EPISODE 200: Justice Society vs Fantastic Four

so joseph how many marvel themed items of clothing do you own uh quite a bit i have a captain america t-shirt a deadpool t-shirt an avengers t-shirt i don’t i don’t need the full run down but it sounds like they’re all t-shirts right yeah that’s correct okay but what if you want to show your comic book cred during like a job interview or an event like really stand out and represent uh with t-shirts i couldn’t weak lucky for you marvel and dc both have a line of men’s fashion accessories available at cufflinks.com who is sponsoring this podcast episode items like superman neckties and captain america shield cufflinks their selection of geek gear is amazing and if you use code duel 15 on cufflinks.com you get 15 off your total order with no minimum purchase from now until the end of 2020. sweet now i can dress like the geek i am and still look fly as hell if our listeners want to show off their comic book cred in style for free cufflinks.com is helping us run a giveaway where two lucky listeners will win either a batman silk tie or an ironman paisley tie to enter all you have to do is visit cufflinks.com check out their marvel and dc sections and send this podcast a message about what you think is the coolest product they have if it’s a marvel product marvel gets a point if it’s a dc product dc gets a point and decide with the most points by november  we’ll declare the most stylish superhero company as always you can reach out to us via email at dynamicduelpodcast gmail.com or you can send us a message on facebook instagram or twitter the links to which are in our episode description thanks to cufflinks.com for helping us set up this promo and remember you can get 15 off anything in their store with the promo code duel 15. check them out now on with the show [Music] 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 welcome to episode 200  that’s insane we’re in our fifth year now of the show january will mark the end of our fifth year we’ve done 200 episodes we’ve reviewed a ton of movies for you guys simulated tens of thousands of battles we’ve given out awards we’ve laughed we’ve cried and we’ve had a blast creating this podcast for you guys we want to thank all of our executive producers and anyone who’s ever supported the show via patreon or donated to any of the charity episodes that we put on it’s just been a wild ride and i’m just so proud of the show that we’ve created so far and we’re just getting started eh i don’t know about that well for this monumental 200th episode we will be pitting the justice society of america against the fantastic four in a team duel simulation yeah right this is our third team duel the first one we did was for episode 100 and that was justice league versus avengers the big flagship teams of marvel and dc for episode 150 we pit the titans against x-men who are like the cool teams of their respective universes and now we’re putting the classic teams against each other jsa was dc’s very first superhero team and the very first superhero team in comics in general and fantastic four is marvel’s first family they’re not technically the first marvel superhero team that’s kind of the invaders and some people have asked why we didn’t go with the invaders team against the jsa and that’s really for several reasons the invaders includes members like captain america the human torch submariner they’re not strong and varied enough to go up against the jsa and the second reason is that invaders were actually a retcon they were developed eight years after the fantastic four to tell stories that were set in the golden age in real life the only true marvel super teams that existed before the fantastic four were the young allies which were mostly civilian children fighting nazis alongside bucky and toro and there was the all winners squad and they only fought alongside each other for two whole issues so i consider the fantastic four to be marvel’s first real developed team so we’re going with them as marvel’s classic group right and we’ll get into the rosters and the matchups later on in this episode before that we’re gonna break down the comic book television news from the past week of which there was only one major news item to really talk about and that’s that oscar isaac is set to play moon knight for the disney plus television series 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 we want to give a quick shout out to our new executive producer zachary hepburn he joined us on patreon last week and now he gets to help steer the direction of the show helping us choose which films we’re going to review and some of the matches that we run he also gets a variety of other perks that you yourself can get by going to patreon.com dynamic duel yeah we have big news for our patrons and our listeners in general jonathan and i have developed and created a marvel vs dc card game called dynamic duel war that we’re going to be releasing on black friday this month so if you want to learn how to get the game be sure to join us on patreon where we’ll give you all the details one last thing just a quick reminder to please subscribe to our show if you haven’t already and if you have please help us grow our podcast audience by leaving a quick rating or review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on or by sharing us with your fellow dc and marvel fans and if you’re tuning in to us for the first time what’s up how’s it going guys where are you from but with that out of the way quick to the no prize a no prize is an award marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans our version the dynamic duel no prize is a digital award we post on social media that jonathan personally draws for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week last week’s question which tied into the news that both jared leto and joe manganiello would be returning for zack snyder’s justice league was which one villain from the dc eu would you most like to see join the injustice league yeah we got quite a few answers we have a list of honorable mentions to get through and then we’ll name the no prize winner our first honorable mention goes to sonofarohumond who said he would like to see dwayne johnson the rock’s black adam joined the injustice league because he’s been waiting to see the rock as the character since he was first announced for the role and since zack snyder’s movie is coming out next year we could see him all that much sooner yeah i mean the rox film was supposed to come out late next year i don’t think that’s going to happen anymore since it was removed from warner brothers schedule but you never know would be nice to see him along with other villains in the injustice league our next honorable mention goes to richard mcgrew who said that he would want to see black manta on the injustice league because he’s formidable and could go toe-to-toe with aquaman with his atlantean weaponry and armor and i loved black manta in the aquaman film i thought he was one of the coolest characters in that movie let’s sing a lot because there were a lot of cool characters in that movie yeah he was really well done i think he’d look really badass next to the likes of like deathstroke and stuff and i definitely think he’s more than capable of going up against several of the justice league members so that would be really cool to see him on the villain team our next honorable mention goes to jay moldenhauer salazar and maggie madden gehen who both gave the answer of cheetah and they both mentioned how she was a member of the injustice gang in the justice league cartoon and jay also added that if you have joker and lex luthor in the injustice league as well you’d have the villainous analog to the trinity of batman superman and wonder woman their villains would be on there yeah that would be really cool plus the team could use a woman’s touch you know there aren’t too many female dceu villains oh there’s harley quinn that’s true i’m actually surprised no one gave that answer but