Author's note: This battle and all others I post here are transfers from my DeviantArt page where I already have them written up. I am formatting them according to wiki guidelines to share them here as well.
Pre-Fight Prelude[]
Most of the time when superheroes, vigilantes and crime-fighters go out to do their job, the majority of their opponents fall into two categories as combatants: The physically powerful brutes and the clever evil masterminds. But neither type of supervillain is as dangerous on their own as those rare few who qualify as both at once:
Like Carlos LaMuerto, the Marvel criminal known as the Black Tarantula.
And Bane, the man who broke the Batman.
Black Tarantula[]
Bio[]
Name: Carlos LaMuerto
Alias: Black Tarantula; “Deathless One”
Height: 7’
Weight: 290 lbs.
First appearance: “Amazing Spider-Man” no. 419 (January 1997)
There is an old legend that the Black Tarantula was a European explorer, who traveled to Japan several centuries ago and trained under the Hand. At the end of the training, it was said he was rewarded with a potion that provided superhuman powers and immortality. But that legend is exaggerated and the reality is quite different: the powers and title of the Black Tarantula have been passed down from father to son. Though not truly immortal, the original Black Tarantula and every subsequent successor all possessed the same set of superhuman powers as a result of the original one drinking the potion. Each Black Tarantula separates the male heirs from their mothers from an early age to begin a life of vigorous training. In the present day, the Black Tarantula mantle currently belongs to Carlos LaMuerto, a crime lord who made a name for himself in South America and parts of Europe.
While attending graduate school in the United States, Carlos met a Brazilian woman named Marina Caches. The two soon married and had a son named Fabian. Upon discovering her husband’s criminal identity and illegal activities, Marina filed for divorce from Carlos and fled with their son. Marina eventually settled in New York and became a criminal psychology teacher at Empire State University (the same place where Peter Parker attended college) and began dating Dante Rigoletto-nephew of infamous mobster Don Rigoletto.
Locating his ex-wife in New York, the Black Tarantula orchestrated a campaign to locate his son and establish foothold in the criminal underworld to take advantage of the then-absence of Wilson Fisk. He dispatched a lieutenant named El Uno and a group of his men to violently introduce themselves to their competition: ex-Daily Bugle reporter Jacob Conover AKA the criminal known as “The Rose”. In retaliation, Rose sent an assassin to kill El Uno and returned the guy’s severed head to Black Tarantula. To strike back, Black Tarantula hired the True Believers (a group of defectors from the Hand) to harass Rose by killing his former colleague Joseph “Robbie” Robertson. But this attempt on Robbie’s life failed due to the combined intervention of the Hand, Elektra Natchios and Spider-Man.
Frustrated at these failures, Black Tarantula decided to go to New York himself to take matters into his own hands. Forming an alliance with Don Fortunato, the Black Tarantula is asked to prove his loyalty to the guy by defeating Spider-Man and bringing him the wall-crawler’s mask. In their first ever battle, Black Tarantula does exactly that. While he won the battle and took Peter’s mask, he didn’t care who Peter was and let the latter live because he was trying to rescue a child at the time. Later on in an effort to find out more about Black Tarantula, Spider-Man (operating under a different identity at the time) fought Don Rigoletto’s assassin Delilah, who was revealed to be Marina Caches. Fleeing to Fortunato’s mansion for protection, Marina was later cornered by Black Tarantula again, during which he fought the don’s guards and also defeated Spider-Man once again.
Black Tarantula soon stops his attack when Marina points out that his actions were scaring their son. He soon relented after she told him that the title of Black Tarantula has been a burden on him, and soon leaves. But not before telling Marina he would be back for Fabian.
Black Tarantula’s activities after this are few and far between, but highlights include: being stabbed in the heart by Bullseye during a prison riot before getting released for good behavior, a brief time of membership in the Hand during Daredevil’s run of it during Shadowland, and even a brief stint as an antihero for a time.
Powers and abilities[]
-Superhuman strength which enables him to lift a range from 25-30 tons. That’s higher than Spider-Man’s range of 15-20 tons.
