(Ed’s note: there is a lot of clarification in our article this week, due to high volumes of being called cum-eaters”)

Spider-Man versus The Flash

Dave

By this point in the smackdown, (this is the 10th week, if you’re keeping track), I’ve basically resigned myself to being called any number of things, regardless of whom I choose.

I thought I’d take a minute or two to clear up some misconceptions that many of you seem to have regarding the Smackdowns…

1) There is no pre-determined winner. Each of us write our piece separately, and then we post them together. One of us adds in the header and footer and some pictures, and declares the winner based on the majority. In fact, we don’t always agree on the winner.

2) We haven’t decided the ultimate winner of the bracket in advance (see 1 above, which would make that difficult).

3) The bracket was determined long before the Fark greenlights started happening, and long before anyone took a serious interest in the final outcome. So yes, we understand that the bracket could be better, but we can’t (apart from having substituted some players) very well change that now.

4) We don’t get paid for this. Apart from remuneration from ads, which I can assure you is fairly minimal, The Correctness is a labour of love, sucking up our time, energy, and cash (which mostly goes to pay for bandwidth used by people who call us morons). We’re thinking of instituting a pay-for-insult scheme, whereby the most acerbic of you can pay us a small fee to call us anything you wish. We’ll be rich!

5) Our opinions are just that. We claim to be comic book lovers, not experts. Tony reads the books he likes, I read the ones I like, Rob likes shiny objects.

6) There is no DC/Marvel bias that I know of. I grew up mostly Marvel, but in the last few years, Marvel has sucked a huge amount of ass, and I’ve found myself catching up on a lot of DC titles. Really Marvel? 47 Avengers titles? Ultimates? Civil War? Zombies? Apes? The only thing you’ve done that piques my interest lately is bring back Clairmont to write “X-Men Forever”, and even that’s been pretty bland. The Grant Morrison “Batman and Robin” alone, in it’s first 4 issues, is better than anything you guys did this decade.

7) It was Rob’s idea to add Kitty Pryde to the bracket, and as a laugh have her win the whole thing. This idea was quickly dismissed, apart from leaving her in the bracket.

8 ) We added the 2 days of preparation bit after hearing from readers that they wanted more setup. This happened at the beginning of the Quarterfinals. It gives the prep guys a bit of time to get ready, but not enough to build insane things and such. It’s a compromise that gives the thinkers a bit of a chance, but not enough to totally control things. It’s every bit as valid as a “chance meeting” setup.

whew… Okay ,so Spidey vs the Flash….

The only thing Spidey has going for him in this fight is his spidey sense. He gets a warning that someone or something is about to attack him. His amazing agility and speed allow him to react to this data very very quickly.

But The Flash can make about 35 of these attacks while Spidey is still dodging the first. The sad part about this is that it’s likely Barry Allen as the Flash, whom I find tedious at best. I’m not exactly sure why he’s being “Reborn”, as Wally West is about 346 times more interesting as a character. But Geoff Johns has his reasons, and most things he writes are really well done, so I’ll go with it for a while.

You’re probably asking yourself why i’m digressing with talk about rules and Barry Allen’s return, but rest assured it’s because this particular fight has been over since I typed the word “By”.

Winner: The Flash

Rob:

Well, this week, I have done some research. I pulled my Note-Tote binder of first series Marvel cards off the shelf, and I can give you some very current stats.

As of 1990, Spider-Man, who wears a black costume with a white spider on it,  stands 5′10″, weighs 165 pounds (seems a tad light to me) and has fought in 982 battles. He has had 620 wins, 328 losses, and 34 ties.  His black costume is totally innocuous and not at all an alien symbiote (check the timeline of this joke for bonus points).

These Marvel cards were released before series 2, in which Marvel made the fucktarded mistake of assigning a “power” and “strength” rating to all of their heroes and villains.  At least the DC universe had some ambiguity, and Marvel did too, at one point. Just how super strong was Spider-man? Could he beat the Hulk? Eventually, Marvel sucked all the fun out of it.

The Flash, obviously, is not in the Marvel universe, and is certainly not in one of my complete set of limited edition holograms.

Spider-Man got his powers from being bitten by a radioactive lantern, while the Flash got his powers from being bitten by a radioactive lantern, just like the Green Lantern.

Things I do not recall: I do not recall singing along to the Scarlet Speedster’s theme song. I do not recall seeing awesome Flash-based movies (except for a flawed hypothetical third film). I do not recall reading Flash comics. I do not recall owning Flash action figures. I do not recall desperately hoping a real-live girl would come over to my tree-fort, which I furnished with the finest garage sale back-issues of the Flash.

Standing by my previous comments, because the Flash can move crazy fast, faster perhaps than spider-sense, and he can, according to the intertubes, become incorporeal (just like my hero, Kitty Pryde),  and going entirely against every tender fibre of my childhood, my whole belief system, and my sense of faith in the Universe, I’m giving this one to the Flash.

Once again, The Flash just speeds up, drops a brick off inside of Spidey’s head whilst incorporeal, and it’s over. The classic brick-left-inside-yer-head gambit.

Winner: The Flash

Loser: My Childhood

Tony

SPIDEY: That’s a weird coincidence… I knew a guy named Flash once. He was kind of di-(Flash of scarlet) OW!!!

Well, that’s about all he’d get out. There have been several complaints about how DC universe keeps beating the pants off of Marvel universe characters, at least in our estimation. This boils down to the DC Universe being generally overpowered. Even the unpowered Batman is given such iconic status that writers find a way for him to beat even the most super powered foes (Guilty!) I love Marvel characters. There’s more Marvel on my office shelf than DC, by virtue of the fact that being somewhat more vulnerable makes for interesting characters. We aren’t debating quality here, we are working with what we know about the characters, and what I know about the Flash is, he will fuck you up before you have time to even spin a web of any size.

Allow me to justify myself a tad before you go throwing what we at the Correctness refer to as “The Green Lantern incident” at me. There were three things saving Spidey when he beat Green Lantern

1.We generally go with the classic silver age heroes we all grew up with, which meant the yellow issue was still very much in play. 2. Spider sense which allowed Spidey to react precious seconds before Hal, and most importantly 3. Hal’s enormous power came from something that could be taken off of him, and if anyone could find a way to do that, it was Spidey.

But he can’t stop the Flash from being the Flash. Sticky tar on the ground? He’d vibrate his way out of it.. Web trap? Spotted it, avoided it, speed read “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” blogged about it being over rated, and still landed a rabbit punch on ol web head before he finished his first overlong thought balloon.

Here’s a question, Can Spider-man stay up and out of the way and wait for Flash to wear himself out? After all, Parker is super strong and if he does manage to land one, it could be good night Irene. (See what I did there?) Well I think with enough speed, Flash can run up walls. So no, even heights won’t help him. And God help Peter if he DOES manage to stick a web on Barry, because I can’t imagine being dragged at the speed of light is fun.

Sorry Spider-Man. The Flash has got you beat.

Winner: The Flash

P.S. Do your worst, commenters, by the time you read this, I will be in Paris, nibbling on baguettes, and occasionally my wife’s earlobe. Eat it, bitches!

Decision: The Flash

So The Flash moves on to the Semi-Finals, taking on The Batman, while the other side of the Bracket is yet to be decided. Tune in next week for Shadowcat vs Wolverine. The part where you tell us how wrong we are is below!