The sudden surgence of comic enthusiasm has hit me lately. It wasn't helped by looking at a preview for the new Ultimate Marvel Alliance game that looks absolutely awesome. Anyway, I was pondering doing a comic tournament along the lines of what Dave did at 411 back in the day. I know there are at least a few people here that read comics and might participate. So, my questions to you all are the following:

A) Would you participate if there was a tournament?
B) If you answered yes to A, what kind of tournament would you want (DC vs Marvel, villains vs villains, heroes vs heroes, combinations of heroes vs combinations of villains, etc)?

I'd participate. Team versus Team sounds like the most fun.

Yes I would.

I think hero v hero by brand & villain v villain by brand & the winners facing each other.

Cool, I'll be using a nomination process similar to what Dave used to do, which was different categories or whatnot and then all nominatiosn would be compiled and placed according to number of votes each characters gets.

Another question before I get started: Would you like to see everyone available for nomination? That would include people like Silver Surfer or Darkseid, who are in the top tier of powers.

If so, would you like to see different groupings based on power levels? A fight between Silver Surfer and Batroc the Leaper would hardly be a challenge.

Should there be a Top tiered bracket for the god-level guys and gals, a middle bracket for the basic superheroes/villains (Flash, Human Torch, etc.), and a bracket for those human or slightly above?

Any ideas on this would be great. I know some of this was discussed at length in the tournaments that Dave used to do. Lots of discussion over how fair it was to include magic users, who would fit into what bracket (would Superman be in the god-level or in the middle tier as an example), and if there would be any rules for fights such as if it is on neutral ground and only on neutral ground, if they were all fully powered, etc.


I'd also plan on having a team fight, but would, again much like Dave did in one of the tournaments, let you all nominate the roster since there are hundreds of variations and each person has a preference of which one they'd like to see. Like, if there was a fight between the X-Men and the JLA, which characters would be included? Since everyone probably has their favorite line-ups for teams, I'd probably just take the 7 or so most popular vote-getters and place them in.

Ok, so here are my thoughts. Going off of PD's suggestion, I'll have three nomination periods to get all nominations in. The first one will be for Heroes (both DC and Marvel), the second will be for Villains (DC & Marvel), and the final would be for teams since Strikmore thought that would be fun. To avoid byes and keep things so that the math will filter down evenly, I figured 16 in each category. I thought that three categories would work (aside from the teams, which would be seperate):

Human or slightly above, which (depending on if you're nominating heroes or villains) would include people like Nightwing, Daredevil, Elektra, Joker, etc.

Metahumans, which would include mutants, robots and whatever else and would be the usual super-powered hereos/villains like Iron Man, Martian Manhunter, Mr. Sinister, Metallo

God-level, which would be whoever was considered too strong for either category. The problem here is that someone like Thor, who is a god and is extremely strong, could fit here or in metahumans. For people like him or Superman, I figure I'll just go by which category they get the most votes for (meta or god-level). Some characters like Silver Surfer, Spectre, Thanos or Parallax would obviously go here

An example of a bracket, with the top vote getter facing the lowest (think NBA play-offs):
Human or Slightly Above Human Heroes Marvel
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.



Metahuman Heroes Marvel
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.



God-level Heroes Marvel
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.






Human or Slightly Above Human Heroes DC
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.



Metahuman Heroes DC
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.



God-level Heroes DC
1. vs 16.
2. vs 15.
3. vs 14.
4. vs 13.
5. vs 12.
6. vs 11.
7. vs 10.
8. vs 9.

These would filter down until there was one winner from each category, and then it would become DC vs Marvel, with the winner of each facing each other. For instance, if Batman wins DC Humans and Daredevil wins Marvel Humans, the two would then face each other. The same would happen for villains. Then, if you so chose, the winners of those could face each other to see who the best of the best is. Let's say that Batman beats Daredevil to win Top Human Hero and Taskmaster beats Lady Shiva to be Top Human Villain, the two could then face each other to see who the top Human is.

Without reading the specifics, I give it a thumbs up. And I'll probably buy a Nintendo at launch just for Ultimate Alliance. That shit looks sweet.

I'll probably just get it for the PC since I don't have the money for the Wii, but dang. Have you checked out the site? Some of the characters they've shown already are pretty damned awesome. I'm not sure if every hero is playable or not, but they've got Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange and others.

I just checked out some of that site....how can you control such a complex looking game?

I have no idea, but it looks like it'll be fun as hell trying.

There's an interview out there where they explain how it controls with the Wii controller. The remote does your melee attacks. Lift up a little on the controller, you do an uppercut. Down is a sweep. Wiggle back and forth is a quick attack. The mutant powers are the same on the control nunchuck. They said once you play it for a few minutes, it becomes pretty intuitive.

See, that's absolutely the reason I'd buy this for the Wii instead of buying it (or borrowing it) on the PC..sure, controling it with the DualShock is fine, but the Wiimote is freaking awesome in the variety it allows.