Azrael vs Blade

Hi, welcome to the Dynamic Duel podcast where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in crossover battle simulations. I'm Johnny DC. 

And I'm his twin brother Marvelous Joe. And this episode, our main event is Azrael vs. Blade. Yeah, we know that we wanted to review Blade in our next episode with the countdown to the Black Panther movie coming out. We thought it would be a good idea to give homage to the character that kind of not only started the whole modern wave of superhero films, but also was one of the first leading Black superhero characters to start in a film. 

Yeah. And you know, putting him against Azrael, I don't think most people would have thought of this match. It was so hard. Like, I spent the longest time trying to convince you that Constantine was the best matchup for Blade. The worst match ever. There's no way Blade would stand. Blade would not even touch Constantine. 

If you say so, I disagree with that. But I think I ended up googling like DC superheroes that carry swords or something like that. I saw a cool image of Azrael Yeah. 

hearing the sword. So I was like, oh, that might work. I hadn't even thought of Azrael. And well, Azrael kind of has he has like a pseudo supernatural, more religious background. Yeah. So it's kind of comparable. 

And because Blade is a supernatural hero. So I think it works. Yeah. I mean, you know, Azrael, he's strong and faster than the usual. He's super human is what I'm saying, along with the blade. Yeah. So you know, Blade was always like this really, really like unique character. And so when you when you suggested Azrael, I was like, why didn't I think of that? 

So that's what we're doing. I think we're also thinking like Zeriel for a while. But it was really hard to get information on him. Zeriel, the angel who Zario Zario. How do you say it? I see Zario. 

He was an angel character that was featured in the Justice League of America during Grant Morrison's run. I thought that might be a good matchup too. But I like this one better. 

Dude, Zeriel would have stopped Blade, not even a good match. All right. If you say so, man, I disagree. But before we get into the match, we like to do the news breakdown. There's no DC news. Good. 

This episode sucks the way I like it. All Marvel all the time. So Logan gets an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. 

Wonder Woman gets a snub. We'll be talking about that. Hans Zimmer comes out of retirement to score X-Men Dark Phoenix. That's cool. There's a new set photo and video that gives us our first look at Captain Marvel. 

Brie Larson is Captain Marvel. Yeah, there's a ton of like internet outrage. There's a reading talk about that. 

We're going to get into that. And that's that's pretty much all the news there is. It's kind of a slow news week. A little bit. It's not too bad for Marvel. But up next, let's talk about the no prize. 

Yeah. So last week, our question of the week was, which Marvel or DC television series do you think had the strongest pilot episode? No one chose my favorite. No one. Well, actually, a few people chose my favorite. 

But I think the most interesting answer and the winner of the no prize for this week is John Spees, who gave the answer. He said, I think the X-Men animated series had the best pilot. Yeah, I didn't even consider like any animated series. 

No, yeah, when I was thinking about this question. But I recently watched the X-Men animated series again, because we actually, we did a guest spot on John's podcast, which is the blast from our past podcast, which is an amazing show that they put on. If you haven't listened to it yet, super nostalgia feels. Yeah, check out the blast from our past podcast. 

They talk about all the cool stuff that we enjoyed as kids in the early nineties and late eighties. So but I will rewatch the X-Men animated cartoon and that pilot episode did such a good job of setting up the themes of the show. Like it wasn't afraid to get deep, but it had tremendous action. And I think it did a great job introducing these iconic characters in a way that made it so palatable to the mainstream audience. 

Like that show was heavily inspired by the early nineties, Jim Lee and Claremont Run. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was a great answer. It's definitely one of the strongest pilots that has ever been produced. Yeah. 

So John will be getting the no prize. But what was your favorite pilot? I think my answer to this question, I think everybody who has listened to this podcast for a while knows that I'm a huge fan of the Legion TV show that came out early last year. And I think that pilot episode drew me in in a way that nothing else did. I was I was so concerned that the Legion show was going to be such a radical departure from the comics. And it was, but it made it so interesting that I was compelled to keep watching. And I just loved every episode as much as the first almost. 

So yeah, that has to be my answer. I've seen the pilot. It was good. But I didn't like it as much as I liked Smallville's pilot. Smallville had a great pilot back in the day. 

That was the one that ended with like the tornado in the cornfield. And they like strung him up like a scarecrow with the kryptonite necklace and they had the the S painted on the chest. But just like seeing Clark Kent and Lex Luthorin, like I grew up with I was a freshman when Smallville came out. So like when Clark became a sophomore and I was growing along with him. So I was like, I was the perfect age for that show. 

It was a good one. I mean, I think I stopped watching after the second or third season because it kind of became apparent that they were never going to show him become Superman. And the way that show ended. They never really did. 

Yeah, it's so stupid. I think I stopped after like season five. I stuck with it for a while. 

I just like every episode I just want to like after the third season, I was like, just shut up Lana. I just like to the concept of it. Like it was like, you know, the meteorites coming with Superman to Earth, the kryptonite meteorites and the radiation from those creating weekly villain of the week villain of the weeks. It was, you know, it may not work now, but it totally worked on me then. Yeah. 

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I had had good action to get special effects. Yeah, great kind of portrayal of the powers that he did have like with X-ray vision and the heat vision and all that stuff. Yeah, it was a good show for a while. Yeah. And then I sucked. 

I don't know. I know. But yeah, I stopped watching. I agree. Great pilot episode for sure. Yeah, I know I was hooked on that one too. And I'm not even a DC guy. So that that's a testament to how good it was. Yeah. 

All right, so we'll be asking another question later on in the show during our news segment. So keep an eye out for that if you want to win that note prize for our next episode. Yep. 

