New Gods vs Eternals

This is a DynaMic Network Podcast. 

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Hi and welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast, a weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in stat based battle simulations. 

I'm Marvelous Joe and I'm his twin brother Johnny DC. 

And in this episode we're going to find out who would win in a fight between the new gods from DC and the Eternals from Marvel. 

And one of our final team duels for this podcast, we knew we wanted to go all out and pit the two most formidable teams against each other. 

I don't know if the Eternals is Marvel's most formidable team but they are certainly up there. They basically have all the powers. So I could totally see the new gods getting dog walked in this matchup. 

That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. No way the new gods are losing this. They are literal gods. 

And the Eternals were once worshipped as gods. So there you go. Before we get into that matchup though guys, we're going to break down the latest comic book movie news that came out this past week of which actually were not because there is no news. 

But as always we list our segment times in our episode description so feel free to check out the show notes if you want to skip ahead to a particular topic. 

Our artificially intelligent duel simulator AJ9K has a quick message for our listeners so listen up. 

Why hello there. Do you want even more from this podcast? Then become a part of the dynamic duel community on Patreon where you can choose from three tiers. The dynamic 2.0 tier gives you access to our Discord chat server. 

The fantastic 4.0 tier gives you two bonus episodes each month and the X-Force tier makes you an executive producer of this show. Lastly, the Dynamite podcast network tier lets you create your own podcast using this Monte Carlo simulator. Johnny and Joe will help you develop your show, provide graphic support and consultation and get you simulation results. Pitch the twins your ideas via email at dynamicdualpodcastatgmail.com. Check it out at patreon.com slash dynamicdual. Pip pip cheerio. 

Thanks AJ9K and thanks to everyone who supports the podcast 

including Travis Herndon and the Camacho twins who we are very late in wishing happy birthday. 

Yeah, if I could give Gilly and Travis a get for Marvel, I would give Gilly Hawkeye set of trick arrows and I would give Travis Mr. Fantastic stretch powers. 

That is random as fuck. I'm gonna say that since all three of these guys are twins, since you know we have the running joke that Travis Herndon is the twin of Travis Bailey, I'm going to give all of them the power of the Wonder Twins. 

Which one? Zan or Jan or whatever her name is. The power to turn into any animal or the power to turn into any water form. 

Let's see we'll make Scotty Zan, we'll make Gilly Jayna and we'll make Travis Gleek. 

So still the power of stretching, except he could just stretch his tail. Yes, it's his tail. Happy birthday guys. Be sure to tune into the other shows and the Dynamite Podcast Network this week including the Console Combat Podcast where hosts John and Dean simulate battles between popular video game characters. And yesterday's episode, they celebrated two years of the Konsole Kombat Podcast, which is a huge feat for those guys. Congrats to them. Go ahead and check out their anniversary special. 

Over on the Max Destruction Podcast hosts Scotty and Gilly, pet your favorite action heroes from film and television against each other. The Macho Twins are returning this week with a Christmas duel right out the gate. Jack Skellington versus The Grinch. 

And on the Senjoh World Podcast hosts Zachary Hepburn speculates on fights between fan favorite anime and manga characters. In his next episode, Zach is revealing who'd win between Shigyo Kageyama, aka Mob from Mob Psycho 100 and Tatsumaki the tornado of terror from One Punch Man. 

Visit dynamicpodcasts.com or click the link in our show notes to listen to all of the shows in the Dynamite Podcast Network. But with that out of the way. Quick to the No Prize. A No Prize is an award that Marvel used to give out to fans. 

Our version, the Dynamic Duel No Prize, is a digital award that we post on Instagram for the person that we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week, we asked you 

guys, what was your favorite story within the Batman Deadpool crossover comic and why? And this is coming off of DC publishing the Batman Deadpool crossover comic, of which there were a lot of stories, including, of course, Batman Deadpool. There was Harley Quinn Hulk, Nightwing Wolverine, Miss Marvel and Static and Dr. Strange and Constantine. 

We received a grand total of one answer this week from Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. He said. 

This is the Woz, not Wozniak. Just simply the Woz. And my favorite part of that comic book is simply Batman. Why does Batman rocks? He's actually the only thing in DC that rocks because Marvel is better. Marvel is amazing. And that's all I got to say to that. 

And Steve Wozniak's right. Batman is better than Marvel. 

Well, what he actually said was that Marvel was better than all of DC. It was just that Batman was better than anything else DC had. That's not what I heard. 

Well, clean your fucking ears then. Because the Woz does not lie. So the Woz gets this week's No Prize. His name is not actually Steve Wozniak. It's Josh Wozmont. 

That's not what I heard. Congrats, Josh, for winning this week's No Prize. If you, the listener, want a shot at winning your own No Prize, stay tuned to later on this episode when we'll be asking another question of the week. And now that that's done. 

On to the question of the week. 

Guys, we have completed all of the review episodes before the final episode of this podcast in mid January. There's nothing else to review because Wonder Man got pushed back. So with that said, what review of ours, what review episode of Dynamic Duel did you get the most out of? Whether you thought it was funny or insightful or way off base, let us know what stood out to you. 

But that does it for the upfront portion of this episode. Let's get on to our main event where we find out who would win between the DC team of the new gods and the Marvel team of the Eternals. All right, the new gods versus the Eternals. Both of these teams are members of a race of godlike beings. So this will be quite the clash of Titans as we're actually the Eternals who live on Saturn's moon of Titan are called Titans. And that's actually where Thanos is from. He's actually one of the Titans. 

