Watchmen vs Thunderbolts

This is a DynaMic Network Podcast. Hi, 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 Johnny DC. 

And I'm his twin brother, Marvelous Joe. And in lead up to our review of the Marvel film Thunderbolts, we are doing a team duel where we pit that team against DC's Watchmen. Yeah, we're not pitting the traditional Thunderbolts team against the Watchmen, like the original classics. It's going to be more in line with the film version of the Thunderbolts, which is also in line with the most recent roster in the comics. Basically the idea here is that we have a bunch of street level heroes and one super powerful character on the team to back them up. Yeah, Dr. Manhattan in the century, respectively. 

Exactly. We'll be raking down each team's histories and the rosters we'll be using later on in this episode. There's no comic book movie news this week, but as always, we list our segment times in our episode description, so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic. Our artificially intelligent duel simulator, AJ9K, has a quick message for our listeners, so listen up. 

Why hello there. Do you want even more from this podcast? Then become a part of the dynamic duel community on Patreon where you can choose from three tiers. The Dynamic 2.0 tier gives you access to our Discord chat server, the Fantastic Four tier gives you two bonus episodes each month, and the X-Force tier makes you an executive producer of this show. Lastly, the Dynamite Podcast Network tier lets you create your own podcast using this Monte Carlo simulator. Johnny and Joe will help you develop your show, provide graphic support and consultation, and get you simulation results. Pitch the twins your ideas via email at dynamicduelpodcast at gmail.com. 

Check it out at patreon.com slash dynamicduel. Pip pip cheerio. Thanks AJ9K and thanks to everyone who supports the podcast, including executive producer Nick Abonto who had a birthday recently. Happy birthday man, if I could give you one gift from Marvel, it would be the power of the century, but without the void persona attached to it. Okay, and I'll do you one better. 

I will give you the power of Dr. Manhattan. Yeah, blue balls and all. Yeah, have fun with those. 

Happy birthday. Guys, be sure to tune into the other shows in the Dynamite Podcast Network this week, including the console Combat Podcast, where hosts John and Dean simulate battles between popular video game characters. In yesterday's episode, they speculated on who would win in a fight between She-Hulk from Ultimate Marvel versus Capcom 3 versus The Mask. Over on the Max Destruction Podcast, hosts Scotty and Gilly pit their favorite action heroes from film and television against each other. 

They are on a brief season break currently, so now is the perfect time to get caught up with their past episodes. And on the Senjoh World Podcast hosts Zachary Hepburn speculates on fights between fan favorite anime and manga characters. On Thursday, Zach is going to reveal who would win between Sunraku from Shangri-La Frontier versus Kirito from Sword Art Online. We said that was going to be last week's episode, but Zach had to undergo surgery last week, so he was able to release the episode and we're wishing him a speedy recovery. 

Visit dynamicpodcasts.com or click the link in our show notes to listen to all the shows in the Dynamite Podcast Network. But with that out of the way, quick to the No Prize! A No Prize is an award that Marvel used to give out to fans. Our version, the Dynamic duel No Prize, is a digital award we post on Instagram for the person that we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week we asked you guys, what did you think of the Shalabal Silver Surfer from the Fantastic Four First Steps official trailer? And we got three answers, so let's go over our two honorable mentions and the No Prize winner. 

Our first honorable mention goes to Kat Stevenson, who said, Hi guys, this is Kat Stevenson. I think that the Shalabal in the Fantastic Four First Steps trailer, while it was a bold choice, I think will ultimately be positive. I think it'll keep the same people who have been consistently shitting on James Gunn's Superman away from the film and will help maintain positive audience reactions to the film. 

Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm not quite sure what he was saying here in regards to the Superman film thing, but basically his answer was it's a bold choice cotton. Let's see how the strategy pays off for them. What I took this to mean was that so many people are going to be distracted by the Silver Surfer that's going to be a positive for DC because they're not going to care if anything's wrong with that film because they're just going to be so negatively focused on Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer. No he said it's going to be a positive outcome. Yeah, for DC. Oh. Yeah, I don't think that's what he meant. 

Well, that's what I heard. Good answer Kat, our next honorable mention goes to Gavin Troyer, who said, I don't care if Silver Surfer has boobs or a penis. I don't even care about bad CGI anymore. Truthfully, I don't really care about the Fantastic Four or Silver Surfer that much, but as long as the movie is good, it's good. And it doesn't really matter what the gender or how good the CGI is. Hopefully the movie is fantastic and that's all it really needs. 

All the criteria it needs is to be fantastic. OK, but what if the Silver Surfer had boobs and a penis? Well, like Gavin said, I don't think it would matter if the movie was good. If the movie is good, then, you know, the sex of the Silver Surfer is probably going to be the last thing on anyone's minds. At the end of the day, I think people care more about the overall quality than any specific, you know, genitalia detail. I don't know about that. 

I think I would notice silver genitalia. Great answer, Gavin. But the winner of this week's No Prize is Travis Herndon, who said. 

What's up, dynamic do's Travis here. So I'm fine with a female Silver Surfer. I mean, they've already established that this is an alternate universe compared to the main MCU universe. And usually when it comes to multiverses types, situations is always the whole like, oh, hey, this character might be gender-banned or this character might be race-wild. I mean, we introduced the multiverse into your story is kind of expected. That's a great point made by Travis. And I think why this answer got the No Prize win for this being the multiversal saga as an audience, we've gotten very little actual multiversal content. And to quote the vision, what is the multiverse, if not interesting and bold casting choices, persevering? 

