and search for Dynamic Duel DC versus Marvel, and you can find the fundraiser there. Go ahead and donate any amount between today, giving Tuesday, and Christmas Day. And at the end of December, Jonathan and I will pick two random donors to award a free Dynamic Duel card game to. Jonathan and I have made a couple of card games.

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that are Marvel and DC based, and we wanna give it to two of you donors. So if you feel so inclined to this Giving Tuesday, again, visit this podcast's Facebook page and donate to the HealthWell Foundation using that pinned post. And because we want you guys so badly to donate to this organization, we are currently making all of our archived episodes available to the listening public. Instead of subscribing to our show, we want you guys to instead put that money toward our fundraiser.

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And it doesn't matter what amount you donate, anything helps. But during this giving season, we appreciate any amount of giving. So those of you who are currently subscribed to this show on Spotify, I don't believe you'll get charged for the month of December. And those who are currently subscribed to us on Patreon, you'll still get access to all of your standard bonus perks, including the bonus episodes, access to our Discord server, blooper reels, and more. I just wanna give a quick special shout out to one of our patrons, Dustin Balcom, when he found out that I had COVID.

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His family sent my family a couple of pizzas, which was just awesome. My family and I are super grateful for the act of generosity. We really appreciate it, and I just wanted to give you a shout out and say thank you very much. But with that out of the way, quick to the No Prize. A No Prize is an award Marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans. Our version, the dynamic duel No Prize, is a digital award we post on social media that Jonathan personally draws for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week.

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Last week's question was in regards to the Spider-Man No Way Home trailer that we got a few weeks ago. We asked you guys who has been your favorite live action Spider-Man villain and why. We got a few great answers for this. Let's go ahead and run down our honorable mentions as well as the no prize winner. Our first honorable mention goes to Jacob Bell who said, Hey guys, this is Jacob Bell. My favorite live action Spider-Man villain has got to be the vulture. I think Michael Keaton.

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plays a great villain and I honestly think that the Vulture and his motivations are probably the best just because, I mean, you can really almost get on board with what he's doing and also the twist with him being Liz's dad was just incredible and so I love Michael Keaton as the Vulture, that's my favorite. And yeah, I would have to agree. I'd say the Vulture is probably one of the MCU's like top three villains.

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Yeah, while most Spider-Man villains are seeking power, the vulture in Spider-Man Homecoming was really motivated by survival and providing for his family. Of course, it got a little bit out of hand and he needed to be stopped, but it was really easy to identify with the character. And Michael Keaton just gave great performance. Yeah, the way they adapted his costume from the comics too, like, mwah, chef's kiss, so well done. Oh yeah, movie version of the vulture was a huge improvement over the comic book version. Although we'll be getting to a vulture duel before long on this podcast.

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Our next honorable mention goes to Benjamin Alves, who said, Hi guys, I think Alfred Molina as Doc Ock was the best Spider-Man villain. He's such a great actor. I love all his movies. And I love the part where he was with Otme on the building. So menacing. It was awesome. I think, and it's just, there's no other word to describe it. Bye.

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Great answer, Benjamin. Yeah, Doctor Octopus is definitely one of Spider-Man's best villains to ever appear in live action. We all know that Spider-Man 2 is one of the best Spider-Man movies ever made, mainly because of how great Doc Ock was in that film. Alfred Molina just knocked it out of the park. He also created a Spider-Man villain that we could sympathize with. And there's no discounting the design of those tentacles, right? Those were badass looking. Oh, man. Yeah, those were really well designed. It's no surprise that Doctor Octopus is many people's favorite Spider-Man villain.

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Yeah, and one of the reasons why he's playing such a big role in Spider-Man No Way Home allegedly. Our final honorable mention goes to Marquis High, who said, Hello gentlemen, so Marquis High here. Just give me a call. I'd say for the villain, must off-top go with Michael Keaton. Always just a great actor, even if he doesn't really know too much about the characters that he's acting. But besides that, I definitely would have to go with Doc Ock. He's always just...

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had more of a human aspect, very relatable. And the fact that he turns into a potential hero is something big. Marquis has a great radio voice, doesn't he? Yeah, he does. Yeah, but great answer. This is kind of a combination of the previous two where he mentioned both Vulture and Doctor Octopus. I think those two guys are widely regarded among the Spider-Man fan community as the best villains to appear in these movies. Hopefully.