Of course, the Eternals had their own movie, which sucked. 

The movie did not suck. It was entirely different from everything else that Marvel had put out. Not in a bad way. I just don't think it was what people were expecting. Being a big fan of the lore of the Eternals, you could definitely listen to our review and hear how I actually enjoyed the film for what it was. 

Wait, so remind me, is Thanos a robot person like they are? 

No, well, he's a member of a race of beings that were created by the Celestials. They're not robots, though. This matchup, though, is probably going to be similar to our Darkseid's elite versus Thanos's Black Order duel that we did a few months ago. 

Right, because the new gods are essentially the good counterparts to Darkseid's elite, who are also new gods just from Apocalypse, as opposed to New Genesis. 

There's a lot of lore surrounding both of these teams. Actually, both the new gods and the Eternals are creations of comic book legend Jack Kirby. I believe Jack Kirby first created the new gods for DC and then kind of carried them on back at Marvel with the Eternals, who are kind of the spiritual successors of the new gods, I would say. 

Right, yeah, Eternals is a Jack Kirby ripoff of a Jack Kirby DC creation. 

Hey, you can't rip off yourself. That's fair. Can't wait to get into this duel matchup. First, to explain the methodology behind our duels, let's go to our sentient duel simulator, Alfred Jarvis 9000. AJ9K, tell our listeners how you go about determining a winner in our duel matchups. 

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

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

Thanks AJ and IK. Before we run the simulations though, we like to break down each team's histories and rosters before improvising a scenario on how we imagine one of the thousands of simulations would play out beat for beat. And I believe it's my turn to go first with the Marvel team's backstory. So let me tell you all about the Eternals. About a million years ago, a host of cosmic giants called Celestials visited prehistoric Earth and experimented on early Homo erectus. Their work produced three branches of humanity. The long-lived Eternals, the unstable Deviants and ordinary humans, which were seated with the potential to become superpowered mutants later in evolution. The Eternals were engineered to channel immense cosmic energy as custodians of the Celestial's mankind experiment, while the Deviants warped genetics drove them to dominate and terrorize early humans. As the Eternals multiplied, they built the city of Olympia in the mountains of Greece. 

Their power and proximity to the Olympian gods led ancient Greeks to confuse the two races, and some Eternals even impersonated gods as part of a treaty, most notably Azura, whose name was changed to Thena, so she could serve as the earthly Athena before mortal worshipers. An ideological rift soon tore the young race of Eternals apart. Uranus, brother of the peaceful scientist, Kronos, believed the Eternals should conquer Earth. Civil war erupted, Kronos prevailed, and Uranus and his fathers were exiled into space. They founded a colony on the planet Uranus, where their presence attracted the alien Kree. 

When a Kree armada destroyed their ship, the survivors crashed on Saturn's moon Titan and created a new colony there. Back on Earth, Kronos continued his experiments with cosmic energy until a catastrophic accident disintegrated his body and permanently awakened his full power. With Kronos, now a disembodied entity, the Eternals merged into a uni-mind and chose Kronos' son Zuras as the new prime Eternal, while his other son Alars departed the planet to avoid another schism. Alars traveled to Titan and found the first Eternals colony there devastated with only one survivor named Sui-san. Together, they rebuilt Titan's society under the guidance of the artificial intelligence Isaac. Alars and Sui-san's children would define Titan's future, giving birth to Aros, a carefree adventurer, and Thanos, a mutant Eternal whose deviant-like appearance and obsession with death would one day lead him to massacre most of Titan's population and to become one of the universe's greatest threats. You can learn more about Thanos in his duel against Darkseid. The survivors of Titan rebuilt the colony yet again and its Eternals repeatedly aided Earth's heroes against Thanos, while Aros, eventually known as Starfox, left Titan to join the Avengers and roam the cosmos as a hero. 

Back on Earth, Zuras consolidated Eternal Society in Olympia, near a gateway to the Olympian God's realm. His daughter, Thena, grew into a scholar and warrior, often acting as the God's representative. Over millennia, she became entangled with Crow, a deviant warlord who first spared her life in ancient Babylon. 

Their long, uneasy romance produced secret twin children, whom Athena hid inside a human surrogate to be raised as ordinary mortals, even as she continued to command Eternals in battle against deviant armies. Other Eternals similarly wove themselves into human legend. Ikaris helped shepherd humans during ancient cataclysms and later guided a refugee ship to safety in stories remembered as the tale of Noah's Ark. Centuries later, while fighting deviance in Greece, he married a human woman and fathered his son Icarus. 

The boy died when Mechanical Wings' father built carried him too high into the atmosphere, and in grief, the Eternal took his son's name. Makari, another Eternal of Olympia, was fascinated by speed and technology. Under various aliases, he taught writing, carried messages for early civilizations, and inspired myths of swift gods, later operating openly in the 20th century as the speedster Hurricane and then Mercury. Cersei stood apart from her kin by fully embracing humanity. A fourth generation Eternal born in Olympia to Helios and Percy, she delighted in art, magic, and mortal company, appearing across history as a performer and benefactor in legendary courts and cities. In the modern era, after helping repel a major deviant assault on New York, Cersei lived as a Manhattan socialite, befriending several Avengers and ultimately joined the team herself, entering a complicated romance with the Black Knight that later tied into her struggle with an eternal mental illness called Mahd Wyry. 

