I said I was going to cover all Cartoon Network series, so it’s only natural to counter the first one ever, Dexter’s Laboratory! I love this series, and while I have covered it multiple times in the past, it’s been quite a while, and the verse still has plenty more to look at. So let’s get to it, here’s how to be OP in Dexter’s Lab!
Planet Tier:
Here we have the vast majority of characters, including the titular Dexter, his sister Dee Dee, and the various villains that they face. Dexter has been able to, multiple times, tank point blank explosions that violently shook the Earth, physically plug a Black Hole the size of a truck, and Dee Dee was able to effortlessly tank two planet sized meteorites smashing into each other at relativistic speed, which even by surface area is clearly planet level. In Speed, Dee Dee was able to move significantly faster than a laser to deflect it off glass, which proceeded to fly into deep space in a second, making it Super obvious faster than light movement speed, that said, characters should have massively faster than light reaction speed from being able to pilot interstellar ships and mecha. So this will be the limit for characters. Unsurprisingly, this verse excels at the Secondary Stat of Intelligence, having millions and millions of Genius level characters, to the point that the entire population of Japan is able to build their own futuristic giant mech suits. The Smartest character in the verse is Dexter, who is capable of perfectly controlling and utilizing all of the energy in the entire Universe, bending reality to his whim, and brought mankind from literal primitives to a Perfect Utopia, which puts him at a Level 5 Intellect, and very arguably the most intelligent cartoon character ever. Trying to outsmart the characters at this tier is probably the worst strategy you can go for as a result, there are so few characters that could, and even if you find one it is extremely inefficient. This however isn’t to say they are slouches in the other stats, in fact, Dexter characters have really solid secondary stats all around, and notably have really good skill, with Dexter being skilled enough to single handedly defeat the entire US Navy, in his underwear, with just a small spray bottle, and many characters have matched skill with him.
Moving onto powers, this series has its fair deal of Aliens, including parasitic slime creatures that can multiply and control people's minds, the Organ Grinder who can hypnotically control monkeys and primates, a giant, flying, shape shifting, lizard alien who can quickly power-drain planets with his tongue, and worst of all, Hookocho an anime villain who exists on the mental plane, and has godly energy manipulation and electricity powers that can affect a whole imaginary planet! But speaking of higher plane entities, Dexter has a fair deal of those, ranging from Ghosts which are intangible, and can drag people into pocket dimensions, Disembodied AI like Master Computer, who can possess and corrupt technology and digitize beings into it where he’s a god, and imaginary mental plane creatures like Koosie. As a Koosalagoopagoop he can change his size to anything, teleport, fly, store stuff in a pocket dimension, and can make portals to and from the realm of imagination, and even use this to travel to other verses, as he is friends with Bubbles from PPG. There’s also the Extra-Dimensional Horror, a powerful logia monster, which exists in the 4th dimension so is intangible to 3 dimensional attacks, but can still hit us. But don’t think that the humans in Dexter don’t pack some crazy powers. You have superhuman fighters like Agent Honeydew who has telepathic communication, black ops fighters with manly beard powers, photographers who can seal you in photos, moms who have legit superpowers, and clowns who can turn others into clowns by biting them like a werewolf.
