Here I thought Spectre or Trigon would make finals but…oh well.
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Has anyone considered this could have been a dance competition or something? All I see are people referencing pure power levels… boring.
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You know what I’d pay to see? These characters playing each other at carnival games.
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DF needs more balance as a character. They have made him Spectresque. Giving DF a split persona Kent or Zatara vs Nabu is a cop-out. Better to see how Zatara bonds with Nabu and changes his character and interactions with other heroes is more interesting. The entire YJ arc for Nabu has made Fate less relatable. Giving him on hour a year to talk to Zatanna, that is just an asshat move, but, creates more “dramarama”. I find that the notion of the general darker views of characters a bit of a swing to far in one direction. What happened to role of Fate as mentor/support system for heroes who needed to find a new path, as we saw in JLU. Fate could kick some serious ass, but, only ever directly intervened when entirely necessary. There are few threats which require Fate to go all out. Rather than temper his actions, and looking at making earth’s heroes better and greater agents for Order.
I would like to see a 6 issue miniseries for Zatara/Fate where the real battle is within their relationship. Think how much Zatara could mentor Zatanna, Raven, and several others in their understanding and growth. Sure, making Nabu an asshat makes for more “dramarama”, but the more truly interesting view of Dr. Fate is as a one who’s journey is making characters better.
Here is an idea, make Fate the “Kilawog” of the Blue Lanterns. Rebuilding them into a power of hope. Is “order” best served by making a strong lantern core based on hope. It would give Fate a universal outlook and bring back compassion to the character.
If DC wants to make truly more relatable heroes, give more of them the true heroes journey (as Joesph Campbell described it). Imagine Damian having to spend a year training under Fate’s wing, rather than trying to be Batman’s clone. How much growth could you you see in that little snot when confronted with having to battle his inner demons to find a truer sense of balance of what is actually justice. That in turn, puts him in greater conflict with Batman, as we saw with Nightwing early in his career.
Fate is more than just a power set. His true powers lay in his ability to distinguish balance and partake that insight for others. Make Fate the truly deep character he can be, not just a a source for Nabu’s 2d view of “order”.
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@iJest I concur. Pure sheer power levels should only be part of the equation. It is a fundamental axiom that villains are almost always more powerful than heroes. If not, there is nothing for the hero to overcome. There are no “stakes”.
Tactics, ruthlessness, guile, and psychology all come into play in battle.
In the whole Supeman/Batman Apocolyse story in the comics or the DCAU in both cases, who is the hero to “save” Kara from Darkseid’s control??? Batman. By working under the radar and hacking into the hell spores.
Batman: Release your control over the girl or Apokolips will be destroyed by your weapons.
Darkseid: Very well. Had the kryptonian made the same threat, I would not have taken it seriously, but, you are human and would actually allow that to happen.
The sheer physical power of Darkseid over Batman is absurd. However, Bats uses tactics and ruthlessness to turn Darkseid’s weapons against him. That is usually Darkseid’s weakness. He is often self-defating and plants the seeds of his losses himself. Darkseid’s arrogance is his greatest weakness. Sending lackeys to do a job. Being to subtle. But, why? If his planet conquering was more overt, that would break the truce with New Genesis and cause him to have to use far to many resources just in another war against them.
Sheer power is not the be all end all.
Darkseid is going to take the title in this, simply because it is a one-on-one, neutral site, no risk to the treaty situation.
Hopefully, with the success of the Madhouse this year. DCU will prepare a more in-depth look at the brackets. Why is each character in the bracket? Why are they competing in the first place? What is at stake for them?
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@DeSade-acolyte: Agreed on all points 
I asked what each character was playing for in the weekly Office Hours thread, and Applejack said it was to save or destroy the world, depending on the character’s alignment. Lol! I can picture them receiving a little 3D model of the Earth, either fine or destroyed 
But she also said the team is going to look at doing the Meta Madhouse a bit differently next year. So they’re still ironing out the details and improving the event, which is good.
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Doctor Fate!
@iJest I’ve posed a few questions to AJ as well.
DCU has done a good job at a first pass on the Madhouse and the response has been more favorable than they anticipated, if I understand AJ responses.
I think you’ll find that next year they may allocate a few more resource hours to its planning and structure, given the passionate discourse that has come out about it on the forums. Live, learn, grow.
DCU is still a young platform, as it matures so will it’s programs & content. Look at all the comics that are getting dropped this month.
I hope they really start to expand the encyclopedia section.
