Obsidian vs Photon

 hey guys it’s joseph at the top of the episode jonathan and i just want to say thank you to everyone who’s reached out to us since the last episode with your condolences well wishes and positive vibes uh we are incredibly thankful to have you as listeners just as we were incredibly lucky to have michael as a brother your outpouring of support in this time it means a lot and helps us you know find the motivation to keep working on the show we hope you guys find these episodes every week as enjoyable and at times cathartic as jonathan and i do when we record together and i hope wherever michael is uh he’s still able to listen to the show and this was for you man on with the show [Music] [Music] hi and welcome to the 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 marvelous joe and i’m his twin brother johnny dc and in this episode we are going to find out who would win in a fight between the dark themed dc character obsidian and the light energy themed marvel character photon photon being monic rambeau who is currently featured in the one division television series yeah monic rambeau has gone by a few names in the comics i think right now she’s actually going by the name of spectrum but she’s also gone by photon captain marvel pulsar we think she’s going to go back to photon just because of the captain marvel movie you know it was her mother’s call sign as a pilot but yeah it’s the character from one division yeah basically we’re going with photon because we’re trying to preempt the eventual name switch back to photon that they’re likely going to be doing within the marvel comic books i’ve already seen that sort of transition already kind of take place that being said if she still ends up going by the name spectrum then just know that it’s the same person as photon we’re gonna learn all about the characters histories and abilities before running simulations using each character’s statistics to find out who would actually win in a match-up so look forward to that later on this episode before that we’re going to go over the comic book movie news from the past week we have a few huge news items here including the news that a superman reboot is being worked on that will be produced by jj abrams and written by tanheesy coats we’ve also gotten the official title for the upcoming spider-man film that’s coming out later this year in december and we learned that the dc character blue beetle has gotten a director for an upcoming live-action film yeah huge news week it’s pretty cool how often do you get like superman and spider-man news in the same week but we’ll get to that later as always our segment times are in our episode description so feel free to jump around to whatever part of the episode you want to listen to remember guys that this podcast now has a card game out called dynamic duel war and you can get it by joining us on patreon on any one of our tiers you can find information on how to get the game and our lowest tier is just two dollars a month if you want to have fun simulating battles between marvel and dc check us out on patreon.com dynamic duel and just a quick reminder guys to please subscribe to our show if you haven’t already and if you have please help us grow our podcast audience by leaving a quick rating or review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on or by sharing us with your fellow dc and marvel fans also if you’re listening to us and you’re not following us on instagram or maybe facebook or twitter please do so we’re particularly proud of our instagram you know it’s kind of the best way for podcasts and businesses to kind of brand themselves yeah we post the dopa stories the dopest content follow us on instagram but with that out of the way quick to the no prize a no prize is an award that marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans our version the dynamic duel no prize is a digital award that we post on social media that i personally draw for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week last week’s question was coming after the news that danny elfman would be writing the score for the upcoming doctor strange multiverse of madness sequel and we asked you guys what marvel or dc film has had your favorite musical score and why yeah we got a number of answers but we want to share our favorite honorable mentions before announcing this week’s no prize winner our first honorable mention goes to calvin mims who gave the answer of hey guys i think the best musical score is from the guardians of the galaxy specifically black tears it’s really emotional and it grows and i think the score itself gets overshadowed by the soundtrack because the soundtrack is also really good but i think it’s one of the best scores in all of marvel the guardians of the galaxy soundtrack written by tyler bates is definitely one of the mcu’s better musical scores not a whole lot of them stand out but in this particular case i think it did a great job of hitting all the right emotional beats all the right heroic beats it was just so moving and i totally agree with calvin that the soundtrack overshadowed the score because the soundtrack was like a best seller for a while wasn’t it yeah the awesome mix volume one yeah yeah there’s some great songs on there james gunn just killed it with his music choices oh yeah yeah for both the score and the soundtrack our next honorable mention goes to isaiah bethune who said hey twins it’s isaiah bethune uh i’d have to say that my favorite score for a marvel or dc movie is probably the original spider-man sam raimi movie i just love the original spider-man theme and we talked about how great the score was when we reviewed that film a couple episodes ago danny elfman totally killed it invoking like themes of like a spider crawling and swinging and stuff like that it’s a beautiful score and i think it’s definitely one of the more recognizable pieces to come out of the superhero film genre yeah it definitely gives me a lot of hope for elfman’s work with the upcoming doctor strange in the multiverse of madness movie and our final honorable mention goes to kevin