So on to the news segment. Logan. No, the real news here is that Wonder Woman was snubbed. No, I think the real news is that Logan is the first comic book movie to be nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Award. Which? 

So it's going to go to, I think James Mangold wrote the script. Really? Yeah. He also co-wrote it with writers named Scott Frank and Michael Green. So if they win, it would mean so much to the comic book genre, I think as a whole. Yeah. Because it's not like a technical award or like a makeup award like Suicide Squad 1. Right. 

It's a testament to how strong the story was. Right. Honestly, this is the one category of Oscars that I'm sorry. I've always wanted a comic book film to be nominated. 

And to win. Besides the best picture. Well, besides the best picture, I think the biggest award a comic book film has really won was, you know, Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. 

That's definitely like, I think, like the most prestigious. But again, that's not really commenting on someone's performance rather than like the source material and giving legitimacy to the source material. Or the adapted material. Right. Yeah, I agree. 

I agree. I think this, if it wins, it can mean so much because I feel like there's a slight sense of superhero fatigue out there, especially I felt it a lot like around when Justice League was just released. And I like when people come down on superhero movies, one of their criticisms is that maybe there's too many of these being made or something like that. So good superhero movies can only, you know, benefit the genre as a whole. And especially when they win awards, that they can only mean positive things. 

And I think that if it wins an award, we'll see maybe more movies being made like Logan in the future. Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, what is it going up against? 

Oh, that's a good question. It's going up against adapted screenplay. Let's see. Call me by your name. Donut. The Disaster Artist. Oh, no, that Molly's game. He sort of know that. I've heard that one was written by Aaron Sorkin. 

Sure. I heard that was really good. And the last one was Mudbound. So like I would have to, I'd probably give Logan like the number two seed in this list. It might go to Molly's game, which would suck because I mean, well, Aaron Sorkin is really good, but he's won Academy Awards before. So it would be cool to see these guys win. 

You know what the sucky thing is though, even if it wins this award, what can they do with that? Because, you know, Disney is about to own those characters now. Plus, like Logan is dead. Like you can't really like take that and run with it into like a sequel. Like I'm sure like someone really would want to, especially with, you know, like because it's in a franchise. What I mean, unless Marvel wants to hire main gold to do an X-Men film, which I think would be fantastic. I do, I think about how the X-Men are going to go into the Marvel Cinematic Universe all the time. 

Like I dream about that. And I was actually, this is a kind of a tangent off the main topic, but I was thinking in the shower the other day, how are they going to introduce mutants into the MCU? Yeah, how they'd never been mentioned before. 

Right. And I kind of came up with a theory that I don't know if has been already come up somewhere else. It probably has. But I was thinking, what if mutants have been around in the MCU this entire time? Like they were there for the Battle of New York with the Avengers and everything like that. But the reason that nobody remembers them is because Professor X is like neuralizing them like with Cerebro kind of like in Men of Black how like, Oh, what? Like how Men of Black you can like make people forget with the neuralizer. Like what if Professor X is doing something like that? He's just mindwiping everybody? 

Just yeah, using Cerebro. He's like, and that's how he keeps the mutants anonymity is by keeping them safe. So the whole world doesn't know that mutants exist? Right. 

Yeah. I think it would be cool if mutants did already exist in the MCU, but no one knew about them. People would just keep getting their mind wiped regarding the mutation and everything like that. And then they would almost make Professor X a villain. Yeah, but he's done shady things like that in the past before, you know? So I think it's not outside of his character. 

And then maybe when they're introduced into the MCU, Professor X is no longer able to hide the existence of mutants because Magneto like launches like an offensive against mankind or something. Destroy Cerebro or something like that or something like that. Yeah. That's not a bad theory. I'm trying to think of any other way it could be done. 

Nope. That's the only acceptable way it could be done. I think it's a great way to kind of establish them in the history of the MCU, but also introduce them as new characters. Huh. 

So we'll see if they end up going that route. But yeah, I just thought about that in the shower and I was like, oh, I got to talk about that in But regarding Logan, I was a little bit disappointed that the film wasn't nominated for Best Picture because to me it was like among my favorite films of last year, not just because it was a Marvel film or because it was a superhero film, but because it was such a good story. I know that after the the Dark Knight was nominated or wasn't nominated for Best Picture, like the Academy increased the number of nominees. And I can't remember. 

I think they went backwards. I could totally be making that up. But I remember like it was like checking her some tweets about this and they were like, oh, you couldn't extend the list again to include Logan? Yeah. You know. 

Well, it just feels like the industry has somewhat of a not of a data, but the fact that Logan didn't get nominated for Best Picture and the fact that Wonder Woman didn't receive any nominations when it was recognized by the PGA, the American Film Institute and everything as well. Yeah. It's just a little bit weird. It seems like the you know, the AFI and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and they like they didn't agree this year. No, not really. I think it's almost like Hollywood is trying to send a message to everybody that they 

don't want more superhero films being made. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter how good you make them because we're not going to recognize them anyway. It sucks because I don't foresee any movies this year coming out that are like more impactful than Logan. Maybe Aqua Man. Maybe. No. Definitely not. You don't know. 

I was gonna say maybe Infinity War. I don't know. I did it. We'll see. 

So you're feeling bad about Wonder Woman though? I can't do. Okay. That's all that matters to me. 

Moving on to the next news item. It should have been nominated for Best Director. What? It should have been nominated for Best Actress. Should have been nominated for Best Picture. Should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Should have been nominated for Best Screenplay. Should have been nominated for... This is not the Jonathan Fantasy Awards. This is the Academy Awards. Dude. 