You can learn more about Cersei in her duel against Firestorm. Humanity's first broad exposure to the Eternals as a people came during the arrival of the Celestial's fourth host. Anticipating their return, Zuras stationed Icarus in an ancient city in the Peruvian Andes to awaken Ajax, a priestly Eternal who had chosen to sleep between Celestial visits. With Ajax revived, the Eternals rushed to prepare for the Celestial's descent and clashed with deviant plots to turn humanity against the towering judges. The Eternals merged into a uni-mind to augment the Asgardian destroyer armor in a desperate attack that failed to sway the Celestial's. The aftermath, the Celestial's spared Earth, destroyed the deviant ruling class and left Zuras dead, prompting many Eternals to depart the planet while a smaller faction remained under Thena and then Icarus. In the modern age, eternal deviant tensions continued as the Lemurian deviant priest lord Gar sought Celestial power. Thena, who had once sheltered the deviant gladiators from Lemuria's brutal culling rituals, found herself torn between Crow and her responsibilities as the new prime Eternal on Earth. 

The strain left her vulnerable to a mental brain-mind that Crow had implanted in her mind and her increasingly erratic decisions led to Icarus eventually challenging and replacing her as the prime Eternal. As the superhero era unfolded, Cersei, Gilgamesh, and Starfox all served as Avengers, bringing eternal power directly into Earth's most famous team. Gilgamesh, long known as the Forgotten One for his earlier interference in human history, briefly fought alongside Earth's heroes before Grievous Injury sent him back to Olympia. During this period, Cersei's mental instability worsened and the Eternals bound her mind to the Black Knight in a soul bond known as a Gann Josin, untangling their lives until the onslaught crisis scattered the heroes again. 

You can learn more about the Black Knight in his duel against Amethyst. The Eternals' understanding of themselves changed completely when the childlike trickster Eternal called Sprite rebelled against his unending existence. Using stolen Eternal technology and the dormant dreaming celestial deep in the Earth's crust, Sprite rewrote reality so that the Eternals became ordinary humans with fabricated histories and no knowledge of their true nature. Makkari lived as a medical student, Mark Curry, Cersei as a party planner, Thena as a Stark Enterprise scientist with a husband and young son, Faistos as an engineer in Sweden, and Icarus as the mysterious Ike Harris, who alone remembered fragments of the truth. Their reunion at a European diplomatic party triggered the return of their powers and set them on a path to restore their memories. 

Icarus reestablished Olympia as their base, while Makkari became the chosen communicator for the awakened dreaming celestial. The celestial revealed that every seated world receives 100 Eternals and 100 Deviants and that the Celestials stand ready to scour a planet if deviant corruption outweighs eternal guidance, forcing the Eternals to confront not just Deviants but also the Celestials' scouting efforts. As they completed the task of reawakening their scattered kin, the Eternals debated their role toward humanity, whether to rule, protect, or stand apart, and ultimately chose distance, even as individuals like Cersei continued to live among mortals. That uneasy equilibrium shattered when a corrupted, final host of Dark Celestials descended on Earth. When Iron Man and Doctor Strange saw answers from the Eternals in the mountains of Greece, they discovered almost all of the Eternals dead by their own hands. Ikaris lived long enough to explain that the Eternals had learned a final, devastating truth, that they had never been destined as noble guardians of humanity, but as caretakers meant to defend the Celestial's true interest in the human race. This revelation drove them into madness and suicide, seemingly ending the Eternals saga on Earth. However, Celestial Resurrection technology eventually restored the Eternals once more, to live in a world that no longer clearly needed or trusted them. In this new age, they grappled with their manufactured purpose and renewed threats from Thanos himself, who targeted Earth's Eternals on the principle that only death should be truly eternal. After the Resurrection, the Eternals discovered that each revival by the machine killed a random human, shattering their moral certainty and dividing them between those who wanted to end the system and those who accepted it. Thanos returned, seized control of the Resurrection machine, unaware that the psychic, Eternal Druig had implanted a failsafe designed to destroy him. Thanos used his brief rule to eliminate rivals until Druig's trap activated, seemingly killing him and further destabilizing Eternal Society. Druig then claimed leadership as the Prime eternal and labeled mutants as excess deviation, launching an assault on the mutant island nation of Krakowa and unleashing the imprisoned warlord Uranus for one hour to devastate Krakoa's counterpart, Arrakko, on Mars. 

You can learn more about Krakoa and Arrakko in Krakoa's duel against Danny the Street. The resulting crisis pushed Ajax and Makkari to resurrect the Progenitor Celestial for guidance, but the Progenitor instead judged Earth unworthy and threatened global destruction. The Progenitors' defeat ended the conflict but forced the Eternals to confront the cost of their immortality and the devastation carried out in their name, leaving their people fractured and directionless. That's the Eternals backstory. For the seven-member roster in this team duel against the new gods, I'm going with the following seven Eternals. 

