| I'm No Superman | |
|---|---|
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| Season Episode | S0 E23 |
| Air date | November 4, 2020 |
| Written by | Cropfist |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous Red Hood VS Winter Soldier |
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Description[]
Superman gone wrong (̶g̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶, ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶o̶d̶)̶.
Interlude[]
With great power comes great responsibility, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And the absolute power of Superman absolutely corrupted these two irredeemable boys: the Plutonian...
...and the Homelander.
He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.
And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armors and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.
Plutonian[]
The Plutonian. The defender of Sky City. With his fellow heroes of Paradigm by his side, the world was safe from anything that would threaten it.
Until one day, he became that very threat, suddenly beginning a villainous rampage of terrorism and mass murder that claimed millions of lives across the globe. But why? What was it that lead the ultimate hero to become the ultimate villain? And where did he even come from anyway?
Well, his story truly begins with the Eleos, a species of extradimensional aliens who dedicate themselves to analyzing everything in the multiverse.
Two Eleos discovered a planet filled with hellish climates and violent life-forms. It was called...Earth.
The Eleos found humanity to be intriguing enough, so they sent in a probe, which was overwhelmed by one woman's emotions and transformed into a human-like baby.
Uh, what?
Unfortunately, this woman's sanity was not all there; her strong emotions weren't driven by wanting a child, but wanting a child gone. Dying in her own attempt to murder the baby, he was given up to the adoption system. But as he grew older, none of the foster families would keep him for long.
See, it was becoming apparent he inherited a little more of the alien abilities than human ones. Whenever they surfaced, he was out the door ASAP, assuming adoptive mom didn't just off herself first. What's the big deal? Wouldn't a super kid be great?
It would sound great, until he pushes a bully too hard and kills him.
Well, after wandering around as "the wolf boy", he eventually got his break when he was adopted by Bill Hartigan, who finally accepted the kid for what he is, and even gave him a name: Dan Hartigan.
However, stability came at a cost; his new dad forced him to be completely selfless at all times, from giving away his Christmas presents to only using his powers to help others. Which bit dad in the ass when it pressured him to not mention Mrs. Hartigan's cancer.
Though his foster parents kicked the bucket in a car accident shortly after, their teachings inspired Dan to grow up into a superhero. Following the traits of piety, loyalty, utility, truthfulness, and order, after saving a pilot from an air show accident, he made a hero identity as the Plutonian.
Together with Paradigm, no villain who threatened justice was a match for their heroic power. But unbeknownst to any of them, the team's ultimate enemy was brewing from within.
His crappy childhood already didn't leave him with the best state of mind. This was aggravated by the fact that even a hero as virtuous as him wasn't immune to constant criticism from the people he was always saving. So he gave them some advanced alien tech salvaged from an invasion to shut them up.
Humanity was not careful with what they wished for, and the mishandled technology quickly spawned a sonic virus that feasted on the flesh of children.
Man, you leave for some tranquility on the moon for ONE MINUTE, and those hairless apes do shit like this!
Though Paradigm succeeded in stopping the virus, the truth of his involvement was revealed to his sidekick Samsara by the scientists responsible for the disaster. And that is when the Plutonian snapped.
You know that video with the golem who stops a giant boulder from destroying a village, but accidentally destroys 1 building in the process and the villagers attack him anyway, so he just steps aside to let the boulder destroy the town? His downfall is basically that. Realizing that the world would not forgive him for the incident in spite of all his good deeds, he went "fuck it", turned a 180 into a supervillain, and ravaged the world on a crusade of ruthless mass destruction. Sky City was first.
Paradigm, his former allies, were the only ones left willing to stand in his way. And with his powers, trying to stop him was an uphill battle.
That's thanks to his vastly powerful abilities. Being a Superman archetype, these include superhuman strength, super speed, invulnerability, flight, enhanced senses able to see electrons, and hear a whisper or heartbeat from across the world. Also not forgetting freeze breath, x-ray vision or heat vision hot enough to turn sand into glass and fission nitrogen molecules, which can be dialed from charring humans to the bone to vaporizing entire cities within moments.
However, the nature of these powers is a little more complex than they would seem. The truth is that the Plutonian subconsciously warps the laws of physics and reality around him to achieve his abilities; in other words, an extreme variant of "mind over matter", or more particularly, "mind over muscle". His physical prowess is caused by strengthening the density of his body while weakening the density of the target's structure, flight is done by placing his mass in the surrounding atmosphere, letting him slide through the air like a wet bar of soap squeezed out of a fist, heat vision transfers kinetic energy to the air molecules around his eyes to make a heated beam, freeze breath takes molecular motion from the air to create icy temperature, and x-ray vision is him modifying the object's atomic structure to make it visually permeable to electromagnetic radiation.