odlon who said hi this is kevin uh kevin o’dillon or ocavo instagram and my favorite uh music uh musical score is definitely black panther because it was a marriage of uh african contemporary music and uh hip-hop music which was definitely amazing so yeah definitely black panther and it goes without saying that the black panther score was an amazing piece of work written by ludwig gorinson it was so beautiful in the way that it incorporated traditional african elements transposed them over a more modern moving score i really like this answer yeah from like t’challa’s theme to like the waterfall theme i think that’s the one i remember the most to even you know like the theme when he was talking with his father in like the spirit realm every piece was just like really well done and yeah and mentioning the soundtrack of guardians of the galaxy for calvin’s answer the soundtrack for the black panther movie i think was even better mainly written and produced by kendrick lamar damn that was a good soundtrack i still listen to it to this day every single song on there is so [ __ ] good great answer kevin that does it for the honorable mentions we want to give a huge thank you to nate shane habeson jacob bell and al gustafson thank you guys so much for your answers and for your kind messages as well but the winner of this week’s no prize goes to zachary hepburn who said hey guys zack hepburn here and i have to say my favorite superhero uh score uh is the superman main theme from the original 1978 superman film i still use it as my ringtone to this day and that’s crazy because so do i and i think a lot of people do it’s just really iconic it is like the most inspiring and moving superhero theme in existence i think and not just that song but the entire score by john williams for that film from krypton to the romantic love theme it all fits the character to a t and was just really moving john williams is one of the best masters of his craft so it’s no surprise that this one gets the win yeah the fact that people are still using it and is still part of the popular culture 40 years later is just a testament to how great the score is but the black panther scorer won an academy award did this one i mean it was nominated it didn’t win which is [ __ ] i thought so great answer zachary hepburn you win this week’s no prize if you the listener want a shot at winning gyro 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 on to the news [Music] okay so late last week and what is probably like the biggest most surprising news that i’ve encountered in a long while warner brothers has decided to reboot superman with jj abrams producing and tanikisi coats writing now it should have been such a huge surprise because if you’ve kind of been following what’s going on behind the scenes with henry cavill and warner brothers and the whole like multiverse angle that they’re really starting to push right now yeah and the deals with aj abrams regarding warner brothers films and hbo max yeah last year warner brothers brokered a half billion dollar deal with jj abrams bad robot studio in part to kind of help establish and solidify a new dc universe sort of like kevin feige that was the rumor at least we knew that jj abrams was going to be working on some justice league dark shows and movies including constantine and it was always kind of speculated that he would be working on superman he has a history with a character he wrote a screenplay for a brett ratner film or a mcg film i think it was like years and years ago but now it’s official we know that he’s written like an overarching treatment for several films and it looks like he’s brian on tennehc coats to write the film teneki coates of course is a pulitzer prize winning journalist who’s also written a few comics for marvel including black panther and captain america yeah he’s the current writer on captain america now there had been rumors for a while that jj abrams was kind of mulling over whether or not he wanted to bring back henry cavill for his superman film and it looks like that’s not going to happen according to the hollywood reporter jj abrams and the studio are looking to cast a person of color as superman and this rumor i think is a big part of this news now within the dc comic books there have been several black supermen correct yeah yeah in the earth 2 comics and the new 52 reboot there was val zod and during the final crisis pre-flash point superman joined a team of various superman from across the multiverse one of which was named kelvin ellis sort of like kell okay and he was the superman that became president right yeah that’s right yeah so who knows if they’re going to go with calvin ellis or valzod or maybe someone entirely new or if it’ll be a black clark kent that’s also a possibility now the idea that they’re doing this i mean dc is it shows that they’re definitely going all in on this multiverse like they did with the joker is that what you want to see well i mean the joker is probably you know a really fair comparison like no one asked for a joker origin film when i heard about it i hated the idea but that movie ended up turning out really great i can’t quite say the same for films like birds of prey no one asked for a harley quinn birds of prey film and that movie was not that great so i gotta say when i first heard this news i was literally banging my head against the wall it’s not what i wanted i i don’t think it’s what most dc fans wanted i think there’s a lot of fans of henry cavill out there that would have loved to have seen him be in a man of steel sequel that said tenney he see coats is a really good writer and jj abrams is really good at reboots based on the reaction of the super girl news i don’t think there’s gonna be a lot of people excited that they will be getting a version of superman that they’re not used to that said we still don’t know if jj abrams will be shepherding in like maybe an earth to continuity and maybe like the regular snyder vs continuity will still be ongoing and we could still see henry cavill superman in films like shazam or black adam it’s still too early to tell