Poison Ivy vs Groot: Just one matchup in eBay's DC/Marvel smackdown

According to comic book fans polled by eBay, Batman would handily beat Daredevil. Do you agree?Screenshot by Michael Franco/CNET

It's a question that little kids -- and, apparently the folks at eBay -- never seem to get tired of: who would win if you pitted certain Marvel and DC heroes or villains against each other?

To put such mighty questions to the test (and to promote its comic-book-selling services), eBay created an interactive infographic (below) that shows what happened when it asked "1,300 of Reddit's finest geek gurus" to indicate their opinions on 20 different matchups. eBay invited Redditors from r/comics, r/dccomics and r/marvel to take a SurveyMonkey survey, and CNET's Crave is the first to share the results.

In the case of Poison Ivy vs Groot, the tree of few words from Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" emerges just slightly victorious over Batman's alluring plant-controlling nemesis from DC. Groot takes it at 57-43 percent, with one DC fan explaining his cross-party vote simply and eloquently: "He is Groot."

Other matchups include Wolverine vs Spiderman ("Wolverine won't get tired, due to his healing factor. Spiderman will eventually tire out," a survey participant reasons); Iron Man vs Green Goblin ("Honestly, I don't think Iron Man is equipped to handle the levels of insanity the Green Goblin would stoop to in this fight."); and Colossus vs Thing ("Iridium beats rock.")

When I first saw the chart, I thought, "Wait a minute, some of these characters are from the same universe -- Thor and the Hulk are both from Marvel." So I asked about that, and the makers set me straight.

"It's a bit tricky, since DC and Marvel share some of the same names for certain characters," I was told by a representative for eBay. "For example, Iceman vs Magneto, looks like Marvel vs Marvel but it's actually DC vs Marvel. Same thing for Hulk vs. Thor. Hulk is Marvel, but Thor is the DC version of Thor." Sure enough, that logic seemed to hold up. I had no idea there were two Thors (although I'm sure there are lots of Crave readers out there who do).

You can see how the Reddit users voted under each matchup (the name in bigger lettering indicates the winner) but now it's your turn to weigh in. This infographic is being unleashed on the world exclusively through Crave today and the counters below each matchup have been set back to zero. So if you disagree with the some of the results, you can turn the table on the battles by clicking your picks below and letting your voice be heard.

Things are bound to get interesting when super-powered characters meet, whether in cooperation or combat. But even in a comic book world of alternate universes and ever-shifting alliances, some matchups exist only in the hotly contested realm of fan speculation. In this project, we surveyed more than 1,300 of Reddit’s finest geek gurus, asking them to profess their preference for either DC or Marvel. Then we posed a series of matchups among classic characters with equivalent powers, and let the “Who would win?” voting begin.

CHECK OUT THE RESULTS BELOW:
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