Cersei, Ikaris, Thena, Makkari, Phastos, Gilgamesh, and Starfox. All the Eternals have essentially the same power set of immortality, near invulnerability, flight, increased strength and speed, regenerative healing, telepathy, telekinesis, cosmic energy projection, teleportation, illusion casting, shapeshifting, molecular reconstruction, and matter transmutation. However, through training and discipline, many Eternals hone a specific aspect or specialty of their abilities. Cersei specializes in matter transmutation, Icarus in cosmic energy projection, Thena in weapons and combat, Faistos in engineering, Gilgamesh in strength and durability, and Starfox in empathokinesis, meaning he can affect the emotions of others. They're all at least moderately gifted and intellect having lived for thousands of years. And that's the Eternals. To reiterate my team is Cersei, Ikaris, Thena, Makkari, Phastos, Gilgamesh, and Starfox. 

Why did you decide to go with Starfox over Druig? 

That's a good question. So Druig was in the movie, but I always thought of Thanos' brother Starfox, who actually was also in the Eternals movie in the end credit scene played by Harry Styles. I always thought of him as more of a prominent Eternals character with his ability of empathokinesis. I largely saw Druig's telepathy as unnecessary because I could get the same effect of quote unquote mind control using Starfox. Gotcha. 

I do think it's pretty lame that they all essentially have the same powers. That's a pretty impressive power set. 

I don't think that's lame for me. I think it's, yeah, for sure lame for the new gods because they're going to get their ass beat. Basically the Eternals have all the powers. Sure, a lot of them specialize in some abilities at the expense of other abilities, but you're going to have a real hard time dealing with the Eternals versatility. 

Maybe, maybe it won't matter. We'll see. Let me get into the new gods backstory. Long ago, before time as it is now understood, the cosmos was ruled by a pantheon of beings known as the Old Gods, who waged a catastrophic war amongst themselves on the world of Urgrund. 

The conflict culminated in the cataclysmic event known as Ragnarok, which tore Urgrund asunder. From its destruction rose two diametrically opposed worlds, Apocalypse, a smoldering furnace of tyranny and suffering, and New Genesis, a verdant realm of peace and enlightenment. These twin worlds occupied the sphere of the gods and were populated by a new race of beings, immortal, evolved, and godlike. They called themselves the New Gods. 

Apocalypse came under the dominion of the malevolent dark side, who ruled with absolute cruelty. New Genesis was led by the wise warrior, Isiah, who became Highfather after communing with the mysterious cosmic force known as the Source. Highfather transformed the floating city of Supertown into the capital of New Genesis and established a culture built on peace, wisdom, and divine ascension. But tensions between the two worlds escalated into a devastating war after Darkseid's uncle Steppenwolf murdered Isiah's wife, Avaya. In retaliation, Isiah slew Steppenwolf and ignited a war between Apocalypse and New Genesis that threatened to consume the universe. Seeking a temporary end to the violence, the pact between New Genesis and Apocalypse. Highfather and Darkseid agreed to exchange their sons as wards. 

Orion, son of Darkseid, was sent to be raised in New Genesis under Highfather's guidance, while Highfather's own son, later named Scott Free, was consigned to the brutal orphanages of Granny Goodness on Apocalypse. Though the exchange forced an uneasy truce, hostilities resumed when Darkseid set his sights on Earth, believing its inhabitants collectively held fragments of the elusive anti-life equation, a formula capable of eliminating free will throughout the universe. The renewed war was fought not only across the stars, but also on Earth, where the new gods allied with heroes such as Superman to repel Apocalyptic incursions. 

In times, Scott Free escaped Apocalypse and returned to New Genesis as the master escape artist Mr. Miracle, joined by a fellow fugitive and formidable warrior, Big Barda. You could learn more about Inher Duel against Ronan the Accuser. Orion, despite his apocalyptic lineage, embraced the values of New Genesis and became its fiercest defender, often fighting alongside the radiant warrior, Lightray. You could learn more about Orion and his duel against the Silver Surfer. Both Orion and Lightray led numerous campaigns against Apocalypse's forces, including brutal battles in the fire pits of Armageddo and the skies above Earth. To bolster their efforts against Darkseid, Highfather supported the emergence of the Forever People, a team of young new gods empowered to summon the mighty Infinity Man, who was secretly Drax, Highfather's brother, and the original intended heir to Apocalypse before Darkseid's rise. 

Even the lower caste of New Genesis, represented by the brave bug warrior Forager, rose to prominence during this time, proving vital in numerous conflicts and bridging the social divide between Supertown and the insect colonies below. Through his wonder staff and communion with the Source, Highfather presided over battles not just of strength but of cosmic consequence. When Darkseid sought to breach the Source Wall and harness the Source for himself, Highfather assembled the gods of other Pantheons, including Zeus and Odin, to form a composite being known as the One. 

Together they entered the Source to stop cosmic collapse caused by the God Wave, a universal surge of divine energy. Highfather perished in the effort, sacrificing himself to protect reality, though his essence remained one with the Source. After Highfather's death, his mantle was offered to his son, Scott Free, who declined the role, leading it to pass instead to Tachyon, a human imbued with Source energy to guide New Genesis. 

Even in death, Highfather continued to appear to others as part of the cosmic quintessence, overseeing events that threatened reality. The New Gods suffered their darkest hour when the sentient Source turned against its creations, determined to usher in a more perfect fifth world The source employed the Infinity Man to eliminate the flawed gods of the fourth world. One by one, the new gods fell, until only Darkseid and his son Orion remain. 

