So, I've been watching a bunch of old cartoons recently, for.... Reasons... and suddenly it struck me, old characters are more awesome than I originally thought they'd be. So I'd like to propose a death battle:
Felix the Cat vs. the Disney Amigoes.
Though selectively cowardly and bizarrely racist as he may be, Felix the Cat was a fucking badass in the 20s. Seriously, look up his old black and white stuff. He shot everyone in the entire wild west, Shoryukened a bunch of dudes twice his size, (Even gave somebody a concussion and knocked him out with gut-punches!?) outran a homing mortar, dodged more literal and figurative bullets than Jet Li and anyone in the entire Matrix could even hope, sword-fought an entire ship of pirates and won, and can sneak up on literally anyone and then shapeshift to hide... It's like that guy from Dishonored had terrifying sex with clayface resulted in a pregnancy, which they sent off to a ninja school to be hidden away for 50 years before its eldritch presence could drive the masses to suicide once more.
So, now that we've gotten the introductory shit out of the way, let's talk about his abilities, shit he actually does and can do: Felix the Cat, as we've established, kicks ass. He seems, as far as the pre color-cartoon whitewashing canon is concerned (And even a little bit post-whitewash, but it's less emphasized) to be a wandering "adventurer" with very, very few fucks to give, and he gives no fucks about anything, least of all basic fucking physics, which is up there on the "No shits given" list with "The lives of every motherfucker that pisses me off even a little bit." Though he may play coy whenever the plot calls for his submission, this cheeky motherfucker has murdered the shit out of burly motherfuckers in matches that were, at least initially, way more stacked against the little guy than everyone Rocky Balboa ever fought taking on Martin Shkreli... Which, honestly, I really want to see happen.
"Sentinel, you stupid stripe-face fuck!" you're saying right now, "You're going off on fucking tangents. I can't understand what you're trying to fucking say!"
Well, the point is, you little Penguinite-racial-epithet-spewing strawman of the audience you, that Felix the Cat is a grizzled, hard-drinking vagrant who, over his years of committing high larceny, mass murder, confidence schemes, pickpocketting, child endangerment, assault and battery, gristly bodily harm, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, and reckless, reckless jaywalking, has gained the skill and physical prowess necessary to punch out lions and motherfucking grizzly bears, which he does on multiple occassions during the cartoons. If you need evidence of his knowledge on how to kill a man rather than just hand out ass-kickings, (and also his marvelous aptitude for doing so) you need only look as far as the WWI propaganda films.
Here we see mice declaring war on all cats, (This is obviously an allegory for the Kaiser, as every bad guy was whenever cartoonists got the chance to portray a "patriotic" villain during the World Wars.) and Felix gets drafted. He sees a lot of shit, survives being blown up on multiple occassions, and, due to his ability to royally fuck up people's shit, his immediate superiors see fit to launch him out of a cannon into the enemy base. Unfortunately, Felix was caught, because, like the Hound, he only murders large numbers of insufferables whenever it's convenient for him or he feels personally motivated for some reason. So he was imprisoned by the Kaiser and sentenced to DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD. Which he dodged. Multiple times. And then they fired a 5-foot-caliber bullet at him, which he hopped up on and rode all the way home. Now sure, that proves Felix can run away from a war, but it also proves that he at least went through military training, which he likely passed with flying colors. But is Felix a no-good, yellow-bellied coward? If he can't even kill mice, how is he supposed to kill three other main characters!? HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO KILL MICKEY!?
Well, you see, the answer is simple: Felix didn't destroy the mouse base he was shot into because he didn't consider them a fucking challenge. But, episodes later, when the RATS declare war on all cats, Felix goes back to VOLUNTARILY JOIN WWI, where he defeats an enemy bomber balloon, leads a charge of sentient bratwurst through the cannon-armed gates and gun-toting guards of the great Rat wall of Rat China, and kills millions. With a sword and some fucking sausages. I'm not even kidding, this is before maturity regulations, so there were actually fucking piles of rat corpses. This guy makes most OP anime villains shit themselves.
But his prowess in violence isn't the only thing that makes him stand out, while not particularly gifted in the singing department, he has more than once established himself as a virtuoso, his clarinet skills and face-melting banjo solos driving people to dance their jewelry away, vibrate themselves into entirely different people, and bring a horde of thousands of circus animals back into their tiny tent.
He's also extremely resourceful, having once turned a suit of armor into a ghost-exploding lightning bazooka, using his own comic-book exclamation points and question marks as a physical means of transportation, and using them (as well as his own detachable tail!) to create weapons and getaway vehicles.
He has since gone through a 12 step program and retired from the hobo-ing life to live in a series of cottages away from his multiple wives, turning golden eggs into coins, caring for a multitude of less sapient animals, and occassionally travelling the world and meddling in the affairs of Pagan Gods. In the golden egg episode, he actually lets a pirate beat the shit out of him just so he can fire himself out of a cannon (Just like he did twice in WWI) and tricks him into committing suicide, because he's that bored. He's even become a goddamn Legolas of lead and iron in his sober years, performing trickshots with cannons that would make every MLG montage ever look like a compilation of blindingly inept and improbable failure.
His shapeshifting powers and imagination are also augmented by the "Bag of Tricks" he acquired somewhere in the late 50s, which is basically a shapeshifting macguffin that turns into nearly every non-invincibility video game powerup ever, plus an escalator.
This isn't any of your pussy warrior kitties bullshit, this cat is the real fucking deal.
