This is another match up that I have been meaning to get to for a while. It just seems like a natural, given that they each rely on rings of incredible power. I was glad that Marvel gave The Mandarin another chance after the fake-out in Iron Man 3. His motivation and back-story in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings made for one of their most effecive MCU villains yet.
"Handily Defeated"
ReplyDeleteOh, that's your best one, yet, this year! :-)
Me? I would've gone for the more obvious "War of the Eleven Rings." But, Bob Greenwade and others would probably--and rightly--pointed out that such a Tolkien should be saved for something more suitable. Like, say, a battle between a certain pteranodon-like mutant and the arch-enemy of all Middle-earth. A confrontation that could be tentatively entitled: "There Is No Eye in 'Sauron!'"
---Carycomic
Actually, my big "ring" showdown would have The Creature Formerly Known As Smeagol going for the Orange Lantern rings.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Mandarin, the only thing that bothered me was the scene where Xu Wenwu is mocking the name. My understanding at the time was that "Mandarin" was a legitimate title for a high-ranking Chinese official. Only recently did I learn that the title came from Portuguese, by way of Malay originally from Hindi, so the mockery is justified. (It still makes some sense that the comic-book version would choose that as his English-language title, just as much as it makes sense that the MCU version would ridicule it.)
@Bob Greenwade: wasn't there a pre-WWI pulp story featuring a Yellow Peril villain called "The Orange Lantern?"
ReplyDelete--Carycomic
@Cary: I really have no idea. But I was referring to Larfleeze.
ReplyDelete@BG: I know. And I was half-right. "The Orange Lantern" was a serialized radio drama in the early 1930's, featuring a Javanese crime lord named Botak (alias Orange Lantern). I forget who the Great White Crime-buster was who served as heroic arch-enemy.---Cary
ReplyDeleteP.S.---you have to admit, though, that Xu Wenwu sounds a lot better than "Plan Tzu" (which is better off as a contingency plan code-name than a criminal alias).
ReplyDelete@Ross: providing you can find the proper images, how about Daredevil meets Judge Parker? Guest-starring Spidey and Mary Worth!
ReplyDeleteCarycomic said...
ReplyDelete@Ross: providing you can find the proper images, how about Daredevil meets Judge Parker? Guest-starring Spidey and Mary Worth!
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Which 'Daredevil' did you mean?
Matt Murdock version, of course! :-)
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Mandarin stole those rings from the Guardians of the Universe. They were the prototypes for the other different corps to come.
ReplyDeleteOr he stole seven of them from the Dwarf Lords of Middle-earth. ;-)
ReplyDelete@Anon744: Can't you just picture the Mandarin visiting Tokyo Disneyland?
ReplyDelete"Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It's off to conquer I go."
(Whistle intermittently ad nauseam).
A battle between Tolkien's Sauron and Marvel's Sauron?
ReplyDeleteUnless Marvel's Sauron got hold of the Infinity Gauntlet or something like that, such a battle would require one page, if even that.
Unless, of course, Karl Lykos absorbed the life force of Dead Ringer while the latter was holding the severed ring finger of Freedom Ring.
ReplyDelete@Carycomic: Your Marvel Fu is stronger than mine; I have no idea what, or whom, you mean. :P
ReplyDeleteFreedom Ring was Marvel's short-lived first attempt at a non-heterosexual superhero. Nee Curtis Doyle, he found what he thought was just some "free dumb ring" such as one might win from a box of Cracker Jacks. But, it turned out to be a ring center-pieced by a sliver of Cosmic Cube somehow obtained by Maynard "The Ringmaster of Crime" Tiboldt!
ReplyDeleteSo began Doyle's tragically short stint as a superhero. He lost the cosmic ring finger while achieving Pyrrhic victory over Tony "Iron Maniac" Stark (psychopathic sole survivor of Earth-5012).
Dead Ringer: nee Louis Dexter. A mutant who can take on the likeness (and occasionally super-powers) of whoever he touches. Just one problem; the originals have to be deceased!
ReplyDeleteHence, the carrying around of severed fingers by Dexter.
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ReplyDeleteKarl Lykos: Sauron's real name. When not going around looking like that Pterodactyl Man, from one of those Scooby Doo spin-offs back in the Eighties, he demonstrates that he's a mutant protopath (a life force drainer).
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