But what? I don't remember him saying that. I'm paraphrasing. Oh, OK. Well, I mean, Marvel does have a precedence for gender-bending characters and the multiverse. If you take a look at Captain Carter or Loki or even Lady Deadpool, we've seen gender-bent versions of heroes we know and love. And since this is a multiversal character, I could see how people could be a little bit more forgiving. That being said, I still stand by what I said last week in that sense. Shalabal is really the only seeming multiversal component of the Fantastic Four first steps film other than the time period. It would have been nice if Marvel chose to go with the Frankie Ray Nova Herald of Galactus instead. Yeah, 100 percent. 

I agree with that. Well, congrats to Travis Herndon for winning this week's No Prize. If you, the listener, want a shot at winning your own No Prize, stay tuned until later on this episode when we will be asking another question of the week. 

And now that that's done onto the question of the week. Since this episode is a team duel between Watchmen and Thunderbolts and since Thunderbolts is coming out this week, here's our question. For those of you who have seen both films, which was better? 

2009's Watchmen or Thunderbolts and why? Record your answer at dynamicduel.com by clicking on the red microphone button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, 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 award that person a dynamic duel No Prize that will post to Instagram. Be sure to answer before May 3rd. DC High Volume, Batman. 

The Dark Knight's definitive DC comic stories adapted directly for audio for the very first time. Fear. I have to make them afraid. He's got a motorcycle. Get after him or have you shot? You mean blow up the building? From this moment on, none of you are safe. 

New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. But now let's go ahead and move on to the main event of this episode, a team duel where we find out who will win between DC's Watchmen and Marvel's Thunderbolts. OK, Watchmen versus Thunderbolts, as we mentioned earlier on in this episode, this is really going to be a team of street level heroes and one really superpowered character backing them up. 

As you may know, with the characters of Watchmen, none of them have superpowers except for Dr. Manhattan, since this is a world where people are essentially dressing up to play superhero rather than actually being a superhero. Yeah. And with Thunderbolts, if you watch the marketing for the upcoming film, Yelena Belova describes the team as a bunch of people who punch and shoot stuff. 

But then there's also the Sentry, who is on par with Superman, if not stronger. I'm really excited for this matchup. I never actually thought I would get to do Watchmen as a team duel. Watchmen is one of my favorite DC stories and highly praised as the greatest graphic novel of all time. So I'm super pumped for this matchup. 

Well, I think the original arc of the Thunderbolts has also been called the greatest graphic novel of all time. Shut the hell up by somebody. Me, I mean, like at least I just said it right now. 

So technically, yeah, it has been called that. All right, one person. But to explain the methodology behind our duels, let's go to our sentient duel simulator, Alfred Jarvis, 9000. Agent 9K tell our listeners how you go about determining a winner in our team duel matchups. 

Yes, of course, sir. The way I determine a winner between the two teams is by running 1000 Monte Carlo simulations between every character on each team using their statistics. A Monte Carlo simulation is a probabilistic model used to determine outcomes through random sampling. In this case, I randomize the statistics along a normal distribution as a way to simulate the many variables that can occur during battle. The stat parameters are based on the official Marvel power grid from which the DC characters statistics are extrapolated. 

Additional stat categories are included such as range, damage potential, versatility and perception in order to create a more detailed and accurate simulation. The results of the 49000 simulations provide a percentage of wins for each character on both teams. The team with the higher average win rate is declared the victor as they have a higher probability to win any given battle. In an equitable pairing, neither team should win 100 percent of the matches. The comic book stories have shown that there's even a way for Batman to defeat Superman, so the confidence rate of my method falls in line with the precedents that have been established in the source material. My mathematical simulations are without subjectivity or bias. Feats are not the sole consideration, nor are fan votes tabulated for determination of the winner. 

Thanks, AJ9K. Before we run the simulations, though, we like to break down each team's histories and rosters before improvising a scenario on how we imagine one of the thousands of simulations would play out beat for beat. And it's my turn to go first with the DC team's backstory. So let me tell you all about Watchmen. Now, the alternate universe of Watchmen, the costumed adventurers first emerged during the late 1930s and early 1940s, beginning with the masked vigilante known as Hooded Justice. His brutal and mysterious activities against criminals inspired the formation of The Minutemen, a team of eight masked crime fighters, including Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Duller Bill, Mothman, the Silhouette, Night Owl, the comedian and Hooded Justice himself. Though publicly celebrated, internal tensions plagued the group after an attempted sexual assault by the comedian on Silk Spectre was violently stopped by Hooded Justice, the comedian was expelled from The Minutemen. Despite their colorful appearances, the members of The Minutemen harbored dark secrets and personal flaws, and the team eventually dissolved under the weight of scandal, tragedy and infighting. Hooded Justice vanished without a trace in the 1950s. 

His ultimate fate never publicly confirmed. In the years that followed, new costumed adventurers emerged. Daniel Dryberg, inspired by the original Night Owl, adopted the same moniker and operated with high tech gadgetry. 