thanks to everyone who did send us an answer including john steroski calvin mims and avmail thanks for taking the initiative guys but the winners of this week’s no prize are michael hagerty and jeremy orr who both said that they would like to see mr mind from shazam in the injustice league because it would be great to see all of the villains interact with this genius caterpillar he was so ridiculous in the shazam movie i just the idea of someone like deathstroke and joker interacting with this caterpillar just tickles my fancy ugh nobody know what you mean it’s just so ridiculous it would just be so great if he was on the team because he poses a pretty credible threat you know he’s capable of possession which you know could throw a real wrench into things when you’re controlling someone as powerful as the members of the justice league congrats again to michael hagerty and jeremy orr for winning this week’s no prize if you the listener want a shot at winning euro no prize stay tuned to later on this episode when we’ll be asking another question of the week and now that that’s done on to the news [Music] alright so last week we learned that the final lead role for marvel’s disney plus television shows has been cast with oscar isaac taking the role of moon knight he’s in final talks to portray mark spector and all the other personalities that moon knight has which is big news you know we recently learned that iman villani who is a newcomer to acting was cast as ms marvel and tatiana maslany was tapped to play she hulk and neither of those two are really big names but oscar isaac is he’s a legit movie star coming off films like x-men apocalypse and star wars and he’s an amazing actor so on one hand i’m really excited about this news on the other hand i’m a little bit disappointed because i thought that they were going to lean heavily into mark spector’s jewish roots for this role yeah i remember from our batman vs moon knight episode you mentioned how the character from the comics has strong ties to his jewish heritage it’s a big part of the character right yeah a big part of his history and of course oscar isaac could play a jewish character or an egyptian one for that matter like he did with apocalypse but leading up to this news the star of the haunting of bly manor on netflix uh was talking about how he was interested in the role his name was oliver jackson cohen and he has an egyptian jewish lineage and he looks pretty spot on as mark spector from the comics so i thought he would have been perfectly cast as mark spector and i really got that drilled deep into my head and there’s always a little bit of disappointment when you have like your perfect fan casting that doesn’t come out to be true totally i would say that oscar isaac was not my number one choice for the role at all but i don’t hate it either i mean the guy has range and that’s really important for a character like moon knight who has multiple personality disorder yeah moon knight sort of is marvel’s batman and i heard once that oscar isaac was up for the role of batman so this is kind of fitting in a way oh really i could see him as bruce wayne but i’m not sure if i see him as batman i don’t know he could pull off batman and i think he’ll pull off moon knight pretty well now that we have the casting i just really want to see what the costume is going to look like i’m so excited for that is it going to be white is it going to be silver is the cape going to be crescent shaped like in the comics just so many questions i hope it’s white i hope he goes with a white costume like a ghost the real question is that because this is on disney plus is there going to be like blood splatter on the white costume probably not probably not unfortunately and i say unfortunately because mooney is quite a violent character yeah he’s a dark character so it seems like they’re gonna have to kind of neuter him to be on the disney plus platform i don’t know i’m sure the violence will be like the mandalorian where it’s actually pretty adrenaline-packed but it’s true that you don’t need gore to sell action no no definitely not if you guys don’t know much about moon knight and you want to learn more about him definitely check out our batman vs moon knight duel episode where we go all into his backstory it was actually our first duel that we ever did see it was episode 2 this is episode 200 coming full circle but that brings us to our question of the week who is your favorite marvel or dc character that we haven’t featured in one of our duel episodes yet yeah we’ve gone through a ton of great characters but there are still so many more out there and we want to know which one you guys want to see the most post your answer to our instagram twitter facebook or email us at dynamicdulepodcast gmail.com we’ll pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic duel no prize that will post to social media so that does it for all the news for this episode so let’s go ahead and get into the big  classic marvel and dc teams against each other the justice society of america versus the fantastic four let’s do it okay so the jsa versus the fantastic four when we were deciding which teams to do for our third big team episode i knew right away that i wanted to do the jsa and i think you knew right away that you wanted to do the fantastic four now first we weren’t quite sure that the teams were a good matchup for each other until we realized that not only were these essentially both comic companies first teams but also that the teams dealt with themes of family and legacy yeah and in terms of power level they kind of balance each other out too because this isn’t just the four fantastic four characters that we’re putting against the entire jsa team it’s really fantastic for and friends as it were since the simulation model we have set up for team episodes pits seven characters against seven characters in a matrix we always have to go with seven characters so i’ll be detailing which allies i chose to team up with the fantastic four against the jsa as i get into the team’s backstory yeah if you’ve never listened to one of our duel episodes before the way we determine a winner between these two characters is by running  their statistics what’s a monte carlo simulation well it’s a probabilistic model used to determine outcomes through random sampling and in our case it randomizes statistics along a normal distribution which is a bell curve as a way to simulate the many variables that can occur during battle the stat parameters we use are based on the official marvel power grid and we use that criteria to extrapolate the dc character stats we’ve included some additional stat categories of our own such as range damage potential and perception in order to create a more complete and robust simulation now running these 1000 simulations gives us a percentage of wins for each character and we declare the one with the higher percentage to be the ultimate victor given that they’re more likely to win any given battle now no one character ever wins 100 of the time you know comics have shown that there’s always a way for batman to defeat superman so we feel our method falls in line with the precedents that have been established in the comic book stories and we used this method because it was the least subjective most unbiased way to determine who would win of course jonathan and i are both heavily biased toward our respective allegiances and instead of debating these matches forever we just let math decide for us so there’s no fan votes here and no relying on just feats before we run the simulations though we like to break down each character’s histories and abilities before improvising a scenario and how we imagine one of the 1000 simulations we run would play out b for b now in this case of our 200th episode when we’re dealing with the team we always make sure that everyone who has been on that team has been featured in a duel episode from the past so yeah so you’re getting the team history here and if you want to get the