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We get to see them team up in the upcoming Spider-Man No Way Home movie, but we don't know yet what kind of role Vulture will play in that film. We want to give a quick shout out to Evan Tompke for visiting our website to record an answer, but the winner of this week's No Prize is Miggy Mathengian who said, Hey guys, this is Miggy and my favorite live action Spider-Man villain is Green Goblin. In my opinion, it's best when the villain makes it personal. And he definitely did that when he attacked his aunt and girlfriend.

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He also endangered a lot of innocent lives, like when he attacked the Macy's Day Parade and dropped those kids off the Washington Bridge and attacked the Daily Bugle. And he continued to ruin Peter's life by deteriorating his relationship with Harry even after his death. More so than any other Spider-Man villain, I would say that Green Goblin has a knack for making it personal, not just in the movies, but also the comics. Oh yeah, he makes Peter Parker's life a living hell. I really like the way they exemplified that in these movies.

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Like Miggy said, even affecting Peter Parker after his death. When you have a villain that not only attacks the hero's grandma, but also drops a bunch of kids in a cable car off a bridge, you know you're dealing with some hardcore shit. Yeah, he's like borderline Joker, right? Yeah, if like the Joker were way better and on Marvel. Just like that, for sure. He's a villain that's so good they included him twice in both Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

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But I'm really looking forward to Willem Dafoe's return as the character in the upcoming No Way Home film. So congrats again to Mickey, Matt, and Keon for winning this week's No Prize. If you, the listener, want a shot at winning your own No Prize, stay tuned to later on this episode when we'll be asking another Question of the Week. And now that that's done, onto the news!

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Okay, so last week we got our first official trailer of the DC League of Super Pets film. And I gotta say it's different from what I thought it was going to be. I was hoping it was going to be based on the children's book series DC Super Pets that is pretty faithful to the comic books. This movie however is not. Yeah, it seems like it's not about a super team of pets of the main DC superheroes. It looks like it's a film about these shelter animals that happen to get powers.

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So it seems like this isn't like Ace the Bat Hound or the terrific What's It, they're entirely original characters. Well, I mean, Kevin Hart's character is named Ace in the movie, who's not supposed to have any powers, looks like he has invulnerability. They have Chip the Squirrel, but he doesn't have Green Lantern powers, he has electricity powers apparently. The Turtle is the only one that makes sense, because the Turtle's apparently named Merton, you know, Merton McSnurdle, the Turtle. You know, we talked about him in our What's It versus Spider-Man episode,

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Still one of my favorite episodes. I love that guy. But in the movie he's called Shell on Wheels. Yeah, I guess the pig whose name is PB for pot belly. It doesn't even look like it's Wonder Woman's pet. Just gives the characters like random names. I don't think those will stick. Do you think by the end of this movie each of these shelter pets will be adopted by the Justice League? I hope so, honestly. You know, I think the turtle should be adopted by the Flash. You know, the pig by Wonder Woman.

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Chip becomes a Green Lantern. And we get to see Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Cyborg, Batman in this trailer, which was a huge surprise. They have different costumes. Not really in love with the designs here, but that's fine. I imagine we won't be seeing too much of them. I like the designs of the DC characters. You know, they're very like Incredibles-esque. It was cool to hear John Krasinski as Superman. Yeah, I think he sounds pretty good as the character. What did you think of the rocks depiction of Krypto? It was fine, it was fine.

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As was Kevin Hart as Ace and Vanessa Bayer as PB. Diego Luna, I guess, does the voice for Chip, which this trailer revealed. Mark Maron, apparently, is the voice of Lex Luthor in this film. Oh, interesting. Yeah. The same guy that was in the Joker movie and who also like was dissing comic book films? Yes. Okay. He just likes DC. What can I say? But there's a few more cast members that we still don't know what role they're going to play, like Kate McKinnon, Keanu Reeves, Ben Schwartz and Jamila Jamil.

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Maybe there's gonna be like other members of the Justice League we don't know yet. Maybe one of them is gonna be the cat, Streaky, who has a very different superpower in this movie. That was weird. Yeah, the tail like shoots out rockets and flames and stuff. I was like, what? It can't be Streaky. I'm not sure I'm loving like the random power assignment that a lot of these guys have. Me neither. But you know, it's a movie for kids. It's supposed to be as whimsical as possible. I think that also explains the jokes, which I'm also not in love with.