Laurie Yospeczyk, the daughter of the original Silk Spectre, reluctantly took up her mother's mantle as the second Silk Spectre. Edward Blake, the comedian, continued operating through government sanction, becoming a hardened and cynical figure who participated in the Vietnam War alongside Dr. Manhattan, who was formerly John Osterman. He emerged as the first being with true superhuman powers after a scientific accident disintegrated and reconstituted him as a blue-skinned being who perceived all of times simultaneously. Adrian Veit, known as Ozzy Mendeus and renowned as the smartest man alive, rose to prominence with an image of altruism and efficiency, only to retire and channel his genius into business ventures. In the early 1960s, Captain Metropolis attempted to reunite the new generation of adventurers under a team called the Crime Busters. 

The group gathered for a meeting, but the effort collapsed when the comedian mocked their idealism and exposed the futility of costumed heroics in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon. Following this, the independent operations of the crime fighters continued until in 1977, when the United States passed the Keen Act, outlawing un-sanctioned vigilanteism. Most heroes retired. Ozzy Mendeus left the public eye to pursue corporate power. Dryberg reluctantly stepped down. 

Dr. Manhattan and the comedian continued their work as sanctioned government operatives and only Rorschach refused to comply. Continuing his crusade illegally. In October 1985, Edward Blake was thrown from the window of his apartment in New York City. His death initially believed to be an isolated homicide. Through the attention of Rorschach, who uncovered Blake's secret identity as the comedian, convinced that someone was targeting masked heroes. Rorschach visited his former colleagues, Daniel Dryberg, Laurie Yospechik, Dr. Manhattan and Adrian Weitz. 

Though most of them dismissed his warnings, the seeds of suspicion were planted. Blake's funeral brought the surviving former heroes together. Dryberg, Weitz and Manhattan attended, each reflecting under complicated relationships with Blake. Shortly after the funeral, Dr. Manhattan was publicly accused of causing cancer among his former associates. Shocked by the allegations and humanity's sudden rejection, Manhattan exiled himself to Mars. 

With the departure of their superhuman deterrent, the Soviet Union seized the opportunity to invade Afghanistan, escalating global tensions towards nuclear war. Weitz narrowly survived an assassination attempt for their convincing Rorschach that a conspiracy was afoot. Meanwhile, Laurie, disillusioned with her life alongside the increasingly detached Dr. Manhattan, grew closer to Dryberg. The two eventually donned their costumes once more, rekindling their sense of purpose as vigilantes and rescuing residents from a burning apartment building. 

Their renewed partnership deepened into romance. Rorschach, continuing his investigation, was framed for the murder of the former villain, Mollick, and was captured by police after a violent struggle. In prison, he was subjugated to attacks from fellow inmates, but he defended himself with ruthless efficiency, culminating in a cafeteria scalding and the brutal murder of a crime boss. Meanwhile, Dryberg and Yospechek, believing Rorschach's conspiracy theory had merit, executed a daring plan to break him out of prison during a massive riot. While Dryberg and Rorschach investigated further, Dr. Manhattan transported Laurie to Mars. 

There, Laurie pleaded with him to save humanity from impending doom. Initially unmoved, Manhattan reconsidered after Laurie's revelation that she was the daughter of the comedian, the product of a complex and painful relationship between her mother and Blake. Seeing the improbability and beauty of human existence, Manhattan agreed to return to Earth. During investigation, led Dryberg and Rorschach to suspect Adrian Veit as the masked killer, following a trail of evidence they traveled to Antarctica to confront him in his private base, where Veit revealed his plan to save humanity from nuclear annihilation by staging an alien invasion that would decimate New York City. By uniting the United States and the Soviet Union against a perceived extraterrestrial threat, you believed he could avert global war. Veit admitted to orchestrating the cancer scare to drive Dr. Manhattan away, staging the attempt on his own life to eliminate suspicion, murdering Blake when he uncovered the plot and framing Rorschach to impede his investigation. As Dryberg and Rorschach reeled from the revelation, Veit disclosed that his plan had already been enacted. In New York, millions lay dead amid the wreckage caused by the appearance of the genetically engineered psychic creature, a colossal sized squid that was teleported into the city. News reports confirmed that the United States and Soviet Union had entered talks to unite against the supposed alien menace. 

Manhattan and Lorry arrived on Earth and traveled to Antarctica, confronting Veit. Although appalled by the slaughter, the heroes realized that exposing the truth would only reignite the threat of nuclear war. All except Rorschach agreed to keep silence. Rorschach refused to compromise. As he departed into the frozen wasteland to reveal the truth, he encountered Dr. Manhattan and he demanded to be killed rather than be silenced by any other means. Without a word, Manhattan complied, disintegrating Rorschach. 

Following the confrontation, Dryberg and Lorry adopted new identities, leaving behind their former lives. Meanwhile, back in New York, the right wing newspaper New Frontiersman received Rorschach's journal detailing his investigation and suspicions into Adrian, its contents poised to expose the entire truth, depending on the editor's decision. Dr. Manhattan, disillusioned by humanities and less cycles, left Earth to explore new galaxies. Adrian Veit, victorious, yet uncertain, was left to wonder about the consequences of his actions. Years after the devastation in New York City, the world uncovered the truth behind Adrian Veit's deception when Rorschach's journal was finally published. Rather than uniting humanity indefinitely, the revelation reignited distrust and chaos among the nations. In desperation, Veit sought to locate Dr. Manhattan, believing only he could repair the world he had broken. Tracking residuel quantum traces across dimensions, Veit crossed into a parallel Earth where superheroes had long shaped history differently. 

