March Madness Super-Team Showdown Final Four — Vote Now!
The voters have spoken and our Final Four is set!
Here are the results from the Round of Eight:
- Avengers over Legion of Superheroes 69/31
- Justice League over Teen Titans 63/34
- Uncanny X-Men over Defenders 60/40
- Fantastic Four over Justice Society 53/47
Once again, the voters did a great job in seeding our tournament, as the top four seeds all advance to the Final Four. The Round of Eight didn’t really have any close contests. The Justice Society tied up their match with the Fantastic Four late in the week, but weekend voting helped the FF cruise to a relatively easy victory.
Will the Final Four continue the trend for the “overdogs?”
YOUR vote with decide!
Get voting in our semi-final match-ups!
The Big 2 number 1s!
Cosmic Rays vs. Children of the Atom!
How did our regional champions make it to the Final Four? I’m glad you asked — here is our grid, up-to-the-second!
Vote early, and vote often! Voting for our Final Four will close sometime on Sunday, March 25th!
Your schedule for the remaining rounds:
- Monday, March 26th — Championship Match
- Monday, April 2nd — Final Result Announced!
Thanks for your vote. Tell your friends! And as always, defend your vote in the comments section, below!
Posted on March 19, 2018, in March Madness!. Bookmark the permalink. 48 Comments.
dangvozden
Paul O'Connor
Kris (not Chris)
markginocchio
miloapama
Dean Compton
Moya
ryanmcswain
Longbox Graveyard 
I had to vote for the Avengers and X-Men. Two fairly easy calls for me. If they meet in the finals, though, that’ll be tough.
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It’s a tight race in the early going!
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And still a tight race as we enter the weekend. Some rando is going to log in on Sunday and decide this thing.
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For Avengers to take down JL, they need to remove Superman early in the match. Since classic Superman is powerless against magic, Scarlet Witch takes him out. Then you’ve got Wonder Woman’s quasi-goddess power to contend with, but the Avengers have a full-fledged god in Thor. Sorry, Diana. Doctor Druid makes Green Lantern mistakenly kill Batman with a green machine gun, then Captain Marvel (or Photon or whatever her name is now) electrocutes GL. The rest of the fight is clean-up detail.
X-men seem like contenders against the FF, because they have a massive mutant roster versus only four fighters. But as someone else pointed out, Sue Storm makes an invisible bubble in everyone’s brain and kills them all. The one problem with that instant win is that Sue isn’t really a killer. Even if she was, Reed would probably feel bad later and make a machine to bring the mutants back to life. In the final scene, we reveal the entire scenario was a hallucination Professor Xavier created in the minds of the FF so the X-crew could skip the fight and enjoy beers at Wolverine’s place.
And no, I don’t know why I assume these matches are fights to the death. Maybe it’s just a fight to the surrender. Or to the pain.
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The place the JLA need to make their stand is the bottom of the sea. Aquaman has it over the majority of undersea guys the Avengers could call in, and if Namor shows up, well … I have a feeling he’d switch sides. It is perfectly in character.
I like your resolution of FF/X-Men, but certainly there has to be some kind of angle around Franklin Richards/Days of Future Past that ties it all up in a neat bow?
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Aquaman does have an edge on Namor: his Dr. Doolittle power to talk to the animals and get them to help him in his fights. In a pinch, Aquaman could have a whale swallow the Avengers and go on a kamikaze-style descent to the bottom of the ocean where the pressure completely crushes most of the Earth’s mightiest heroes. In the epilogue, Iron Man’s suit washes up on the beach, except it’s now the size of a tin of sardines.
I confess to forgetting all about Franklin Richards in the FF scenario. His power to alter reality is nothing to sneeze at. And I haven’t really been reading FF enough in recent years to have a clue about Valeria. My most recent exposures were the Ultimate FF series (which I love), MIllar & Hitch’s brief-but-awesome run on the regular series, and the wonderful handful of issues Waid & Weiringo produced. Sometime, I’d love to waste a weekend reading the entire Hickman run, since it’s raved about so often. I picked up one or two of the Spidey-in-a-white-suit issues and thought they were fun.