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A lot of them didn't really land for me. I think felt like the timing was off. Like when Crypto was talking to that other dog about like the federation of exes, the dog was like, why it's taking my owner so long? I was like, okay. Yeah, that was horrible delivery. Yeah. It was a little bit too slow. Also the joke about like, they should call me Iron Man. Nah. Dude, what is up with DC animation's obsession with Iron Man?

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Like you get the Iron Man reference in this movie and in Lego Batman you had the reference with Batman's Batcave password. Iron Man sucks, what can I say? They're just jealous as hell. They're just jealous. There was also another Marvel reference in this when Krypto was basically saying with great power comes great responsibility. Wait, what? He says when one has an abundance of power, they have a certain duty to use that power. Exactly. Exactly. Same thing. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I don't know.

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I can't quite say I'm looking forward to this movie just yet. Well, I'm guessing this is going to be an origin story where we see these characters evolve into the team you know and love, just maybe with different powers. Maybe. Maybe I need another trailer or two, which we'll probably get. The movie doesn't come out until May of next year, so we have some time. But this all brings us to our question of the week.

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Who is your favorite DC or Marvel animal hero and why? There's a lot of them to choose from, both on DC and Marvel, but let us know which one you like the most. Yeah, record your answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner, which will prompt you to leave us a voicemail. Your message could be up to 30 seconds long, and don't forget to leave your name in case we include you on the podcast. We'll pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic duel no prize that we'll post to social media.

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Be sure to answer before December 4th. But I think that does it for all the news for this episode, so let's go ahead and hear from our sponsor, HBO Max. Bruce Wayne may appear to be a wealthy playboy, but beneath his facade his true identity is that of the Batman, waging an endless war against crime. Join the Caped Crusader in Batman, the Audio Adventures, the first scripted audio original featuring Batman and his villainous rogues gallery in a world premiere story.

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Thanks to HBO Max for sponsoring this episode. But now let's get into the main event of this episode where we find out who would win in a fight between the Wonder Twins' pet monkey, Gleek, and Deadpool's rival, Pit Monkey.

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Okay, Gleek versus Hitmonkey. This matchup was actually a fairly last minute decision. You could tell because this year we didn't commission an artist to do artwork for this episode because it was so last minute. Yeah, but we were inspired by one of our patrons on our Discord who asked us who would be good in a matchup against Hitmonkey since that character now has his own television show currently on Hulu, which is actually pretty good. I've been watching it. Yeah, they both have their own cartoons. It's pretty awesome.

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And Jonathan and I have been trying to get Gleek in a matchup for the longest time. We thought he might be good in a fight against Spider Ham, but eventually we went with the terrific What's It for that matchup. I think when you have an alien monkey who can stretch his tail infinitely long against a monkey who's really good with guns, you have a pretty solid matchup there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea who's going to come out on top. I just know it's going to be fun. Again, this is our charity matchup as we do every year. So if you feel inclined to give this holiday season,

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Again, visit us on Facebook and donate to the HealthWell Foundation, which is a nonprofit dedicated to helping America pay their health bills. So let's get into it. If you've never listened to one of our duel episodes before, the way we determine a winner between these two characters is by running 1000 Monte Carlo simulations using their statistics. Now a Monte Carlo simulation is a probabilistic model used to determine outcomes through random sampling. In our case, it randomizes statistics along a normal distribution, which is a bell curve.

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as a way to simulate the many variables that can occur during battle. The stat parameters we use are based on the official Marvel power grid, and we use that criteria to extrapolate the DC character's stats. We've included some additional stat categories of our own, such as range, damage potential, versatility, and perception, in order to create a more complete and robust simulation. Running these 1000 simulations gives us a percentage of wins for each character, and we declare the one with the higher percentage to be the ultimate victor.

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considering that they're more likely to win any given battle. No character ever wins 100% of the time. Comics have shown that there's always a way for Batman to defeat Superman. We feel our method falls in line with the precedents that have been established in the comic book stories. And we use this method because it was the least subjective, most unbiased way to determine who would win. Of course, we are both heavily biased toward our respective allegiances, so instead of debating these matches forever, we just let the math decide for us.