but i always think that people are always going to clamor for like the traditional version of the character myself included i kind of had to frame this uh news in a way that made sense to me as a marvel fan and the analogy that i came up with was after the time the first captain america movie came out captain america the first avenger that was a divisive film you know you had fans that really liked it you had fans that didn’t appreciate the style same thing with man of steel but marvel studios instead of bawking get this divisiveness they gave us the winter soldier which was a fantastic sequel with steve rogers warner brothers is a very very indecisive studio and they had the potential here to give us a man of steel sequel that was as good as the winter soldier by going down this route it’s essentially the equivalent of marvel instead choosing to make a film about isaiah bradley who was the black captain america from the comics now isaiah bradley’s story in the comics is amazing it’s incredible it would make a fantastic movie but i’m glad that we got the winter soldier sequel i’m glad that marvel didn’t give up on the franchise despite the divisiveness over the captain america the first avenger film yeah and you know and now that they’ve made a really good captain america film several good captain america films like if they announced a new captain america film with isaiah bradley that would be cool yeah but the important thing is that they nailed the character first they gave us a product that everyone loved they haven’t done that yet with henry cavill superman and i really feel like they’re abandoning him which kind of hurts my heart cause the guy is cool albeit difficult to work with allegedly in some circles using that analogy i said i could understand as a marvel fan how dc fans could be upset by this news it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a bad movie it just means that you’re not necessarily going to get what you want and ultimately that’s what’s most disappointing and ultimately i think that’s what’s going to hurt the studio i don’t get what warner brothers is doing not building their shared universe like what marvel has because there’s so much potential there and fans know that but for some reason wb executives don’t honestly parterby thinks they would have announced this news at this point if the superman and lois show didn’t get such great reaction i saw the pilot it was really good if people wanted their classic superman you know they could go to that show i’ll be you know it’s a little bit different because superman has two teenage sons but tyler huckling plays such a good superman that i think a lot of fans will love this news was actually broken by a small website called shadow and act and in that article you know they have quotes from both tanehisi coats and jj abrams talking about how you know they’re gonna take superman in a new direction that we haven’t seen before so i guess you know as fans of the character we’re all just kind of along for the ride let’s see how this goes i’m hesitant to poo poo on it too much because again things like the joker were really good and i keep kind of just going to that you know to comfort myself in a way because when good filmmakers work on projects even though they’re different the films can still turn out really good so we’ll see i will definitely miss henry cavill you know as the main actor in the role and i hope he sticks around i’m really looking forward to seeing him in zack snyder’s justice league and maybe the responses and reactions to that will kind of you know steer future decisions by warner brothers and at t at t seems to like really like zack snyder but who knows and this brings us to our question of the week do you want jj abrams dc films to be a part of zack snyder’s established dc eu or do you want a complete reboot with new versions of the characters it’s a big question we may have to up the time limit from 20 seconds to 30 seconds which i think i’ll do regardless with our site’s voicemail function yeah i’m definitely looking forward to everyone’s answers please 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 again the message can be up to 30 seconds 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 at dynamic duel no prize that will post to social media be sure to answer before march 6th in other news the spider-man movie has announced its new official title after being jerked around for a bit uh with the cast regarding supposedly official titles like spider-man phone home spider-man home slice and spider-man home wrecker which i thought were pretty funny we learned that the real actual title of the movie is spider-man no way home now you and i have kind of gone on and on about the usage of the word home in these titles it never really made sense to us starting back with homecoming right that being said no way home is probably the most interesting out of all of them the implication is that spider-man can’t go home right but is that referring to tom hall and spider-man or is it perhaps referencing andrew garfield and toby maguire’s versions of the character who may be trapped in tom holland’s dimension from the multiverse now of course tom holland has recently been denying the rumors that toby maguire and andrew garfield will be in the movie but we all know that’s [ __ ] because they have contracts right the other spider-man are definitely going to be in the movie i i think sometimes they just tell tom holland to deny everything since he’s so good at spoiling everything exactly but yeah we know that also jamie foxx and alfred molina and a ton of other characters from the previous films will also be in the movie including charlie cox’s matt murdock so tom holland is definitely giving us the run around just look at what he did with phone home a big part of this marketing campaign is going to be misdirection because they don’t want to give away spoilers because i think you know there’s going to be a lot happening here i think we mentioned before that we were both skeptical that this movie was still going to make its december release date but it’s