...I don't understand a word of the nerd shit you just said. But once he found out the essence of his superpowers, he trained himself to do even more cool quantum stuff, like turning intangible, nullifying inertia, controlling metal, and causing explosions with a snap of his fingers.
He was able to view the memories of others by seeing through time, a small glimpse of his true full potential - along such, it is speculated he could reverse entropy, alter probability, and redefine reality itself.
The Plutonian is strong enough to break tectonic plates, throw half a mile of diamond meteorite at Singapore before pushing the whole island underwater, and withstand gravity almost comparable to a black hole with the weight of a star system. At his very limit, he lifted the density of a neutron star, taking hits from an enemy who drew power that could extinguish star systems and shatter whole galaxies. Also, he's fast enough to outspeed a radio signal to space in 1/3rd of a second, and outrace another signal from space-to-earth in just a few picoseconds!
But in the end, he's not truly omnipotent. Aside from not being mentally...all there, his kryptonite is the wax of the Nahru Visna candle, which nullifies his powers, and could theoretically kill him if it was, say, shaped into a bullet that was then teleported into his heart.
He's more durable than strong, meaning he is unable break material equal to his skin, and he never did quite reach the full capability of his reality warping.
But when his parents came back to Earth and unintentionally unleashed cosmic radiation across the planet, he worked with his ex-teammate to save the world one last time. Though Pluotnian's body died in the process, his essence was sent through the multiverse across space and time, where it inspires two young comic artists to draft a certain most popular superhero of all time...therefore granting him redemption in the end.
"Let me tell you about the kind of world I live in. It is a world of miserable, bitter, ungrateful paramecium who lash out at you in a state of perpetual rage for not solving their problems fast enough. You do astonishing things for them a hundred times a day. You bring wonder to the lives of ordinary people. And in the end, you realize it's like doing magic tricks for a dog."
Homelander[]
The Seven. Champions of the mighty and defenders of the innocent. There is no one better to lead the greatest superheroes, than the greatest superhero of all.
He's a modest, polite, sincere boy scout and an all-American patriot all the way through! Who else but the Homelander!
You stay back! All of you, stay back! You stay the fuck back or I'll laser you, goddammit! I'll laser every fucking one of you!
...anyone else but the Homelander.
Yeah, everything we just said was a lie. The truth is that Homelander was raised as John in the cold and isolated labs of the Vought corporation as an experiment with Compound V, a chemical developed by guess who? The Nazis. The V he was injected with in the womb was exceptionally refined, so billions of dollars and a few dead doctors later, the experiment proved a success: Homelander was not just the most popular hero, but for Vought, their most popular product.
(pop-up: Homelander makes 1% of all profits, while the rest of the Seven only make .75%. However, he is not their greatest product, as that would be the Compound V formula.)
As you might have guessed by now, his upbringing did not at all mold the perfect paragon of virtue he is advertised as, but made him quite the opposite: an arrogant, egotistical, narcissistic, selfish, callous megalomaniac who views the powerless masses as worthlessly beneath him, and thus feels he has the right to do whatever he wants. Having "the power of a god" gave him the complex of a god as well.
Thanks to his unstoppable abilities, and Vought's unstoppable resources, Homelander really could do whatever he wanted, from murder to debauchery. At least, until he messed with the wrong woman. That's when the Boys showed up.
The vices of the superheroes may have gone unnoticed by the public, but not by the CIA, who assembled a black-ops squad known as "The Boys" to patrol them after Homelander...took Billy Butcher's wife unwillingly.
Just like that, Homelander made himself not just the #1 hero, but the #1 supe on Billy and the Boys' hit list.
But taking Homelander down is no easy task. With his great superhuman strength, supersonic flight, and invulnerable durability, it's easy to see where his reputation of impunity comes from. Though his favorite power is his heat vision.
Yup. Swoop in, blast the baddies with eye lasers, and fly out, mission accomplished! These beams can blast through everything from human bodies to big old jet airliners, and they're said to be superior to an anti-missile system! When he needs to see what he's melting, he's got x-ray vision to permeate his gaze through almost anything, including hot bod-
Sight is not his only enhanced sense. His hearing range is about 200,000 hertz, good enough to measure the blood temperature of others, detect when people are lying, hear conversations from tens of meters away, listed to heartbeats, and hear neurons firing through the brain. It's not too sensitive to handle his own voice, because if he gets angry enough, his yell can rupture normal people's eardrums. Or, more calmly, he can do so with his hands.