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So there's no fan votes here and no relying on just feats. Before we run these simulations though, we like to break down each character's histories and abilities before improvising a scenario on how we imagine one of the 1,000 simulations we run would play out beat for beat. And I think it's my turn to go first with the Marvel character, so let me go ahead and tell you all about the comic book backstory of Hitmonkey. So much is steeped in legend surrounding the origins of the assassin known as Hitmonkey.

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The tale regarding this mysterious killer of killers is said to begin in the snowy mountains of Japan, where an unnamed assassin fled after being double-crossed in a failed political coup. In the freezing wilderness, the lost and injured man was discovered by a group of Japanese macaques. The primates took the assassin to their hot springs and nursed him back to health with their herbal remedies. Though the macaques were willing to accept the man into their monkey clan,

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One skeptical monkey didn't trust the outsider and watched him closely. This monkey observed as the assassin healed from his wounds and prepared for revenge against those who betrayed him by honing his skills in the snowy mountains. The monkey watched and learned as the man demonstrated his various lethal maneuvers in hand-to-hand and weapons combat. And he watched how easy killing was for the outsider. The monkey tried to warn his clan that harboring the assassin was only going to bring more violence their way.

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When the clan rejected this notion, the monkey accidentally injured one of his fellow primates during his effort to convince them of the oncoming danger. This monkey was cast out of his clan and into the wilderness on his own. Several days into his exile, he noticed a group of soldiers headed up the mountains toward his former home, and he rushed back to the hot springs to warn his fellow primates. The monkey was too late, however, as he arrived only in time to witness the soldiers gun down the assassin and all of his macaque family.

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The Monkey picked up the weapons of the Assassin and used the skills he learned from observing him to shoot and kill the soldiers there that murdered his clan. At that moment, he became Hitmonkey. The spirit of the Outsider Assassin appeared before Hitmonkey and told him how the soldiers were sent by a politician named Hideki Hayashi, who in turn worked for General Kato. The spirit told Hitmonkey that by killing these men, he would achieve vengeance not only for his dead Monkey brethren, but also for the Assassin himself.

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Hitmonkey traveled to Tokyo and, under the assassin's guidance, stole a truck and crashed it into Hayashi's limo. Barely clinging to life, the politician was sent to the hospital where he was smothered by the assassin Bullseye, who was hired by General Kato to cover his tracks. The following day, Hitmonkey snuck into General Kato's daughter's wedding and stole the suit from the child ring bearer, pretending to be part of the ceremony to get in close. He managed to decapitate General Kato despite Bullseye's efforts to stop

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causing Bullseye to kill the rest of Kato's men to avoid the humiliation of being bested by a primate. Bullseye found and hurled a knife at Hitmonkey, though the blade was intercepted by the ring bearer child, who annoyingly stepped in the way. From then on, Hitmonkey, having achieved his own vengeance, vowed to seek revenge for those innocents whose blood had been spilled, and he became a killer of killers.

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He fell into urban legend, believed only by the very few who had ever seen him in action, and disregarded as a joke by everyone else. Spider-Man was one such non-believer who refused to buy Deadpool's story about the legendary hit monkey who was targeting him. Spider-Man then witnessed the merciless primate bust in, and like a furry blur, filled Deadpool full of lead. What? To get back at the monkey, Deadpool stole Spider-Man's spare costume,

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and pretended that Spider-Man was a victim of collateral damage from Hitmonkey's attack. A funeral was held for the wall-crawler, which Hitmonkey attended out of remorse, believing he had accidentally killed Spidey. As the primate approached the casket to pay his respects, Deadpool burst out and tried to gun down the monkey, but Spider-Man swung in and stopped their fight, leading to Hitmonkey's escape and to the long-lasting rivalry between the two murderers.

