The Smark Avengers - The ULTIMATE Marvel vs DC Bracket — First Round Matchups Revealed!

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The tournament officially begins! In this milestone episode, Corey, Dylan, and Jon finally assemble the full Marvel vs DC Tournament Bracket and lock in every first-round matchup between the biggest heroes and villains in comics. Who dominates the bracket? Who gets snubbed? And which wildcards are primed for an upset? The guys break down the power levels, feats, lore, and chaos potential behind every character chosen for the tournament. This is the kind of crossover showdown fans have dreamed about for decades—and now it’s real. If you love Marvel Comics, DC Comics, superhero debates, power-scaling arguments, or giant nerdy tournaments that go way too far… this is THE episode for you. 🔥 Topics Discussed Building the official Marvel vs DC bracket Revealing all 16 Marvel competitors Revealing all 16 DC competitors Breaking down strengths, weaknesses, and match-ups Who would win? Who should win? Who absolutely shouldn’t win? First round predictions and inevitable arguments Wildcard picks that caused utter chaos ⭐ Support the Show If you enjoy the episode, hit LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and leave a comment with: 👉 Which first-round matchup is YOUR pick to win? Click the link for Dylan's radio show!: http://www.bouncedigitalradio.co.uk Click the link for Dylan's Twitch stream: http://Twitch.tv/spookylaroux Click the link for Jon's Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/bigjonbowski/ Click the link for Corey's project "Henry's Usual": https://www.tumblr.com/henrysusual Click the link for Corey's show "Large Old Cup": https://open.spotify.com/show/2YHMppnl9inQevwLIxR64f

even like santa claus the movie i used to apparently love that movie back in the day i don't know why i watched it again recently and it's like oh this isn't that good that is a very famous movie because i remember it was in a textbook in school for me as like an example of a movie that lost a lot of fucking money By the way, thank you for me, like, no, no, wait. No, no, no, we're talking to Santa Claus the movie with John Lithgow and Dudley Moore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A Santa Claus, and I'm like, okay, cool.

Because that is also the Santa Claus movie. Yes. Well, technically, yeah. And this one is the Santa Claus movie. Or Santa Claus is the movie. Okay, well, the Santa Claus is a movie. So if you were talking about the Santa Claus, you go, that Santa Claus movie? Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Smart Avengers. My name is Corey. And with me is Dylan and John.

I'm up to that with the tape. A little bit just, I think mainly around this movie first started talking about the Santa Claus movie, I think, is when it started coming up. That's when I was getting ready. No context for that whatsoever. None. But you don't need it. That's what the point of the jump open is. So, guys, welcome to Smorg Avengers. This is a kind of an impression. prompt to you one because I realized a couple of about a month or so ago we made a whole like picking names for people to compete in a tournament and then we didn't actually have the tournament yet so a bit of a you know a bit of a goof on our part on that one so yeah a little a little bit of a gap so what we're going to do now is we are going to have a

essentially we're going to determine what the bracket looks like we pick the participants now we've got to find out who's facing who in the bracket and you guys are going to kind of be there with us this is we're not deciding who's winning by the way we're just we're just finding out what the matchups are going to be give everybody some time to think about it make some comments and see how it goes should we be writing these times uh i will have them yes by all means you're more welcome to write them down as well for your record but i have a bracket that i have been filling in so i will also make that available when we have the opportunity to sweet cool cool so what it is is basically to kind of help give the the feel of these pairings being random because like there you look at them on paper and I'm seeing the names I'm like okay that's going to be an odd they'll be an odd fit what's what's what's that one look like and uh you know we'll we'll make it as fair as possible we're going to leave it up to a random chance but we're going to spin a wheel smart avengers we got to have a wheel

we'd love a wheel we love the big wheel we love the big wheel as well historically I think me and John have talked about how much we love the big wheel in the early episode so I'm sorry I'm gonna jump over to