character histories you can go back and listen to those previous episodes so let’s get into the team backstories for this monumental 200th episode which is sponsored by the hulu original series hellstrom right the marvel television produced series has all 10 of its episodes on hulu right now so if you’re like me and hungry for video content based on characters from marvel comics go watch it the show is not your typical superhero comic book reimagination it’s a mature scary story with dark humor and supernatural action the series deals with the theme of nature versus nurture wherein damon and anna hellstrom wrestle with their personal demons rising from their chilling family history the siblings join forces to save their mother as the mystery of their evil powerful father unravels it’s a thrilling tale with an incredible ensemble cast that’s perfect for this time of year with halloween just behind us when the nights grow longer and darker if you’re in the mood for some fun suspenseful television and who isn’t binge hellstrom only on hulu today big thanks to hulu for sponsoring this episode and now it’s time to dive into the history of dc’s first superhero team the justice society of america in 1940 prior to the united states involvement in world war ii president franklin d roosevelt learned that adolf hitler had obtained the spear of destiny a powerful artifact which could be used to conquer all of europe and eventually the world pressured by congress to keep the us out of the war president roosevelt decided to turn to america’s masked mystery men superheroes who were not only a relatively new concept but allowed america plausible deniability if they were captured since they were vigilantes unaffiliated with the government system president roosevelt sent two heroes to europe on a secret mission the green lantern ellen scott and jay garrick the flash the two heroes were overwhelmed and captured by hitler’s forces though luckily the mystic doctor fate was able to sense on his own that hitler wielded the spear and recruited other superheroes specifically sandman hawkman our man the spectre and the golden age version of the atom to fight the nazis in europe dr fate’s group met up with green lantern and the flash in europe after they escaped their capture and the two warned dr fate that hitler had used the spear to summon and control an army of mythical valkyries to escort a prototype long-range bomber set to destroy washington dc joining forces the group was not only able to stop the valkyrie army and the plane but also saved the president from a valkyrie assassination after the ordeal president roosevelt suggested the heroes form an official team to protect american shores from the threat of nazi invasion thus the justice society of america was born with their headquarters originally within a hotel in capital city in their first official meeting they were joined by the teenage genie wielding johnny thunder and the comedic abigail ma huncle the original powerless red tornado it wasn’t long before other heroes were recruited to the team including [ __ ] girl starman dr midnight wildcat black canary and even wonder woman for a time when the united states finally entered into world war ii president roosevelt activated article x drafting all american superheroes including the jsa into service as the all-star squadron during their service the jsa battled nazi and non-nazi threats to america such as the immortal vandal savage the hulkish solomon grundy and the sorcerer woten during a battle against the villain ian karkel the all-star squadron were bombarded with temporal energy which increased their longevity and vitality causing them to age slower after the war in the early 50s a villain named perdegaton successfully manipulated u.s politicians into believing masked vigilantes were a potential threat to america and the house of un-american activities committee ordered the jsa to reveal their secret identities so that they could be investigated and proven to be loyal americans sans communist sympathies the jsa refused the government order choosing instead to retire from superhero x rather than put their families and loved ones at risk the jsa members remained in retirement until the early 1960s when jay garrick met another version of the flash barry allen together the two flashes determined that they were from separate dimensions barry allen and the justice league which you can learn more about in our justice league versus avengers episode were from earth 1 and jay garrick and the jsa were from earth 2. inspired by the younger earth 1 team the jsa reformed and took on new younger members including robin the star-spangled kid and power girl eventually the super-powered children of the jsa members grew up and requested membership onto the team unwilling to put their own children in danger without further training the jsa declined their membership which led the younger heroes to form their own team known as infinity inc which included among others hector hall aka silver scarab the son of hawkman and hawkgirl jade and obsidian the twins of green lantern new clone who would later go by the name atom smasher the god son of the original adam and new versions of our man and dr midnight during the crisis on infinite earth’s event in the mid-80s the infinite dimensions of dc’s multiverse were merged into a single dimension retconning some of the team’s history and membership not long after the event the jsa learned that the spear of destiny had re-emerged and was responsible for an oncoming ragnarok that would destroy the new single universe sacrificing themselves to protect their universe the jsa fought alongside the norse gods in an endless cycle of death and rebirth to prevent ragnarok from reaching earth the jsa were seemingly dead never to return until the mid-90s when it was revealed that the oncoming ragnarok was just a simulation by odin to prepare for the eventual twilight of the gods upon their return to earth the jsa encountered another time altering event known as zero hour during which dr fate our man and the adam were killed and the rest of the team except for alan scott were physically altered to match their actual old ages the jsa disbanded once again until the late 90s when surviving members and new versions of classic members such as sandman star girl and black canary were forced to confront the evil sorcerer mordrew when he tried to control who would become the next doctor fate after stopping him the jsa decided to function as a mentorship based team in order to teach up-and-coming heroes the lessons already learned by some of the world’s original superheroes they repurposed the late sandman’s mansion known as the brownstone into their new headquarters slash museum which was curated and cared for by the elderly abigail ma hunkle eventually hawkman and powergirl rejoined the team as did new versions of hawkgirl dr midnight mr terrific and johnny thunder now hakeem thunder as well as former members of infinity inc rick tyler aka our man adam smasher and hector hall as the new doctor fate eventually the reformed shazam villain known as black adam joined the team as a way to make up for past misdeeds though his presence caused a schism within the jsa when several of their members left the team along with him in order to follow a more proactive and violent approach to stopping villains after reforming with new heroes such as ma huncle’s granddaughter maxine huncle aka cyclone citizen steele grandson of the all-star squadron member commander steele and even an elderly superman from the kingdom come dimension the jsa faced a similar schism after defeating an old god known as gog who created the violent anti-hero magog who himself like black adam convinced nearly half of the jsa that the team’s morals and ethics were too antiquated for modern villains a short-lived splinter team known as the all-stars was led by power girl for a time before they rejoined the main jsa members after the flashpoint event to reset dc’s continuity new young