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Eventually, however, Deadpool and Hitmonkey talked it out, and Hitmonkey turned over a new leaf, joining SHIELD's howling commando subdivision that dealt with supernatural threats. Hitmonkey later joined Deadpool and Domino's mercenary team called the Mercs for Money, though the primate's mission was to monitor the team on behalf of SHIELD. At one point, Deadpool inadvertently assisted the evil organization HYDRA during its takeover of the United States, and he put a 20 million dollar bounty on his own head as a means of

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Punishment. Hitmonkey was brought in alongside other heroes to help put a stop to the resulting chaos caused by villains out to collect Deadpool's head. And that's Hitmonkey's backstory so far. Now, he has no powers to speak of, save for his simian physiology that makes him stronger and faster than your average human. He has opposable thumbs on his hands and feet, allowing him to wield weapons such as guns and swords with extreme dexterity no matter which limb he uses.

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This ability, combined with his mastery of martial arts and marksmanship skills, make him an unpredictable and dangerous killer. He carries two handguns and often uses a samurai sword in battle. Occasionally, Hitmonkey has been known to commune with the spirit of the deceased assassin that instructed him in how to kill. And that's Hitmonkey. So he's like a small version of John Wick. Exactly, that is a fantastic way to put it. He's a small version of John Wick if John Wick couldn't speak any human language.

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and also had thumbs on his feet, even though Hitmonkey would annihilate John Wick because he's just that little bit better. This actually makes me like really interested in the cartoon. I haven't started watching it yet, but that sounded like a lot of fun. Not going to lie. And honestly, now that I have covid, like I have all day to watch it. You know, I don't know any Marvel fans that have caught covid. It's only DC fans that I know of. What? Yeah. Wow. Interesting, huh? DC must stand for like Delta covid. I'm going to go cough in your face.

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I think that's illegal, isn't it? Yeah. Okay, nevermind. Go ahead, I'll sue your ass. Well, you know what else I've been watching on TV this past week? Super Friends as research for this episode. And I gotta say, I love those classic Justice League cartoons. They're great. How big is Gleek's role in the Super Friends cartoon? It depends on episode to episode. They're all kind of like anthological in a way. But he is one of the recurring characters. He's in almost like every episode. Since we began doing these charity animal duels.

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I would say all of the DC characters have been pretty obscure. Gleek is probably the least obscure character I've done since he was a regular on the Super Friends cartoon, but he also has, I would say, the least amount of incontinuity backstory for a character I've ever written about. Like all in all, he's had around 20 issues of canonical appearances, with the vast majority of them being minor cameos. Gleek and his Wonder Twin owners first appeared in 1977.

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during the Hanna-Barbera animated series, The All-New Super Friends Hour, which was a spin-off of 1973's Super Friends. The Super Friends have had a total of six spin-off series that lasted until 1986, and of all the series, Gleek and his Wonder Twin owners appeared regularly in five of them. The All-New Super Friends Hour series also notably introduced a more diverse cast of new characters in Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado.

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As I mentioned in our Wonder Twins vs Cloak and Dagger episode, the Wonder Twins and Gleek supplanted the powerless characters of Wendy, Marvin, and their Wonder Dog from the original Super Friends series as the young audience surrogates on the show, as Gleek and the twins were able to take a more active part in the stories since they had superpowers. Gleek, like the Wonder Twins Xan and Jaina, was from the planet Exor, where, according to the Super Friends show, many monkeys existed just like him.

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In fact, in one episode, they all visited Earth in spaceships in an attempt to take over the planet because X-Or doesn't have bananas. They had been monitoring Gleek for some time and sought from him information on how to destroy the Super Friends. Bombarded by a banana brain blaster, Gleek was forced to reveal the team's secrets and nearly succeeded in destroying Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman with a disintegrator ray, but was stopped by Jan and Xana,

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after they broke free from the clutches of a giant Gleek robot. Jaina immediately transformed into an electric eel and zapped Gleek free from his mind control. Once the Water Twins and Gleek rescued the Justice League, the Exorian Monkeys were returned to their ships and escorted back to the planet Exor. The episode ended, as most Super France episodes did, with a gag from Gleek, who this time confused a banana blaster for an edible banana, zapping himself silly.