looking more and more like that actually is the case well i mean that all depends on whether or not like black widow comes out on time right maybe not because this is a sony film right we’ll see we’ll see what happens in our last bit of news it was announced that angel manuel soto is going to direct a film about blue beetle the jaime reyes version of the character not the ted cord version so it’s going to be dc comics’s first latino superhero lead film which is kind of cool yeah i love this now we’ve reported before that a blue beetle movie was in the works i feel like that was years ago and nothing really came of it there was no development until now announcing the director is a huge step in the pre-production process yeah it kind of seems like with this news this will be like the first dc film we get after all of the films that were presented at the dc fandom and i’m sure we’ll learn more about this film during this year’s dc fandom i’m not too familiar with the director angel manuel soto he’s directed a lot of shorts none of which i’ve seen but it kind of seems like dc is kind of going the black panther route with this film you know trying to bring in as many lan filmmakers to work on a project focusing on a latin superhero as it were which makes sense because the latin community is i think the number one movie going demographic in the us and i know dc is really popular in south america so i’m not surprised that they’re going this route yeah i’m waiting for marvel to do something like that the only latin character in the mcu is louise that’s sure by michael pena you know there’s a horrible misrepresentation there we have a lot of white heroes a lot of black heroes we’re getting a few asian characters although i guess the mcu is getting another latin superhero in america chavez with the upcoming doctor strange movie that’s true yep there you go finally we’re getting represented yeah seeing as how joseph and i are both land this is important to us it’s really cool to see this yeah now we can finally cosplay as someone other than louise even though i don’t really look anything like [Laughter] we’ll be sure to keep you guys updated on any other announcements regarding this film hopefully it doesn’t become like a new god situation with uh ava duvernay where the director is announced and then just nothing happens with the project but i think that does it for all the news for this episode so let’s go ahead and get into our main event where we find out who’d win in a fight between the jsa character obsidian and the avengers character [Music] photon okay obsidian versus photon again photon is monic rambeau the character who’s currently in the one division series she has also gone by the name spectrum pulsar and captain marvel within the comics but for the purposes of this duel we’re gonna call her photon because one that’s my favorite name of hers that she’s ever had and i thought it was [ __ ] how she lost it in the comics and two it does seem like both mcu and marvel comics are steering her back toward that code name and in order to keep the title of this episode as relevant for as long as possible we’re going with photon but it’s monic rambeau yeah and it’s an acting name considering you know it deals with light and she’s going up against obsidian who is a character all about darkness now there were a number of people we could actually have pi against monic rambeau you know like the rey or or even like jade obsidian’s sister but we decided to go with obsidian because we felt his power levels and power set was comparable to photons without being identical to it with the final episode of one division coming out next week i think it’ll be exciting for people to learn the comic book backstory of monic rambeau’s character 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 that’s used to determine outcomes through random sampling in our case it randomizes statistics along a normal distribution which is a bell curve 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 given that they’re more likely to win any given battle no character ever wins  comics have shown that there’s always a way for batman to defeat superman we feel our method falls in line with the presidents 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 were both heavily biased toward our respective allegiances and instead of debating these matches forever we just let the math decide for us so there’s no fan votes here and no relying on just feats before we run the simulations though we like to break down each character’s histories and abilities before improvising a scenario on how we imagine one of the 1000 simulations we run would play out beat for beat yeah i think it’s my turn to give my character’s backstory first so let me tell you all about obsidian now todd rice was conceived to the golden age green lantern ellen scott and the villainous thorn during their brief marriage you can of course learn more about ellen scott in our green lantern vs iceman episode todd and his twin sister jennifer were put up for adoption at birth and raised in separate adoptive families unaware of the other’s existence todd unfortunately had an abusive upbringing and while attempting to locate his real parents in his late teens he met his twin sister jennifer and his powers manifested together the two developed suspicions as to their possible true parentage and tried to join the justice society of america which you can learn more about in our jsa versus fantastic four episode ellen’s gone he’s kind of a shitty father huh well alan scott was not aware of their birth he didn’t know he had kids as thorn had left him before learning that she was pregnant okay the twin siblings were denied admission into the jsa along with several other young super-powered individuels many of them the children and proteges of existing jsa members todd jennifer and the others who were rejected decided to form their own superhero team infinity inc and todd took on the name obsidian based on his powers of darkness jennifer became the hero jade as she had inherited her parents powers of green light energy and chlorokinesis