It should have been nominated in each one of those categories. I don't think so man. Alright. Moving on to the next bit of news. Hans Zimmer who has apparently stated before that he was not going to score any more superhero films. Yeah. He's going to score X-Men Dark Phoenix. 

Which is... Yeah. So apparently he's only done with DC films. Thanks a lot Hans Zimmer. What the fuck? 

He... I think he's done great work on Man of Steel and of course the Dark Knight trilogy. So this is great news for X-Men because I don't think that they've had a particularly strong score in any of their films. Maybe X-Men 2. 

I think John Ottoman's score in X-Men 2 was pretty well done. It was like... Oh yeah. Yeah. But I mean they kind of reused those themes in both Days of Future Past and X-Men Apocalypse and the other films just weren't that memorable. Yeah. 

I didn't like the score at all for X-Men Apocalypse. No. Yeah. So the fact that it's going to at least have more memorable music registers more on my radar a little bit more. I mean I could listen to the Man of Steel soundtrack all day. Just all day. Just had headphones on and just listened to that all day. It's so good. It's really good. I thought the Dark Knight score was better. 

What he did with Batman was good too. I don't know. Hans Zimmer to me right now is like the best composer and I know like a lot of people would argue John Williams because he's definitely had like the most iconic and most memorable scores. Yeah. But to me like technical wise I think I have to give it to Hans Zimmer. He's done more interesting things I think than John Williams. John Williams scores are definitely memorable and classic but it seems like Hans Zimmer is slightly more experimental and yeah I don't know. 

It's just it appeals to me in a more unique way. Yeah. This is I mean this is great news for the for the X-Men franchise but I mean again it's like are you going to be able to reuse those themes? 

I think I would not want them to because I think if you're watching the new MCU X-Men you're going to associate those themes especially if they're memorable Hans Zimmer themes to the old shitty X-Men universe. Yeah. So yeah. All right moving on to the next set of news. 

This is probably the biggest news item of the week. We got our first glimpse through a series of set photos of Brie Larson suited up in her Captain Marvel superhero costume. It immediately caught me off guard when I saw these. 

Yeah. I texted it to you. But it only took me like at least 10 seconds to like readjust like oh that's the that's the Cree uniform. Yeah. I remember I texted you the photo and your response was what? 

What's that? I mean we've all seen the concept art that was released during Comic Con last year that shows that she will have the costume in her traditional colors of red and blue and with the gold holostar in the center. So this like if you're familiar with the comics when Marvel first came to earth and he's the character that mentored and became the romantic interest of Carol Danvers. It's going to be Jude Law in the movie. 

Jude Law. Yes. His costume was a green Cree army uniform. So I'm pretty sure that she's wearing his suit or not his suit specifically but wearing the same that same thing. Yeah. 

So this this may be before she like customizes it to not resemble a Cree outfit anymore and more of her own thing. Yeah. I'm assuming. Yeah. So the design itself is a little interesting. It does have a few more embellishments than I would have thought it would have. 

It looks one way in concept art but in the photo it doesn't quite fit nearly as well as it should which at first made me think that she was wearing his suit. 

Oh there's like an abundance of embellishments like if you rivets some piping kind of. I thought yeah I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thought it didn't fit her that well. I mean not that it needs to be skin tight but like there's a sizable amount of fabric in the crotch area that is just like 

what is that just dangling it so she could she could do her high kicks I guess I guess but like the design of like where the knee pads are well they're not actually knee pads to the top of the shin pads but they look like knee pads so it makes it look like her legs are like super tiny and everything. It's not the most flattering design. I have to say I like the top half more than I like the bottom half like if you just kind of cover up the bottom half. Yeah that looks pretty good 

and then you cover up the top half and you just look at the bottom and it's like what is happening but I think with the the corrected colors I think that'll be fine. Because we know that she's appearing in Infinity War and I wouldn't be surprised if you know she has her normal suit colors in that movie but for this movie maybe she has green all the way up until almost the end. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah well because her movie will be her origin story. 

Right. There was a brief little set video as well that was released along with these photos and it didn't really reveal much so it's not it didn't go into spoiler territory but we did see a man approach her somewhat threateningly and then he she like grabs his hand and like crushes it and he like winks and falls to his knees in pain. Not sure what's going on there but I thought that was pretty interesting. It seems like I think she's like has a big smile afterward. I don't know if that's just Rilarzans reaction to like the performance or it's actually part of the script. Part of the character. Yeah yeah like kind of discovering her powers or something like that. Yeah I have to say the first thing I thought of when I saw this suit was for a studio that's trying to distance itself like origin wise from Green Lantern this really reminded me of like a Green Lantern suit. 

It's like if you wanted to do that this wasn't the best way to do that at all. It's almost like a Green Lantern uniform. One of the actually one of the early thoughts that I had as well was that this suit was green because they were going to animate part of it like a green screen kind of effect but then I was like no that's too Green Lantern they wouldn't do that but you never know they might but yeah that's actually an apt criticism is that if they're not animating over it it somewhat resembles a Green Lantern suit and if they are animating over it then it somewhat resembles the Green Lantern suit from the 2011 Green Lantern movie. You know what it really reminded me of? You know the character Jade, Ellen Scott's daughter. Yes. Ellen Scott is the first Green Lantern. 

She still she has like that same like Hollister kind of symbol on hers. That's what it reminded me of. Oh okay interesting. 

I think that's all I have to say about that. I'm just looking forward to seeing more set photos as you know they're taking. I'm interested in seeing more different looks at the costume essentially and seeing the costume in its proper color. Right. 