In the final conflict, Orion tore out his father's heart, delivering justice in the name of the fallen. The source merged Apocalypse and New Genesis into a single world, signaling the end of the fourth world. In the wake of their destruction, the new gods were reborn in the realm of Earth 5.1, reconstructed by the monitor Nix Uhtun after the events of the final crisis. 

You can learn more about the monitor in his duel against the Watcher. As Darkseid's essence attempted to conquer Earth from within the body of Metropolis Detective Dan Turpin, the remaining new gods returned in more evolved forms. Metron, Black Racer, and others reemerged to guide and protect creation. With the fall of Darkseid, the gods of New Genesis resumed their stewardship, their spirits reborn to guide a new age. After the timeline-altering Flashpoint event, the history of the new gods was rewritten. In this new continuity, Ixaya and Uxas, or Darkseid, were once peasants on the world of Urgrund, ruled by the destructive Old Gods. 

When the war among the deities erupted, Uxas manipulated the conflict, stole their powers, and transformed into the being known as Darkseid. Ixaya pleaded with the gods for salvation, and one dying god gifted him the power of the Alpha Effect. Reborn as Highfather, Ixaya battled his brother in a clash that destroyed their world. 

From the ruins, Ixaya forged the floating city of Supertown and rechristened his people, the new gods of New Genesis. Though Highfather led with strength and resolve, the devastation wrought by war hardened him. The death of his second wife at Darkseid's hands reignited hostilities, culminating in a second pact. As before, Orion was sent to New Genesis, and Highfather's infant son, Scott, was given to Apocalypse. Though the truce held, it did little to prevent Darkseid's continued conquest of the Multiverse, and Highfather became increasingly authoritarian in his governance. Years later, as new threats emerged, Highfather sought to end the eternal conflict once and for all by acquiring the Life Equation, an antithesis to Darkseid's Anti-Life Equation. To that end, he dispatched the Council of Aids to retrieve the emotional spectrum rings from the Lantern Cores and captured the White Lantern Kyle Raynor, who you learn more about in his duel against Null. Though Highfather claimed his actions were noble, he used the Life Equation to transform innocent beings into soldiers in his war, including the citizens of the planet Moos. 

When confronted by the Lantern Cores and his own people, Highfather recognized his descent into tyranny. In a moment of clarity, he relinquished the Life Equation and sought redemption. He helped save New Genesis from the revived Source Titans, acknowledging the need to rebuild both the trust of his people and the shattered order of their society. Darkseid meanwhile perished in battle against the Justice League, consumed by the power of Anti-Life. His disappearance created a cosmic imbalance that the universe attempted to correct by giving rise to a new God of Evil, an emergent infant named Kamal. Orion, tasked by New Genesis to destroy the child before he could awaken his godhood, found himself torn between duty and conscience. 

Refusing to carry out the execution, Orion defied the edicts of Supertown and fled with the child, triggering political upheaval across the realm. In the wake of Orion's defection, an alien race known as the Nektari, who were descendants of the forgotten old god Nektar and former slaves of Apocalypse, emerged from the shadows of the cosmos and launched a genocidal crusade against all fourth-world gods. The Nektari declared themselves heirs to the divine legacy lost in the fall of the old gods and viewed both New Genesis and Apocalypse as aberrations born from blasphemy. Their assault culminated in the destruction of Supertown, forcing the surviving new gods into exile. In the battle's final moments, Lightray was slain defending the celestial bridge from Nektari warships, his body igniting into radiant flame visible across the multiverse. Scattered and wounded, the remnants of the new gods established a refugee fleet shepherded by Metron's Mobius chair across forgotten star lanes in search of safe harbor. 

Big Barda and Mr. Miracle led rescue operations to salvage survivors from the ruins of Supertown, while foragers people, long overlooked, rose to the front lines as guerrilla fighters. Highfather, stripped of his capital and humbled by war, governed from a fractured command, relying on Tachyon to maintain communion with the source. Orion, now a fugitive among his own people, raised Kamal in hiding, seeking to guide the child away from the shadow of Darkseid. The war with the Nektari marked the twilight of the fourth world, as the new gods fought not for dominion or dogma, but for survival. And that's the new gods history so far. Now for my seven-member roster, I'm going with Orion, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Light Ray, Metron, Forager, and Becca. Orion is Darkseid's son, raised in Supertown, a brutal warrior with superhuman strength, speed, durability, and the power of the Astro Force, an explosive energy he projects from his harness in battle. 

Mr. Miracle is the universe's greatest escape artist, armed with a sentient mother box computer and high-tech gadgets that let him fly, phase, and break through any trap or barrier. Big Barda is a fierce frontline combatant raised by granny goodness of apocalypse, wielding her indestructible mega rod and enhanced armor. Light Ray is a radiant and optimistic warrior who manipulates solar energy, granting him light speed, flight, laser precision blasts, and blinding luminescence. 

Metron is an aloof observer of reality who traverses time, space, and dimensions with his Mobius chair, granting him unlimited knowledge, teleportation, and technological control. Forager is a swift and agile warrior from New Genesis' bug colony, Cast, fighting with energy-based stingers, mines, and exo-armor. And for the seventh member of my roster, I'm going with Orion's wife, Becca, the goddess of love capable of inspiring overwhelming devotion in others while wielding advanced New Genesis technology, including a phase-shifting suit that grants her invisibility and intangibility. I do want to say that I originally wanted to use Highfather in this duel, but Joseph's a big fat cheater who would not allow me to do so. 