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I had forgotten entirely about Franklin in Days of Future Past until I re-read the story for a Longbox Graveyard article several years ago. The FF are all over that story, actually — it could have been a blueprint for the Fox movie FF/X-Men crossover that we never got. (And never will).
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My first reaction to incorporating Franklin into “Days” was that it was a completely radical idea… Then I looked it up and saw that 1987 Mutant Registration Act poster with “MUTIE” spray-painted across Franklin’s face. I had forgotten all about that, too! But you’re right: that would have made for a great crossover film for the MCU. I didn’t care for the version we got on film.
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I remain a big fan of X-Men First Class, but the rest of the franchise leaves me a little cold. I liked the very first film, way back when, but didn’t think it held up terribly well when I saw it again several months ago.
Aside from First Class, the best X-Men movies may well be the off-brand ones — Logan and Deadpool.
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I believe that the silver age JLA is the greatest team of superheroes ever assembled in a comic book. Plus, they had a great animated series. But, when I think of the best comic books I’ve read, only a handful of JLA issues make the cut while a bunch of Avengers comics make the list. While the JLA is the better team, the lack of characterization in the issues written by Gardner Fox causes me to vote for the Avengers.
The JLA vs. Avengers was hard. The FF vs X-Men is impossible! The FF was the greatest and most important team book of the silver age. The X-Men was the greatest and most important team book of the bronze age. So, I’m going to use the same yard stick I used above. There are a lot of great X-Men comics, some of the Lee and Kirby issues, Thomas / Adams runs, the Phoenix Saga and the issues right after it. These are some of the best comics ever done. But, the FF has the classic Thing / Hulk / Avengers two-parter. The one year run that included The Inhumans / Silver Surfer / Galactus, This Man, This Monster, Black Panther and the wedding of Sue and Reed. So many great stories with Doctor Doom (Marvel’s greatest villain). The story arc with Sue and Namor is some of Marvel’s best stuff. You never knew when you opened up an issue of the FF where you’d end up – Latveria, Atlantis, microverse and negative zone… I think the FF was Kirby’s best work. His photo collages still take my breath away. After Lee and Kirby, you have great runs by Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, and Walt Simonson. So while the X-Men are uncannily good, the fantastic ones get my vote.
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It’s a conundrum for sure. All four groups are massively significant to super hero comics and pop culture for that matter. If it wasn’t for the success of the JLA there may never have been a Fantastic Four or anything else that followed. The FF were the more significant book though – had there been no Marvel explosion the Silver Age may have petered out by the mid Sixties and comics would have gone the way of the Dodo. And the X-Men kept Marvel alive for the Bronze Age. No X-Men and Marvel would have died out – well before their Bankruptcy. And without the Avengers it’s unlikely that Disney acquires Marvel since the other lucrative properties had been licensed out to other studios.
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But if it was about cultural significant, the JSA would still be alive.
This is POP culture, so I expect the guys who came last will finish first. Which means my money is on the X-Men. They gotta beat those greybeards in the blue jumpsuits first, though!
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By that standard I’d bet on the Avengers. In a POP culture world they have a multi billion dollar lead over the X-Men in movies. They are also more current. Depending on how you feel about Deadpool the last relevant X-Men movie was “Days of Future Past” in 2014. Black Panther is killing it in the box office as we speak.
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In movies, yes, the Avengers are tops, no contest.
I was thinking about pop culture through the very foggy lens of comics, and more specifically through the lens of comics fans who frequent Longbox Graveyard. My buddy Billy King says there is a generational divide between the FF and the X-Men (strictly in terms of comics) and I think he is right. The FF are children of the 1960s and (sort of) the early 1970s. The X-Men take over in the mid-70s and then they just pour on the fuel with a comic series that has (nearly) always been relevant as well as an animated series that was hugely influential for fans of a certain age.
By that measure, X-Men are the more potent pop culture force — a bigger franchise, more relevant, more nostalgic hooks into people in their 30s/40s. But people in their 50s, or older … they might break for the FF, because they either read that book in the Stan/Jack Golden Age or they’re old enough to have feel nostalgia for that era.
Either way, the FF have way overperformed my expectations in this tournament. I thought the audience over-seeded them as a #1, but here we are the night before the polls close and they just might win …
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You’re gonna make bashful Ben blushes!