members of the jsa once again existed in an alternate dimension known as earth  which was later destroyed by darkseid during the rebirth event when it was revealed that dr manhattan of watchmen was responsible for altering dc’s history the original members of the jsa and their histories were restored to the prime dc continuity though there have been many iterations of the jsa members of its original classic lineup have always been on the team when it’s active that said it is a team that revolves around the concept of legacy so for my roster of seven members that will be a part of this episode’s simulations i will be using a blend of both classic and younger legacy heroes specifically the green lantern ellen scott the flash j garrick and dr fate those three were major catalysts for the original formation of the team so i think they’re important i’m also including early member hawkman who’s probably the team’s most popular character thanks to his inclusion in the saturday morning cartoon super friends and he’ll be one of the lead characters in the upcoming black adam film star girl is also popular being the only jsa member to ever have their own television show and she’s a strong legacy character along with mr terrific who’s like dc’s version of mr fantastic and is one of the longest running leaders of the jsa and finally our man another legacy character who holds a mantle that has been in every iteration of the team so that’s my roster green lantern the flash dr fate hawkman star girl mr terrific and our man that’s a pretty solid lineup yeah definitely represents multiple generations of the jsa while retaining its key core members in our last two episodes i didn’t really have a problem choosing my roster i know it was like a challenge for you to do so with the avengers and the x-men yeah but for this one i actually did struggle like i could have included wildcat i could have included sandman i could have included so many other characters but in the end i decided to narrow it down to this seven because that’s the number our model goes with right and again that’s the reason why i’ll be using the fantastic four plus three allies so let me get into the history of the fantastic four now the fantastic four aren’t really a superhero team they’re a superhero family bonded by blood marriage and unbreakable friendship their devotion to one another closeness and willingness to protect and sacrifice for each other make them uniquely endearing in the marvel pantheon as a group of scientist explorers the fantastic four stories take them where most other heroes never go facing threats other heroes never imagine in the course of their adventures they introduced marvel readers to black panther in wakanda silver surfer the skrulls on the cosmic side of the universe the inhumans and atalan subatomica and the microverse the negative zone and so much more the fantastic four have been all around the world from atlantis to the edge of the universe other dimensions through time and always back home to each other again they first met each other in the course of scientific prodigy reed richards postgraduate studies while attending empire state university in new york as a teen reed met a fellow prodigy named victor von doom who came to hate and mistakenly blame reed for the failure of one of his own devices that left him scarred and expelled from the school reed’s roommate was benjamin grimm who was at the school on a football scholarship the two became close like brothers and reed shared his dream of one day building a starship and journeying into space ben told him that if he ever got the chance he would pilot the ship ben graduated from empire state and became a test pilot for the air force while reed furthered his education while enrolled in graduate school in his early  he stayed at a long island boarding house where susan and johnny storm lived with their aunt sue was another gifted mind and she and reid developed feelings for each other he eventually moved out when he found himself too distracted from his work and sue went on to earn her doctorate reed eventually began work on a starship using government funding though the ship was the first man-made craft capable of traveling beyond the moon to other planets and solar systems the funding for its first launch was pulled due to the government’s skepticism it would work reed determined that he would prove the ship’s capability to keep the project alive and set up a test flight with his closest confidants as the crew ben sue and johnny the latter of whom was a skilled technician in his own right the launch was successful and the crew ventured into space however a storm of cosmic radiation enhanced by a chance solar flare bombarded their vessel and doused the four in cosmic rays they were forced to make a messy emergency landing back on earth and among the ship’s wreckage they discovered that the radiation altered their dna to grant them elemental abilities johnny burst into flame and discovered he could fly and control fire susan vanished into thin air and learned she could turn invisible ben developed a rock-like hide and superhuman strength and reed’s body became fluid and malleable the government apprehended the team and they were placed in a quarantine facility ashamed that his error of inadequately shielding his craft had forever changed his friends reed silently concluded that the only way for them to be accepted by society was to use their gifts to benefit mankind however possible rita was able to convince officials to let the team operate freely after they proved to themselves by solving a case of missing nuclear reactors and stopping a rampaging underground monster bonded through these events they collectively dubbed themselves the fantastic four taking the individuel names of the human torch invisible woman the thing and mr fantastic reid rented the top four floors of manhattan’s baxter building to use as a lab to research the developing powers as well as work on inventions to benefit mankind funded by their patents and royalties they begin adventuring and saving the earth from the likes of villains such as moleman the scrolls the puppet master and dr doom who was reed’s former colleague and the team’s greatest and most persistent antagonist the four developed a family dynamic with reed and sue often serving as the parental figures to ben and johnny’s brotherly bickering after one argument johnny left the team and came across the amnesiac namor the submariner the lost king of the underwater city of atlantis namor fell in love with sue and though she was attracted to him she neglected his offer to become queen and chose reed instead he proposed to her not long after and the two were wed in a large ceremony attended by nearly every other marvel superhero despite his unrequited feelings namor ended up becoming a valuable and frequent ally to the team ben and johnny also developed their own romantic relationships ben with blind sculptures alicia masters and johnny with every girl he laid eyes on eventually the silver surfer came to earth as a herald for the planet-consuming cosmic entity known as galactus the fantastic four were the first on the scene and they fought the silver surfer and tried to repel galactus but the threat was too strong they helped convince the surfer of the value of earth and he turned on his master this bought the fantastic four enough time to secure one of galactus weapons the ultimate nullifier which they threatened to use against the world devourer if he didn’t leave earth which he did as punishment for his betrayal galactus imprisoned the silver surfer on earth where he occasionally assisted the fantastic four against planetary threats after making dozens of scientific dimensional and universal discoveries reed and sue made their greatest yet when sue became pregnant and gave birth to their son whom they named franklin the child exhibited vast psychic and reality warping potential at an early age due to his parents cosmically alter dna sue became pregnant again