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In the non-canonical Super Friends comic, it was revealed that members of Gleek's species are known as Elastomunks. Gleek was first owned by an Exorian clown named Illic, who trained him as part of a traveling intergalactic circus from Exor. Illic was a good man who helped educate the Wonder Twins when they were brought on as part of the show. Gleek took a liking to the twins and escaped the circus with them when they found out they weren't getting paid for their performances. After their escape, the twins discovered on a nearby planet

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that the Superman villain, Grax, was going to attack Earth, and Gleek traveled with the twins to Earth in order to warn the Super Friends, and they stayed on the planet in order to learn to use their powers as superheroes. After the Super Friends cartoon and comic ended, the Wonder Twins would enter mainstream DC continuity in the mid-90s in the title, Extreme Justice. But Gleek, unfortunately, did not appear with them. He did appear, however,

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in the line of children's books based on the DC superpets where he helped Beppo the super monkey defeat Gorilla Grodd when the circus came to Metropolis. It wasn't until 2019 that Gleek made his official DC comics debut in a 12 issue Wonder Twins miniseries. In this post-Flashpoint continuity it was established that Xan and Jaina weren't circus performers but the grandchildren of Exor's equivalent of Hitler. Their father sent them to earth with Superman,

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so that they wouldn't have to suffer the shame and sense of their grandfather. While on Earth, Zand bought Gleek through a magazine ad that some circus performers put together in order to save Gleek from his abusive circus environment. Gleek's circus was run by a supervillain known as the Ringmaster, who would force Gleek to ride a tiny bicycle through flaming hoops and other hazards. Because of the kindness Zand showed Gleek, he single-handedly rescued the twins when they were captured by the League of Annoyance.

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a small-time cadre of villains organized by Lex Luthor to cultivate sporadic chaos around Washington, D.C. Later, when the League of Annoyance tried to get a Phantom Zone projector from the Wonder Twins, their recent recruit, Ringmaster, succeeded in ring-tossing the twins into another trap, only for Gleek to emerge from Zan's backpack and start punching out his former abusive owner, Ringmaster. Gleek was tased by cell phone Sylvia during the pummeling.

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but the distraction worked, and the Wonder Twins were able to send the bad guys to the Phantom Zone.

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Most recently, Gleek and the twins were seen helping Young Justice bring down rogue scientists within Star Labs, and became official members of that team by its conclusion. Powers-wise, Gleek has the physiology of an Exorian Elastomonk, granting him his blue-furred appearance and prehensile tail that he's able to extend to any length, with a tensile strength that allows him to lift up to a quarter ton. He's also smarter than your average Earth Monkey, capable of understanding human speech,

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average human, often to humorous effect. Well, same thing with Hitmonkey. While he can understand humans, he's not as smart as them. But Gleek is also clever by nature, capable of hiding empty buckets and bananas and drawing them out from seemingly nowhere at will. His ass? We'll never know, but probably. Not gonna lie. He has that infinitely stretchable tail, but also probably an infinite stretchable colon, is my guess. And that's Gleek.

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This will be pretty good, it kind of reminds me of like Mr. Fantastic vs. The Punisher or something like that. But now that we got these monkeys' histories and abilities out of the way, let's speculate on how one of the 1000 simulated matches will go. The winner is determined by simulations, not the speculation, but it's fun to imagine how this fight could play out. Now we don't set any rules for this match other than the characters don't know anything about each other going in. Except that the other character is a threat that needs to be put down.

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We say that they start off about 50 meters apart in an environment that has no bearing on the match itself because we don't take stats for the environment. Plus, certain characters have advantages in some environments over others, and we want these characters to win on their own merit. So let's get into it. Gleek and Hitmonkey meet on the battlefield. Who goes first? Okay, I'm gonna say Hitmonkey goes first because he's kind of like this little ball of fury. Okay? So he's gonna start off by reaching into his suit jacket, and with one hand, he's gonna pull out his cool shades.

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and put him on, and with the other hand, he's gonna pull out a fucking Glock 19. And he's gonna point it right at Gleek, like badass sideways gangster style, and he's just gonna start unloading rounds. Okay, once Gleek sees the gun, he's gonna be like, wow! He's gonna use his tail to like spring away as Hitmonkey is shooting. And while Hitmonkey is like focusing on hitting center mass as Gleek is just like bouncing around like a pinball, Gleek is going to stretch out his tail and just whip the gun right out of Hitmonkey's hand.