No, I mean, I'm not using Mentor or Zurus or anything like that. So yeah, you can't use Highfather. He's just too powerful, I think, for this group. 

So to reiterate, my seventh member roster consists of Orion, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Light Ray, Metron, Forager, and Becca. 

Yeah, it's a good team. I like how the history of the New Gods is no less convoluted than the history of the Eternals. 

I actually think it got better with the post-Flashpoint retcon. It's not Jack Kirby, but it is pretty cool. 

Yeah, the Eternals got retconned a few times as well, even by Neil Gaiman. But I think really actually the movie helped solidify some of those ideas that Jack Kirby originally had, and they've since brought some of those concepts into the comic book universe as well. 

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Now that we've got the team's histories and rosters out of the way, let's speculate on how one of the simulated matches will go. The winners determined by simulations, not the speculation, but it's fun to imagine how the fight could play out. A.J. and I.K., what are the rules of our speculation? 

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

Alright then, let's get into it. The new gods and the Eternals meet on the battlefield who goes first. I'm actually going to say that Lightray starts off the match since he's the fastest one out of both of the teams and he's going to begin by emitting this blinding flash of light that is going to blind all of the Eternals and that's going to allow Orion to unleash this wide astrophors blast against the entire team while they're trying to blink the light out of their eyes. So they're all just basically destroyed from the get go. 

Okay, but Eternals, I mean they have eyes that can adapt to brightness and darkness better than humans. So like this flash of light by Lightray, it doesn't affect them more than it would like a normal human looking at a bright light bulb. 

So not too bad. You know, like they witness Orion about to unleash his astrophors. So Cersei is going to construct a wall shielding them that's made out of pure diamond and Makkari, you know, my resident speedster, she's going to phase through the wall and straight up pinball herself among the new gods, just you know, karate chopping some of them in the head, kicking others in the chest and like judo tossing at least one of them. But like for sure knocking down each one of the new gods on their ass. 

A diamond wall wouldn't be much of a shield against the astrophors, but sure, we'll say a stand's long enough for Makkari to get through it before you know it becomes diamond dust, essentially. Luckily enough for the new gods, though, I'm going to say that the first one Makari approaches happens to be Becca, the new goddess of love, who is constantly radiating empathic waves that force those in proximity to her to fall in love with her. So while Makari suddenly becomes smitten with her, Big Barda is going to use her Mega Rod as like this jet to launch herself straight into the biggest guy on your team, Gilgamesh, and she's just going to pummel him with her rod. 

I don't know why that sounds gross, but it does. But Gilgamesh, like he's so fucking strong, he's going to straight up catch Big Barda's Mega Rod as she's like bringing it down on him, and he's going to just snap it like a twig before feeding one of the broken ends to her, just like busting her right in the face. Then Thena, just out of thin air, she conjures a Mega Rod of her own, except it's going to be three times as long and twice as girthy, and it also has a blade at the end, like a spear, and she uses it to fire a blast at Barda that knocks Barda off of Gilgamesh. 

Okay, first of all, the Mega Rod is apocalyptic in technology. There's no way Gilgamesh breaks it, bends it, maybe, but you know, a bent rod is nothing to be ashamed of, you know. Barda just angles it slightly when she uses it, and she's going to use it to counter Thena's blast with one of her own. 

And because Mr. Miracle saw Thena try to attack his wife, he's going to get between them and whip out his multi-cube that he's going to use to fire this unbreakable net around Thena, which pins her to the ground. 

Thena would just teleport out of the net. So no big deal there. Phastos is going to use his Warhammer to smash Mr. Miracle's multi-cube, and then he's going to throw out a gadget that ensnares Mr. Miracle in this, like, intricate trap. It kind of looks like a golden four-dimensional clock with, like, these gears that distort time and make whoever is trapped inside of it go back in time with every motion Mr. Miracle makes. So it's basically impossible to escape from. 

Well, I wouldn't say that. It just means he needs to break out of it in one motion. And that's going to be easy. He will use his mother box to generate a boom tube around him, and that's going to allow him to escape the trap by falling into a boom tube. Meanwhile, Forager is going to douse Phastos and his hammer with a stream of acid from his acid pod on his wrist, and that's going to disintegrate him. 

Except Cersei just turns that acid into clone midair before it lands on Phastos. So all Forager did was make Phastos smell like a suave motherfucker. That's when Icarus just flies right through Forager, turning him into, like, this cockroach smear on the battlefield. 

Okay, but actually Icarus is just going to bounce right off of Forager's bug shield that he was wearing on his back. So, ha ha. We'll say Forager does get smashed into the ground, but you know, he's pretty resilient, so he'll be fine. Meanwhile, Metron is going to catch Icarus in a tractor beam and teleport him near Becca. So now she's in control of both Makari and Icarus, and because they're under her thrall, they're going to start attacking the other Eternals at super fast sonic speed. 

Okay, except when Icarus and Makkari try and attack Starfox, he gets them under his thrall, so they don't want to hurt him or his teammates the rest of the Eternals. And then Starfox is going to extend his empathokinesis to Becca, so Becca falls in love with Starfox too, and therefore she drops Icarus and Makari completely out of their empathic days, and Becca straight up starts making out with Starfox. What? 