Also, he's a pretty good manipulator even without brute force, maintaining a heroic facade alongside high public opinion in spite of the monster he is, allowing him to spin any story into propaganda for his side. Like after he failed to save an airplane full of people from terrorists, but then used the incident in tandem with slipping other terrorists some V to justify superheroes getting allowed in the military.
Furthermore, Compound V likely slows his aging down, extending his lifespan and keeping his physiology in its prime for decades.
Okay, what black magic ritual did the Nazis do to make this compound? There is no way a chemical should grant any powers besides cancer.
I actually have a sample of V in the lab I'm waiting to test.
Heheh, you mean this one?
(Boomstick pulls out a syringe with the blue chemical in it and immediately injects it into his arm)
Oh yes, unlimited power!
(Boomstick's body starts to glow white)
Boomstick no no no wait, it doesn't work on-
(his body then causes an explosion, knocking their recording equipment out)
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY
(camera resumes, Wiz and Boomstick are covered in black soot)
(cough) Adults... (sigh) Anyway, Homelander is able to to toss a jet with one hand, split off part of an airplane by flying through it, withstand part of a tunnel being collapsed on him, tank and outspeed a C4 explosion, or fly faster than a fighter jet. He is superior to Queen Maeve, who stopped a falling bus with one arm, Stormfront, who can cause destruction comparable to a hurricane or destroy a dam with one finger, and Butcher, who can run fast enough to match Stormfront's electricity. Homelander is so powerful, no weapon in the world has been able to affect him before, and Vought's only contingency against him was nothing short of a nuclear bomb.
In the comics, that was only until they made a clone of him, who was strong enough to give him a nice jaw and full body readjustment. But double trouble aside, despite his physical perfection, he still has his weaknesses.
Homelander's kryptonite is his mental condition. He is insane, irascible, insecure and psychopathic, describable as a series of negative impulses only barely kept in cheek by his intelligence and his deep-down desire to be truly loved. Also, he is vulnerable to blackmail or somewhat to high frequencies, cannot see through zinc with x-ray vision, and has divided attention while using his super-senses.
Meaning he could be focusing on analyzing a person one moment, and not notice a dog taking a leak on his leg at the same time.
Yet, if you were to live in the world of The Boys, make sure to never meet this hero, and don't pray if you do, because the only man in the sky is him. He is not the American dream, but the American nightmare.
All clear boys! Mission accomplished!
(Homelander spots a terrorist running away and kills him with heat vision, to the shock of the observing soldiers)
God bless America!
Intermission[]
Alright, the combatants are set, let's end this debate once and for all.
It's time for a Death Battle!
Death Battle[]
Homelander is lounging around in the Seven Tower, sitting in the chair at his table, when a Vought employee approaches him.
"Sir, there is a supe here who wants to talk to you."
"Oh, really? Who would that be?" he responds, with an air of disinterest.
"He...doesn't seem to be in any of our records, but, he calls himself-"
Just then, the glass of the window shatters. They both turn to face the "supe", who is levitating in front of the room, and introduces himself.
"I am the Plutonian. You are claimed to be the world's greatest hero? I was too...until I realized how worthless the people below me were."
Homelander is lightly surprised by the Plutonian's ideas being similar to his. Until the next words come out.
"Including you."
FIGHT![]
Realizing he's bad news, Homelander blasts his heat vision at this enemy, who replies by blasting his heat vision back. The two beams collide until Plutonian dials his up, increasing its width to vaporize the nearby employee and blast Homelander through the floor. Plutonian follows this up by flying at Homelander, tackling him through the rest of the tower's floors until they reach ground level, where he then throws a car at Homelander, who backhands it away despite someone being inside. Tony dashes to John and punches him in the face; to his unpleasant surprise, this caused him pain, and to question who exactly his foe was.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Frustrated, Homelander flies up to Plutonian and punches him a few times, which then leads to a mutual trading of blows, each one causing progressively more destructive shockwaves that level and damage the city area around them. This ends when Plutonian rams him through several skyscrapers, throwing him onto an urban park area. Homelander manages to punch Tony, sending him flying long enough for John to address the present citizens who had not already fled the battle scene, somehow holding back the ego fracture caused by facing someone as powerful as he was.
"Don't worry everyone, I have the supervillain under control! You guys are safe-"
Suddenly, several of the citizens are brutally incinerated by Plutonian's heat vision.
"No, they're not."