There, he manipulated a successor to Rorschach, Reginald Long, convincing him to assist in the search. Edward Blake, the comedian whose death Veit had once orchestrated, was pulled from the moment of his murder and brought into this new world by Dr. Manhattan's intervention. Now alive again, Blake hunted Veit for revenge, while also becoming entangled in violent conflicts between metahuman factions. Dr. Manhattan, observing this world, had been subtly reshaping its history. Intrigued by the resilience of its greatest hero, Superman, Manhattan had experimented with removing key figures and altering pivotal moments, shifting the emergence of heroes and the world's timeline. Yet, despite his manipulations, Manhattan found himself unable to see beyond a looming confrontation with Superman, uncertain whether he would destroy this reality or be destroyed by it. Adrian Veit, recognizing the instability Dr. Manhattan's presence created, attempted once more to engineer peace by igniting a global metahuman arms race and framing Superman as a threat. His plans ultimately unraveled as the truth surfaced aided by heroes from this new earth who resisted further deception. In the final confrontation, Superman's unwavering hope inspired Dr. Manhattan to abandon his cold detachment. Rather than destroy or dominate the world, Manhattan restored what he had broken, returning lost heroes to existence and ensuring the survival of those he had once endangered. 

Veit was returned to his own world, exposed for his crimes and imprisoned, accepting that he had no place in this world. Manhattan entrusted his power to a child he had raised, a boy he named Clark, whom he gave to Daniel Dryberg and Laura Yospechik to raise before Manhattan vanished from existence. Clark grew up to become the superhero known as the Watchman. And that's the full history of the Watchman characters. Now, for my seven member Watchman roster, I am, of course, going with the six main characters of the Watchman story, including Rorschach, Silk Spectre and the Comedian, none of whom who have superhuman powers, but are skilled fighters and possess various crime fighting tools and weapons. Ozzy Mandius, also included on this team, possesses near superhuman abilities, as he is the most intelligent and most physically capable human man in existence. Dr. Manhattan, as my sixth member, is the powerhouse of the team, possessing nine missions and omnipotence, whom you've learned more about in our Dr. Manhattan versus Molecule Man episode. For my seventh and final member, I decided to go with Hooded Justice, as he was the very first superhero in Watchman Comics and is an accomplished fighter and stealth expert. 

But who watches the Watchman? Your mom? Yeah, I think she's seen that movie. You're right. 

You're right. I got to say that the subsequent rebirth DC universe aspects of these characters history didn't really hold a candle to the original Watchman story. No, and I don't think it really holds a candle to what they did with the Watchman television series. In my opinion, that is the superior sequel to the Watchman story, particularly when it comes to also the history of certain characters like Hooded Justice. But that's not comics canon. Yeah, if DC was smart, they would actually serialize the Watchman television show from HBO, put it into a comic book format and then make it an official sequel. 

I might be too late for that, but it's fine. Well, at least Marvel has the synergy going with this new team that's going to be in the Thunderbolts movie. But let me take you back to the beginning of the comic book history. 

The Thunderbolts were founded after a battle with Onslaught left the world without the Avengers or Fantastic Four. Seizing the opportunity, Baron Zemo assembled a new team of villains from the Masters of Evil group now posing as heroes. Vidal, Fixer, Goliath, Moonstone and Screaming Mimi, who adopted the new identities of Mach 1, Techno, Atlas, Moonstone and Songbird. 

You can learn more about the Masters of Evil in their team duel against the Legion of Doom. The Thunderbolts debuted to public acclaim, even inspiring young heroine Jolt, who joined the team unaware of their deception. After the Avengers and the Fantastic Four returned, Zemo accelerated his plans, publicly exposing the Thunderbolts true identities to destroy their chances at redemption and solidify their loyalty to him. Zemo attempted to enslave the global population with a mind control device, but the team, having genuinely embraced heroism, turned against him, freeing the mind controlled populace. 

Zemo fled while the remaining Thunderbolts, now fugitives, struggled to earn back the trust they had betrayed. Better an Avenger Hawkeye than joined and led the team, boosting their credibility. He convinced Mach 1 to serve jail time for past crimes, solidifying the team's commitment to change. Under Hawkeye, the Thunderbolts defeated the new Masters of Evil, gained the headquarters, and earned government support. After exposing Henry Guyridge's anti-superhuman conspiracy, they were officially pardoned. Later, during a battle with Graviton, several Thunderbolts, including Fixer, Jolt and Songbird, were hurled to counter Earth, which was a parallel world created by Franklin Richards, the son of Mr. 

Fantastic and Invisible Woman. There, they worked with Baron Zemo to stabilize the devastated planet. Meanwhile, Hawkeye formed a second Thunderbolts team to combat Crimson Cowell's forces. Meanwhile, Hawkeye formed a second Thunderbolts team to combat Crimson Cowell's forces. After various battles in the return of the original team from counter Earth, the Thunderbolts merged into one group. 

Zemo seized control, convincing some members to follow his vision of saving the world through domination. His Thunderbolts clashed with the Avengers and were ultimately defeated, fracturing the team. Original members Mock Four, Songbird and Atlas later revived the Thunderbolts with new recruits like Joystick, Rizzard, Speed Demon and Radioactive Man. This era saw them battle against Hydra and the Purple Man, who tried to enslave New York. Zemo secretly manipulated a Formerly the Green Goblin, soon assumed leadership of the new Thunderbolts lineup. 

