Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Ask Erik: Episode Twenty-Eight

Here at Ask Erik, we've spent a lot of time reading books and comics, watching movies and TV shows, and browsing through the Internet in the hopes of finding the answers to life's biggest mysteries.  Why can you ship a coconut without it counting as "perishable" but not honey or maple syrup?  How many hats is "too many" hats?  Have there been any movies where Johnny Depp doesn't wear eye makeup?

Having instead amassed a vault of useless knowledge stored in his head, Erik instead tackles your questions and tries to find the answers you care about (or a reasonable facsimile).  Or, if you don't care, he'll at least try to make you laugh and forget you just wasted time you could spend doing anything else.

To Erik: 

Okay, first off, that isn't really a question.

But okay, let's break it down, see who would triumph over who.

Let's start with the one I'd be least confident in protecting me: Robocop.  Why?  Because Robocop is, by far, the absolute worst at doing any job he's created for.  He's supposed to be the ultimate cop but I really don't remember him ever actually arresting anybody, writing any tickets, or filling out any paperwork.  He just shows up, shoots people, and then leaves.

And while that might be all well and good in a situation where I might need someone to shoot other people, in this case he's also pretty much outclassed.  His armor wouldn't do too much against adamantium claws, and the only way he was able to defeat Skynet was by implanting his consciousness into the system in the past (it's a long story) and rebuilding himself in the future so he could go back into the past (I said it's a long story) and blowing up a satellite, which then caused the future him to never exist to begin with.  So he's out.

Speaking of people who are out, the only real advantage I could see Marv from Sin City having is that he lives in a black and white world, so the Predator's special vision suddenly becomes useless.  Other than that, he's simply out of his weight class.

But hey, Darth Vader!  He's a total bad ass, right?  He has The Force, he can choke people through holograms, he can see the future, and he has a sword that can cut through darn near anything.  ...and yet, I wouldn't pick him either.  There's one character on that list that I think would give him a really hard time: the Terminator.

If there's one thing we know from the beginning of Star Wars, it's that robots and The Force don't mix.  Darth Vader can't sense R2D2 and C3PO on the escape pod that sends them to Tattoine.  He doesn't simply rip the information about the plans out of Princess Leia's head.  Heck, he's not even really the one who blows up a world, that was Tarkin.  Lord Vader might also be able to deflect blaster bolts with his fancy shmancy plasma sword, but if he can't tell which direction the attack is coming from, he's at a disadvantage.  Plus, as Order 66 proved, if you have enough people shooting at you, even the best Jedi (or Sith Lords in this case) have a much harder time.

Wolverine might be an effective choice, if only because he has a better track record for keeping sidekicks alive than, say, Batman.  I've always felt, though, that his greatest weakness is range, and pretty much everybody else here has ranged weapons that would make it much, much harder for him to keep me alive.  Unless he could, you know, give me his healing factor or something like that.  Unfortunately, he can still be knocked out simply by hitting him with a car, and we know that's a tactic that the Terminator isn't afraid to use.  Of course, the problem would be keeping him down, but when you have someone who's essentially immortal on a squad, you have to assume there's some kind of time limit.

So how about the Terminator?  He's really high up on my list of options, but the fact that so many of these characters have had crossovers with his type of robot and won, and that disqualifies him.  Batman's beaten Terminators.  Judge Dredd beat Terminators.  Predators beat Aliens, and Aliens give Terminators a hard time (to be fair, the Aliens vs. Predators vs. Terminators comic series was pretty terrible all around).  Plus, I think an advantage to having the Terminator against me is that it wouldn't be afraid of cutting through everyone else chasing me to get at me, which means everybody else is going to have to deal with it.

Predators...I'm sorry, they're hunters, not protectors.  Having an ally who turns invisible and would have difficulty seeing some of the people you're fighting (I'm not sure how thermal vision works on Vader) and regularly stomped by Batman wouldn't be my first choice.

But what about Batman?  The Dark Knight, protector of the innocent...well, as I said before, his track record isn't great when it comes to keeping people around him alive.  Plus, there's at least one character on that list who has regularly cleaned Batman's clock every time they faced, whether it was in Gotham or in the character's own world.  And if I want the best, I have to go for the guy who wins the most often.  But first I have one more person to deal with.

Hellboy.  Hellboy might easily be my number two choice, if only because he brings a whole branch of magic to the party, is extremely resilient, and is played by Ron Perlman.  It'd just be cool to hang out with Ron Perlman.  But strangely enough, my number one pick is probably one of the comic book characters I just don't like to read about that often.

For my choice, I'd pick Dredd.  Yes, he's beaten up Batman on a regular basis.  Yes, he defeated a Predator once already.  Yes, he has a gun that can fire a ridiculous amount of mixed ammo, including stuff even Darth Vader would have trouble against (best way I ever found to deal with Force-users is explosives).  Yes, he managed to keep Rob Schneider alive, and if he can do that, he would probably have an easier time protecting me because I wouldn't be stupid enough to hand him over to cannibals.

But none of those are why I'd pick him.

The reason I'd pick him is because, presumably, in order to protect me, I'd have to be in their world.  This is a huge crossover, so presumably Dredd would want to protect me in his home turf, namely Mega City One.  Why would I pick that instead of, say, the Star Wars universe?  Well, I'm not really eager for Skynet to somehow work its way into Coruscant, or for Predators to have better access to their spacecraft.

Plus, Dredd has one advantage over everybody else there: me.  I know these characters.  I know their strengths and weaknesses.  I can get Dredd prepared to face them, while playing up the things he has to be aware of.  Plus, I have an ultimate ace up my sleeve.

Remember how I said I wouldn't want Skynet to get its mitts on Coruscant?  Having that program loose in Mega City One would be just about as bad, and we all remember that Judge Dredd has a pretty effective way to deal with things that would become global threats.

He nukes the entire city.

As the bad guys hunt for me in the city, I'd be getting whisked outside the city limits, and the last thing I'd hear before there's an enormous explosion behind me is Dredd having the nukes sent out to keep every city from being taken over by killer robots, guys with laser swords, or actual demons.

That is how you stay protected.  You rely on the law, and Judge Dredd is the law.

(Of course, assuming that all of these characters suddenly appeared in our world, without access to their home resources, and with only what they had on their back?  ...probably either the Terminator or Batman.  They seem to be the most adaptable when it comes to using stuff around them instead of just relying on what they brought.)

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