LAST MAN STANDING

Though the purpose of this mini-site is largely a no-brainer, I'll explain simply in the interests of being needlessly long-winded and pedantic, two great qualities that I'm often complimented for having :-)

For starters, a bit about the two individuals responsible for bringing you fans of fantasy fiction this wondrous (okay, maybe only cool, but I'll also accept a simple adjective like "passable") addition to cyberspace.
I'm Chris N., the webmaster and writer of (among other unrelated sites) The Godzilla Saga, which deals with film reviews, timelines, a glossary, and many other things regarding the King of the Monsters (linked below).
With this particular web site, I've teamed up with the inimitable Crazy Ivan, webmaster and chief scribe of the Amalgam Chronology Center, one of the Net's definitive and foremost resources concerning the amazing Amalgam Universe, that literal fusion of the characters and events of the Marvel and DC Universes into one universe, and the subject of two separate sets of highly memorable 12 one-shot comics that were an outgrowth of the DC VS. MARVEL mini-series of the late 1990s, and is in and of itself partially an inspiration for this very site (Ivan's site is also linked below).

Here we are going to present the prospect of imaginary battles that many of we felicitous fans of fiction fandom (hey, cool alliteration I just made!) have always wanted to see take place (a few of which have, many of which haven't and possibly never will), and which you, the visitors, will place a vote to collectively determine, via majority vote, which opposing entity would be the victor of such an epic confrontation. These battles will feature two reasonably popular characters (and sometimes teams or occasionally even mecha and real life individuals) culled from the entire fulcrum of fantasy fiction, be it comic books, cinema, prose, video games, etc., that we (and many other fantasy fiction fans) have long wanted to see engage in a knock down, drag-out battle of sheer might and combat competance.
Which one of these entities would win? That's what you, the visitors, are going to decide by that wonderful tool known as majority vote (don't worry, you won't find any Electoral College here!).

This is how things will work.

At periodic intervals, a poll will appear here featuring two characters taken from the broad spectrum of fantasy fiction (they can be good, evil, somewhere in between, or entirely non-sentient) who will be pitted against each other in the "Last Man Standing" competition popularized by the eponymously named feature in WIZARD magazine [since "Last Man Standing" is actually derived from an old colloqualism, and neither I nor Ivan are making a penny off of this site, we are counting on the highly generous and magnanimous WIZARD magazine staff to forgive us for borrowing the name of their feature, to hopefully consider two humble fans of this broad genre to be beneath their notice, and that they have too much dignity to attempt to sue us for infringing upon some sort of copyright they may hold! Besides, this was all Ivan's idea! Honest!! Okay, maybe I did suggest it first, but he was the one who encouraged me go ahead and put the site up!!]

Ivan and I will each compose a short (well, short for us, that is) anecdote detailing the merits of one of the two characters in opposition to each other, and each trying to sway the visitors to vote in favor of the opposite character. What you, the visitors, will do is carefully read the anecdotes explaining why we think one particular character would be the winner of the battle, weigh the opposing words that Ivan and I express in regards to the opposite character, and then make a decision based upon your best personal judgment as to which character you would bet your hard-earned money on if these two entities were to go at it in a solo battle, as if your real money was at stake in such a wager (sounds exciting, huh?? I didn't think so either, but why begrudge a webmaster his meager attempt at self-flattery, eh?).

One thing we are hoping to avoid with these polls (but will probably not be able to do entirely, despite our best efforts) is the rather ignomonious practice of visitors making a voting decision based upon whom the voter would like to win the battle predicated upon the personal appeal they happen to have for that particular character, rather than who he/she thinks would actually win the battle if these two entities actually went at it.
In other words, to use an example of an actual debacle of this sort that occurred during the 1996 DC vs. Marvel battle, if we have Wolverine vs. Lobo (as seen in DC VS. MARVEL #3), we will have people voting overwhelmingly in favor of Wolvie simply because the Main Man happens to be a total bastard whose Czarnian butt we WANT to see kicked, despite the fact that the chances of everyone's favorite bloodthirsty mutant actually defeating an opponent as powerful as Lobo is exceedingly slim! And let's not forget that Wolvie was even bereft of his adamantium at the time this battle took place!

[What the hell was DC thinking when they chose to pit Lobo against a mega-fan fave like Marvel's famous feral mutant? Where they maybe expecting a voter outcome based on the objective fact that Lobo would pulverize Wolverine if this battle took place in real life? Puh-leeze! If actual monetary wagers were made at the DC offices before the voting results of DC VS. MARVEL #3 came in, I would bet a hefty wager of my own that all but the most feeble-mindedly naive bet their entire fortunes against their own character actually getting the majority of fan votes!]

To quote Mitchell Brown from the section of his web site on The Unofficial Comics Crossover Index that dealt with the Marvel/DC war:
"...something has to be said about the Wolverine-Lobo match, in which Wolverine beats Lobo in a knock-'em-down brawl. Wolverine beats Lobo? I know we're dealing with universes where a radioactive spider can give you cool powers, but can we at least try to inject some realism here? Of all the matches in the series, this one was just a little too much to believe. No small surprise that this fight was one in which readers could vote for the winner -- but that's democracy for you [emphasis mine]."
This is exactly the point I'm talking about here (not to mention the fact that Mitchell used the results of a comic book voting contest to besmirch the principle of democracy!).