You can learn more about him in his duel against the Joker. Characters like Songbird, Moonstone, Bullseye, Venom, Penance, and Swordsman operated as a sanctioned strike team capturing unregistered heroes. Despite public success, internal betrayal and corruption riddled the team. Osborn manipulated events during the Skrull invasion positioning himself as the national hero known as Iron Patriot. Under Osborn, the Thunderbolts became a covert assassination squad known as the Dark Avengers. New members included White Widow, Yelena Baloba, who was actually Natasha Romanoff in disguise, Ant-Man, and Ghost. Missions ranged from targeting Deadpool to seizing weapons for Masked Guard during Osborn's campaign against the realm after it manifested on Earth. After Osborn's fall, Luke Cage took over the Thunderbolts program. The team included Songbird, Mach 5, Ghost, Moonstone, Juggernaut, Crossbones, Hyperion, and Manthing. 

Operating from the Raft prison, this version aimed at rehabilitating villains, though tensions and betrayals remained. Crossbones and Hyperion were expelled after betraying the team, and Satan had joined to defend against magical threats. The team was later lost in time, battling through World War II, Camelot, and a dystopian future before returning to the present and then disbanding. Later, General Thaddeus, Thunderbolt Ross, now Red Hulk, formed his own Thunderbolt strike team with Deadpool, Electra, Agent Venom, Punisher, and eventually Ghost Rider. Operating outside government control, they confronted threats like Madman, Gamma-irradiated Crimson Dynamos, and even travel to Hell. The team fractured after a brutal internal conflict between Punisher and Red Hulk, which was partly orchestrated by the villain known as the Leader. 

James Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, assembled a new Thunderbolt squad, including original members Fixer, Atlas, Moonstone, and Mach 10. The mission was to prevent Shield from abusing the sentient cosmic cube, Cobyc. During this time, they battled alien invaders, the squadron Supreme, and a secretly fascist Captain America. Songbird briefly reunited with the team before it disbanded, following attacks by Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil. Subsequently, Zemo organized a Thunderbolt's team during his vendetta against the Punisher. His roster included Ghost, Moonstone, Radioactive Man, Fixer, and Jigsaw. 

Their efforts to trap and kill Frank Castle failed after Ghost turned against Zemo. The Kingpin, as Mayor of New York later formed his own Thunderbolt's task force led by Taskmaster to fight the evil deity Null's invasion of the city. After being hunted by Null's shadowy forces, the team made their way to the Ravencroft Institute, where they teamed with Norman Osborn to use the Sentry against Null's symbiote base. After Null's eventual defeat, which you can learn more about in his duel against DC's White Lantern, Kingpin continued using the Thunderbolts, now led by a US agent to crack down on Vigilantism. Following Fisk's downfall as Mayor, the newly elected Luke Cage restructured the Thunderbolts and placed Hawkeye in charge with a new lineup featuring Photon, Miss America, and Power Man. 

This team successfully defended New York from several threats, but was short-lived. Meanwhile, the Winter Soldier and former Shield agent Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine assembled a separate Thunderbolts team to dismantle Red Skull's global operations. Red Guardian, White Widow, Black Widow, Sharon Carter, Shang Chi, and US agent joined the cause. 

They succeeded in defeating the Red Skull after a battle in Laferia, involving Dr. Doom. And that's the Thunderbolts backstory. For this team duel's 7-person roster, I'm going with mostly members from the most recent iteration of the comic book team, which largely coincides with the roster in the Thunderbolts movie, which comes out this week. Yes, it did destroy me that we're not including any members of the original Thunderbolts team here, including people like Baron Zemo, Mach 1, Songbird, Atlas, Moonstone, and Techno. No one is more upset by this than me, because I think the original Thunderbolts storyline up through Hawkeye's leadership of the group is just classic Marvel storytelling that no other iteration of the team has been able to match. But as we said earlier, when we realized that the film's Thunderbolts roster could potentially make for a good duel against the Watchmen, we just saw an opportunity that we couldn't pass up. 

So representing the Thunderbolts are the Winter Soldier, who has led two separate versions of the team, Taskmaster, who served on three iterations and even led the team once, Ghost, a three-time Thunderbolts member, US Agent, who has served on the Thunderbolts twice and led once, White Widow, who was involved in two incarnations of the team, Red Guardian, who was a more recent recruit, and finally, the Sentry, who was never actually a Thunderbolts member but who was a part of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers, which was a team that spun out of the Thunderbolts. Each of these characters has had their own duel episode for listeners to learn more about them, except for Ghost and Red Guardian. Ghost was a brilliant data engineer who developed quantum computing chips that could phase out of existence to bypass the physical limitations of the real world, such as overheating. When he was betrayed by the company he worked for, he integrated the technology into a suit that could render him both invisible and intangible. After killing his company's executives, he became a corporate saboteur for hire. He clashed with Iron Man on multiple occasions before being drafted into the Thunderbolts. 

Ghost's suit also renders him completely silent, able to zap others or disrupt electronics with an electric touch, able to interface with technology, and able to float. Of course, the comic version is very different than the MCU's version, who is Ava Star, the daughter of the Ant-Man villain Egghead. Now Red Guardian's real name is Alexi Shostakov, whom I discussed briefly in our Black Canary vs Black Widow Duel episode. In the comics, he is a former Soviet pilot and husband of Black Widow. 

His death was faked by the KGB in order to turn him into a special operative. Russia is answered to Captain America, called Red Guardian. He was often pit against his American rival and later against his ex-wife, when she defected from Russia and joined the Avengers. Red Guardian later defected himself, and often teamed up with White Widow against the Red Room. 