That'll be cool. This kind of brings us to our question of the week. The question for this episode is speaking of costumes who in your opinion has had the best adapted live action costume design out of all the Marvel and DC films. So go ahead and write your answer into us by searching for us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Just do a search for Dynamic Dual Podcast and you'll find us. Or you can email us your answer at dynamicdualpodcastatgmail.com and we'll go ahead and pick our favorite answer and draw them a Dynamic Dual No Prize with their name on it that we post to our social media accounts. Yeah if anyone says Green Lantern they will immediately be blocked. 

They will not only be disqualified from winning the No Prize they will be banished from our social media accounts. Actually you know what I didn't hate the Green Lantern costume so it made sense to me the way they approached it because if you're going to create like this this costume that's made of like you know a green construct a green mental construct yeah maybe it is made of like a CG energy I don't know I don't know. All right yeah let us know who you guys think had the best superhero costume and with all that news out of the way let's go all right asriel versus blade um the fight of the century maybe maybe probably not no probably not I mean it's a good fight I do think I'm interested in seeing how this one will pan out I like both of these characters I know very little about asriel so I'm interested in learning about him and seeing what makes him so cool because despite only sticking around as the replacement for batman for I don't know like a year maybe less than that he still kind of shows up every now and then in like the the nerd consciousness yeah so he's an interesting character for sure. I mean I didn't know too much about him either so this was a lot of fun research I think I think he would have been a great match up for moon night. Really? 

Yeah once I get down into his his profile description you know they both have you know they're both you know kind of superhuman they both have like multiple personalities in a way um they both you know they're both hooded figures yeah who sometimes were white I guess. Well you never know eventually maybe way down the line a few years from now we may get to the asriel versus moon night match that's that's actually a good idea so. 

Yeah write it down write it down. We're gonna forget. So if you haven't listened to to one of our dual episodes before the way this works is we run a thousand spreadsheet battle simulations the figures from which are extrapolated from stat sheets that that we record we we do the the simulations a thousand times which I think is is sort of a big thing for us. It's an accurate way to do it to get a good answer because I feel like a lot of other people who do something similar in in a way that you know they only do one match and the thing is is that there's so many different ways for characters when they're fighting to win or lose you have to do it so many times to get you know like an inaccurate result I think. Yeah in our simulations in our simulations no character wins like 100% of the time. 

No no. So I always thought that was pretty neat so it feels very accurate we simulate a thousand times we get the numbers from the stats that we compile from the official Marvel power rankings as well as a few other stats that we uh determine ourselves. Yeah we extrapolate the the DC stats from from those power rankings. Yes it's math there's it's no bias there's no fan votes you know like the the comic from the 90s where the winners were decided by votes. 

Oh yeah that was bullshit. Lobo would have never lost to Wolverine that's what I'm saying so it's it's nothing like that it's it's science yeah it's science. Yeah and before we do the 1000 simulations uh before we run those numbers in the spreadsheet we like to go over the profiles and the powers of each of the contestants involved in the match as well as speculate on how we think at least one of those matchups would kind of play out. 

Yeah it's always fun yeah we don't talk about environment though uh I think that's one of the things that's also unique is is you can't really record environmental stats because it's so variable one character can win one environment and not in another so it's just we don't we don't do it. Mm-hmm but before the speculation we do the profile breakdowns so let's I think you it's I think it's your turn to start. Yeah yep I'll go ahead and uh talk about blade. All right so in 1929 London a pregnant prostitute named Tara Brooks summoned a doctor named Deacon Frost to her brothel to assist with severe labor complications uh Frost was actually a vampire who feasted on her blood as she gave birth and in doing so the vampire accidentally passed on certain enzymes from his saliva through Tara's bloodstream into the child that made him immune to the effects of a vampire bite and gave him an attunement for sensing the supernatural and a lengthened lifespan. It is all of the strengths of an out of his weaknesses. No it just gave him those three powers. Oh so it essentially turned the child into what's called a dampier. 

Dampier I think I'm pronouncing that right which is someone who has been touched but not converted by a vampire. The other women of the brothel were able to dry frost away before he could kill the child as well and they named the baby Eric. Eric Brooks and he grew up to be the vampire hunter known as Blade. Wait that's Blade's real name? Eric Brooks yes. Blade has a real name? Yeah I did not expect Eric Brooks. It wasn't it's not Wesley Snipes. 

I was thinking Wesley Snipes or something cool like that. Yeah so as a teenager Eric was an orphan living on the streets when he first happened upon a group of vampires attacking an older man named Jamal Afari. He helped fight them off and saved the man's life. Afari was actually a lifelong vampire hunter who realized that Eric's special immunity made him ideal for hunting vampires so he took him under his wing and taught him everything he knew. Eric's main motivation in learning how to kill vampires was to avenge his mother's death by killing the vampire responsible. He called himself Blade after his preferred vampire killing tools. 

He used these like teak wooden knives throwing knives to kill vampires. So that was his goal he was unable to find Deacon Frost however but he ended up teaming up with a small group of vampire hunters to hunt the ruler and most powerful of all vampires Dracula. The group succeeded in staking Dracula's heart but his servants were able to resurrect him and he got revenge by killing the group except for Blade. So he persisted in his fight against Dracula with a new team of hunters that included Quincy Harker and Rachel Van Helsing who were the descendants of the characters from Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. 

Over the years they killed Dracula multiple times but he kept getting resurrected by his servants and his brides. After a while Blade was probably just like fuck this shit and decided to return to his original mission of avenging his mother. So to track Deacon Frost he teamed up with Hannibal King who was a detective that was turned into a vampire and he was played by Ryan Reynolds in the Blade Trinity movie. 

That's right. Together they uncovered a plot by Frost to usurp the title of Lord of the Vampires from Dracula. They battled An army of frost vampires, but ended up killing him. A few years later, Blade teamed up with Doctor Strange, Hannibal King, and Frank Drake. Frank Drake is like an inventor dude with a Ghostbuster proton pack. It was an energy gun that could affect supernatural entities. 