however their daughter was stillborn though later it was revealed that young franklin saved his sister’s life by sequestering her consciousness in another reality where she was raised by a benevolent doctor doom the fantastic four all sacrificed their lives alongside many of earth’s other heroes in order to stop the evil psychic entity known as onslaught which you can learn more about in our titans vs x-men episode eventually the heroes were revealed to still be alive saved by franklin in a pocket dimension when the heroes returned reed sue’s daughter was restored to her state as an unborn child and dr doom helped deliver her naming her valeria after his first love valeria didn’t have powers like her brother but she was a prodigy like her father and had vast magic potential later on franklin and valeria would become kid heroes known as powerhouse and brainstorm oh i didn’t know that yeah now during the superhuman civil war in which heroes found themselves divided over the issue of registering and working on behalf of the government the fantastic four were also divided reed joined the pro registration site and helped tony stark build an extra dimensional prison for super powered offenders while sue and johnny joined captain america’s anti-registration site ben remained neutral and tried to prevent civilian collateral damage during the big brawl between sides eventually captain america’s side lost which you can learn more about in our justice league versus avengers episode and the fantastic four ended up reconciling when annihilus and his negative zone army tried to invade earth through a dimensional gateway in the baxter building johnny sacrificed his life to save the world and the team by sealing the gateway from the other side devastated by johnny’s death the fantastic four reformed as the future foundation an organization focused on solving earth’s problems through science they recruited spider-man into the group who was one of johnny’s best friends a frequent ally and his personal choice to replace him on the team as stated in his will eventually annihilus resurrected johnny in the negative zone as a means to get him to reopen the gateway and johnny escaped to his home dimension and the team was reunited the future foundation constructed a vessel capable of surviving the end of all reality during a time when marvel’s multiverse began collapsing in on itself ultimately reality was saved by dr doom who usurped the godlike power of the beings known as the beyonders and recreated the universe in his image when reed confronted dr doom doom admitted that reed would have wielded the power more wisely and the power was transferred to him the fantastic four temporarily disbanded as reed sue and their kids restored reality and recreated the entire multiverse while ben and johnny went on their own paths on earth johnny inherited billions of dollars from reed’s patents and he joined the avengers meanwhile ben finally proposed to and married his sweetheart alicia masters and that’s their history for this duel since our matrix incorporates a seven on seven framework again this is gonna be fantastic four and friends essentially so in addition to the primary members i scoured their list of close allies and former members in order to come up with three allies that best represent the fantastic force history and explorative nature off the bat i didn’t go with franklin and valeria because they’re still developing as heroes in the comics and franklin is way too powerful for this match and also i didn’t want to speculate on kids getting violently hurt but i did go with a hero that has once been a member of the fantastic four and a member of the fantastic five in an alternate reality and a member of the future foundation also known as bagman when he’s on the team i went with spider-man for the first slot it’s what johnny would want spider-man could also have been part of our justice league versus avengers rematch in the future but there are too many other classic avengers out there for that and i more closely associate spider-man with the fantastic four than with the avengers since he didn’t become a full-fledged full-time member of the avengers until the 2000s decade whereas he was trying to join the fantastic four in his very first title issue of the amazing spider-man number one it’s nice to get spider-man on a team like usually he’s a solo player yeah but it’s cool that you were able to find a spot for him here the second ally i chose was actually the first other hero the fantastic four encountered he’s a golden age hero who has consistently popped up in the fantastic four books in part to add romantic tension i went with namor the submariner it’s what sue would want [Laughter] i should state that neymar the submariner since we did the duel episode with him against aquaman he’s since developed the power of hydrokinesis what yay he got that from hydroman spiderman’s villain he can’t wield it quite like mira does where he can like form constructs and things like that but he can move water from one place to another to like flood an environment or open up like a big air bubble underwater okay that’s random and convenient i mean i like it i think it’s a good way to help differentiate him from aquaman that’s true actually yeah that’ll probably serve him well whenever he makes an appearance of the mcu yeah the third and final ally i chose wasn’t difficult at all i could have gone with another former member of the team because at some point each of the primary members have been temporarily replaced crystal and medusa have filled in for sue ant-man and black panther have filled in for reid luke cage and she-hulk have filled in for ben and nova and spidey have filled in for johnny but to beat the jsa i knew i needed a real powerhouse with a more varied power set from the others on the team i went with the silver server you know he’s always been a big part of the fantastic four’s history he’s one of their most frequent allies and he even co-starred in a movie with them so the full seven character lineup is mr fantastic invisible woman human torch thing silver surfer spider-man and the submariner with the additions that feels very fantastic four to me very silver age fantastic four well you know what’s better than silver right gold like golden age heroes from the jsa it’s [Laughter] no but the silver age was huge for marvel you know that was really the marvel age where stanley really went and created a vast majority of the marvel characters that are so popular today whereas dc goes way back as the original universe of original superheroes that are better don’t even try to deny it let’s move on hey it’s not who came out first it’s who did it better okay so dc all right yeah i agree now that we’ve gone over the team’s histories and rosters let’s speculate on how one of the 1000 simulated matches will go the winner is determined by simulations not the speculation but it’s fun to imagine how this could play out yeah we don’t set any rules for this match other than the characters don’t know anything about each other going in except that the other team is a threat that needs to be put down and we say they start off about 50 meters apart in an environment that has no bearing on the match itself because we don’t take stats for the environment right because certain characters have advantages in some environments over others and we want these characters to win on their own merit so let’s get into it the characters meet on the battlefield who goes first let me guess you’re gonna start this match off the way you started all of our team matchups with the flash going first well yeah yeah of course i mean he would go first that’s funny i have had a flash in each of these haven’t i yeah barry allen wally west and now jake eric the flash is gonna start off by seeing this guy who’s on fire you know the human torch and running circles around him at super speed to create like a vacuum and extinguish the flame the flash is gonna like blow the human torch out like a candle yeah