He wields a circular shield and carries smaller discs on his belt that he can use as throwing projectiles. That's the team. To reiterate, my Thunderbolts roster is Winter Soldier, Taskmaster, Ghost, US Agent, White Widow, Red Guardian, and Sentry. Right, and when we're formulating rosters with our executive producers, we like to pair up these characters just to make sure that they are evenly matched, or as evenly matched as we can get. In this case, Red Guardian is pairing up with Hooded Justice, White Widow with Comedian, Ghost with Silk Spectre, Taskmaster with Ozzy Mandias, Winter Soldier with Night Owl, US Agent with Rorschach, and of course, Sentry with Dr. Manhattan. 

Yeah, one of the main differences between the two teams is that the watchmen are going to get served justice like lightning. Okay. And if you didn't know, that is the Thunderbolts tagline. 

So, yeah. But now that we've got the team's histories and rosters out of the way, we're going to speculate on how one of the thousands of simulated matches will go. The winner is determined by simulations, not the speculation, but it's fun to imagine how the fight could play out. 

Agent I.K., what are the rules over speculation? Well, I should say there are no rules, other than the teams have no prior knowledge of the other going into the fight. All they are aware of starting out is that the other side is a threat that needs to be eliminated. For the speculation, the groups will begin approximately 50 meters apart in a nondescript environment that will have no bearing on the match itself, as no environmental statistics are considered in my simulations. 

The teams must earn victory on their own merit. All right, then, let's get into it. The watchmen and the Thunderbolts meet on the battlefield, which team goes first? Actually, I'm going to say that because Dr. Manhattan already knows how this match is going to play out and end, he's going to start by causing this colossal labyrinth of reflective glass and clockwork gears to rise up from the ground around them. And so now the teams have to fight through this MC Escher-esque hall of mirrors. 

That's pretty cool, but the Thunderbolts are going to be like, what the hell is this? How is this fair? And why is that blue guy's dick out? And Red Guardian is going to be like, should I pull my dick out? And everybody's going to be like, that's gross. 

Don't do that. But I'm going to say the century starts off by he's just going to tear through the clockwork tower, like shattering some parts of it, melting parts of it down. So everything is basically falling apart around them. And as this glass structure gets torn down, Winter Soldier suddenly gets a clear shot with his sniper rifle through a hole in the glass, and he just shoots Comedian right in his side. Actually, though, that was just a reflection of the Comedian. So Winter Soldier really just shoots through glass and now he's given away his location to the real Comedian to return to the favor by launching a grenade from his rifle at the Winter Soldier. And that's going to cause his good arm to get blown right off. No, no, no, no, because as the grenade comes in, it's just going to bounce off of US agents' shield and blow up another part of the glass tower. I think by this point, like at least half of the structure is already gone. So White Widow grapples up to the highest point that's still around. And she's going to shoot down a gas pellet that covers Rorschach and Hooded Justice in tear gas smoke, and they're not able to breathe and they're incapacitated. 

You literally chose the two characters who both have mouth coverings to filter their air. No, it would affect them more. I don't think it would. 

Oh, shit, did I fuck up? Rorschach, you know, he's going to see where the tear gas came from and he's going to use his grappling gun to zip up to where White Widow is, at which point he's going to attack her with a broken shot of glass that he collected down below and he's just going to slice right into her neck. There's no way. Like White Widow is going to block this slash attack and then she's going to punch Rorschach right in the face and then she's going to look at his mask and she's going to be like, I think I see a bitch and she's going to rent house, kick him right off the glass tower where he lands on some spiky glass debris down below and dies. What? 

Damn. OK, he's probably going to call her a whore as he falls to his death. Right in front of Night Owl, who's like, no. And so he's going to grapple up to his Archie Owl ship and use its sonic emitters to shatter the glass tower that White Widow is in. 

So she also falls to her death. I said that you couldn't use Archie in the course of this battle. I'm sorry. Why? For the same reason I said you couldn't use the bug ship in the Blue Beetle duel episode. And yet I did. And it's not fair to do one and not the other. 

So suck it. Meanwhile, back in the match, Hooded Justice has Red Guardian panties to the ground in a wrestling chokehold. OK. And Red Guardian is going to be like, why is the guy fighting me have an erection? 

What is with this team? And he's going to be rescued by USA agent who curls his shield at Hooded Justice's head, which is going to cause him to lose his grip on Red Guardian. And Red Guardian, he's going to get up and he throws his shield at Hooded Justice to in retaliation for the chokehold. 

And then, you know what? Just to get it on the action, Taskmaster also throws his shield at Hooded Justice. So that's three different shields being thrown at him. Hooded Justice is looking like a pinball here and he's knocked out of this match. No one's taken three shields to the face and living to tell about it. 

OK, that seemed unnecessary. Let's say Silk Spectre and Ghost are battling get out elsewhere in this match. But, you know, even with ghosts, phasing abilities, Silk Spectre is one of the best trained fighters in the watchmen world. So she's able to time her attacks perfectly and land several debilitating blows against a ghost that would never happen. If anything, Ghost is probably just going to have some fun, like frustrating Silk Spectre as she tries to land hit after hit after hit and just getting air each time. And then Ghost is just going to turn invisible. And Silk Spectre is wondering where the hell he's gone. 

