In this feature, I examine comic book fights that were particularly notable in the wrong side winning (or at least that the fight wasn't won the "right" way). This really isn't a big deal, of course, as it doesn't really matter if the "wrong" person won a fight. But it's fun to talk about!

If you want to suggest a fight for future inclusion in this feature, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com. Don't suggest a fight in the comments!

For the latest fight, we'll take a look at Black Widow's unlikely success in Contest of Champions II, where she single-handedly defeated both Wonder Man AND the entirety of X-Force.

As always, the first page we look at their power levels and on the second page, we look at the fight itself.

Also, as always, we answer the age-old question - "How did they do when they fought Spider-Man?"

Wonder Man, as far as I know, has never really fought Spider-Man (besides perhaps in a group sequence in Infinity War or Infinity Crusade).

Black Widow and Spider-Man haven't had a lot of fights, either, but they DID tussle in the debut of her Ms. Fury-style outfit in Amazing Spider-Man #86 by John Romita, Stan Lee and Jim Mooney...







As you can see, Widow acknowledges that Spider-Man (who she was testing because she thought he was powerless like her) would kick her ass under normal circumstances.

Black Widow IS really freakin' awesome, though. Here is my favorite bit of hers from Marvel Two-in-One #10 (by Chris Claremont, Bob Brown and Klaus Janson), where she has to keep some bad guys off of the Thing. So she then takes on ONE HUNDRED bad guys over a series of hours and defeats them ALL!









So bad ass.

Wonder Man, though, sure seems to be pretty tough, no?

In his first appearance by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Dick Ayers, we learn his fists are as powerful as Thor's hammer...



Later, he lucks into kayoing Thor through a lucky circumstance (while his punch didn't hurt Thor that much, it did keep Thor away from his hammer long enough to take him out of the fight)...



When he returned to life, Wonder Man couldn't shut the hell up about how he was Thor-esque in power. Here, in this scene from Avengers #158, he seriously brings it up twice on the SAME PAGE...



For a while there, Wonder Man would just stop strangers on the street to let them know about that one time he knocked Thor out.

Anyhow, on to the fight!

Contest of Champions II was about a group of aliens (secretly the Brood) who invited Earth's heroes to compete in a series of contests. Secretly, they drugged everyone there into not caring about anything but the battles themselves. Honestly, for the most part, pretty much all of the elaborate battles that took multiple pages seemed to end fairly well. Whether you agree with the result or not, they were logical enough. Claremont would even throw in little things to explain away the loss for the losing side, like Black Panther loses to Captain America but it could be that Panther was fighting the drugs they were under so he was distracted. Stuff like that.

But where the series got a little weird was when Claremont and his artists (Oscar Jimenez and Eduardo Alpuerte and Michael Ryan and Livesay) had to just draw one panel resolutions to fights. Those got a little kooky.







None of these fights are INSANE, but the Firestar and Quicksilver losses seem to revolve around Firestar and Quicksilver being morons ("Oh no, this is wrapped around my neck. If only i had something to burn it off of me" and "I'm super fast, but there's one thing I can't catch up to - a stick.") and the Power Man/Domino one doesn't even slightly explain how she won ("He's about to throw a car at me - he's just right where I wanted him").

But then you have Black Widow beating Wonder Man by putting the super strong being MADE OUT OF ENERGY into a choke hold for the win...



Suffice it to say that I think that that doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't even stop there, as Widow then kicks X-Force's collective ass before Thor takes her out quickly...



So, anyhow, her taking out Wonder Man like that did not work.

Okay, that's it for this week!

If you have other fights you'd like to suggest, e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com. DON'T suggest future fights in the comments section!