with a wind vortex well spider-man is right there and he sees what happened and he’s able to use his enhanced reflexes and a spidey sense to get a handle on the speedster and he shoots webs on the ground right beneath the flash’s feet causing him to stick to the ground no no and then the human torch just reignites his flaming body and he sets the flash on fire oh [ __ ] okay but by this point mr terrific is gonna send his t spheres over to the flash and they’re gonna douse the flash and the human torch in flame extinguishing chemicals like like fire retardant you just keep trying to put the human torch out huh yeah he just looks like the most visible threat i think yeah i do have to mention that the t spheres are also scanning the opposing team for intel as this is happening okay well mr fantastic sees these cool technological devices these t-spheres and he wants to get his hands on one because you know he’s a big tech guy himself so he stretches out and snatches one out of the air and then he gets electrocuted when their defense systems kick in yeah that makes sense he doesn’t know that so he’s kind of stunned meanwhile the thing he picks up invisible woman who like creates this huge spherical force field around herself like the size of a house and the thing hurls her like a bowling ball to the gsa group and she just scatters them like a bunch of pins strike okay they probably didn’t see this coming either right because she’s invisible right yeah they’re just like what the hell hit us so dr fate he’s gonna summon this magical sandstorm to find like where the invisible force source is okay and he sees that there’s this like invisible sphere that’s not being affected by the magic sand so using his telekinesis he summons that sphere towards him and he goes intangible to go inside it where he finds invisible woman telekinetically he just chokes her out what is he wayne brady that’s messed up well namor sees this and and he’s defensive of sue so he’s not having it so he hurls his trident with all his might right at dr fate and the trident like sticks right into his back so dr fate drops invisible woman and she falls to the floor and turns invisible again okay but hawkman is gonna like quickly pull that trident out of dr fate’s back and then he’s just gonna streak through the sky toward namor and spear him with his own trident except that when he goes to stab him with the trident the trident just passes right through neymour’s body and kind of like disintegrates and reforms in neymar’s hand because this silver surfer saw what was about to happen and he protected his former defenders teammate by rendering the trident intangible and then give and get back to him okay so now neymar has his trident then he’s going up against hawkman’s mace or whatever and they’re just kind of like battling it out in this like gladiatorial aerial combat that’s cool and silver surfer goes into assist but before he can stargirl she uses her cosmic staff to generate a tractor beam that lifts her teammate our man off of the ground and she just flings him like really fast straight into silver surfer knocking him off of his board could our man knock silver surfer off of his board i guess if he’s like thrown fast enough yeah yeah okay so silver surfer is temporarily grounded meanwhile spider-man and mr fantastic have kind of comboed up in that mr fantastic has turned into this spiky ball and spider-man is swinging him around in the air connected to a web line like a giant morning star flail you know okay and he just swings spiky mr fantastic into stargirl knocking her away and forcing her to drop her cosmic staff and mr fantastic quickly just pounces on it because he’s like oh look more technology for me to analyze okay but i mean what does he want to analyze it for science stuff don’t worry about it okay he’s probably trying to figure out how to work it the thing is though is that star girl has telekinetic control over her cosmic stack so she just summons it back to her but he can stretch so he’s like pulling it keeping it from going back to her they’re having like this tug of war of sorts over the cosmic staff okay so they’re like going back and forth and then mr fantastic just stretches his foot out to kick star girl right in the solar plexus sending her flying back and mr fantastic quickly analyzes the staff and figures out how to work it i don’t think i like this that mr fantastic is like analyzing all this technology i’m gonna have green lantern intervene he’s gonna cause mr fantastic to get wrapped up in this straight jacket so he can’t use his arms and it prevents him from toying with the cosmic staff which just flies back to stargirl oh i’m gonna get that back okay going back to the silver surfer who got knocked off his board by our man he’s gonna telekinetically call his surfboard back to him and it’s going to slam into our man before the surfer hops back on it and flies back into battle where mr terrific meanwhile is swarming the thing with t spheres just knocking him around knocking him around yeah they’re strong well i don’t know if those would actually hurt thing too much he’s probably just annoyed by him he’s like get out of here he’s like swatting at him and he actually like manages to like grab some and like crush him in his hands that’s fine i have like 50 more around him which all simultaneously like spray him with like sleeping knockout gas putting him to sleep but before the gas can affect him too much he does this like thunderous shockwave clap with his hands that stands the gas like blowing away from him and the t spheres as well from the shock wave so he’s a little bit drowsy now but he’s not knocked out and he stumbles over to mr terrific and swings at him and just punches his head off geez i mean he’s drowsy it’s not going to be hard to dodge mr terrific is a world-class athlete he can’t touch forever though no before the thing could even reach mr terrific mr terrific is rescued from the whole situation by the flash [ __ ] dumb can’t touch this meanwhile the human torch is putting the heat on dr fate by engulfing him in like this tornado this whirlwind of fire that is totally not even gonna hurt dr fate like he’s magic he’s just gonna like take all of that flame and condense it into like this giant like eye of horus above his head in the sky and it just shoots these like flaming hailstones all throughout the battlefield at the fantastic four members oh that’s a pretty cool visual yeah it’s dope i’m picturing like the eye of sauron just like shooting fireballs at everybody sort of but the invisible woman erects invisible force fields around everyone on the team so they don’t get hurt by these flaming hailstones of course and spider-man swings in and just does the swinging kick into dr fate’s face knocking off his helmet and then he webs dr fate’s helmet covering it with webs and sticking it down dr fate’s really gonna want to get that helmet back and it doesn’t give him his power but his power is greatly diminished without it so while he is trying to unstick his helmets let’s check back in with the hawkman and namor fight i’m going to say that during the hailstone barrage neymar got distracted enough trying to block the hellstones that hawkman got the upper hand so now he has namor pinned on the ground just bashing his brains in with his enth metal base no because the silver surfer just flies in and disintegrates hawkman with a cosmic beam what silver surfer is like my perfect deus ex machina well you know who’s mine our man because he has precognition you remember when silver surfer like bashed his surfboard into our man yeah this whole time iron man’s been hanging onto that like fin at the bottom of the board and he’s just been flying around with him so our man foresaw that hawkman was gonna die so at the last minute he manages to climb onto the board and stop him from killing hawkman how is he gonna do that i don’t know he’s gonna like grab his fist and then and then get disintegrated himself so while he may prevent hawkman from