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I think Raven will win but I’m going to vote for Dr. Fate
How this got so wrong is beyond my thinking. These will be the same people who will vote Nightwing to take the whole thing.
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Well they haven’t told us it’s NOT a Best Butt contest.
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What exactly are we voting for? Who would win in a fight? If that’s the case, how did Spectre lose? Wasn’t he voted the 4th strongest based on his powers? I love Dr. Fate. I really do. However, Raven shouldn’t even be up there. Idk…
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Most people have been debating it as a straight who-would-win. Most people have been voting as though it’s a popularity contest. I’ve been approaching it is as a question of who I would like to see win if the fight happened in an actual story (in other words, allowing for underdog victories within reason, hence my vote for Nightwing).
The Spectre definitely shouldn’t have lost, but most of our winners so far have pretty blatantly been carried forward by pure name recognition (on power levels, we’d be dealing with Highfather, Parallax, Deathstroke, and the Spectre, and the Spectre would win the whole thing without breaking a sweat). Like I said before, we’ve basically come to a showdown between Teen Titans fans and Young Justice fans right now.
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Seeing as how Dr Fate SOMEHOW beat Spectre, I gotta vote for him. Sorry Raven.
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So I guess raven wins
HighFather vs Darkseid would have been a close one, and I’d give the edge to Darkseid based on pure ruthlessness.
While I concur, Spectre should have won the Shazam bracket. A fight between Spectre and HF/Darkseid is far from a forgone conclusion.
The DCU is pantheistic universe. There are a multitude of gods. From the Greeks, to lords of Order and Chaos, to the 4th world, to the mighty gods and prophets that make up Shazam.
When the Spectre was created, he was predicated on a Judeo-Christian fallen angel. DC had a problem. The had already created The Flash, who was a direct knock-off of Hermes/Mercury, right down to the helmet. There is still push back today, from certain quarters, that “the media” doesn’t push the Judeo-Christian point of view enough, especially to kids. What do you think the 1940s was like in that regard?
If Spectre is so all powerful, which he was back in the original COIE days, according to your logic, he could have stopped the Anti-Monitor single handly. Which (spoiler alert) he didn’t. He didn’t even exist on Earth-3.
I can see a scenario where Darkseid (or HF or Zeus or, hell, even Hades) would look at him and go.
“A monotheist…how quaint. We’ve been around for far more than 8,000 years. Go sit at the kids table and let the grown-ups fight.”
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Eh, I’m operating more on the power levels they’ve displayed in practice. Darkseid is really powerful, as are the others you mentioned, but generally he seems to rely heavily on a strong power base of minions and has only been truly omnipotent/nigh-omnipotent when using the anti-life equation (and assuming he has that might be fair if you’re comparing him to the Spectre, but not if you’re comparing him to anyone else in any of these brackets). The Spectre, whatever the reason, has been written as still being more powerful than any one magic user even at his weakest. Trigon in his home dimension or anti-life-equation-wielding Darkseid I could buy matching the Spectre, because at that point we’re talking about omnipotent reality-warper types. But again, making it fair for them to fight the Spectre makes it unfair for the three of them to fight anyone but each other.
Regardless, I’ve always interpreted the DCU’s theological makeup as each pantheon having roughly equal power, but the polytheistic religions having it divided among a larger number of gods. So in other words, the entire godly populations of New Genesis and Apokolips combined would be a match for the Presence and probably considerably more powerful than the Spectre, but Darkseid is only one god and as powerful as he is, his abilities are still limited accordingly. Now, I could buy non-judeo-christian gods being out of the Spectre’s jurisdiction entirely, preventing the fight from happening to begin with, but if they were to fight, the Spectre is probably more powerful.
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I just honestly don’t understand how raven is in the finals? They really need to make it clear that this isn’t a popularity contest and it’s not a “who have you seen in your favorite cartoon” contest. It’s a who would win contest. Listen I absolutely love swamp thing like to a sickening degree (according to my brother). Swamp thing and Batman are tied as my favorite characters not only in dc but probably in all of fiction! Don’t you think I would have loved to just vote for swamp thing over and over again 100 times? But I didn’t because I integrity! Maybe I’m taking this a little to seriously. I mean I definitely am taking this to seriously but still integrity is important!
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Spectre was too OP so I chose Dr.Fate. I’ve always been a Fate fan. Dr Fate for the W.
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I think the final 4 is
Nightwing vs the flash
Darkseid vs the spectre
Final 2
The flash vs darkseid
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