Okay, well that's going to piss off Orion since that's his wife, and we'll say it enrages him so much that it's going to short-circuit his mother box, which is usually what keeps his innate rage in check. So, with his power unleashed, Orion, who at this point is irrational and made impossible to be affected by Starfox's empathic power, he's going to plow straight into Starfox at light speed on his astral harness, while engulfed in astro force energy. So, Starfox gets vaporized, after which Orion's mother box is going to repair itself and restore Orion's mind. 

I guess that's fair, considering he did make out with Orion's wife and all. Yeah, but you know what? Orion's going to be angry again when Thena shoots a bolt from her cosmic energy crossbow that's going to strike Becca right between her eyes, so Becca's out. 

Yeah, Becca has a phase shifter built into her suit that makes her intangible, and you know, she probably activated that at the very start of this match, smartly. So, that bolt is actually going to hit Gilgamesh instead, which is going to take him out. 

No, he's fine, but Becca may be intangible, but Cersei's just going to force her to become tangible, either by like turning her phase shifter into dust or like even just rendering her molecule solid. Either way, Becca does not survive Thena's next bolt, which fires from her crossbow. So, Becca's out, and Orion's not going to do shit about this, because Faistos slaps a magnetic technology hacker onto Orion's astro harness, and that's going to infect Orion's mother box with a celestial virus that causes him to become docile, and like so docile, in fact, that he just lets Icarus hurl him into outer space, never to return. 

Oh, dang, that was a good move, actually. All right, well, I'm going to say by this point, Mr. Miracle boomtubes back into the match, and right away, he's going to quickly grab Gilgamesh and toss him into the tube before it closes. So, Gilgamesh also never returns to the match. Meanwhile, Big Barda uses her mega rod to teleport behind Icarus, and she's going to use that rod to garot and kill him. 

Okay, she's choking him out with the mega rod. Still sounds gross. He wrestles to free himself from getting choked out, but his eyes are still free. He's going to shoot massively powerful cosmic eye beams at forager that just incinerate the guy. So, Icarus may be out, like he gets taken out by Barda choking him, but he's also going to take that cockroach guy with him, and then suddenly, Mikari steals Barda's mega rod and then uses her speed power to phase the rod through her chest, just impaling her and taking her out of the match. 

Is Makkari a man or a woman? 

Well, both. Makkari started out as a man then was resurrected as a woman in her latest incarnation. 

Oh, okay. So, Barda's out, but as Makkari proceeds to zip around, I'm going to say Light Ray flies out in front of her path and stays in front of her no matter where she turns as he blasts her with a series of lasers, taking out each leg before beaming her right between the eyes. So, she's out. Okay. 

I mean, while Light Ray was so focused on eliminating Makkari and staying in front of her, one thing he didn't notice was his own decapitation by Thena's sword. So, he like lasers Makkari out of the match, and then all of a sudden, he sees his own body. He's like, oh, shit, there's my body. Oh, no, I'm dead. 

Jeez. Actually, I'm going to say that Metron just rewinds time. So, that Light Ray is no longer decapitated. Now, he's just going to duck below Thena's sword and sever her torso in half with a laser beam. So, she's actually the one that's taken out. 

Time manipulation is bullshit. What controls Metron's time powers? Is it, it's his chair, right? Yeah, the Mobius chair. I'm going to say that it is now the Mobius pile of dog shit, because Cersei is going to transform Metron's chair into dog shit. So, now Metron is sitting on it, and he's like, eww, gross, I'm sitting on this big ass pile of dog shit. And then, he and his pile of dog shit get turned into marble. So, he's a marble statue now that will forever commemorate that one time Metron sat on a big ass stinky pile of sloppy dog shit. 

That is the most disrespectful thing you've ever said. I feel like Metron also would have seen that coming. But whatever, Mr. Miracle, he's going to use his mother box to transmute Cersei into, I don't know, what's worse than shit? Vomit? Nothing. A pile of vomit. That's what Cersei is now. Alright, so who, I only have Phastos left. Right, and I have Mr. Miracle and Light Ray. Okay. 

So, Phastos, he's going to throw out a device, a celestial technology device that transforms into a portable version of the Eternals Resurrection Engine. And this is going to awaken a whole new set of the same Eternals that you knew gods just destroyed or removed from the battle. And then Icarus, now resurrected, he's the head Eternal, he's going to start the Uni-mind Ritual by creating this pillar of blue flame that all the other Eternals fly into, and that is going to form the Uni-mind, which is a composite being that together is like more powerful than the sum of its parts. 

That's right, you're totally screwed. The fuck? He's like Infinity Man? 

Sure. I still don't quite know who Infinity Man is. It's High Father's Brother or whatever. This is a composite being of Eternals. It's like a floating energy head with all the powers that can take on any form it wants to actually. And so this Uni-mind is going to compress matter inside of Light Ray's body into this mini black hole that causes him to implode. 

That's going to kill him. And the mini black hole also sucks in Mr. Miracle. Like, Light can't escape a black hole. How the hell is Mr. Miracle going to escape a black hole? He's not that smash over. That was awesome. 

Escape a black hole? I mean, that'd be easy, actually. Like all Mr. Miracle has to do is take over this Uni-mind by reciting the Anti-Life equation, which he knows. And with the Uni-mind under his control, not only does he close up the black hole, but the match is over since to be under the control of Anti-Life is essentially death. 