I thought he was the lamest thing ever. But they teamed up with Ghost Rider to fight and defeat Lilith, who is the mother of all demons and her offspring called the Lilin. So Blade continued his mission to rid the world of vampires, which brought him to New York to stop his former ally Morbius, who was being controlled by another vampire at the time. He teamed up with Spider-Man for the fight, but managed to get bitten by Morbius. Blade had been bitten by vampires before, but he's immune to any effects, that's one of his natural abilities. Morbius however, was a different sort of vampire, not one turned by supernatural means. Morbius is like a pseudo-vampire created by scientific means when he tried to cure himself of a blood disorder using the genetic material of vampire bats. That's more like genetic manipulation than... Yeah, so he's like part vampire bat basically. But when he bit Blade, it turned him to a daywalker. Meaning he got all of the powers of a traditional vampire, and none of their weaknesses except for the thirst for blood. He got the thirst. Right. But Spider-Man was able to fashion a serum for both Blade and Morbius to satiate their thirst and they would both take it regularly. Spider-Man did that? Yeah. 

Interesting. Blade eventually met his father, Lucas Cross, who was still alive and coincidentally turned into a vampire a long time ago. He captured Blade and told him about a prophecy he was to fulfill that results in all vampires getting their souls restored. So Cross tried to get Blade to drink the blood of a young girl as one of the conditions of the prophecy was that he had to drink the blood of a virgin. Blade ended up escaping, but he ended up fulfilling that part of the prophecy when he drank the blood of his enemy Draconus, who turns out was a virgin. But he drank as blood as a means to drain his powers. So he ends up fulfilling that part of the prophecy and then he's abducted again by his father and taken to Draconus Castle to complete the final part of the prophecy. So it turns out that Cross had been tricked by Dracula into thinking that the prophecy ritual would restore all vampire souls, but what it did instead was resurrect every vampire that had ever died, effectively resetting Blade's mission back to zero. That's pretty much it for his backstory highlights. Recently he helped the X-Men fight off an invasion of their island Haven, though not before Jubilee was bitten and turned into a vampire. Oh, so dumb. And Blade was also a member of Luke Cage's Avengers team called the Mighty Avengers for a while. 

As far as powers go, his vampire bite immunity, his long lifespan, and his ability to send supernatural creatures, those were all acquired at birth during Deacon Frost's attack on his mother. 

His later vampire abilities came from Morbius's unique bite that gave him the more traditional powers of a vampire, although I've never seen him turn into a bat and I've never seen him hypnotize people. So it's more like the physical stuff. So Blade has enhanced strength. He can lift about one ton. He has superhuman speed, especially in fast bursts over short distances, which he can cover in almost an instant. He has enhanced agility, reflexes, stamina, and durability. He has an accelerated healing ability that we saw in the movie as well. Not quite as good as Wolverine's, but still pretty good. I remember seeing this image of him fighting Wolverine and like Wolverine, like put his claws right through his head and Blade was just smiling. 

So it has to be pretty good. Yeah, like Wolverine, I told him, it's like, you know, it's not as fast as mine, but it's it's almost there. He also has heightened senses, including eyesight, that make him an expert marksman and able to see in complete darkness. He's a master martial artist with expertise in multiple fighting styles and a specialist with bladed weapons, including swords and throwing knives. He also carries automatic machine pistols loaded with hollow point garlic filled silver bullets. He does have one weakness. 

I mentioned it before. It's his thirst for blood. If he doesn't consume blood or his serum for over the course of a couple of weeks, he dies. And that's everything about him. Did you learn anything? Does he have an English accent? Yes, he does. Weird. 

Weird. Yep. Instead of there's worse things out tonight than vampires. He says it more like, there's worse things out than vampires. Gov'n'at. I can't do an English accent. So I was real skill wise and ability wise. He's not too far off from Blade. You'll see. OK, so as real. 

Jean Paul Valley was a mild mannered programming student at Gotham University when one night a masked figure crawled bleeding into his apartment. The figure turned out to be his father to Jean's surprise. And he had been mortally wounded fighting demon worshipers as the assassin slash enforcer for a 500 year old religious secret society known as the Sacred Order of Saint Dumas. Saint Dumas. 

And you're sorry. Saint Dumas. With his father's last dying breaths, he explained to Jean Paul that with his death, Jean Paul was the next in line to become the order's personal angel of death, as real. Using resources, his father bequeathed him. 

Jean Paul traveled to Switzerland and met with the Order of Saint Dumas. There he learned that he was a genetically modified test tube baby. Whose DNA had been spliced with animals to make him stronger and faster, among other things. 

He had also been subtly conditioned and brainwashed unknowingly his whole life. What kind of animals? It's not specific. OK, so he's like part grizzly bear. Possibly. 

OK. So he'd been brainwashed unknowingly his whole life in a process known as the system. Now, under the system's conditioning, Jean was psychologically manipulated, not only to serve the will of the Order, but also subconsciously trained to become a violent fighting machine and perfect assassin. And again, this has been going on his whole life through the Secret Society. 

I had no idea. Thanks to the system, it wasn't long before Jean Paul was ready to don the suit of Azrael. Soon after which, he came into odds with Bruce Wayne, who had traveled to Switzerland while investigating the death of Jean Paul's father, Beck and Gotham. Bruce's investigation led him to a man named Carlton LaHaw, a former acolyte of the Order of St. Dumas and believed servant of the demon Bisse. Bisse? 

