Lady Shiva's Four Most Embarassing Defeats

[espanolbot]

Lady Shiva existed for a time has one of the most threatening characters in the DCU, as a heroic character, a villainous one and as an ambiguous combination of the two, depending upon the story.






But for every story of Shiva helping a post-Knightfall Batman get his groove back by framing him for an armless martial artist's murder, Cassandra Cain duels, or making Killer Croc poke himself in the eye, you occasionally get her going down in ways that are kind of anti-climactic when compared to her twenty or so years of history.

1. Tim poisons her with chocolate
Way back when Tim began as Robin, he teamed up with Shiva for her to train him how to fight, to fight Tim's long-time enemy King Snake, and her to make uncomfortable advances on the 13 or so year old Tim.


But as Tim's time as Robin rolled to a close, Shiva evidently wanted to bookend things by changing him to a fight... To The Death! Unfortunately for her, Tim at this point has doubled down on his tricksiness, leading to this.


2. Talia busts out a move from a saloon.
As part of Jeph Loeb's multi-part (mediocre) epic Hush, pretty much every Batman character appeared in one form or another through the story (except Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown), leading to Shiva showing up to save Talia after Catwoman and Batman kidnapped her, because reasons.



3. Prometheus cheats.
As part of the post-Infinite Crisis One Year Later thing, Shiva temporarily joined the Birds of Prey while Black Canary was off at the village which Shiva was allegedly from... even though it entirely contradicted everything established about her before and since. During one of her missions with the superteam, Shiva ended up going against Prometheus, a villain who routinely goes up against JLA-level superheroes...



...He's also a metahuman who uploads people's skills into his head like some kind of low-rent Taskmaster. So, like Deathstroke, he's a CHEAT.

and finally, the most recent example from Deathstroke's current series...

4. Harley shoots her in the ass...


...And then Rose Wilson makes her hit herself in the face with her own weapons...


Because DC have had a bizarre fixation with Slade ever since Identity Crisis, despite his own notably attributes are that Deadpool is based on him, for decades his main enemies consisted of a superteam of children, and that he once slept with a 14 year old girl.

 

Comments

[icon_uk]

Ah yes, the infamous Tim Drake "My plan depends on ultra paranoid Lady Shiva A) Trusting hotel chocolates which might have been tampered with and B) her eating precisely enough poison for her to be taken out of a fight exactly 24 hours later without it actually killing her or having any effect earlier than that which might make her realise she'd been poisoned" plan... not a fan.

I almost like Shiva being shot in the ass because it does highlight the problem with bringing martial art skills to a gunfight when you only have human reflexes. Terrifyingly effective reflexes, but human reflexes nevertheless.

And not a fan of Deathstroke's overexposure these days, in fairness to Slade, the "superteam of children" was the New Teen Titans, arguably the most powerful and competent incarnation of the team ever. (His obsession with the later Titans teams seems weird, since he only faced the originals due to a contract, but then so is a whole lot else of modern Slade)

[yap]

That whole chocolate bit reminded me of Death Note, actually. I think part of this is that Shiva is something of a non-playable-character--- her martial arts prowess being something to defeat. That said, I'm hoping she'll show up in the DC superhero girls lines. http://dcsuperherogirls.wikia.com/wiki/Lady_Shiva

[silicondream]

Yeah, Prometheus should never have been able to take her down that easily. His cheats, armor and tonfa let him beat Batman hand-to-hand--once--but he wasn't good enough to one-shot Bruce, let alone Shiva.

[bruinsfan]

Also Catwoman was able to take him down because he hadn't specifically prepared for her in advance. I'd think Shiva at least as capable of exploiting that weakness as Selina Kyle.

[silicondream]

That part, at least, I can understand; I expect Prometheus did prepare for her in advance. Batman was only one of the many martial artists whose styles he had on disk, and Shiva was probably another.

[q99]

And part of the win was that she was specifically confident that he only had her *old* moves and she could beat it (as she says she re-makes her style every year), when nope, he knew her latest.

So she was not just throwing stuff he knew, but was throwing *exactly* the move he was expected because she was confident she didn't need to mix it up.

[lucean]

I actually really liked the Prometheus fight, especially with the lead-up in to it, both narratively and in the story. Simone was trying to bring him back to the Morrison level badassery while it also showed Shiva's hubris about her abilities.

[trooper924]

Although it's an alternate universe Shiva, I do feel that her defeat in Multiversity deserves a mention where she tries to take on the Blackhawks and is gunned down in the middle of bragging about how she's going to kill them all with her sword.

[junipepper]

Yeah, when I saw that scene I was like, "Wow, apparently you really shouldn't bring a knife to a gunfight."

[trooper924]

It's up there with the Felix Faust/Doc Fate "fight" from the same issue:

Faust: "It's your magic against mine, Fate! Abarakadabra!"

Fate: "Hey, presto!" *Kicks Faust in the nuts*

[glprime]

...well damn, I really wanna see that.

[q99]

Yea, that generally won't work against main-Shiva due to her high speed and body-moving, she's at least as good a dodger as Batman, arguably better, and pretty close to Cass at avoiding gunfire.

Blackest Night mentions it's her first time *ever* being shot.

[stolisomancer]

I was expecting this to include the first arc in Superman/Batman, where they're fighting a small army of mind-controlled supervillains and Batman takes Shiva out in a couple of panels.

I figured the principle of conservation of ninjitsu had to be kicking in on that one.

[espanolbot]

That time Batman acknowledged Shiva wasn't at her best as she was being mindcontrolled by Grodd at the time.

[zechs80]

Sigh... Shiva needs a better writer again. Simone's current use of her had my hopes up, but it seems half-hearted like her final Shiva story in BoP.