So basically, each of you fine people are on your honor regarding the placement of your votes, and we are asking you NOT to do your part in causing these votes to devolve into a mere popularity contest (e.g., "I think Thor would beat Superman, but hey, I also think he's a total jerk, so I'm voting for Supes!"). To mitigate the frequency of votes being registered based upon how much the majority of the broad fan base likes a certain character better than another on a personal/aesthetic level, we are going to strive to usually present two combatants whose respective popularity level in fandom are roughly equal (but which cannot always be the case, of course), and to avoid placing a hero against a villian, except in rare cases where we may deem a certain villian (or "gray" character) to be of exceptional popularity (e.g., Dr. Doom, Darth Vader, etc.).
So people, again...you're all trusted to make votes based upon the individual merits of each character, and not because you grew up reading about one particular character a lot more than the other, and thus would not want to vote against the character you bonded with in childhood for that reason alone.

Okay, now I would like to bring up a related concern, which also had much to do with debacles like the outcome of the aforementioned Wolverine/Lobo donnybrook. We will always endeavor not to use obscure characters that many visitors are unlikely to have ever heard of, but everyone will at least occasionally be faced with a situation where you know much about one of the combatants, and next to nothing about the other. In such a case, the honorable thing would be to either research the character in question (assuming that you have the time and/or inclination to do so, and that's a damn big assumption), or simply abstain from voting in that particular poll rather than hitting the tally in favor of the character that you happen to be more familiar with; it really REALLY annoyed me during the aforementioned DC vs. Marvel vote of '96 when I constantly heard people tell me things like, "Yea, I voted for Wolverine because I didn't know that much about Lobo"...c'mon, where is the integrity, people? Of course this is only a fantasy thing and is no big deal whatsoever, but...hey, it wouldn't kill you to try and uphold some measure of honor anyway, right? And that was NOT a rhetorical question, btw!

The length of each poll will vary, and the first few polls will probably be left up longer in the initial days of the site to give people greater opportunity to discover the site and become regular participants.

Now, a few words about the Guest Book: well, I included one :-) It's primarily designed for voters who would like to leave their two cents regarding why they voted for a certain character in any given poll, and why they think Character A would whup Character B's ass any day of the week, and express why they did or did not agree with the end results of any given poll, why they were shocked or totally expected the results, etc. You can also use the Guest Book to leave other comments and suggestions about the overall purpose of the site (but be warned: if you leave something exceedingly rude, I'm going to tear you apart in my response, and possibly ban your IP address from ever accessing the site again, but at the same time, please do not feel obligated to respond in a mealy-mouthed fashion).
Also, please do not feel obligated to include an e-mail address or web site in the Guest Book, as half the time it seems that this guest book receives a type of glitch that prevents this info from staying there once the browser is refreshed a few times, just so you know.
One thing I do ask of those who choose to use the Guest Book, however: I'm not trying to be a perfectionist or nitpicker here, but when you leave an entry for the webmasters and other visitors to see, please do your best to write slowly and to utilize halfway decent spelling and grammar, not because we are sticklers for proper English decorum, but rather because when you leave a post made in obviously extreme haste with no self-editing, the spelling and syntax is sometimes so damn muddled that we have to read the entry at least five times before we understand what the hell you were trying to say, and oftentimes we and many visitors will simply avoid reading such a posting altogether. The latter problem is the electronic equivalent of writing "illegibly," so please check your Guest Book entries before submitting them to be sure that it's easily readable.
In fact, if I get a guest book entry that goes something like, "Yae I thiink super man wuld reallly messs up thor cant bele paeople voted like thiss way, ohh welll loook forwerd to moore poles bein dun hear in footure..." then expect me to delete the entry rather than waste the visitors' valuable time it would take to decipher that if they even bothered trying to read it, not to mention sparing you the humiliation that you would so obviously deserve to receive.

No e-mail address need be listed here due to the site's rather simplistic purpose, but if you need to get in contact with the webmasters off the site for any reason, then simply use the option in the Guest Book to leave us a private message.

And finally, the obligatory disclaimer: All of the characters who will appear on this site that are not legally in the "public domain" are the copyright of their respective publisher, film, or video game production company, etc., this web site and its content are not authorized by any of these companies or their affiliates, and Ivan and I are in no way, shape, or form receiving any type of financial compensation from any source for running this site. In layman terms...neither of us are going to earn a single penny, let alone get rich, off of using any character that may appear here via images, the polls, or various textual anecdotes, and this is simply a typical example of fans of fantasy fiction presenting an idea to our fellow fans over cyberspace that we think happens to be cool (and if you disagree, then what the hell are you doing here anyway? Go back to your porn surfing!).

Okay, that's all the particulars involved, so let's get to the voting!

POLL #1 Has Ended: THOR WINS 63% to 36%!!!
The God of Thunder made the Last Son of Krypton EAT HAMMER!!!

Oh, and btw...visitor Ren Rissom has been banned from the site for life for daring to vote for Superman!!! Who the hell does he think he is???
Juuussssttt kidding, dude ;-) Thank you for your participation in the poll...even if you did vote for a loser (bwaah-hah-haahh!!) Better luck for you in the next poll, dude :-)

Poll #2 coming soon!

Tentative battle for Poll #2: GODZILLA VS. GAMERA

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