after infinity inc fought and defeated a mind-controlled jsa it was confirmed that ellen scott and thorne were indeed the parents of obsidian and jade during the crisis on infinite earth’s event where the universe destroying anti-monitor and his shadow demons threatened to destroy the entire multiverse obsidian proved exceptionally useful during that time as the shadow demons could not hurt him in his shadow form not long after the crisis the infinity inc’s founder starman was killed and the team disbanded obsidian and fellow former infinity inc member nukelon both joined the justice league of america during which time obsidian confessed to having romantic feelings for new clone nukelon who would later go by the name adam smasher did not reciprocate those feelings however due to the rejection his past abuse and the inheritance of mental illness from his mother among other things obsidian fell into a suicidal depression though due to the nature of his powers he was unable to injure himself on top of that the energies that fueled obsidian’s powers came from an extra dimensional realm known as the shadow lands a psychic plane from which nightmares come which allowed him to see the darkness within others unwillingly yikes after several of his justice league teammates died the league was disbanded now despite years of therapy the disillusion of the league was the final straw for obsidian sanity and he began plotting revenge against his stepfather and ellen scott for his abuse his powers and ultimately his life obsidian first attacked his stepfather james rice by absorbing all of the shadows within his hometown of milwaukee obsidian used those shadows to help spread his darkness over the entire world eliminating all light upon it alan scott and the rest of the jsa were able to stop obsidian thanks in part to the sacrifice of james rice defeated obsidian retreated to the shadow lands where he stayed for some time obsidian later re-emerged from the shadows partnered with the evil sorcerer mordrew and vengeful spirit eclipso to destroy the jsa during which time it was revealed that obsidian’s descent into madness and evil was largely due to the manipulations of a former jsa villain the shadow sorcerer ian karkel who influenced obsidian from the shadow lands in an attempt to gain power and become its ruler obsidian’s darkness powers in fact were the result of his father ellen scott being bombarded with dark energies during a battle between the jsa and karkal long before obsidian was born obsidian was able to eventually conquer karkal and in the process cured his mental imbalance coming to terms with his homosexuality obsidian retired from superheroics passing the years with his boyfriend a district attorney named damon matthews it wasn’t until the death of his sister jade during the infinite crisis storyline the obsidian returned to superheroics and rejoined the jsa serving as a guard of the team’s mansion headquarters known as the brownstone eventually a traitor within the team’s ranks the all-american kid later revealed to be the villain kid carnival caused obsidian to degenerate into an egg of pure darkness that acted as a fuel source for a machine that depowered all of the superpowered beings on the planet wait an egg yeah like an egg shape of just darkness okay i was thinking like an actual egg no with the help of a time traveling to mr terrific who you can learn more about in our mr terrific vs forge episode obsidian was able to prevent kid carnival from accomplishing his plan during the conclusion of the blackest night event jade was resurrected by the white light of life while on the green lantern planet base of owa she inadvertently returned to earth with the star heart the mystic energy source of ellen scott’s green lantern power which possessed alan and obsidian while corrupting all other magic users on earth jade attempted to free her brother from the star heart’s possession but the two ended up merging into one being serving as the ultimate host for the star heart and becoming too powerful for the combined might of the jsa and jla to defeat with the help of the white light of life however jade was able to separate herself from obsidian and heal her father who was able to then absorb and contain the starheart threat obsidian and jade however were from then on no longer able to be near one another as their bodies would automatically merge once again and risk the star heart from possessing them once more now post flashpoint during which dc’s continuity was reset obsidian was recently reintroduced into the primary dc universe after dr manhattan brought back the characters of the jsa as he had erased them from existence prior powers-wise obsidian is the host of the shadow lands a primordial void and psychic plane of darkness by merging with his own shadow obsidian becomes intangible gains enhanced strength and is able to travel and teleport through darkness he can fly can grow in size by absorbing darkness and shadows and can create dark energy constructs such as swords and weaponry he’s able to see darkness within others and can expose them to their own evil and nightmares by absorbing them into the shadow lands which drives them insane you can even control others by possessing their shadows and merging with them and that’s obsidian he reminds me a lot of cloak from cloak and dagger yeah yeah absolutely i think cloak is actually a ripoff of obsidian big surprise do you know that he came out after obsidian came out in 1983. oh [ __ ] cloak and dagger came out in  what a ripoff obsidian is holy [ __ ] yeah i take it all back [Laughter] uh they’ll never learn they’ll never learn that said obsidian and jade could totally stomp on cloak and dagger they certainly sound more powerful but not more powerful than photon let me tell you all about monic rambeau’s history so just like gambit from our last episode monic rambeau was also born in new orleans louisiana her parents were the firefighter frank rambo and seamstress maria rambo strong-willed and analytical monica grew up to become a police officer rising through the ranks to become a lieutenant in the