But definitely the most underrated character in the entire series is Dee Dee, who is extremely powerful in her own right. First off Dee Dee has off the chart skill, being a trained ninja, race car driver, and apprenticed under the black ops hero, Action Hank, who was able to beat the shit out of a whole group of Alien Guards that enslaved Dexter, and defeat armies of robots by dancing, without even noticing. She has a great deal of potent imagination powers, like creating imaginary friends, which are super powered entities, invisible and inaudible to those that don’t think they exist. She also created an entire planet existing on the mental plane, which she controls and manipulates with her mind, and can make portals to dimensionally travel, or BFR someone to her world. She can also banish imaginary entities via imagining them away, and after training to become a Mime, she attained classic mine powers, able to create invisible tools or objects for her own use, essentially a somewhat limited form of telekinesis, which she can use to make make impenetrable invisible walls and boxes, lassos to trap, snare, grapple or collect things and weapons to attack. Dee Dee is also as smart as Dexter, however rather than Science and Math, Dee Dee excels in History, Fantasy and Mysticism. She is knowledgeable on fairytale creatures, Zodiac stuff, and star dictation, able to summon and banish the shoe gnomes, accurately understand the laws of the universe, and furthermore, reached Spiritual Enlightenment. Attaining this has given Dee Dee numerous additional powers, including Levitation, Teleportation, and Spatial Manipulation. She can Astral Project herself from the spirit world into the land of the living, as well as telepathically talk to people in dreams. She can also communicate with animals and control and summon sealife, at one point straight up murdering this pirate, Wet Willy, by summoning a bunch of sea sponges that dissolved him into bones. Lastly, Dee Dee has some forms of metafictional manipulation, controlling the scene transitions to move herself and Dexter into the kitchen, pulling down an end tidal screen to conclude the show, and Immersion, that lets her enter into a TV and attack foes Through it.
But lastly, We have to talk about Dexter and Mandark, the premier scientific geniuses of the series. Dexter has built an incredibly powerful and varied arsenal of technology over the years, which he always has access to and cannot be disarmed of thanks to his teleportation remotes that let him bring any of it right to his location, and his Teletonic Manifestation Device, which lets him recreate any tech merely by thinking of it. Dexter has a lot of direct abilities through this, Lasers, Force Fields, missiles and numerous ways of bolstering his stats from hundreds to literally Millions of times over. He can Read Minds, Erase Memories, and Hypnotize people, turn invisible and detect hidden entities, and make literally hundreds of clones of himself. Some of Dexter's most hax abilities include his numerous methods of advanced Time Manipulation, Transmutation & Digitization, Potent Size Manipulation, Bringing Inanimate Objects to Life and being able to fight and manipulate astral plane entities. Mandark doesn’t really have any tech that Dexter doesn’t, but he does add a few helpful spells like summoning interdimensional beasts, and regenerating himself from complete cellular destruction.
So what would be some good counterplay options to this tier? The Dexter Verse doesn’t really have any weaknesses in terms of Secondary Stats, and has a wide range of abilities and hax that work on the physical, astral, mental and even somewhat in the absolute plane, so you would need a versatile generalist character to deal with all the threats this can throw at you. Technopathy would of course be a strong ability to deal with the advanced tech that populates this verse, but this verse surprisingly doesn't rely on Technology nearly as much as one would suspect. Some other powers that have shown to be useful in this series include Mind Control, Energy Draining and Duplication. One character I think could work really well here is,
Kokonoe Mercury:
Kokonoe from Blazblue would do pretty well here. Kokonoe is relevant to the Large Planet, FTL feats of Makoto destroying the moon, meaning she can hold her ground here in stats. Kokonoe is a total and complete supergenius who is optimized for effective combat ability. With her Tech, Kokonoe can teleport across space and time, and mess with it however she wants, as it also immunizes her from paradoxes. She has incredible super senses, potent soul and mind manipulation and has the ability to generate a pocket reality around herself where she can manipulate the world around her as if it was made of data. She is an expert strategist and has resistance to basically all the hax in this tier via her various force fields, ya know, like most Blazblue characters. Her only real threat is Dee Dee managing to trap her in dream space or use meta powers. For a more protected counter,
The Sleeper:
The Sleeper from the Behemoth would be a great choice. Like the rest of the Pit People Cast, The Sleeper is capable of intercepting and blocking Hatty’s laser which could travel to Saturn in seconds and destroy it, putting him in the range of Dexter characters. The Sleeper is a Mental Plane entity that often comes down into the physical plane to rest. When he rests, his dreams leak into reality, projecting changes to the entire environment and creating hundreds and hundreds of beings that will passively protect and fight for him, and can develop powers to counter what their enemies can throw at them. The Sleeper is intangible to all non-mental plane beings, and his warriors are able to hit on the physical, astral and mental planes alike, allowing him the ability to attack any entity in verse, he can also fly and teleport himself between Planes and use this to BFR people. The Sleeper is an even more powerful dream manipulator than Dee Dee, so is unlikely to be defeated by other Dream beings, still Dee Dee managing to beat him with that, or her Metafictional powers, is certainly possible, for a complete counter...