-Healing factor on par with the likes of Wolverine and Deadpool. It’s not known what the limit of his healing is, but he has stated that getting shot was merely “irritating” to him. He can also heal others with a touch, though this is an ability he has rarely displayed. His skin is nearly bulletproof. The worst known injury he sustained was getting stabbed in the heart by the assassin Bullseye during a period when he was briefly powerless, and has healed from poisons and fatal diseases. (It should be noted that this incident with Bullseye took place at a time when Black Tarantula’s powers were suppressed, but for this fight he will operate at his original strength level from his first appearances.)
-In spite of being 7 feet tall and bulky, Black Tarantula has pulled off incredible acrobatics that you wouldn’t expect from someone his size. He is more agile than even Spider-Man and is slightly faster than him in general.
-Discharges twin laser beams from his eyes, though this does require a recharge between uses, so he can’t just spam this ability during a prolonged fight and only uses it as a last resort.
Bane[]
Bio[]
Name: Dorrance (First name unknown, possibly Eduardo)
Alias: Bane Height: 6’2” (6’8” on Venom)
Weight: 225 lbs. (350 lbs. on Venom)
First appearance: “Batman: Vengeance of Bane” no. 1 (January 1993)
From the get-go, Bane’s life was screwed up. Prior to his birth, the revolutionary Edmund Dorrance AKA King Snake escaped justice from the courts of the corrupt Caribbean island nation of Santa Prisca. Unable to capture Edmund himself, the Santa Priscan government instead ruled that Edmund’s son would carry out the life sentence intended for his father and thus arrested Edmund’s pregnant wife. As a result, the younger Dorrance spent his childhood and early adult life in the prison known as Peña Duro (Spanish for “hard stone”). Despite the nature of his circumstances, Dorrance was able to develop extraordinary skills within the prison walls; he read as many books as he could get his hands on, spent most of his spare time bodybuilding in the gym, developed his own form of meditation and learned to fight and trained in several martial arts styles. Due to the cultural and geographical location of Santa Prisca between Cuba and Jamaica, Bane knew how to speak multiple languages (including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin), and even found teachers of various sorts (including a Jesuit priest who provided him a classical education).
At the age of 8, Bane killed a man for the first time in his life by stabbing him. This first victim was another inmate who wanted to use him to learn information about Peña Duro. In his childhood teddy bear Osito (“little bear”), Bane carried a knife he kept to defend himself, and considered the bear his only friend. But in Bane’s nightmares were a vision that constantly plagued him when he slept: a giant monstrous bat-like creature, which at first gave him an intense fear of bats. In spite of this, Bane ultimately established himself as the “king” of Peña Duro, and the prison’s controllers soon took note of this. Forcing Bane into a super soldier experiment against his will, the Peña Duro leaders subjected Bane to the experimental steroid known as Venom, which killed every test subject up to that point.
Nearly dying in the process, the experiment successfully granted Bane superhuman abilities, but Bane realized he had to take Venom every 12 hours to avoid debilitating side effects. Using his newfound powers, Bane led a group of inmates including his closest ally known as Bird in a mass prison break that ultimately saw his forces get out of Peña Duro. Bane had a new ambition to stand above all other men and be second to none, and he believed the way to achieve this was to conquer the power of fear. From his partner Bird, Bane learned about Gotham City and the legends about its protector who ruled the city through fear: the Batman. Gotham fascinated Bane because, much like Peña Duro, the city was ruled through fear-but of Batman. Believing Batman was the personification of the bat creature in his childhood nightmares, Bane sought to destroy him.
Upon arrival in Gotham, Bane wanted to bring Batman into the weakest possible physical and psychological state he could. To this end, Bane and his fellow escapees stole munitions to destroy the walls of Arkham Asylum-causing a mass breakout of all its deranged inmates including most of Batman’s major enemies. Consequently, this meant Batman had to recapture everyone who got out. This mission took Batman the next 3 months to carry out until he finally apprehended everyone and sent them back to Arkham, after which Batman was driven to physical and mental collapse. Batman retreated to Wayne Manor, only to find Bane waiting for him there since the latter was able to figure out Batman’s true identity.
Attacking Batman, the Dark Knight was too weak to keep Bane from beating him nearly to death. At the end of their battle, Bane delivered the infamous blow he is most well-known for: a brutal back-breaker attack, which he uses to temporarily cripple Batman. This was the moment that Bane became known as the only man who has “broken the Bat.” Bane was soon the ruler of Gotham’s underworld due to achieving what no other criminal in Gotham before him could. While Bruce was crippled, he temporarily passed the mantle of Batman to Jean-Paul Valley AKA Azrael.