new orleans harbor patrol after repeatedly being passed over for a promotion to captain by her superior monaco was contacted by a nuclear scientist who believed his research in harnessing extra dimensional energy was being misused in a secret lab within a roxon oil drilling rig off the new orleans coast investigating the matter monica discovered a dangerous energy weapon that was part of a plot to take over the united states in her attempt to destroy the machine as it powered up she was bombarded by extra dimensional energy granting her the ability to transform into and discharge any form of energy within the electromagnetic spectrum monica was dubbed captain marvel by the press for her heroic act since one of the rig’s armed guards mistakenly referred to her as a captain and the name stuck this was a few months after the death of the cree alien warrior marvel so the name was available but monica’s origin actually had nothing to do with the original captain marvel or carol danvers who currently goes by that name whom you can learn more about in our supergirl vs captain marvel episode actually marvel’s television show cloak and dagger heavily borrowed elements from monica’s origin including the new orleans setting and the roxon oil rig energy explosion but that’s fine because monica got a cooler origin for the mcu yeah that was pretty cool in one division anyway her powers were initially unstable having absorbed too much of the extra dimensional energy which threatened to explode from her like a megaton nuclear bomb she traveled to new york city to ask the fantastic four for help but the thing referred her to the avengers since reed richards was out at the avengers mansion iron man was able to siphon away her excess energy just before she exploded and realizing her potential he brought her onto the avengers team as a member in training monica graduated to full-fledged member after helping the team defeat the ant-man villain egghead and she helped the team fight against the likes of the beyonder king the conqueror and baron zemo’s masters of evil she also assisted doctor strange and the scarlet witch against the mystic vampire villain dracula monica became such an adept avenger she even led the team for a brief while before losing most of her powers after an incident in which she turned into a lightning bolt to battle an atlantean villain over the ocean and accidentally dispersed her atoms too much across the water’s surface she left the avengers though occasionally helped out as an active reserve member monica regained her full abilities during an adventure in space where she was recruited alongside miss marvel carol danvers black bolt of the inhumans hyperion from the squadron supreme and icarus of the eternals it was around this time that monica first met jennis vel the artificially created son of marvel who’s also going by the name captain marvel though monica resented this she ended up conceding the name out of respect for marvel’s legacy and adopted the new moniker of photon monica resumed her reserve duties for a while dividing her time between being a local hero for new orleans and a scout at the avengers deep space station monitoring for extraterrestrial threats later janice fell deciding he wanted to establish himself apart from his father’s identity quit using the name captain marvel and began using the alias photon which was some [ __ ] janice fell just such a [ __ ] character he kept taking her name yeah it’s so stupid this led monica to change her superhero name to pulsar i don’t think she should have had to do that but i digress she then briefly joined a new superhero team called next wave alongside other heroes such as elsa bloodstone boom boom and machine man during the superhuman civil war in which the us government made it illegal to perform crime fighting duties without their sanction monica ended up registering as a superhero but she still sided with captain america to fight for those who felt the registration act was wrong you can learn more about this in our justice league versus avengers episode she developed a tight-knit bond with many of her fellow female heroes especially firestar hellcat and black cat it was revealed to that friend group that monica was once romantically involved with brother voodoo whom you can learn more about in her constantine vs brother voodoo episode deciding that she didn’t really like the name pulsar she later changed her name to spectrum and helped defend new york city from an attack by thanos that occurred while the primary avengers were out in space she and the other heroes that joined efforts to save the city formed a new team called the mighty avengers which included luke cage spider-man white tiger she-hulk falcon and blue marvel monica began a relationship with blue marvel which lasted through the dissolution of the mighty avengers and upon his suggestion she joined a reformation of the ultimates team which focused on cosmic and extra dimensional threats though monica had occasionally worked with carol danvers captain marvel before on the avengers it was during this time in the ultimates that their close friendship really developed powers-wise can transform her body into and emit any form of energy along the electromagnetic spectrum an ability she can use for a variety of effects this includes flight at speeds up to the speed of light she can become intangible and phase through solid matter when composed of energy such as x-rays she can render herself as a bright blinding flare of light or render herself invisible she can turn into electricity and shoot out lightning or turn into microwave radiation and emit heat blasts photon can even match energy signatures and absorb external energy provided that she can match its wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum she can also match with external energy to travel along it such as radio waves to the energy source she can detect heat signatures using infrared radiation and do some csi [ __ ] such as detect bodily fluids through ultraviolet light now in addition to all these effects she also has firearm and hand-to-hand combat