wheel you guys at home won't be able to see it because lately OBS really hates the wheel I don't know why it hates the wheel as much as it does but fucking hates it it hates the wheel as much as we love the wheel it's yeah it's balanced is what it is so yeah so we're gonna drop out and get to the wheel yes all right it's a little simpler than what we're used to dealing with i uh we kind of just put up here so here's all 16 of the marvel heroes that we drafted we're gonna spin them uh until everybody comes off the board and that's going to be our matchups all right this will be our

our first matchup in the hero's bracket for Marvel and what better way to start out than with spider-man you know everybody loves them we all love spider-man so we're going to remove him from the wheel and we're going to spin again to see who spider-man's facing in the first round A different Spider-Man Yeah Almost Yeah There's like 40 of them

Oh Yeah That's a tough draw That is a tough draw That's close I don't think Remember whenever we were doing the thing And we were like

Some of these Some of the guys you couldn't pick Because they're not gonna pair well with other people that was a big whenever we were doing it like sometimes like this guy's too he can't think dormami what the fuck's he gonna do you know

but I think that like Captain America versus Spider-Man like that's a great matchup yeah that's a strong opening yeah that's really good really good at this all right here's match two

we got Deadpool I'm so used to our, I'm so used to the wheel being full of disappointment that it's like, oh wow, it's landing on a big name every time because we picked the names that went on the wheel this time. All right, here's Deadpool's a photo. Should we do this again with all of the shitty ones? All right, Deadpool, the first round is going to go up against Rogue. Wow. Wow. They had a bit of a romantic relationship at one point as well.

Alright, here's match three. Captain Marvel. I like how it looks like Thor and Hulk are getting ready to fight into their anime. Yeah. Okay. And Captain Marvel will face off against. Marvel 2. Oh, wham!

Yep, four. Wow. That's a big one. All right, match four. These are really big so far. Dr. Strange. Yeah. I love that we applause in between every pig.

Right. All right, which makes you realize it when, like, we spun the wheel on the last time, and it was, um, um, fucking triathlon. There's an applause going, woo, triathlon. Fuck yeah, 3D man, you know. All right, Dr. Strange, the master of the mystic arts, is going to go against. Boy, that's a tough one. The Hulk.

oh boy that's the Hulk these are good matchups so far all right match five I think these are really oh Wolverine there is lady's favorite and Wolverine's Daredevil. Oh! Whoa! Oh! That's also a former... A bit of a romantic peering there.

That's a great fight. I would watch that. Okay. The fight, I mean, not the romantic pairing between Wolver and Dom. All right, we got Daredevil at six. And watch it. Yep. And Daredevil will face off against.

off against i don't like his chances against any of these guys i'm going to be honest with you no i think he could beat gambit well storm no that's tough one yeah that might be true yeah that's tough one right here's our last two matches so we're going to have scarlet witch they'll be against gambit and she will face off against i think if he did fight gambit it would work he can make it work i mean you're gonna have a chance to ask you your point because he has that charm ability where like he can make people fall in love with him so scarleta wits you just be like oh i like you i don't think that's an official power and then our yes it is our final fight is ironman versus

cage that's fun yeah one's in destructible and the other is in a suit of armor yeah

I think that would be a fun much all right all right well I'm going to go ahead and clear the

board and we will do our villains next we have our villains up now I should recognize

the names on the list these are who we hand selected we'll do it the same way to spin

and pick up our matches and we'll go from there so you're ready to spin for our first villain fight yeah that be good all right in our first fight we're gonna start with John's favorite Magneto there we go what if it goes up against John's

favorite Super Scroll all right we'll see who it could be he is on the list He's so good if it was Green Gondola. It was so good. Oh, man. Doctor Doom. Uh-oh. We talked about this on the show, didn't we? I think we did.

I think so, yeah. We talked about how if Magneto went up against Dr. Doom, and Magneto would just fucking magnetized his fucking armor. That's, that's tough. That's gonna be tough to come back from. Here's our second name on the list. It's gonna be located. Okay.