When all of a sudden Ghost appears behind her and straight up tases her in the neck and she drops to the floor like a wet sack. So Silk Spectre is out of this match now. For my tasing? 

Yeah, she's incapacitated. OK, well, this whole time, Ozymandias has been hiding in the labyrinth, just observing the thunder bolts. And through his powers of deduction, he's noticed that the Russian technology of the winter soldier's bionic arm doesn't match his accent. So he assumes he is a kidnapped, brainwashed assassin. And having read about Russian brainwashing techniques, Ozymandias quickly speaks Bucky's code words to take control of him. 

And he has Bucky's snap red guardians neck killing him. Well, you're thinking of the movies here, like in the books, there were no code words. If I remember correctly, it was just he was controlled by the Russians through mind implants. But we'll say that, yeah, sure. 

Somehow Ozymandias knew something about Russia manipulation techniques, at least enough to take advantage of them. All right, cool. Yeah. So the winter soldier is his agent now, and he killed Red Guardian. But whatever Ozymandias can do, Taskmaster can copy. So as the US agent and ghost are like defending themselves from Bucky's gunfire, Taskmaster is going to just run his sword through Ozymandias and pailing him and killing him and then using the same Russian techniques to bring the winter soldier back onto the Thunderbolt side. No, no, no, because Ozymandias had observed Taskmaster as well and also deduced his ability to mimic physical abilities. So as Taskmaster attacks him, Ozymandias just sidesteps and catches the blade of Taskmaster's sword between his palms. And with one fluid motion, Ozymandias disarms and impales Taskmaster on his own sword. OK, so you're telling me that Ozymandias not only still has winter soldier under his control, but he also just took out Taskmaster. That's right. 

Well, it's pretty dang strong. I'm going to say by this point, Ghost has floated up to Archie, Night Owl's ship, and he uses his ghost tech to shut down all of Archie's electrical systems and Night Owl has no idea what's going on because Ghost is invisible and inaudible. So Night Owl ejects from the ship as it falls from the sky. But Ghost manages to steer it right into Ozymandias, who's like, oh, shit, I didn't see this coming. And then he gets fined into the world's smartest pancake. 

OK, sure. Night Owl, he's going to glide down from the sky silently. And he aims right for US agent doing a gliding double kick right into his spine, causing US agent to topple forward. And Night Owl is quickly going to follow up by hurling a crescent blade right into US agent's neck. No, not only does US agent block this crescent blade with his shield, he's going to rush over and then straight up shield uppercut Night Owl's head. Right off his body, because, you know, he has like 10 ton level strength. What the heck? 

All right. Well, this is when US agent suddenly gets hosed down by the comedian's flamethrower, just setting him ablaze. And while US agent is dying, comedian turns his attention to Winter Soldier, who's coming out of Ozymandias's brainwashing, all confused. And the comedian snipes him right in the head. 

No, I think Winter Soldier is less confused than you think. Like he snaps out of Ozymandias's brainwashing and straight up catches comedian's bullet with his metal arm. And then without missing a beat with his other arm, he just flings a throwing knife that flacks right into comedian's forehead. Dude, I said comedian snaped him. He was far away. 

Winter Soldier could throw a knife that hard, that fast, that far. Yeah. OK. 

So what? All I have left is Dr. Manhattan. Oh, no. Whatever. 

Psych. Dr. Manhattan is going to split himself into three duplicates and one's going to teleport over to ghost and turn him into steam. And another one's going to go to US agent. Just turn him to Mercury. And the third one, he's going to teleport over to Winter Soldier and turn him into snowflakes. Wow. 

Easy peasy. And then he's going to re merge into one giant being that's going to snatch the century right out of the air. And, you know, maybe taking a second to study his photosynthetic physiology. 

He's just going to straight up turn him into a black hole. Match over. I win. 

OK. I'm going to say that Dr. Manhattan meant to turn century into a black hole. But what he actually accidentally did was bring out the centuries void persona. So this like black hole that Dr. Manhattan created, it actually develops like this dark smile and shoots at a bunch of dark tendrils that embed themselves into Dr. Manhattan and they just explode him like a nuclear bomb. No, Dr. Manhattan would have seen this coming, though. No, no, no, because there were tachyons. 

Right. Created by the mini black hole that was actually the void. And then when Dr. Manhattan exploded like a nuclear bomb, like, yeah, there were tachyons. 

And, you know, all the science stuff. So he couldn't see it. Sorry. You're just saying words. 

OK. Actually, you know what? There was a nuclear bomb explosion. So as the voids embedding itself in Dr. Manhattan, let's say suddenly this bright light crackles between them just as a massive alien squid suddenly explodes onto the scene, not only blowing up the void and Manhattan, but also invading their minds with like disturbing psychic energy that literally shatters their minds. And how how did this happen when Ghost crashed Archie into Ozymandias at the last second? 

He leaped through one of Archie's giant eye windows and then he rewired and rebooted the ship's technology to send a signal back to bite industries and putting coordinates for where his squid alien should appear and detonate. He probably knew he wouldn't survive the explosion, but he knew that Dr. Manhattan could by reconstituting himself afterward, giving his side the wind. Except, you know, that the century would also regenerate from this, not just Dr. Manhattan. So that would work. Yeah. OK, well, you know, Dr. Manhattan would regenerate first, so we still win. I don't think so, but we can go ahead and leave the match there. Either Dr. Manhattan regenerates from Ozymandias's giant squid explosion first or the century regenerates first. Let's go ahead and find out which scenario happens by inputting the stats on these teams, running the simulations and coming back with the winning team. AJ9K, hit it. 

