Power Mismatches in fights

Of course, last time around, I mentioned the problems when you have team ups that are just flat "mismatches." You can also have the same with mismatches between the hero and the villain.

It can work on occasion. James Meely over at the Comics Asylum highlighted a fight between Spiderman and Juggernaut some time back, and I'll agree, that fight worked. However, it does push the writers ability to do it.

One variation of this is when a villain is just entirely too weak to stand up to the hero. Now, there are ways to make this work. Even if a villain isn't able to outfight the hero, if he can outthink (or at least make it challenging) the hero, it can make for an interesting story.

An interesting variation of this was the appearance of the Joker in the Kingdom Come storyline. Now, matching Supes up against the Joker isn't something you want to do so often, but in the Joker's absolute chaotic method, he's capable of doing damage (murdering innocents), before Supes is able to track him down. So, while you know that Supes will "get him" in the end, there is legitimate fear that the Joker will do something awful first. Like killing the entire staff of the Daily Planet.

Again, like so many other things, that's a well you don't want to go into too often. That's one of the problems the industry has though. With so many books out there (just between the big two, not to mention any indies), things just tend to get run into the ground.

On the other hand, you can also have a situation where the hero is badly outclassed. Now, again, on occasion this can work. Spiderman suckering Juggy into a thing of wet concrete works. For that matter, Batman going up against Croc also works, even as a regular villain (though I find Croc boring.) However, what happens when Batman suddenly finds himself up against Sinestro? (Not sure it ever happened, but we'll take it as a for instance.) Sinestro is no one's fool, he's very powerful, way, way out of Batsie's weight class.

Probably the worst instance of this that I know of was the "legendary" Dazzler vs Dr. Doom battle. Like Dazzler or not (in her later X-Men days she got tolerable), she had no business playing tag with a villain who is a good matchup for the assembled Fantastic Four. All it did was cheapen Doom.