B-I-I-S. Bish. The same man. This was the same man who killed Jean Paul's father. The new Azrael was tasked with killing LaHaw, but instead ended up rescuing Batman while LaHaw seemingly died. 

Aware of Bruce Wayne's secret identity and inspired by his humanitarian and heroic nature, Jean Paul rejected the Order and returned home to Gotham with Batman to break the system's conditioning and to help end the crusade against Gotham's criminal element. Breaking free from the system proved extremely difficult. It just...it's impossible. While fighting crime, Azrael would often unknowingly and unwillingly become over-aggressive and violent. This would cause him a great amount of stress and frustration, which would turn him into a more aggressive and vicious cycle. He was a subconscious assassin. Yeah, kinda. 

Yeah, interesting. I almost think of him like Jason Bourne, in a way. Like he didn't know he had all these abilities until he was triggered. 

Yeah. Batman had strong hope for Jean Paul, who had proved his usefulness time and time again, thanks to his physical abilities. When Bane broke Batman's spine, Azrael was chosen to fill in for him to stop Bane's rise to power. 

After getting his ass handed to him by Bane initially, Azrael developed a new armored bat suit that made him even stronger and faster, with flame-throwing gauntlets also capable of firing high-velocity razor-sharp batterings. I think most people, when they... They may not know Jean Paul, but when they see this suit, they're like, Oh, that's who Azrael is, that's who Jean Paul Valley is. Yeah, he's like the robotic Batman. Yeah, yeah. The suit was designed by Joe Cassata, actually. Oh, really? 

Yeah, interesting. He defeated Bane in their second match, and this confidence boost only led to him becoming even more violent and unhinged. He sealed off all entrances to the Batcave, locking Robin out, wanting nothing to do with him due to Robin's deus approval of Jean Paul's violent tendencies. After nearly killing the Joker, Jean Paul lost the trust of many of the Gotham Police Department. 

Drunk on power, delusions and hallucinations had developed and intensified, eventually to a point where he let a serial killer fall to his death, even though he could have saved him because he was having visions of Saint Dumas. By this time, Bruce had recovered and confronted Jean Paul to strip him of the Batman mantle. Using nonviolent maneuvers, Bruce stripped Jean Paul of his bat armor in a both physical and psychological match. That also stripped Jean Paul of his delusions. Mentally broken, Jean Paul began a rehabilitative quest to take down the Order of Saint Dumas, which he was mostly successful in doing as Azrael. Was the order not good though? They were like taking down like demons and stuff. 

Like why would why would he take the order down? They're not, I wouldn't say they're good or bad. They were just, they were a secret society. They go back to the Templars. 

They were a splinter group of the Templar Knights during the Crusades. And I think it was Dumas. I forget his first name. What are those Templar Knights? He found like the treasure of the Templars and used that to fund a secret society. It's just, it's just one that has been like carrying out assassinations for centuries. So we're supposed to assume that they're also doing shady things. Yeah. Okay. 

I'll believe that. So Azrael died fighting Garry's surface to La Ha, but he came back as part of the new 52 relaunch in which he was an agent of the Order of Saint Dumas once again. He now wore armor known as the suit of sorrows, an ancient armor forged from the swords of fallen Templar Knights that has something like a mystical artificial intelligence. It's not technical. It's like mystical. It interfaces with the wearer's nervous system, feeding them extra sensory information like enemy weaknesses and such. 

In addition to reinforcing the system's conditioning, it's been described like having two brains in one body, which is enough to drive any man insane. This includes Jean-Paul. Batman tried to help him by putting him in a new suit, designed as a throwback to the Batman armor Jean-Paul wore in the previous continuity. Developed by Lucius Fox's son, Lucas, the new bat armor had an AI of its own based on Batman's mind that countered the system's more violent mindset. Having deemed the Azrael line a failure, the Order of Saint Dumas unleashed a robotic replacement assassin known as Ascalon, an android with artificial intelligence based on the entire recorded experiences of the suit of sorrows. As Azrael and Batman tried to stop Ascalon, it was revealed to Jean-Paul that the leader of the now mostly extinct Order of Saint Dumas was his father, a revelation that sent him into a rage that temporarily overthrew his own programming and caused him to punch right through Ascalon's body, which infected its system with Batman's AI. 

Due to his genetic modification as a fetus, Azrael has enhanced strength able to lift several tons, two tons. What? Yes. As well as increased speed, reflexes, stamina, durability, and the ability to heal several times faster than ordinary. His mental programming coupled with his innate enhanced senses, enhanced senses, and the intelligence system of the suit of sorrows, makes him an extremely skilled and tactical fighter, albeit he is prone to visions and hallucinations. Weapons wise, he wields a sword that he can ignite on flame, two gauntlet mounted blades, which could also set a flame, and a dagger that he keeps strapped to his front scabbard. Is the dagger special in any way? Has like a fleur de lis on it? 

Pretty fancy. Oh, that's cool. Okay. 

I don't think there's anything sweet about it. No. Okay. It's just a dagger. Yeah. Okay. So that's Azrael. Well, I didn't know anything about him. So that's pretty interesting. I've always, I never really liked the Joe Cassata design. 

It was weird. It was when he replaced white sleeves and it was just weird. It was bizarre, but I always liked his modern look. He kind of looks like the Assassin's Creed guy kind of a little bit. Oh, but yeah, if you're gonna take like the Assassin's Creed and Moon Knight and mix them together, you get. 

I think that's real in a way. All right. We're going to go ahead and speculate before we, before we actually do the stats and simulations. We're going to speculate on how we think this matchup would go. When considering this matchup, we always start the characters 50 yards apart from each other in a non-environment zone, where they know that each other are threats, but they don't know anything else about each other. Right. 