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Hard choice, I loved both the Justice League and Avengers but in that miniseries it was by the one of the greatest Avengers creative teams of Kurt Busiek and George Perez which is a bit unfair…
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Nobody draws those every-superhero-in-the-universe-beating-each-other-at-once books better than George Perez.
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The FF are a distant fourth for me out of this group. I like them, and I know they’re very important, but the small roster, plus the fact that the roster hardly ever changes, plus the fact that I only find two of the four members (Ben and Reed) the least bit interesting, detract from the importance and family dynamic which are their strengths.
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I’m not generally a fan of the FF but the things you cite are the things I find most interesting about them — the small(ish) family roster, the tight connections between the characters, all the cosmic stuff and the sprawling supporting cast. But I think you can make a case that after the first one hundred issues of Fantastic Four you needn’t read it ever again. (And perhaps shouldn’t).
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Well, I do like the Bryne run, but yeah, after the first hundred issues it’s nothing special. And yeah, the cosmic angle is another strength of the FF.
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Make no mistake — there have been good FF runs after Stan & Jack. But I feel this is a series that really benefits from being of its time and I don’t think the reinventions measure up.
For example, I think I could defend a position that Simonson’s Thor run exceeds Kirby’s originals. (I THINK. Not ready to die on that hill today … but I think there’s a case to be made). I couldn’t mount a similar defense for any handling of the post-Kirby FF. Some good books, to be sure, but nothing that eclipses the originals.
(I think).
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Whatever came after Kirby on both FF and Thor has been mundane or slightly above at best.
That’s a testimony to the quality and inventivity of Kirby’s work!
As for Simonson, I’ve followed his career but he, also, doesn’t measure up to the King.
Hell, Kirby’s art had to survive Colletta’s scratching… Who else could claim to have achieved such a feat?
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As far as measuring up to the originals, I’d say only the FF and Amazing Spider-Man set a terribly high bar, though actually I’d say that Thor was the 3rd best Silver Age comic, though I’m not much of a Spidey fan so I’d actually probably rank Thor second. Personally I’m no Simonson fan, but I understand how popular his work is so you may be right about that exceeding the Stan & Jack stuff.
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Yes, I will need plenty of debate-preparation time in my Fortress of Solitude if I am going to make that Simonson assertion in public.
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Whoops, I misspelled Byrne.
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It’s clobberin’ time!
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Better call in Thundra for back-up because Ben is getting all he can handle.
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Paul, half an issue of Kirby’s work is enough to obliterate anything you can throw at the FF.
IT’S CLOBBERING TIME!
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You really want to know what you are up against?
Raise the stake and try using this picture on your post: https://a.scpr.org/i/720c5431bff1763fa8d2fd7bb8e8593d/91116-eight.jpg
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Better bring in the Flying Bathtub, the Pogo Plane, and Willy Lumpkin’s mail-scooter, Krackles, because the FF needs every vote!
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Well, since you asked for it… I’ve always been partial to this kind of FF science and gadget scenery:
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Don’t try to be wise, you have been closely watched:
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Or what about this:
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Oh, and what do you have to say about this:
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Now, you have no choice but to concede and hand it over to:
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And, if you dare not surrender… You’ll be annihilated under the heel of Anihilus!
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Don’t force me to save you from yourself:
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The FF are on the fly to victory!
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But, you know what? I’ll let you figger out the reasons!
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No mas, Krackles! No mas! I think you put your boys over the top!
Better save some of these for the Avengers in the championship round.
(Though there is still most of a day to go in the polling, so who knows?)
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Incidentally, this last picture is probably the only ONE picture inked by Colletta that I don’t dislike (OK, I’ll admit I like it).
What a revoltin’ development!
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Wow, a tie with FF vs. X-Men. Exciting! I wonder what’s going on in the Twitterverse?
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Didn’t do Twitter voting this round because the first round didn’t amount to much, but if it was up to Twitter I expect the X-Men win in a walk.
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Whoa! Where did all those last minute votes for the FF come from? Is that a typo?
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Call it … the Krackles Effect.
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Yeah, and you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet… Just a warm up!
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IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!
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