Malware:
Yes, Malware, the unstoppable alien monster from Ben 10. Malware is a Galvanic Mechamorph, the same species as Ben’s Alien, Upgrade, only mutated by a glitch in his programming. Unlike adding himself to technology to improve it like a standard Mechamorph, Malware permanently absorbs any tech he comes into contact with and uses it to Upgrade Himself. Malware is strong enough to overpower Ben’s Alien Way Big, who once blocked an Incursion Laser Cannon that would have violently destroyed the Earth. He also has absorbed a Galvan Jetpack that allows him to fly between planets, and easily match the Dexter Characters in raw stats. Malware would be absolutely Devastating in the Dexter Verse, not only does he possess all the abilities of Ben’s Upgrade form, like digitization manipulation, electrokinesis and disabling technology, but can massively improve himself in basically any category with his unique powers. Malware’s body is made up entirely of a Liquid Metal substance that lets him shapeshift, alter his size and shrug off damage. Even after being completely disintegrated on a subcellular level, twice, he can still regenerate back, making him effectively impossible to defeat with raw force alone. Malware would be outright immune to all forms of biological, astral or mental form hax, due to not possessing any cells, soul or mind to attack, and despite that is also Ridiculously intelligent, able to make an upgraded version of the Omnitrix from scratch after only interacting with it briefly, and the Omnitrix is the sole piece of Level 20 Tech in the Ben 10 series. Malware is able to absorb any technology he comes into contact with, and his range is massive, one time literally spreading himself across the entire Moon of Galvan B and infecting every normal member of his species in an instant! This means he could immediately spread himself into Dexter’s Lab and gain control of all his technology, including mind control, soul attacks, transmutation and many many more, to use against the verse. He is capable of absorbing any technology, including stealing the Time Manipulation abilities of the cybernetic Chronosapiens (Meaning he can resist Time Hax), and actually pulling Aliens out of Ben’s watch to destroy them on contact, plus once he absorbs something, it cannot be used against him. While there would certainly still be powers in the verse that pose a threat to Malware, like Metafictional Powers, one piece of Tech he has already absorbed back in Ben 10 is the Tachyon cannon, which disrupts every cell with matching DNA in range in one shot, meaning if fired at a person, it would destroy every person for hundreds of miles past the cellular level, almost certainly taking out characters before they are even aware of his presence. Malware is essentially an unstoppable Monster who would be able to near instantly take in and gain the powers of all Dexter’s technology, and destroy everything so rapidly that even the few hax that can still stop him would never get him in time.
Stellar Tier:
Here we have our second tier, which mostly contains characters from the Dexter‘s Laboratory companion series’, Dial M for Monkey and The Justice Friends, both of which take place in the same universe as the main show. This tier is composed entirely of various different superhero and super villain characters from the series, the most powerful of which being Monkey, who was strong enough to pull every single celestial body in the solar system, including the Sun, out of Barbequor’s throat, as well as being fast enough to fly to the sector seven star system in about three seconds, which would be about 300 billion times the speed of light. Most of the other heroes here are at least somewhat relevant to Monkey, and many villains like Quackor, Rasslor and Badaxtra being equal or outright superior to him. So solar system level, billions of times the speed of light will be the limit.