What good is the Anti-Life equation if Mr. Miracle is unable to speak? What? Because the Uni-mind just erased his mouth and Mr. Miracle gets sucked into the black hole. 

I don't know. I mean, Mr. Miracle doesn't have to speak it out loud. He could think it. I'm assuming the Uni-mind is psychic. So it probably still hears the equation in Mr. Miracle's mind. 

How is Mr. Miracle going to think this equation before he dies, before he gets sucked into the black hole? That's dumb. 

We'll just say he resets it before the Eternals even had time to form the Uni-mind. Like you're saying Phastos was able to activate this celestial machine, recreate the Eternals, have them form the Uni-mind and form the black hole before he could recite the equation? No way. That's wishful thinking. That's bullshit. 

It could happen. Sure, why not? Okay, that is a lot of steps. We'll go ahead and leave the match there. Either Phastos and the Eternals are able to form the Uni-mind, which in turn creates a black hole that destroys Lightray and Mr. Miracle, or Mr. Miracle recites the Anti-Life equation taking control of the Uni-mind or the Eternals and ending their lives. We'll go ahead and leave the match up there, input the character stats, run the simulations and come back with the winner. AJ9K, hit it! 

Inputting data, running calculations, processing results, simulations complete. 

Man, I was really looking forward to using the Uni-mind against you, but you're right. Like it just, it was just too many steps. I don't think I could pull that off quite cleanly. 

I'm just glad Mr. Miracle survived to the end of that speculation to use the Anti-Life equation because I'm not sure how else I would have overcome the Uni-mind. Not that the speculation matters, it all comes down to stats in the end of what you were right. The Eternals stomped on the new gods when it came to versatility. That was the biggest discrepancy between both teams. 

Yeah, the Eternals definitely had the edge over the new gods when it came to versatility considering they have basically all the powers, but the new gods did stomp the Eternals when it came to evasiveness, largely because characters like Becca, Mr. Miracle, and Metron are over and above highly evasive. Both teams were fairly durable, fairly fast, they were pretty much even when it came to damage level, actually, and their range was also very similar. 

Overall, it looks like the Eternals were a group of better fighters, which surprised me. 

Yeah, Ikaris, Thena, Gilgamesh, they're all really well-adept fighters who have lived for close to a million years, quite a lot of experience under their belt. Whereas someone like Metron, like have you ever seen Metron throw a punch even? 

No, actually, he had the lowest fighting stat out of anyone on either team. 

That being said, he was still the most powerful member overall. 

Yeah, Metron was by far the most powerful character. He had a win rate of 82.1%, though I also had the weakest member of the other side with Forager, who only had a win rate of 24.4%. 

Most of my Eternals were actually right around the same level stat-wise, and so a lot of them also had around the same win rate, ranging from about 55% to 45% win rate. People like Gilgamesh excelled in strength, McCurry, and speed, things like that, but overall, they were pretty well balanced. That being said, Jonathan, can the new gods overcome that level of versatility and balance? 

I think so. I mean, I think the Eternals are not specialized enough, I would say. Not as much as the new gods, and I think that's going to be in the new gods' favor. And Instagram agrees with me. Of those who took our Instagram poll, 62% sided with the new 

gods, which is lame because the new gods haven't even had a movie, so I think that's just a lot of people hating. 

Well, some of the new gods made an appearance in Zack Snyder's Justice League. I mean, no one who's on my team, they're all from Apocalypse, but people know about them. 

I don't think they do, but let's see which team won. Age of 9K, the results please. Alright, the winner between the new gods and the Eternals is... The new gods. 

Yes! Not by much though. Not by much. Not even close to what you are probably hoping for, out of the thousands of simulated matches, the new gods only won 51.2% of the time, whereas the Eternals won 48.8%. 

So what you're saying is that the new gods aren't stoppable. 

What I'm saying is the new gods are big fucking losers, and they can go fuck themselves, and I hate them. That's what I'm saying. Geez, jealous much? I'm not jealous because I know at the end of the day the new gods are inferior. Clearly not! Well, if they weren't, then they would have had a movie made about them already. Wouldn't they have? That's what I thought. You mean a shitty movie? Yeah, if they had a movie made about them, it would have been shitty. Yeah. 

No, I mean, the Eternals movie was shitty. Fuck you. Never mind. 

In the end, I don't feel too bad because it was such a close matchup. It's almost a coin toss really. And it looks like the coin came up. New gods. That's stupid. You lose, bitch! 

But that does it for this team duel. AJ9K, help close us out. 

Alright, our next episode is going to be an individual duel. We're going to find out who would win in a fight between Gypsy, who I think is a Titan? No, a member of Justice League Detroit. Okay, I don't know anything about Gypsy, but we're going to learn about her. 

She's going up against Shadowcat, who everybody knows as a member of the X-Men Kitty Pride. That does it for this episode, guys. We want to give a big thanks to our executive producers, Jon Starosky, Zachary Hepburn, Dustin Balcolm, Nathaniel Wagner, Levi Yeaton, Austin Wazalowski, 

AJ Dunkerly, Nick Abanto, Scott Camacho, Gil Camacho, Adam 

Speas, Dean Maleski, Devin Davis, Joseph Kirsting, and Paul Graves for helping make this podcast possible. We'll talk to you guys next week. Up, up and away, true believers. 

I'm glad Druig wasn't in this duel. Druig sucks.