getting blasted by the cosmic beam he basically just sacrificed himself because he’s not stopping silver surfer from blasting that’s true it’s a noble cause so our man’s the first one to drop in this match very heroically that’s fine his dad would be proud and you know it’s not a total waste because since hawkman’s still alive he still takes out namor no because neymar saves himself at the very last minute by summoning this like wave this water blast to crash into hawkman and like wash him away just really wanted to squeeze in some hydrokinesis in there right i’m sure so hawkman’s being like washed away neymar gets up and he flies over to stargirl and they start going at it with their weapons neymar with his trident and star girl with her cosmic staff star girl against neymar yeah she’s going down she’s pretty good with her staff but yeah he’s a lot stronger than her so i’m gonna say that green lantern is gonna come to star girls rescue you know teamwork and just create like this fish hook that hooks into namor and pulls him away from star girl towards green lantern so as neymar’s being pulled toward green lantern neymar just stabs green lantern with the trident except that would do nothing because green lantern really doesn’t have a physical form he’s made of green mystic flame oh yeah that’s right forgot about that so as this trident is like sticking through him green lantern just incinerates neymar ah crap that makes sense i guess neymar is out of this match now so reach down one but what’s spider-man doing i’m gonna say he’s fighting mr terrific okay that’s kind of cool i could totally see them just like spiraling around each other in the air with like t spheres all around him oh i forgot that mr triffic can fly yeah yeah spiderman’s probably actually like swinging from his t spheres as mr terrific is like attacking him with laser beams but spidey has a spider sense and he’s dodging the laser beams and he ends up webbing mr terrific right in his face so he can’t see what he’s doing now you should know better than that mr terrific’s mask protects him from stuff like that so he’s probably not able to see in like the spectrum of light anymore in which case he’ll just switch to infrared and you can still see spider-man’s heat signature you can see through the webbing right so now with spider-man’s heat signature locked on mr terrific has no trouble tagging spider-man with one of those lasers but where did spider-man get hit with the laser don’t answer that i’ll tell you it was you know somewhere non-essential like the arm how does mr terrific control the t spheres uh it’s mental he has like these implants in his ear and i think they connect to his nervous system so he’s able to control them you know with his brain well server surfer just flies in because teamwork and he converts mr terrific’s uh tech implants into just putty so mr terrific can no longer control these t-shirts and he just falls out of the sky onto the ground okay but mr terrific is an athlete so you know he doesn’t get too damaged by the fall he just tucks and rolls yeah right next to spider-man who’s right there and the two start hand-to-hand fighting yeah mr terrific is a master of several forms of martial arts so spider-man knows the way of the spider and this time he’s not going to pull his punches which is what he usually does when he goes up against non-enhanced beings so he punches mr terrific right in the face and pretty much mr triffic’s face explodes geez so he’s out of here and spider-man grabs one of those t spheres and he starts studying that technology stop using my own stuff against me what are you doing meanwhile flash spots invisible woman okay how you know one of the times when she happens to be visible so he’s going to take advantage of the situation and he’s just going to charge her at full speed yeah right into an invisible wall like a fly on a windshield splat no i did he phases right through that his reflexes are like light speed so once his helmet gets like the faintest touch that it’s about to run into something he just goes intangible oh my god if he didn’t have that stupid-ass big helmet that probably wouldn’t have happened so once he’s through that wall he just keeps rushing sue and then he just like phases his hand right through her heart in her chest and now she’s out no because the silver surfer flies over to her and johnny sees this and he’s super pissed and he freaking just incinerates flash like goes full supernova on him or he’d like to but star girl like contains him within a force field preventing the blast from even reaching the flash star girl can contain human torch’s full supernova blast within a force field i mean yeah no no this blast is like way too powerful for this rookie she tries to contain it with a force field but it’s not quite strong enough and it forms like this little crack and the full force of the nova flame comes through the crack and just engulfs her reducing her to ash what why does that happen that’s not fair life’s not fair deal with it i could kind of see that happening a lot of the times in dc this stuff is dependent on willpower and star girl is still such a young hero right all right whatever she’s out of this match that being said the human torch’s supernova blast does exhaust all of his flame powers that’s right okay so the flash sees that the human torch is no longer on fire so he’s not going to let this moment go to waste he rushes over to human torch vibrates his hand again and just like scrambles his brain geez fatality well when star girl died mr fantastic picked up her cosmic staff and you know he knows how to use it now but he converts the star rod’s power battery that absorbs like starlight right yeah yeah stellar radiation and he converts it into like this energy vacuum and he points it at the flash and he like triggers it and it absorbs all of the ambient energy around the flash and it kind of like in effect freezes him in place well like captain cold yeah kind of and then the thing runs over because he’s pissed that johnny died and he just punches flash just shattering him so flash is out of this match turning the cosmic staff into an energy vacuum that was a really good move thanks yeah i use my mr fantastic brain for that one okay but green lantern just saw his best friend since like the 1940s die so what destroys rock paper or you know a jackhammer green lantern just creates like this giant flaming jackhammer that just like i was gonna say jack’s off [Laughter] that just it hammers things head right off oh geez yeah just like pushes him down down the ground and i just like gone things out of the match now also at this point dr fate has finally managed to get his helmet unstuck and just puts that sucker back on his head oh and he sees spider-man tinkering with that t-sphere that he got so he just conjures this like magic webbing that’s like glowing and it just drops onto spider-man trapping him down on the ground at which point these like poisonous scarabs manifest and devour spider-man try using your spider sense to get out of that one that’s like out of the mummy or something yeah that’s the horrible way to go all right who do i have left uh silver surfer and green lantern they’re like trading big energy blasts with each other going back and forth uh-huh because they’re both energy-based characters yeah i mean green lantern can create constructs though and what’s the surfers biggest fear the giant shark so green lantern is probably chasing silver surfer with this shark just like chomping down it well silver surfer can’t create constructs but he can affect mass and gravity so he reaches his power cosmic over to green lantern and he just like compresses green lantern’s body into a black hole essentially just just wiping it from space and time i think and i guess that would take the shark with it if there’s no one controlling the shark anymore right okay but dr fate sees this and he’s going to put like this time aura this temporal aura around silver surfer that magically reverses time