Good. And Loki will go up against. Of course. Oh, that's actually interesting. Cassandra Noah. Wow. That's tough. Both of them with a cerebral warfare.

both of them not very happy with siblings yes our third matchup we've got sabertooth oh sabertooth sabertooth this character it's not gotten a lot of love in our podcast but I feel like you all like saber tooth I think we all like saber tooth right yeah yeah all let's see who he's going up against he's gonna be a very tough customer Oh, baby. That might not end well for Seventry too. In our next round, we have Abomination. Ooh.

That's a horse fight. It certainly is. That's meat stop and meat right there. Big boys. That would be a good match. Put in the restroom, put a cage around them. We got Dr. Octopus. Good man.

and doc ock would be going up against the green gobbler oh oh baby only one I wish that happened only one gets to kill Peter Parker damn it I feel like that's they must have done that in the comics or something point you had to have well yeah it was like the end of the superior spider-man run that's true it's true super scroll is a heavy hit that's very underrated he's gonna go i hope it against cardage what cardi just rips the dick on them it's carnage you know the thing is the super scroll has the fire power power That's true.

Yeah, but he could Downidge is impervious to fire now. He's had some years in the comics he's had some improvements to his symbiote. All right, well.

The Annie Brockwood or the Cleascastity one? This was the clearest custody one. I think when he was messing around with like dark gods and stuff. Oh, fair enough. That'll be that. Yeah, yeah, that's right. We got two matchups left to decide. In our penultimate fight in the villain bracket, it will be Thanos, the Mad Titan.

I mean, poor Taskmaster, whoever he's against. He's got a tough draw. But that's the good thing about Taskmaster is he can go up against anybody if he knows how to fight them. He can study them. It might be tough against all of these. All right, going up against Thanos, though, it will be Ultron. Thanos versus Ultron, I could dig. Which means that the task...

I will say. Which does mean the taskaster is up against Apocalypse. That's... That's tough. Good luck, buddy. Yeah, let's be honest here. Very few of these have been, like, straight off, like, steamroller-esque, uh, one-sided fights.

This one might be. That one's going to be tough. Not going to lie. You know? We've got our DC Heroes here now. We're going to, you know, keep doing what we're doing. And this will decide our first round in the DC Hero bracket. Oh, you got to start with the main man.

You got to start the main man. Is he even a man? Oh, a Lobo is absolutely a man. An alien man. Yeah. So he's not in mine because it's from space. It's correct. Thank you.

All right. This will decide Lobo's opponent. Lobo's a tough fight. Oh, but this is a good one. Powergirl. Yeah. Lobo's going to have some issues. He's going to be very distracted, I think.

Why would I think? I feel like the way Power Girl's going to win this is... There's a couple of people on this list that Power Girl could have. absolutely use that to her advantage, and Lopo is absolutely one of them. I would say Powered Girls' advantages are twofold. Thank you. All right, here's our second fight. We have Wonder Woman.

Yeah. Wonder Woman's also going to be a really tough fight for somebody on the list, and she's going to go up against. Oh, okay, we got some royalty fight here. She's got up as Aquaman. If he gets his hit, so Game over.

This is actually in the Flashpoint miniseries the when, you know, all the heroes were villains essentially Aquaman and Wonder Woman were in a

or like a what's the word I'm going I'm looking for? Conscripted marriage. Arranged marriage. Arranged marriage with one another and then when it it broke because Aquaman's mistress

was found dead and the blame was placed on the Amazonians they went to war with one another so there's a basis for that as well right here's our third fight it's the original Robin Nightwing and Nightwing will be facing off against that's tough is it going to tip over it does it's still tough he's going up against his best friend wally wally west the flash that was close it is that was almost nightwing versus superman almost nightwing versus Superman uh Superman is a mentor to nightwing