Ignoring Bruce’s warnings to stay away from Bane, Azrael confronted Bane using the new high-tech heavy metal gauntlets he added to the batsuit and used them to launch sharp projectiles at Bane. However, Bane used his Venom to get the upper hand in the fight and taunting Azrael to make the latter angry enough to lose focus before beating him. Despite his victory, Bane suffered several lacerations and lost a great deal of blood. Not able to go to a hospital, Bane upped his Venom intake to block the physical pain he was suffering from and to give himself time to last long enough to defeat Jean-Paul Valley in their next fight. Returning with a new upgraded metal batsuit, Azrael fought Bane again and reduced Bane to a wounded animal, begging Azrael to kill him. However, Azrael did not and left Bane to be arrested by the GCPD.
After recovering from his Venom addiction during his stay in Blackgate Prison, he eventually escapes and returned to Gotham. Ever since then, Bane has been a consistent thorn in Batman’s side.
Powers and abilities[]
Bane is known for two things: his incredible strength and equally great intelligence. Bane is naturally strong in his normal state, able to lift 1500 lbs., is able to break the bones of Killer Croc, snapping steel cables, and denting an iron gate off its hinges-and all of this is what he’s capable of when he’s NOT hopped up on Venom. On his own, he’s also shown himself to be tough enough to shrug off bullets to the shoulder as well as withstanding numerous bricks being thrown towards all areas of his body. He is also quite fast despite his bulky frame.
But when Bane gets on the Venom, it is distributed via the device on his left wrist and pumps directly to his brain. This results in Bane gaining increased height and muscle mass and a significant increase in his physical abilities. On Venom, Bane is capable of lifting 4 tons, and possibly more depending on how much Venom he pumps himself up with. But this strength increase does come at the cost of his sanity, which turns Bane into an animalistic brute. The Venom enhancement also allows Bane to shrug off most blunt force trauma, withstand blows from most superhumans and survive falls from great heights. The Venom is also capable of healing Bane from most injuries, infections, poisons and diseases.
Despite the benefits that come with Bane’s use of Venom, there are multiple downsides which come with it, too. One problem is the addictiveness of the Venom, which he has tried and sometimes succeeded in kicking. Another problem with the Venom is that the distribution device on his wrist and the green cable plugged into his brain are vulnerable weak points which can be exploited. Disrupting Bane’s flow of Venom or affecting it in a way to cause it to ramp up the dosage to make Bane borderline overdose on the stuff has often been his downfall.
Intellectually, Bane is by far one of the smartest enemies Batman has ever faced. Bane possesses an eidetic memory (more commonly known as photographic memory), which allows him to virtually memorize anything. He is exceptionally knowledgeable in subjects such as various sciences, history, geology, medicine and many other fields. He is also incredibly multilingual, capable of speaking many languages such as: Spanish, English, Portuguese, Latin, Urdu, Mandarin Chinese, French, Russian, and Farsi. He figured out Batman’s secret identity in the span of a year before he first faced the guy and is one of the only two people in the world to beat Ra’s al Ghül at chess (the other of course being Batman). Bane is also a master of escapology and infiltration, surpassed only by Batman, Nightwing and Mister Miracle.
As a hand-to-hand combatant, Bane is formidable enough to hold his own against Batman and Ra’s al Ghül and even created several fighting styles of his own. As a tactician, Bane can only be described as a highly gifted strategist and devious. After all, his first day in Gotham as described above was him orchestrating a mass breakout from Arkham which took Batman the next 3 months to stop, which left him physically and mentally exhausted to a point where Bane was able to easily beat Batman and break his back.
Battle[]
Location: Bane’s hideout, Gotham City
Bane heard commotion coming from outside his hideout’s office as the screams of his henchmen filled the air. A second later, one of his men came flying in through the glass window to his left. The man’s neck was was pierced with his own knife, which told Bane this was not Batman out there. Heading out to the main room of the hideout, Bane saw a massive man standing over the bodies of his mercenaries. The big guy dressed in black casually twisted the head of Bird before tossing him aside.
“I hope you have counted your blessings, amigo. This city shall be mine,” the larger man said in a Hispanic accent as Bane leaped down to confront him. Both men got into fighting stances.
FIGHT!