Characters in this tier sport incredible skill and very high stamina, it is also no slouch in intelligence, as the cosmic super ape, Simion, is smart enough to create matter from sheer thought, and use this to create a super advanced space fleet capable of conquering the Earth. The vast majority of them are able to fly, breathe in outer space with no difficulty and fire a great deal of powerful projectile attacks, from laser eyes, electrical blasts, sonic shockwaves, and damaging beams of magic. There's a fair deal of super senses in this tier, such as Major Glory’s X-Ray Vision, and Magmanamus’ ability to somehow hear all the activity of humans on the surface, from the Earth’s Core. Magmanamus is also a giant Logia Lava monster who controls Fire and Lava. Monkey can surround himself in a damaging energy aura, and has psionic powers like Telekinesis and Telepathy, Krunk can regenerate from being sliced to pieces, and Valhallen can control clothing, and teleport. Rasslor can actually teleport large groups of people at once, and Barbequor has a hypnotic bug zapper that draws foes towards their doom.
So strategies for this tier are far more simple than for the previous tier as the powers themself are more simple. Basically the characters here are generally powerful super beings who are good at all around combat, but can be brought down by a character with high power variety, or one really potent ability. For Example,
Professor Utonium:
I think Professor Utonium would do really well in this tier! The Professor is the genius creator of The Powerpuff Girls, and one of the smartest characters in Cartoon Network behind Dexter, so it seemed like a good time to let him shine. Utonium cannot compete with these characters in stats, as powerpuff civilians only scale to about Town Level, FTL. But that's the thing, no one in this tier would just target a mild mannered Scientist, before he had prep time. Utonium has made numerous mechanical suits that are completely on level with The Powerpuff girls themselves, such as the mecha, Dynamo, or more appropriately, his Powerprof Battle Suit. This would raise his stats to the same level as the characters here, and flat out superior in speed. Even without that, The Professor has invented tons of hax gear over the years that could allow him to totally stop anyone here, such as Time Travel, to go back and alter them getting superpowers, or a device that swaps everyone's bodies to mess with their abilities. The Professor has also time and time again been established to be more intelligent than Mojo Jojo, meaning he could logically invent anything that Mojo has, including Mind Control, Teleportation and Matter Manipulation to counter their powers further. Even without his tech it is still possible he could win a fight here, as humans in PPG have been able to physically beat up PPG level entities before when feeling extreme enough.
That said, he is rather reliant on his intellect to pull a win here, for someone who could stand against them head to head, how about,
Esmeraude:
MY Fave member of the Black Moon Clan, (With terrible taste in Men), Esmeraude from Sailor Moon. As a member of the Black Moon Clan, Esmeraude scales above the power of arc 1 sailor moon, who was able to destroy a star level shield from Kunzite, putting her at similar strength to any of these heroes. While she is ‘only’ FTL by comparison, she wears earrings made of Black Crystal, which passively warp spacetime and nullify positive energy, preventing her from being blitzed or sniped by a projectile attack. She can also use these to teleport herself and others, and BFR foes to Blackholes or the Edge of Spacetime, allowing her to nullify the advantage of their own teleportation, and seriously mess with their ranks. Esmeraude can fly and fire deadly dark energy attacks, but deadliest of all is her Beast Hand Technique, which turns her arms into stretchy black claws that can drain away the energy of anyone they touch, which is a very broken technique in universe. That said she could still be defeated by numerous characters working together, and would in particular be vulnerable to Monkey’s telekinesis if he busted that out. For a more complete counter, how about...
The Nega-Chin:
The Nega-Chin, the Crimson Chin’s Arch Enemy from Fairly Oddparents! Nega-Chin scales significantly above the citizens of Dimsdale, who were once able to endure the force needed to hurdle the Earth into the Sun at highly Relativistic Speed, and Vicky was able to beat up Mandie, who was faster than Mark Changs spaceship capable of traveling Billions of times the speed of light, so he's pretty comparable to the characters here. Nega-Chin has numerous common superhero powers like flight and heat vision, as well as teleportation gear that allows him to match all the mobility options here. The Nega-Chin is a fictional comic book character in the FOP World, who is able to freely travel into and out of his comic at will, and can use this to toss other heroes in comics to BFR them away from this world. But his MOST deadly ability is his signature Nega-Vision, which rapidly drains away all the power and abilities of other super beings, and gives them to NC. He was able to drain all the power of Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad, who normally scale above him, in an instant. Meaning he would quickly become unstoppable here.