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Well that pisses Hitmonkey off, you know, he's gonna screech in frustration and then he's gonna charge Gleek on all fours with his monkey speed and he's gonna leap through the air and he's gonna do this flying kick that, well, I guess, is it a kick or is it a punch? Right, yeah, with the monkey it's probably always a punch But it's gonna connect and hit Gleek right in his dome piece Okay, okay so Gleek probably drops to the floor and he's gonna retract his tail but when he gets up to his feet he's gonna put his arms up like a boxer and start

32:52
hopping back and forth like, wah-wah-wah-wah, wah-

33:18
I'm trying to add insult to injury. That's gonna infuriate Hitmonkey. So he's gonna screech again, and he's gonna reach toward his back and ensheath the samurai sword that he has. What? And he's gonna spin it around, and he's gonna swing it at Gleek and just slice off his tail. How does Hitmonkey have a samurai sword small enough for his body? You know, it's one of those short swords. Oh, like the, what is it called, the Shoto? Yeah, sure. One of the, okay. Okay, that's dumb. So Gleek, he's gonna yell.

33:47
and run away.

33:48
And I'm sure Hitmonkey is gonna be chasing after him, just swinging that sword around wildly. But Gleek, he's gonna conjure a banana, all right? And he's gonna peel it, eat the banana, then throw the peel behind him, causing Hitmonkey to slip and drop his sword, which Gleek grabs with this still functional stretchy tail, even though it's been cut, he can still stretch it. And he's gonna start swinging that around like crazy. So Gleek is still able to stretch his tail, even though it's been cut. Yeah, essentially you did nothing by cutting it.

34:18
Gleek is, you know, trying to swipe at Hitmonkey with his katana sword, but Hitmonkey is agile, you know, he dodges these slashes and he runs around Gleek, and by running around him, Hitmonkey causes Gleek to wrap himself up with his own tail and drop the sword. Then with Gleek all wrapped up, Hitmonkey's just gonna punch him right in his face.

34:39
And that's gonna send Gleek flying back, but Hitmonkey's gonna grab his tail and just yo-yo him back. What? Causing him to come winding back up and then get hit again. And Hitmonkey just keeps doing this. That's a pretty good move. You know, Gleek, he's probably dizzy and seeing stars, but he's just gonna shake it off. Since Hitmonkey is holding onto his tail, Gleek is just gonna loop his tail around Hitmonkey's wrist, and he's just gonna lift him into the air and start slamming him into the ground repeatedly, like, bam bam bam bam bam!

35:07
Well, after getting slammed a few times, I'm gonna say that Hitmonkey reaches into his suit with his feet. And he's gonna pull out another Glock. And then before Gleek can slam him again, he shoots that blue monkey right through one of his eyes. Dang! Why?

35:24
Jeez. No, I mean, that would kill Gleek. I'm gonna say that once Gleek sees the gun, he's gonna pull out his trusty metal pail and put it over his head like a helmet, blocking the bullet.

35:40
That pale, he uses that to carry Xan, right? Yeah, whenever he's like in a water form. Okay, so this metal pale blocks the bullet from killing him, but Gleek is gonna be rattled by this, you know? And therefore he's gonna let go of Hitmonkey with his tail. So Hitmonkey falls to the ground, probably drops his gun, but when Gleek removes his metal pale helmet, he's gonna see like multiple Hitmonkeys like vibrating around just because he was so rattled. And in addition to seeing multiple Hitmonkeys, he also sees multiple

36:10
brown gooey masses flying at his face. What? Yeah, that's right. Hitmonkey just threw some feces, and it blinds Gleek, hits him right in the eye. I had a feeling this was gonna turn into a shit show. Ha ha ha ha. And when Gleek wipes the monkey poo away from his face, he sees nothing. Hitmonkey has vanished from the battlefield. He's gone? Yeah, like Batman. He's stealthy like that. Okay.

36:35
Gleeky, you know, he's probably gonna be clutching his pale helmet and just like looking around for Hitmonkey. I don't know. Well, Hitmonkey suddenly appears behind Gleek with like this loud screech. He unleashes a flurry of shit missiles that just pelt Gleek to death like being stoned. Dude, why is this monkey so constipated that his shit is so hard and sharp that it would kill someone? He had a lot of dairy. Okay.