Motivated more out of personal anger than the dead civilians, Homelander digs his hands into the ground beneath him, pulling up a chunk of concrete that he throws at Hartigan. Though Dan easily smashes it, he is caught off-guard by HL using this as cover to punt him to the ground from above. He continues to pummel the ex-hero of Sky City.
"How fucking dare you!" he questions.
"How dare you be so arrogant!" Tony responds, sensing Homelander's body to understand his emotional state. "You need to chill out!"
Not coincidentally, as he says this, he spews an icy breath from his mouth, freezing the leader of the Seven's body solid. Before he can shatter the frozen person, he rapidly thaws out with heat vision. Plutonian grabs him by the neck and soars, bashing him into the middle of a tall building structure, then headbutting him. Homelander breaks from his grip and goes berserk with his optic beams, screaming in rage as they wildly split buildings and people in half. In his rage, he fails to realize the Plutonian has disappeared. Managing to slightly calm down, he uses x-ray vision to search the area, where he finds the former Paradigm hero hiding behind part of a building. He screams at the foe.
"Get back here, asshole!"
The intensity of the sound wave disrupts Tony's super-hearing, leaving him wide open to attack: John slams through the structure to punch Plutonian to the ground, impacting hard enough to leave a big crater. As Dan Hartigan gets back to his feet, Homelander slowly hovers him, eyes red with heat, body red from being caked in blood from both the battle and the collateral casualties, wearing a sinister grin on his face.
"I am the Homelander...and I can do...whatever the fuck I want!"
He finishes off with a flying punch headed straight for Plutonian's chest, meant to rip through it completely.
And go through his chest it did. But not because it tore through. It phased through.
Caught off guard by the intangibility, Homelander threw another punch, but it was stopped by Plutonian's hand. He did not need to nullify the punch's kinetic energy, as he nullified its inertia, making it feel completely weightless to both of them.
"What...?" an angry and confused John asked.
"You can do whatever you want?", Tony comments. "So can I."
Plutonian proves his far more literal application by pulling various earthly metals from the ground and manipulating them as to wrap Homelander's body with them. He struggles to break free, as these materials would normally be destructible to him, but they have also been controlled to have more mass than he can handle. The son of the Eleos flies up high above the atmosphere and finds a large asteroid, which he throws down to the Earth. The impact hits Homelander point-blank and completely destroys the entire city, reducing it and everyone in it to a wasteland of flaming rubble.
Plutonian flies down to land in the midst of his destruction, with an evil smile.
"That was what I wanted."
Suddenly, Homelander red-gloved hand bursts out of a nearby rubble pile, gripping Dan by the neck. The rest of John emerges, heavily injured and tattered, and fires the heat vision at the highest intensity he could muster. It melts through Tony's shoulder, causing him to yell in pain. But then he grabs Homelander back and throws him above his head before looking up, firing his heat vision through Homelander's waist, splitting the Homelander's body in half and killing him.
K.O.[]
Verdict[]
Holy crap! That was some glorious destruction!
Although both shared the same archetype in being based on Superman, this did not mean they shared the same level of power. Simply put, Plutonian was by far the stronger of the two, having the power to destroy whole countries at base, as proven by breaking tectonic plates, sinking Singapore, and carving his symbol on the face of Earth with eye beams. Meanwhile, Homelander, at his very best, could be killed by a nuke.
(Popup: While it was stated in the series no weapon in the world has hurt him before, it is unclear if this involves nuclear weaponry.)
He was immensely faster as well, being able to outrace a radio wave, which moves at lightspeed, and reacted to another signal in a matter of picoseconds, making him many times faster than light! Homelander, if we're being very generous, might be comparable A-Train, who dodged a plasma beam created by absorbing light from bulbs. Even if we assume this is not an outlier, and is actually light speed in the first place, it would still be far slower than Tony's level of FTL! Oh, and this is all before awakening his reality warping
Once that came into play, Tony's power reached stellar levels, with a variety of hax powers that Homelander has no answer for. Even if they were evenly matched, Plutonian has trounced equals in power by means of skill, whereas Homelander has virtually no experience in actual combat, period.
Looks like Homelander couldn't, uh, gaze on this fight to the end.
The winner is the Plutonian.
Trivia[]
- The connections are that Plutonian and Homelander are both blond, mentally unstable, evil Superman substitutes who were the greatest and strongest superheroes of their worlds until they abused their powers to commit atrocities, with a squad of far weaker and morally questionable individuals being the only ones able to oppose them. Both had unhappy childhoods and are indirectly related to racist villains, with Homelander being a clone/ally of Stormfront and Plutonian's actions inspiring the Diamond Gang.