until server surfer reverts back to noren rad so he’s just like this normal man at which point dr fate manifests this like energy blade and just sends it right through noran rad killing him so silver surfer’s gone now i’m not gonna lie that that was actually a pretty badass move dr fate is kind of a badass he’s really powerful he’s really cool he’s probably the most powerful guy left on the field for sure we’re gonna have to fix that i don’t know how except i do know how because mr fantastic has that cosmic staff that he repurposed as an energy absorber and he further repurposes it specifically into a magical energy absorber using the t sphere that spider-man was tinkering with as this kind of like controller and basically he builds the ghostbusters ghost trap what you saw the movie right you see that yeah so he like throws it on the ground kind of near dr fate’s feet and then he activates it with his t sphere and it zaps dr fate with like this electrical beam that starts pulling dr fate and his magical energy into the trap sealing him when did mr fantastic become a ghostbuster i mean if they can make that device he can make that device so it sucks dr faden but it’s gonna leave the helmet behind okay i think all i have left is hawkman but him and dr fate they go like way back to ancient egypt so hawkman’s gonna fly over and pick up the helmet and then put on the helm of fate becoming hot fate okay and his wings like turn golden and like triple its size he just looks like total badass so now that hawkman is like a super saiyan sorcerer he just like flaps his wings and turns mr fantastic into dust instantaneously then he flaps his wings again and boom mr fantastic is just like gone with the wind and that’s it match over but then hawkman’s head just explodes i’m sorry what because silver surfer was able to heal invisible woman from the flash’s attack so she’s still alive she’s just been hidden this whole time and she created a force bubble inside of hawk faith’s skull and just expanded it killing hawkman dr fate and really ending this match i actually think that hawkman you know with his enhanced senses combined with the helm of fate would allow him to see this attack coming so before she could explode his head he sees her first and like lets out this sonic scream that just vaporizes her no i’m pretty sure his head explodes but that’s a great place to leave this match on a cliffhanger so let’s go ahead and run the simulations of these battles find the winner and see what actually happens at the end of this match i love these team duels they’re so much fun yeah it’s fun to go no holds barred action with multiple characters that being said though it is kind of a pain to run that many simulations right as we’ve mentioned before in previous duel episodes usually we’re only comparing two sets of data against each other you know one character against another character when we’re dealing with teams we’re comparing matrices of data against each other so it’s each member of each team going against each member of each every other team and then we average the results yo surprising was that this matchup was essentially a bunch of mid-tier characters teamed up with one god level character on each side silver surfer and dr fate were both insanely powerful like way more powerful than their teammates yeah i think the stat ranges in this team duel was much more broad than our past team episodes yeah if you look at the win rate for dr fate it’s 91.7 percent he won a vast majority of all of his battles and silver surfer was up there too he won 83.4 of all of his matches yeah so i had the most powerful character but i also had the weakest character in our man he only won 17.8 percent of his matches so it kind of balanced itself out yeah that was unfortunate for our men like we kind of matched them up powers-wise with spider-man because they’re both super strong and agile and they both have like pre-cognitive warning systems yeah so on paper that kind of worked but in reality our man just got his ass kicked all the time when trying to come up with the characters that we use for these team matches we do try to kind of pair them up so that we have an idea that the teams are balanced so like mr terrific pairs with mr fantastic star girl with invisible woman green lantern with human torch flash with thing dr fate with silver surfer hawkman with the submariner and arrowman with spiderman yeah usually that method serves us pretty well in terms of balance and this duel is no exception the results were really close yeah i’m kind of nervous especially since the poll results from the poll that we gave to you guys on social media say that jsa is going to win yeah by 52 that may be the closest social media poll that we’ve ever done but if you had a guess who was going to come out on top who do you think would my guess is fantastic four and why is that because that’s what i want well the winner of our 200th episode duel is the fantastic four yes yes oh and i hope you have this win the fantastic four won by  that is very close i don’t think it’s as close as our x-men vs titans episode which i think was like 508 wins i think but this one came down to the wire for sure the gsa only won 48.6 of the time and i’m actually kind of surprised going into this match i thought that jsa had a huge advantage the silver surfer on your team changed the whole dynamic well yeah i needed somebody powerful enough to go up against dr fate and in the end you still had the most powerful character i think i just had the more well-rounded team i mean honestly like if it was just the four fantastic four characters who knows how well they would have fared against like the primary four jsa characters but our model has always been seven versus seven so it’s not quite the fantastic four winning but it’s the fantastic four and their allies winning and i’ll take it so close i really wanted the jsa to win but it was a good match yeah good match dc sucks [ __ ] you jeez jeez just for that you’re going to lose the next team match which will actually be episode 225. that’s right we’re actually going to start doing these big team duels now every 25 episodes as opposed to every  big team duel match per year we’ll have two per year now so look forward to episode 225 when we pit suicide squad against marvel’s street heroes who i’m going to call the defenders because that’s what the netflix show did right so characters like daredevil and luke cage and iron fist exactly so look forward to that at the end of april in the meantime we have lots of fun episodes coming your way including our holiday charity episode where we’re going to pit herbie against helix and we commissioned special artwork for that by artist matt turner and at the end of the year we’re going to have our brother’s awards although that might not work out quite well for  little bit and of course we have plenty of great reviews and other duel matches coming your way so yeah please subscribe now to our show if you haven’t and please leave a rating or review on your platform of choice sharing this show on social media or in person is also a big help for us don’t forget guys that we have a promo going on right now with cufflinks.com where if you use promo code duel 15 at checkout on any purchase that you make on their site you’ll get 15 off that’s d-u-e-l-15 yeah do that right after this episode and then after that let us know what you thought of the match by writing to us at dynamicduelpodcast gmail.com or by visiting us on facebook instagram or twitter you can find links to all of our accounts by visiting our website dynamicduel.com and also don’t forget to binge the hulu original series hellstrom yeah all 10 episodes are now available we want to give a big thanks to our executive producers ken johnson jace krump john straurowski john spees isaiah bethune and zachary hepburn for helping make this podcast possible and we’ll talk to you guys next week when we review the 2011 film x-men first class see you guys then up up and away true believers