However, if Felix has any disadvantages, it's that the story itself is apt to work against him in bizarre ways. Felix gets treated like a twat, and painted in a negative light, for doing reasonable things, and he gets treated like a hero, and painted in a reasonable light, for doing twatty things. His allies and relationships with other people and cats can sour to violent, abusive horror in an instant just because the story needs conflict. He's also incredibly lazy, and has had his ass handed to him several times because he just doesn't feel like actually using his skills to seriously fight back against people he doesn't consider a threat until it's too late. He's like One Punch Man that way, but more vulnerable, less ridiculously overpowered, and made out of black silly putty.
Since there's no way most cartoon characters could take on Felix alone, this one will be a handicap match. Felix will be going up against the tres hombres, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy.
We'll start off with Mickey, because he's kind of the main guy. Skilled in violence he is not, particularly since Disney has since elected to turn him into an untouchable mouthpiece.The mischief he gets up to and the problems he deals with, while high in slapstick at times, have become increasingly innocent, and even benign, to the point where one of the main conflicts in the new cartoons is that the hot dog he bought from a stand somewhere fell out of the bun. That's literally the premise of the story, he had to chase a hot dog around because it fell out of the fucking bun.
While he is, perhaps, the pansiest of Felix's foes in this lineup, Mickey is not to be underestimated. He's a mildly skilled, though diminutive and at times cowardly Musketeer, and over the years he's been equipped with a magical paintbrush, which not only creates vehicles, walls, and all manner of other useful cartoon shit like Felix and his bag of tricks, but is also capable of blasting his foes with thinner, which dissipates corrupted black things in his cartoon universe... However, the creatures he was fighting were made or black paint, and Felix, as it has been established more than once in his fourth-wall-breaking escapades, is made out of pen ink. The weapon in Mickey's arsenal that makes him really stand out is the Wizard hat from Fantasia, which allows him to create an army of brooms that don't quit until the hat wearer tells them to. If Felix, for some reason, can't prove more than a match for his wooden adversaries, the brooms are unlikely to quit beating the shit out of Felix.
Then there's Donald, the second World War Veteran in this lineup, and one of the bigger badasses on this list. Donald Duck has taken more bullets and blasts than anyone here and made a full recovery in seconds. Of all the blatant indestructibility of cartoon characters, one of the most spectacular example of this, as well as spontaneous bone regeneration, is in Donald Duck. Donald Duck does not quit, he does not give a fuck, or a damn, or a shit, or a flying rat's ass. He beat the shit out of an ostrich, he beat the shit out of a car, he beat the shit out of rubber cement, and if I remember correctly, he beat his furniture into crying submission. These were all actual physical battles, mind you, and he fought them all. He won some fights, and lost others, but he was never down for more than a few seconds. Donald Duck is an unstoppable berserker who just cannot avoid violence unless forced to by strict standards of G-rated media. Donald Duck hates the Axis powers more than anything else in the world, having served in the Army, joined the Paratroopers, the Air Force, the Navy, and he was even a goddamn Commando.
This bird was a Navy SEAL before Navy SEALs were even invented. When the United States needed Axis ass kicked and had nowhere else to turn, they sent one guy in. Donald Motherfucking Duck. All those years on the front lines in every theater have given him a mean streak that makes the Great Wall of China look like the scorched remains of @Coins' man parts. Donald Duck no longer has a tolerance for anything that makes him remotely upset, made ever more apparent by his repeated attempts to murder Chip and Dale, (almost succeeding on several occassions,) Kill Pete and all his reincarnations, and even try to murder his own friends and relatives in a bright Disney-Magic rainbow of colorful murder methods.
You do not fuck with Donald Duck.
Donald doesn't have much in terms of equipment, his fists and his cold, diabolical wits have served him well enough, but we can assume, due to his time in WWII, that his skill with guns and combat tactics are more "Up to date" than Felix's. But, speaking of his time served fighting the Axis, his greatest weapon lies in his capabilities as a guerilla commando, which is greatly enhanced by the fact that he has a fucking invisibility cloak.
Last of all, but certainly not least of all is Goofy. Now, Goofy is by far the most indestructible of everybody on this list. being portrayed often as a hobo of sorts, this long, lean, mean machine likely also got his boxing lessons from the streets of whichever neighborhood he wanders into. Goofy doesn't bring any battle gear to the table, other than piles and piles of sports equipment, enough to outfit an army. Where Goofy shines is in his raw indestructibility and ability to improvise. While he has no explicit skill for beating the shit out of things, unlike Felix and Donald, where their capabilities are very pronounced, he can certainly hold his own, being a big guy.
But I feel like I could be undershooting Goofy's durability here with meagre description. Allow me to establish, plain and simple, the fact that goofy has endured hellacious punishment over the years more extreme and deadly than anything anyone prior mentioned has had to deal with while hardly breaking a sweat, save for the times when he mugs it up for our schadenfreude. The cartoon cat from the Simpsons is glad he's not this guy. The Chicken from Family guy goes home at night and prays to the merciful god that made him somebody other than Goofy, who has to deal with nearly everything they did without dying.
But this is all vastly overshadowed by his real superpower. Goofy comes from a world populated entirely by himself, and there's this incredible reverse-highlander effect where, the more of him there are, the more indestructible and adept at violence he becomes. That's to say nothing of his final form, which, when diminished in numbers, looses a great deal of skill, courage, intelligence, and willpower, becomes inept in practically every way, but can kick your ass entirely by accident.
Well, there's my long-winded explanation of the incredible forces at play here. Anyone got any opinions on who would win?