Inputting data, running calculations, processing results, simulations complete. All right, this is quite the fun pairing, mostly because putting in the stats for the more street level characters was funny compared to the more god level power characters. Yeah, it was not even close. Dr. Manhattan won a whopping 97.8 percent of his matches against the entire Thunderbolts team. 

It was funny because it's rare that we ever get a zero win rate percentage, but it happened for the first time in the course of this match. There were several Thunderbolts characters who literally stood a zero percent chance of defeating Dr. Manhattan. Yeah, he was by far the most powerful character on either of our teams. Now, the century, obviously, was your most powerful character. Yeah, and there were some watchmen characters that the century beat, like, 99.9 percent of the time. So his overall win rate ended up being 84.3 percent. 

It would have been damn near close to 100 if it wasn't for Dr. Manhattan. It was interesting seeing how the overall stat categories compared across each team, especially with things like evasiveness. Like the Thunderbolts were way more evasive than the watchmen, largely because US agent has a shield, taskmaster has a shield, red guardian has a shield, ghost is fucking intangible and invisible. So the Thunderbolts just dominated in that category. Yeah, the only stat where the street level watchmen characters really shined in was fighting skill. 

They're all pretty good fighters. And next to Dr. Manhattan, my most impressive character was actually Night Owl. I thought it was going to be Ozzy Madius, but with the Archie Owl ship that really leveled up Night Owl in terms of his stats. I mean, yeah, the watchmen were good fighters, but the Thunderbolts were also really good fighters. 

That's fair. And you guys were also much more versatile than the watchmen as well. I had the most powerful character, but I also had the two weakest characters in Silk Spectre and Hooded Justice. Yeah, my weakest character was actually Ghost, who does great in terms of evasiveness, but wasn't really impressive in any other stat category, except for intelligence and versatility. Yeah, Ghost as your weakest character had a win rate of thirty six point five percent, whereas my lowest win rate of fourteen point six percent belonged to Silk Spectre. So we got a nice little trade off here going basically, Jonathan, you have the character with the highest win rate, but you also have the characters with the lowest win rate. My best win rate doesn't match Dr. Manhattan's, but also I don't go as low as fourteen point six percent like you did. So that all said, which team do you think came out on top? 

Well, it's kind of hard to say. I think it's going to be the Thunderbolts, because even though Dr. Manhattan is statistically better than the Sentry, I think that the rest of the team is far superior to the Watchmen. Although Instagram does not agree with me in the poll that we put up prior to recording this episode, 69 percent of the poll takers sided with the Watchmen. And I'm not surprised because Watchmen is way cooler than Thunderbolts and everybody knows it. But did Watchmen get the win? A JNNK, the results, please. 

Here you are, sir. The winning team in our matchup between the Watchmen and Thunderbolts is. Thunderbolts, that's right. 

What did I say? Justice like lightning. They won an even 57 percent of their matches compared to Watchmen who only won 43, which is actually a pretty decent showing for the Watchmen. Right. Now, I guarantee you that Dr. Manhattan got all their wins for them almost literally. Yeah. But still decent showing. I don't understand this considering the fact that at the start of each match, Dr. Manhattan could literally teleport the entire Thunderbolts team to Mars and they would all just die. 

Well, the century wouldn't and he would bring him right back to Earth and then kick Dr. Manhattan right in his blue wiener. Whatever. Also, we don't consider battlefield removal as a viable strategy in these duels. Says you. Yeah, says the winner. Are you sad, Jonathan? 

I'm not going to lie. I am pretty sad. Like, I just want to go to bed now. 

Do you think we could get you crying on air before we sign off? Well, let me try. Let me try. No, I can't do it. Sorry. Well, that's too bad. 

But that doesn't for this duel, guys. Agent 9K, help close this out. Thanks for listening to Dynamic Jewel. Visit the show's website at dynamicjewel.com and follow us on Instagram at Dynamic Jewel podcast. You can support the show on Patreon at patreon.com slash Dynamic Jewel and joining a tier that works for you or by rating and reviewing Dynamic Jewel on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser or on our website. 

Don't forget to listen to the other shows in the Dynamite podcast network, including Max Destruction, Senjo World and Console Combat. As we mentioned earlier, our next episode is going to be a review of Marvel Studios Thunderbolts' asterisk film. We'll find out what the asterisk is apparently when we see the film. Yeah, I'm excited to see it. Basically staying off the Internet for the whole rest of the week because I'm not seeing it until Friday evening. And I know there's going to be spoilers galore out there. So I can't wait to get spoilers. 

And I could just forward them to you because I'm petty for losing this match. But thank you for the warning. It helps me know that I should block you now. I mean, I'm not going to do that. Fuck. That does it for this episode, guys. We want to give a big thanks to our executive producers, John Staroski, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Balcom, Mickey Mathen-Geehan, Brandon Estregard, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yatten, Austin Wuzelowski, A.J. Dunkerley, Nick Ibonto, Scott Camacho, Gil Camacho, Adam Speese, Dean Moleski, Devin Davis, Joseph Kirchsting, Josh Schleiner, Mike Williams and Oscar Galvez for helping make this podcast possible. We'll talk to you guys next week. Up up and away, true believers. Who watches the Watchman when the justice like lightning is or shit. I lost it.