Bane and Black Tarantula leaped toward each other with powerful punches, clashing fists in the air. As they went back to the ground, Bane tried to get Black Tarantula in a wrestling hold. However, his opponent easily broke free and retaliated with a strong turning back kick to send Bane flying backwards. Landing on his back and transitioning from a roll back to his feet, Bane knew he needed to try something else. Jumping over towards a nearby garage door where an armored truck was parked, Bane decided to pick up the truck and throw it at Black Tarantula.
However, Black Tarantula caught the flying truck with both his hands with ease and then threw it back. Bane dived to get out of the way of the truck’s trajectory. Picking up a pair of knives from a pair of his dead men, Bane jumped towards Black Tarantula again to deliver a couple slashes. Then he performed one final stab attack directly to Black Tarantula’s heart. To Bane’s shock, Black Tarantula didn’t fall.
Grabbing Bane’s wrist while he still held the knife in his chest, Black Tarantula looked down at Bane with likely a taunting expression under his mask. “Is that all you’ve got?” Black Tarantula mocked. Bane soon noticed the cuts from the previous knife slashes had healed within seconds. Then Bane got punched backwards by Black Tarantula, who then immediately pulled the knife out of his chest and tossed it aside. Did this guy have any weaknesses?
Bane did not want to have to do it, but he knew he had no other options. “Alright, pendejo. You asked for this!” Bane exclaimed before activating the Venom distributor on his left wrist. Once this was done, Bane felt the rush of the Venom coursing through him. His muscles expanded and he stood taller than before, closer in height now to his opponent. Bane let out a powerful scream now that the Venom had done its work.
Bane charged forward with his boosted strength and speed, ramming into Black Tarantula. The latter tried to hold him back before Bane got him into an armbar hold and twisted his arm. Black Tarantula leaped away from Bane’s next series of powerful swings. After a few seconds during which his arm and bones twisted back into place, Black Tarantula noticed the tube connecting Bane’s wrist device to his head and pumping him with that steroid. He had an idea.
“Even with your drug, you pale before me,” Black Tarantula said. Bane ran towards him again with a shoulder charge attack, but Black Tarantula was ready for it this time. Once Bane was in range, Black Tarantula did a backwards flip into the air as Bane passed underneath him and came down to land with a drop-kick to Bane’s back. Black Tarantula jumped towards Bane and got him into a full nelson. With one hand, he forcefully pulled on the cord sending the Venom to Bane’s brain.
Bane freaked out in response to this, desperately trying to elbow Black Tarantula to break his hold as his body reacted negatively to the loss of the Venom. Not letting up and taking the strong hits, Black Tarantula’s eyes glowed yellow. Then he released a point-blank optical blast from his eyes. Once the bright light of the blast cleared away, Black Tarantula let go of Bane’s headless body.
KO!
Post-Battle Analysis[]
I know this match is shorter than my past ones, but I imagine a fight between these two wouldn’t exactly be a prolonged affair. I wanted to take a lesser-known Marvel villain that I like and set him against someone from DC who is similar in some ways and is much more established. Bane had plenty going for him since he is the smarter of these two combatants and has taken on some of DC’s most skilled martial artists including Batman. But Black Tarantula has shown skill in his own right as well, having stood against the likes of Spider-Man and defeating him twice, gaining a victory against Daredevil, and even contending with Iron Fist and White Tiger.
Bane is a tactician who would be able to determine and find any notable weaknesses in his foes, but the problem here is that he simply didn’t exactly have that luxury against Black Tarantula. Even within his sporadic appearances in the Marvel universe, Black Tarantula has never had his healing factor overtaxed or affected in a negative way, which makes it difficult to know just how much he can truly handle. Black Tarantula has shrugged off bullets on multiple occasions as well as getting stabbed in the heart (and he did this even while in a weakened state of being less powerful than usual), which means Bane didn’t really have a way to kill him. By comparison, Black Tarantula would take note of how Bane was boosting his strength with the Venom and think to cut off the supply.
One more advantage which Black Tarantula maintains no matter what is his superior strength. Bane’s top strength level while hopped on Venom comes out to 4 tons, whereas Black Tarantula outclasses him with a lifting range of 25-30 tons. But in the end, Black Tarantula proved to be stronger, tougher and deadlier then the King of Peña Duro.
The winner is Black Tarantula.