They're actually more comparable than I thought they were going to be. Yeah, yeah, I'm trying. I thought I had this one in the bag and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, two tons. Well, actually, it may even be stronger than that in some instances, but. So can blade. Those are essentially just feats of strength again. When I'm breaking down the characters, I tend to think of them more as like, you know, what's what's typical. 

There's no way as real is going out there being able to lift eight tons, which apparently like he's done something like that before. I just think of that as sloppy writing. Yeah. You know, oh good. Good. I agree. 

Slappy writing. What weapons does he have? Let's go over a weapons list. 

Well, I went through them. He has his sword that he's able to ignite. He has his blade gauntlets, which kind of makes him like Wolverine and he has his dagger. But like in previous incarnations, like he's had he's had multiple suits. He's had like eight different suits, maybe not that many, but like he wants to have like a pretty close to a bad man. So he did have things like batterings and stuff like that. You could assume that he could throw his dagger if you need a projectile. 

Sure. If you want one blade, he'll have his throwing stakes. He'll have his two automatic pistols. His guns. Yeah, he has guns. He has his his main sword and I'll give him his glaive that he throws. It's like a boomerang knife thing. 

It's so badass. It was in the movie. Yeah. But he's also had it in the comics as well. It's really badass. And what else? I think I think that's that's about it. Metal stakes, glaive, sword, guns. 

Gauntlet blades, sword, dagger. Is Azrael suit bulletproof? It's armor. That doesn't answer my question. It's made from swords. Yeah. Swords of the suit of sorrows is made from. Is that why he's wearing in this? Yes. Yeah, he's wearing a suit of sorrows. 

The one that makes him insane. OK, well, it also makes him more lethal. So does it? Yeah. 

OK. More lethal than blade. And it helps him track things, right? So it makes him it helps with his his agility and it helps with his marksmanship. OK, I think not just marksmanship with like with weaponry, but also with like his fists and stuff. It's it's not going to find any weaknesses on blade because blade doesn't really have any weaknesses. 

So that sort of aspect of is useless in this match. I think it's going to start off with blade pulling out his guns. I think that's inevitable. I think in every match, I think as real's primary objective is going to have to be to disarm blades, guns, somehow or evade the bullets long enough until he runs out of ammo. Question is, how do you see him doing that? 

That's because that's how the match is going to start off. He's fucking running. He is running his ass off. 

Like, shit. He's running, but he looked at his sword and he ignites his sword and he's dragging his sword on the ground and he's creating like a wall of fire. And that's going to sort of act like a screen. 

Oh, that's that's not a bad move. Like, yeah, smoke. Is it hot enough to set the ground on fire? I've seen like stuff basically explode like when he slices them just like fire erupting. OK. OK. So he creates a screen using his speed, agility and his flaming sword. Yeah, it's a pretty good one. 

All right. So Bway's going to, you know, Wesley Snipes his gun back into his jacket holster. And then but he, you know, he has good vision. He has good hearing and stuff. So he could probably peer through the fire and see where Ezreal is. And he's just like a badass. He's going to leap over the fire like a strike a cool pose like in midair. And as he lands, he's going to hurl his glaive right at right at Ezreal. OK, so Ezreal catches the glaive out of what? What? What? You can't catch blades. Maybe. 

Yeah, he absolutely. So OK, so he's not. Can blade catches on glaive? Yes. OK, then Ezreal can. So what you're saying is Ezreal no longer has a hand. 

No, he goes to catch it and then it goes right through his hand and he's like, damn it. I remember how does blade catch it? He's just a badass. Well, he has enhanced senses so you could time it well as it's coming back to him with his eyesight. 

Not only does Ezreal have enhanced senses, he also has the suit of sorrows. What the fuck ever, man? OK, so he catches it fine. He catches it and he's texted away for later. OK, he pulls out his sword. OK, right. 

And then blade pulls out his sword. And raise blade lands and then blades like ready to die. Motherfucker. 

OK, John Paul, I have no comeback. John Paul, just he's just silent and cool. So he. So they go at each other with the swords. Yeah. And the sword fight. But as real as you know, sword is better because it's flaming. 

OK, so yeah, they're the sort of thing. I'm pretty sure Azrael is a better sword fighter. No, I'm pretty sure he's not because blade is like the best sword fighter, one of the best sword fighters in the Marvel Universe. Azrael is one of the best sword fighters in DC. OK, so that means they're even. OK, who the fucking sword fighting? It probably looks bad ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like doing flips and like cool shit spinning around. 

Yeah, like the capoeira kind of stuff. The cool thing, though, is that, you know, well, Azrael has his sword in one hand and he's, you know, sword fighting there. He ejects and ignites the risk mounted blade on his other arm and just goes at blade with two blades. He's fighting blade with blades. 

So blade is fighting off two two blades all of a sudden. And he and he's surprised. He is surprised. He didn't see those those gauntlets blades come out. So he he reaches into his little hip holster and he flings like three silver stakes right at Azrael. Now they bounce right off his armor. No, right at his face. They bounce right off his armored face. He doesn't have an army. Yeah, he does have an armor. It's like it's like a cloth. No, it's not. Look closer. It's it's metallic. 

OK, so there's no. Are you saying that there's no where that blade can strike Azrael with his stakes? Well, there is. I don't know if you could see them, though. Oh, he sees. He's Azrael. He doesn't wear a helmet. He wears a mask with the hood. Oh, so the back of his head. So blades sees the hood. So he does a flip over and as he's up, you know, upside down mid flip, he jumps a stake into Azrael's head. 

Right. Except that no, because as he's doing that, Azrael is also moving at the same time as well as constantly moving. He's super agile. OK. That's when he takes his dagger and throws it at blade. And that's when blade. Oh, his dagger. 