training from her time as a police lieutenant so she could go intangible just like obsidian yeah this is gonna be hard how are they even gonna hurt each other oh monica has her ways now allegedly obsidian does have a weakness to light but it’s very inconsistent because i’ve read that he’s weak to light but i’ve also seen numerous examples of him shielding himself and protecting others from like light energy and light rays so i mean we’ll just say that he’s weak to light though right no i don’t think so because that only came from one source actually so all right so now that we got their histories and abilities out of the way let’s speculate on how one of the 1000 simulated matches will go the winner of this match is determined by simulations not the speculation but it is fun to imagine how the fight could play out 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 and 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 yeah plus certain characters have advantages in some environments over others and we want these characters to win on their own merits so let’s get into it the characters meet on the battlefield who goes first i’m going to say that photon goes first because she can travel at the speed of light so she’s going to fly up into the air and she’s going to transform her body into electrical energy and she’s going to zap her electrical form down at obsidian as like this powerful lightning bolt a lightning bolt yeah okay well obsidian sees her like transform into electricity in the air so right when she does that he creates like a lightning rod nearby like not too close to him but nearby so as she’s like coming down her body is just like naturally attracted to that lightning rod and she just gets absorbed into it into the ground that’s pretty good but uh before she actually becomes grounded and you know gets her energy dispersed along the ground i’m going to say that she turns into x-ray energy and she phases into the floor and and while she’s underground she travels directly underneath obsidian and rockets up delivering a powerful energy uppercut an energy uppercut okay yeah i mean uh okay so obsidian and he’s probably knocked down to the ground from the attack but as he hits the ground he just falls right into his own shadow just merging with it and becoming a flat shadow in which he travels along the ground over to our photon landed and he just travels up her leg around her neck and just wraps around it choking her out that’s creepy it’s super creepy all right so in order to escape this choke out she becomes intangible and she slips out of his shadow form grip and she flies into the air and just blasts him with this focused laser beam okay i mean but obsidian is also intangible in his shadow form so he’s not physically damaged if you know if anything he’s pained by the light itself so since he’s in pain he just quickly right away he just vanishes into the shadow lands okay he can teleport yeah yeah so as monica you know is like looking around for him a dark portal will open up behind her and obsidian emerges and just hurls this battering gram construct right into her back just sending her flying okay i didn’t know he could teleport so she gets knocked down to the ground but as she hits she turns into microwave energy and flies back up and just bombards obsidian with oppressive heat waves that set him on fire okay all right so he probably falls to the ground on fire but he can’t physically be burned it’s probably difficult for him to transform back into a shadow form with all the light from the fire but once he hits the ground he just stops drops and rolls that’s good to get the flames off of him at which point he’s gonna go back into a shadow form not flat this time you know three-dimensional he’s just all dark and he just charges photon he’s super strong in this form so he just pummels the hell out of her to that i say how is obsidian going to pummel what he can’t see because as obsidian flies toward her photon turns into an invisible radio waveform so he can’t see her or even touch her because she’s intangible and while he’s like swinging at nothing looking for her photon becomes tangible again and punches him right in his face but again his shadow form is intangible and like radio waves don’t emit light so that does nothing how can he punch things but not get punched don’t try to understand it it’s it’s shadowland physics he’s like a ghost yeah kinda yeah exactly this is a tough match they can both become intangible all right so she becomes tangible again to punch him but right when she becomes visible and tangible he flies down and merges with her shadow on the ground possessing her and showing her all of the evil that’s inside of her like what evil though like freaking monic rambeau is a saint she doesn’t have any evil that’s going to make her depressed she’s got something she’s not a villain that could be manipulated like that okay whatever so she probably sees something that might make her a little bit sad but not like how he affects bad guys and in order to expel her shadow photon turns into a bright light like brighter than any lighthouse just blinding and completely overtaking all the shadows within the environment expelling obsidian from her shadow from her vicinity and then she directs all this light energy directly at him just obliterating him from existence that was a good move yes she probably would force him out of his shadow form if he was possessing her shadow and she no longer had one but as he got knocked back right before she blasted him obsidian created this massive wall of darkness in front of him to block all that bright light and the brighter the light the darker and harsher the shadows okay okay so he takes this massive shadow from this massive ball that he created and he absorbs it and uses it to grow bigger okay and he grows so big that he just covers the entire environment in darkness well then photon just turns brighter but she realizes at that moment that she was actually absorbed into obsidian as he expanded and that she’s now in the shadow lands where she sees her deepest and darkest nightmare unfold