37:04
But you said he screeches, so Gleek is gonna hear that screech, and he's just gonna instantly begin twirling his tail like a fan blade, just generating a gust that's strong enough to redirect these turd torpedoes back at Hitmonkey, killing him instead. Hitmonkey's not gonna go down by his own poo, alright? He just did. Wha-

37:28
Can we just end it here then? So either Gleek dies from getting pelted to death from Hitmonkey's poo, or Gleek is able to redirect the turds back at Hitmonkey who dies. I'm fine with that. I honestly have no idea how you could top poo flinging in a monkey battle. Alright, so let's go ahead and run these characters through the Monte-Caller simulations and come back with a winner.

37:55
In what other Marvel vs DC matchup can you do a poof linking battle? Besides this one. Yeah, I don't know. I guess technically you could do it for any battle, but why would you? That's true. These guys were fairly comparable. I thought that Hitmonkey was absolutely going to have an advantage due to the fact that he has fucking guns, you know, and he could shoot at Gleek from a long range. But surprisingly,

38:21
Gleek has an even longer range than Hitmonkey with his stretchable tail. Right, right. Also, Gleek is stronger than Hitmonkey because of that same tail. Yeah, yeah, the tail is his strongest weapon. It's his only weapon, and it's no joke. And it's so versatile too, like able to form a spring to like a helicopter twirl. Yeah, that's right. But where Gleek couldn't touch Hitmonkey at all was in his martial arts ability. Hitmonkey is vastly superior in his hand combat.

38:50
in every other category, these monkeys were comparable. Considering that, who do you think won this match? I think it's Gleek. I think his tail is way more special than, you know, a couple of guns and maybe a knife. Though I have to say, Instagram does not agree with me. 73% of our Instagram followers who voted, voted in favor of Hitmonkey, which I'm not surprised. Like, how many of them actually watched the Super Friends cartoon? How many of them actually know about Gleek? I'm gonna assume all of them.

39:20
and that they are very smart and well versed. Maybe. Hitmonkey does have a show that is like on Hulu right now. So I'm sure his popularity factor played a part in why he won this poll. Well, he won the poll, did he win the matches? I have the results here. Let's find out. The winner of the duel between Gleek and Hitmonkey is Hitmonkey. Damn it! But it was fairly close. This was a commendable fight. Hitmonkey won.

39:48
534 matches out of the 1000, whereas Gleek won 466, so that's 53.4% to 46.6. Fairly close, but Hitmonkey is a straight up killer, and just way more badass than Gleek. I can't even argue with that, honestly. Like Gleek is anything but badass. He's silly though, he's cute and silly. I am surprised by the results though, I thought Gleek was gonna just spank that monkey's red ass tail.

40:18
Oh, we didn't do that in speculation then. We should have done that. Well, Hitmonkey is just on top of the world now. Not only did he win this duel against Gleek, he of course has that show on Hulu, which has been doing really well. It has like a 90 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 80 percent critic score. I'm like five episodes in. It's pretty good. We're going to review that show in our next episode. So look forward to that. And when it comes to Gleek, I would actually recommend checking out Adult Swim's

40:46
parody of the wonder twins? Yeah, they did these wonder twins shorts based off of like old quote unquote lost footage of their adventures. There's like five of them. They're hilarious. You could find them on YouTube. But that does it for this duel. Let us know what you guys thought about the Gleek versus Hitmonkey results by writing to us at dynamicduelpodcast at gmail.com or by visiting us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. You can find links to all of our accounts by checking out our show notes or visiting our website dynamicduel.com.

41:16
And also don't forget, since this is our charity duel episode, to check out our Facebook specifically in order to donate to the Healthwell Foundation. Again, it doesn't matter how much you donate. We were not asking for large amounts. Right. We will randomly pick two donors when this fundraiser ends on Christmas day and we'll be gifting them a dynamic duel Marvel vs. DC card game that we created. And remember for the duration of this fundraiser,

41:43
all of our archived episodes, every episode that we've done at this podcast will be available again to the listening public. So if you haven't checked out our back episodes, go ahead and do that. But that does it for this episode. We want to give a big thanks to our executive producers, John Spies, Ken Johnson, Jace Crump, John Staroski, Zachary Hepburn, John Bechinina, Mitchell Phipps, Dustin Belcombe, Salvador Hernandez Contreras Jr., and Levi Yeaton for helping make this podcast possible. We'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away.

42:12
True believers?