as well but i would say that the one character on here that nightwing is going to have somewhat of advantage would be it would be against the flash because he doesn't know him inside and out all right here's our fourth matchup here going into the world of magic with dr fate uh-huh and dr fate will go up against uh-oh batman i was gonna say but one of the few people on this there's some people on this list that superman and power girl do not want to meet in the first round dr fate is one of them all right our next mass master maybe green arrow and Oliver Queen is going to go up against

surely green arrow that's rough that's rough that's a rough one for Ali that's a rough one for Ali that could be tough to walk back from not gonna lie He was ready, like, I hope it gets sent out of him.

All right, we got booster gold. The greatest hero you've never heard of. Let's go to the show. Verses. Zatana. Good girl. A mistress of magic. All right, we got two matchups left.

Very magic heavy. So we'll see where this is going to go. It's going to be Swamp Thing. Uh-huh. The Avatar of the Green. Versus. Actually, all three of these people, for the most part. We got Constantine.

his teammate and justice dark again if there's anybody it's going to know how to deal with Swampick it's going to be John Constantine which means our final matchup is going to be space cop versus space alien Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern

well actually one is a Earth man who goes into space to be a space cop and the other is a Martian who came to Earth to pretend to be a cop there you go yeah thanks for our guy I just isn't it?

Certainly is. And then they're both going to show each other a level of police brutality. Oh, boy. All right, and here is our final wheel of our villain names. Can you guys see this? Yes. Okay. Fucking gorilla's one.

Yeah, reverse flash is still on here, by the way. That name every time I have to type it out. All right, this is our first matchup. and it will be gonna tip it over mr. freeze yep very good versus miss hot the heat miser he's mr. Worme he's going up against this is the best bet for joker in his whole opening ground is he going against Mr. Freeze. As I was putting this list together, I was like, boy, Joker gets stopped

by almost every single fucking one of these people. Yeah. Honestly, he did pretty well without one. That's a lucky draw for the Joker against Mr. Freeze. He actually stands a chance. So annoyed with this. Why can he put him... We know he's just going to climb

with the crowbar, and it's not going to do well. All right, we got Cinescro of the Sinestro core. The best of the course. The best of the course. Up against. Okay. Deathstroke the Terminator.

Oh. Hello. That's interesting. Our third matchup on the villain's side. We're gonna have... Cory's favorite. I do enjoy Staro. And Starro will go up against.

Brother Broad. Poison Ivy. Both specialize in mind control at times. Hmm. It's a tricky one. Very tricky one. All right. Well, we have the thing that gives Sinestro power, Parallax, the entity of fear. Going up against.

Oh, that's tough. Dark side. what is the embodiment of fear and the other is things that people should be afraid of that's a good one that's a really good one yeah i like that okay we've got the reverse flash good i know we say this is like an x-man podcast but sometimes i think think is it a flash podcast mean yeah on reverse flash you a barred thorn or tharn we'll go against another flash villain gorilla groad okay that can work good good good okay we've got Clayface, about to have his own movie soon. And Clayface will go up against Lex Luthor.

Yay. Hit him with that bionic forearm. Hmm. All right, we are down to our last two matches. There's some real powerful people on this one. All right, we have General Zod. Mm-hmm. And Zod will face off against.

There's one pairing that's going to do them better than others. And it's not this one. It gets the brain. Which means our last matchup is a bit brutal. It's Bain versus Doomsday. That's a matchup. The Slobinocker. Bain will die from Venom overdose trying to keep up.