Yeah. Oh, blade would knock that out of the air with his sword. But it's super fast. 

I don't know if you know this. He's like super fast in short distances. And so now that he knocked the blade out of the way, that's when he pulls his gun back out and then goes. So that's when Azrael pulls out the blade that he had been saving. 

And knocks the gun out of blades hand with it. OK. Oh, yeah. Good call there. I'm all out of projectiles. What else do I got? I use the guns. I use the glaive. I use the stakes. I have the sword. So he knocks the the glaive or the gun out of blades hand with the glaive that he stole from him. 

Yes. OK. You have to remember like there's fire everywhere. Fire everywhere. Blade doesn't give a shit about fire. Yeah, he does. Well, kind of mean like he can still burn. 

Yeah, he's in pain. He's in pain. Yeah, but he you know, he heals pretty quick. So it's just it's just it's just a flesh wound. Just a minor burn. Well, his body is is too busy healing itself to be paying as closely attention to Azrael and his attacks as it should be. I'm trying to figure out how blade can get through armor. Azrael's armor. 

Like it's not that durable. Right. I mean, like eventually, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's really durable. He's gonna have to he's gonna have to target the back of his head then or something. I mean, it's not because it's unfortunate that he has bladed weapon. Like I don't the bladed weapons won't necessarily get through a metallic armor. 

Like if it was like slashing weapons, right? Yeah, like slash and stab weapons. That's what armor is made for, you know. Right. So that's a little rough. Yeah. You want to take this to the stats? Because you give up. Do you have? Because you give up. I don't give up. 

No, I just already know that blade already killed Azrael with the stake to the back of the head. He was like, some other fuck as a wish on an ice skate uphill and then stabs him in the back of the head. What does that even mean? It just sounds cool saying it so you could say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's go to the stats. All right, we'll go to the stats. We'll be right back. 

Gregorian chants always remind me of Monty Python. It's true when they hit themselves on the head with the board. Yes, you're Dominic. Don't he's right. I think that's just off the top of my head. 

That was pretty good. We've ever seen that movie in decades. Yes, seriously. Decade. Decades. One decade at that one. 

Yeah, we're not that old. All right, so we ran a thousand simulations, putting their stats together. The stats were interesting because a lot of them came out closer than what I thought they would be. It was mainly being like, oh, yeah, blades way better at this. And then Jonathan going, no, no, no, he's just as good. And then me going, no, shut up, you're stupid. And then him going, no, look. Yeah, we determined that blade is faster in short bursts because he could essentially almost almost teleport. 

Yeah, almost. Yeah, as well as is stronger. Yeah, he's stronger. That surprised me. Barely though. His insanity was a bigger detriment than I thought it was going to be. Right, which makes me kind of sad because he's he's definitely not as intelligent as Batman, but he is, you know, he does have that conditioning that essentially just makes him a perfect weapon. Unfortunately, you know, he is again, once again, prone to to hallucinations and stuff like that. 

So it's unfortunate and it hindered him in these stats, I think. How confident are you feeling right now? Not as confident as it was earlier because I was like, fucking, as we could do anything blade can do and he wears armor. But there was one thing that he couldn't do, which is shoot guns. Yeah, yeah. 

Yeah, that ended up being a factor in this as well. I'm not going to pretend like, you know, Azrael doesn't get tagged occasionally because, you know, I've seen him bleed for sure. But I'm curious to see what the results are for sure. All right. Okay, so the winner of the Azrael Blade Dynamic Duel is... 

Azrael. What? No, I'm just kidding. No. 

Aw, you asshole. I do that to you all the time the other way around. I hate you. It's Blade, whatever. Blade won... Not by much. Blade won 596% or 596 battles out of 1000, which is 59.6%. And yeah, the guns played a huge factor in this. 

It's fucked up. I mean, I don't think they would have played that big of a role in this match. I mean, Azrael has taken on guys like Deathstroke and Batman and Bane and beating them. 

You say that there's nothing that Blade can do to Azrael, but what can Azrael do to Blade, considering his healing factor, his speed, and all that stuff? It's a close match. I mean, 59.6 is not that high. 

It's not as high as the last match. I mean, this is not too bad for you, right? I mean... Dude, I'm still sad. I'm heartbroken. It broke my heart. It's what I do. 

It's what Marvel does. They stomp on DC characters. It's what they're good at. They stomp on DC characters and they know things. They have the t-shirt that says that. That's what they do. 

Anyway, I've never seen this shirt. I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you know what that's a reference to? No. Okay, never mind then. All right. That does it for this episode. 

Don't forget to answer our question of the week, which was basically who do you think has the best live action costume in the Marvel and DC films? Follow us on social media and Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, search for our dynamic dual podcast. Buy our cool ass t-shirt designs by going to t-public. We have a link on our website, which is dynamicduld.com. So if you want to check out those sweet ass t-shirts, go to dynamicduld.com. Honestly, if you go to our website, we have links to our podcast, to our merchandise, to everything. Our social. It's all there. 

Social media. Yeah. Yeah. 

Not social security number. What? I don't know. No, it's not. 

I don't really know anything. Next episode, we will be kicking off Black History Month by doing a review of the first Blade movie. Super excited for that, especially since Blade is a winner in my book. It's been a long time since I saw the movie. 

It's good. Forget the director's name. Steven Norrington. 

Steven Norrington. He's just a fantastic director. Yeah, he is. He is really good. 

So stylized. Don't count the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen against him. Yeah, totally. Totally. But yeah, so looking forward to that. And we will talk to you guys in a week. Yep. Up, up and away. True believers.