probably like jenniceville appearing and introducing himself a spectrum she was like no [Laughter] that is her worst nightmare just jennasville constantly taking her name [Laughter] well okay so she sees this nightmare vision of jenniceville doing this to her and this pisses her off it angers her into turning into a light as bright as the freaking sun just obliterating not only the vision of jennasville but also obsidian from within you can’t do that because obsidian is like the whole shadowland dimension and as long as there’s shadows and darkness as long as they exist the shadow lands exist okay but that probably does hurt obsidian pretty badly and not physically but he’s in a lot of pain yeah enough pain to die i don’t know obsidian’s been through a lot i think he could bear through it i think i think she’s just gonna end up trapped inside of him forever and that’s it that’s a match she’s as bright as the sun dude i think she gets out of it but we’ll find out won’t we by running 1000 monte carlo simulations on these characters using their stats and finding out what scenario would actually happen and which character actually wins that was kind of a tough match i didn’t realize that both characters could go intangible so yeah it’s always kind of hard for them to hurt one another whenever that happens yeah it’s always hard to find ways for intangible characters to hurt each other i know we ran into that problem with our martian manhunter and vision duel yeah but these guys still had enough tricks up their sleeve to make this match interesting their stats also made it interesting because they weren’t too dissimilar but enough in certain areas to make this a little bit unpredictable like we said photon was faster yeah she has a higher movement speed compared to obsidian and she’s also a more trained fighter with her time in the police force we also said that she’s slightly smarter than obsidian considering you know his superhero career basically began as a late teen but we did say that obsidian is more durable than monica considering he can reconstitute his form if he’s been injured right yeah when the characters do get hit monica takes it less well than obsidian we did give obsidian the strength edge because he is slightly stronger in his shadow form but in everything else they were comparable including their evasiveness including their damage level and perception and versatility so all that considered i have no idea who the hell’s gonna win this one i wanna say it’s gonna be photon just because light triumphs over dark our social media followers actually agree with you but just barely this is one of the closest polls we’ve ever had between facebook and instagram an average of 52 of our social media followers gave the win to photon but honestly i think that’s just because the characters in one division and that shows you know currently ongoing right now so but obsidian was in legends of tomorrow right yeah he was played by lance hendrickson which was pretty cool oh he was bishop in the alien movie right yeah aliens yeah that’s cool anyway let’s get the results so the winner of the match between obsidian and photon is obsidian what but not by much really yeah he won 598 of the 1000 matches as compared to photons  put them over the edge i wonder it was durability and strength it looks like according to this web graph i guess that makes sense because yeah monica is faster but he can teleport so you know only marginally so and she is a better fighter but he’s also had some fight experience with the jsa so yeah i could see this going down that way it’s also not surprising considering you know obsidian has gone toe-to-toe with like the entire jsa the entire jla before he’s actually a pretty big threat photon is a pretty big threat on her own too okay really don’t discount her with that yeah it looks like this time darkness beats the light i don’t know what to say no that’s lame well the darkness may be light this time but one division still beats legends of tomorrow in quality and at the end of the day that’s what really matters i guess you gotta find comfort somewhere that’s an odd one but sure it’s a stretch we go with it go with it honestly i’m glad obsidian won um i didn’t know too much about the character going into this he’s been through a lot so i’m glad he gets the w and i’m really excited to see how monic rambeau’s story plays out in the final episode of one division which comes out next week and this episode will lead into our review of that show so hopefully you guys have been watching wondervision because we’re gonna break it down in our next episode but that does it for this duel let us know what you thought about the results by writing to us at dynamicduelpodcast gmail.com or by visiting us on facebook instagram or twitter again instagram is the best out of those three yeah so if you have an instagram account follow dynamic duel podcast well you can find links to all of our accounts by visiting our website dynamicduel.com and on our site you can find a link to our patreon page where we offer bonus content and our very own marvel vs dc card game called dynamic duel war check it out right after this episode our lowest tier is only two dollars a month and also on dynamicduel.com is a link to our merch store where we sell t-shirts hoodies stickers and more with our dynamic duel no prize artwork now jonathan who are you trying this week i’m actually going to draw vision this week no really he doesn’t tie into this episode but i want to make sure i have updated drawings of both vision and a scarlet witch for the next episode yeah that’ll be great but that does it for this episode we want to remind everyone to please subscribe to our show if you haven’t or please leave a rating or review on your platform of choice sharing the show on social media or in person is also a big help for us we want to give a big thanks to our executive producers ken johnson jace krump john starovsky john spees isaiah bethune zachary hepburn and john betchinina for helping make this podcast possible and we’ll talk to you guys next week up up and away true believers you