That's a real harsh battle right there. I really like Ian versus Doomsday. That's great. I like that a lot I'm going to hop over into our bracket throw these pairings in and then we'll take a look at what you guys have to digest Mm-hmm

So here we are A couple of silver Yep so this is our bracket It's from Print Your Brackets.com It was the easiest place I could find Like one I could fill in pretty quickly Very professional incredibly so this is what the bracket looks like we have our upper quadrant here and i figure we just run through our matches for those who weren't writing them down so our first round matches in the marvel hero bracket is spider man versus captain america

deadpool versus rogue captain marvel versus thor the captain marvel being of course carol danvers dr strange versus the hulk wolverine versus domino Daredevil versus Storm, the Scarlet Witch versus Gambit, and Iron Man versus Luke Cage. It's a simple bracket format, so that would be, you know, the winner of Spider-Man and Captain America would face Deadpool and Rogue's winner. Captain Marvel and Thor's winner would face Dr. Strange and Hulk's winner, et cetera, et cetera. And that would go until we had one hero remaining on the Marvel side. That person would face the winner of the Villains Quadrant, which the first round match. as for our villains quadrant are Magneto versus Dr. Doom,

Loki versus Cassandra Nova, Sabretooth versus Exodus, the Abomination versus the Juggernaut, Dr. Octopus versus the Green Goblin, the Super Scroll versus Carnage, Thanos versus Ultron, and the Taskmaster versus Apocalypse. Again, those winners would advance

until only one Marvel villain remained, and the Marvel villain would face the Marvel hero to decide who would face the winner of the DC side of the bracket. Over on the DC side, we have Lobo versus Power Girl, Wonder Woman versus Aquaman, Nightwing versus the Wally West version of The Flash, Dr. Fate versus Batman, the Oliver Queen version of Green Arrow versus Superman, booster gold versus Zatanna, Swamp Thing versus Constantine, and the Martian Manhunter versus the Hal Jordan Green Lantern.

The winner of that bracket would face the DC Villain side, which, the opening round matches are Mr. Freeze versus the Joker, Sinestro versus Deathstroke, Starro the Conqueror versus Poison Ivy, parallax versus Darkside, the reverse flash versus Gorilla Grod, Clayface versus Lex Luthor,

General Zod versus the Brainiac, and Bane versus Doomsday. The winner between the villain and the hero on the D.C. side would face the winner of the Marvel side. And then whoever wins that wins our entire tournament. So,

the question of course you can get this bit out if you want so we were talking earlier about how the brackets it works so like you could do a full bracket of the heroes in one episode a full bracket of the villains Marvel heroes in one

episode Marvel villains in one episode DC heroes and villains in separate episodes so that we have four people left yes so could we make a whole episode

out of four people. The finale would have to be those four people. Yes. Could we stretch the whole episode with just two, what was it, one, three matches? Well, because I think what would work between that is we are taking like one major name from each one. And I think we could stretch it out, honestly. We could talk about the history of the character, things, you know, like, you know,

that's up to us to make the argument, I suppose. Yeah, who they beat in the tournament as well. Yeah, exactly. You see who had the toughest fight going through? Because again, we're also leaving up a lot of stuff to chance. You know, like, you know, Apocalypse could lose in the first round to Taskmaster. Taskmaster could luck his way into being in the final, and you're like, what the fuck how'd this happen? Yeah.

Well, he's very adaptive. Okay, I just wanted to see if we had enough material to be able to do that. that but that's that i think we can do that that's fine okay all right so yeah that is the layout of the bracket uh how this will work is when we decide to start the tournament it might be a couple of episodes might be three or four episodes we're not really sure until we get into it but we're going to approach each matchup with who we think would win now there's three of us so obviously we could go by majority rule however in traditional tournaments there's always cinderella's an upset stories. So we thought it would be interesting if we threw in a bit of that spontaneity into

this as well. So with each of your vote, my vote, your vote, Dylan and then John's vote, that's going to be one entry into the wheel and we'll just spin the wheel. So we can either like, you know, refresh the names on it or we just put Corey Dylan and John and spin it in that whoever picks, whoever his name it lands on is the pick that wins probably would save time if we did that. But that's how we would determine who would advance. And, uh, you know, it might be a recurring title. You know, we could revisit this in a year and say that, you know, in year 20, you know, six or whatever, uh, abomination won the whole thing. Like, do we have a tournament to see who could face abomination? And then at the end of that one, we put the winner against

abomination to see if somebody could knock them off the, uh, knock him off his, his, his, podium. So you're saying we can have a tournament and then one guy would be the champion of that tournament and then every year we do the tournament again to see who gets the title but we also let

of that turn. But we would also let the winner of that tournament participate in the tournament too. So like if he were to win we're not really we won. We won't spell out what happens because probably we don't really know what would happen if he won. Yeah. Yeah. We would have to let him participate to defend

his championship. Of course. Does that mean that the championship is on the line in every one of his matches? Absolutely not. That would be silly. Not, that would be crazy if he did that. Yeah, of course. We don't we wouldn't do that. We're not out there. Yeah, exactly. And this isn't a single

you know, this is a single loss elimination. We're not asking that champion to face every single person that's in the competition. That would be absurd. That would be insane. Who would do that? Are you listening, Tony Khan? Oh, yeah, maybe, maybe that's, I can see the parallels between our bracket and Tony

Cam's brackets. Now, do you say that out loud? All right, so that was our bracket selection. I'm going to save a PDF of this, and I'll send it to you guys. That way, you have a copy of it. And when we get around to recording it, we now have a framework for how this is going to work and who's going to be against two. And, you know, this is probably our most ambitious thing we've done on the show

to date, considering how many episodes we've dedicated to. This is episode five of this. There's another, at least one. Potentially five. Maybe three or four. Potentially five, yeah. So we're dedicated a lot of time, energy, and resources to this. And we hope you all will, A, like it.

be listened to it. Please listen to it. But we'll go ahead and we'll wrap it up for now, though. John, 2025 is coming down to an end. I believe when this episode airs, we will be in the, about towards the end of December. So this might be your last 2025 update.

Yeah. I'm so excited. Other episodes we do at the end of 2020. but you'll be in 2026. Yeah. Is that going to work? We'll figure it out. Okay, cool.

So, yeah, John, where are you looking at so far? We know you've broken your record, so now you're just, you know, patting it out. Yeah. At the moment, I am on 1,085 movies for 2025. do you have a good not really i mean at this point i'm just you know like you say setting a new record every movie i watched so yeah just keep doing that until december 31st i guess there you go so john what was the last movie that you watched uh it was a movie called drop about uh

A woman who goes on her first date in, like, 10 years, and then in the fancy restaurant, she keeps getting all these airdrop messages, like, telling her that she has to kill the person she's on the date with, or, like, someone's going to murder her sister and a young kid at home. And, yeah, it's just sort of like a thriller that plays out in that situation. It's pretty good for that. it looked good yeah yeah i enjoyed it okay there you go dylan what do you get up to during the week uh i do a lot of sorcery but if that's not what you're asking about i also i'm not going to explain that i just do that

leave it as that other than that i have a radio show that i do on monday nights at nine o'clock to 11 o'clock UK time. It's on Bounce DigitalRadio.com. You can tune in and listen to it every Monday night if you choose to. You can listen to it on your browser. You can listen to it online. You can do it anywhere in the world. It's really cool. We play a lot of music and I talk a lot of between them.

Sometimes I stream on Twitch where I animate stuff at Spookleroo on Twitch. And those animations turn up on Team Crows and I, which is in YouTube, and I think we're on TikTok as well. We're on something. Probably the

same username. So check those out if you like to. You don't have to, but it'll be nice. There you go. I have other stuff going on. They have kind of been taking a back burner at the moment, but it's a large old cup, which is a podcast, it's been of

a spoken word thing. And there's also Henry's usual, which is sort of a writing project that I have, you you know, I play around with from time to time. But you can find links to both of those in the description as well as links to Dylan's Twitch stream, the bounce digital radio, and John's letterboxed. Until next time, though, we'll see you guys later. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Bye-bye.