How Batman Killed the Justice League and How People Transform the Universe
Bruce Wayne only has one superpower. You have it too.
Hulk is stronger than Juggernaut. Flash is faster than Quicksilver. Galactus overpowers Thanos. Brainiac outsmarts Ultron.
Goku defeats Saitama. Every. Single. Time.
Comic Book comparisons like these are fun and dramatic exercises in explanatory reasoning. In our support for one superhero over another, we leverage arguments about their powers and weaknesses, their deeds and misdeeds, in a comparative conflict of conjectures and criticisms. Everything from muscle mass to mummy issues are considered in the study, and what first presents itself as adolescent bickering enhances towards a genuine intellectualism. Entire book series have been published on the subject of natural battle hierarchies, and YouTube is saturated by channels devoted to cartoon (but never cartoonish) scholarship. Like so many other ostensibly downmarket artforms, shonen battle narratives conceal a more elevated wisdom: intricate combat mechanics, multilayered worldbuilding, spirited characterisation—all the trappings of serious political allegory, sci-fi abstraction, and philosophical substance worthy of close reading. The costumes are all latex and laser beams, but the real power lies within.
Of the many playground matchups commissioned between classrooms, none inspire quite so much passion as DC Comics’ two most celebrated titles. Many of us will have heard the hypothetical:
“Who would win in a fight… Batman or Superman?”
The question is so arousing because it appears so absurd. Pitting Bruce Wayne against Clark Kent is about as balanced as pitting Jar Jar Binks against the Death Star. Batman is a master of acrobatics and hand to hand combat—a billionaire ninja trained by immortal assassins. But he is only human. Blood, sweat, skin, bone, flesh, brains: human. Not an advanced human nor an enhanced human nor a mutated human nor a metahuman. He is a standard issue homosapien with fewer superpowers than Arm-Fall-Off-Boy. And while he is undoubtedly fast and strong and skilled and stealthy; while he would claim the UFC title with both hands tied behind his back; while he can purchase any tropical island and stockpile what amounts to his own private army… Batman would die if you hit him really hard on the head with a hammer. He would die if you ran him over with a Toyota Prius. He would die if you shot him with a .22-calibre bullet at point-blank range. Both Bruce Wayne and Batman alike would die if they contracted tetanus or fell from a stepladder or lived for over 100 years. Both Bruce Wayne and Batman, it would seem, are very easily defeated.
Contrast this to Superman. Few comic book characters have a list of accomplishments half as extensive—nor half as extravagant—as the Man of Steel. Fewer still have faced him in battle and won. Superman has lifted 200 quintillion tonnes with one hand. He has bench pressed the Earth and ripped apart continents. He has defeated Doomsday and Darkseid and Black Adam and General Zod. In the Silver Age of comics, before writers had to adhere to an established sense of scale across multiple continuities, Superman dragged 100 billion stars behind his back and destroyed a solar system with a sneeze. More recently, in 1998’s DC One Million, he lived inside the sun for 15,000 years and broke through the multiverse itself.
Compared to your average Gothomite henchman, Batman is formidable. But compared to Superman, he is a flea. How is it, then, that the two heroes have gone toe to toe no fewer than 16 times in the comics alone? How do the writers justify the contest? And how can it be that Batman has won five individual bouts against the Sun God from Smallville?
Prep Time To Die
Evaluating Batman on his physical attributes is like evaluating Lex Luther on the hazard of his shoe size. The secret to Batman’s formidable record lies not within his strength but his strategy—his combination of research and resources that allow him to surmount any given challenge. This emphasis has altered the popular form of the original fixture from Superman and Batman to Superman and…
✨ Batman with prep time ✨
The central idea is that given enough forethought, Batman can identify weaknesses in any opponent and exploit them to his benefit. He has both the intellect and the technology to augment his relatively meagre “power level” to defeat any conceivable opponent. This is true of many genius characters in both fiction and reality (more on that below); indeed, all of the arguments for a prepared Bruce Wayne can equally apply to his Marvel counterpart Tony Stark (“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”) Both Batman and Iron Man use science and engineering to credibly rival deities—Stark with his suits, “Veronica” and “Model 22”; and Wayne with his “Agamemno Contingency”, an analysis of the Justice League with the express design to incapacitate or, in the last resort, kill his fellow crusaders. How? With a working model of their psychologies, phylogenies, physiologies and physical profiles; with a deep and reaching scientific knowledge of the operating mechanisms and how to manipulate them. Martian Man Hunter? Fire: magnesium nanite virus for airborne ignition. Green Lantern? Belief: offensively induced posthypnotic blindness. Plastic Man? Ice: freezing by liquid nitrogen injection.
Even Superman himself must submit to the study. One Kryptonite pellet and the steel will distort.
Batman Is People
With his contingencies, Batman is playing the same game as the schoolboys opening this article: imagination interleaved with critical analysis: creativity yielding hard-to-vary explanations about far-reaching phenomena.
The difference is a couple billion dollars and the ambition to apply it. But at its core, a Batman supremacy speaks to a more profound realisation: people are significant. With knowledge and technology we can influence the environment as much as heroes and monsters alike; with time and determination we can solve any problem advanced by natural law. If Superman can reasonably be likened to the Sun (large, bright, towering O so high above us), then Batman can be likened to the Earth. Civilisation itself. And while our star remains dominant in both energy and brilliance, mankind extends its potential with knowledge and wisdom. The Sun is simple while people are complex. The Sun is unchanging where people evolve with quickening fervour. The sun combines hydrogen with blind, dumb, unthinking mass while people fuse hydrogen with machines. Given enough time—enough preparation—people can become the dominant factor influencing stellar evolution. Will the Sun explode in five billion years? The answer depends on two things: gravity and man.
It is important to note here that the eminence of people need not be combative. When we consider the influence of human development we are not seriously posing the question “Who would win in a fight, people or the universe?” That is a fallacy born from a doublespeak all too common throughout modern discourse. Words like “power”, “work”, “exploit” and “control” are used in contradictory terms when applied to both people and objects. In our interactions with the physical world we can no more “murder” a forest fire than we can “extinguish” a bank robber. People are not atoms, and atoms have no rights. The object of human knowledge is to utilise available materials and transform indifferent environments into comfortable homes. Fewer parts: “Who would win in a fight?” than “Where should I put this lamp?” The conclusion remains the same.
The Batmanning of Infinity
How powerful is Batman, really? How far does prep time take us?
In short: as far as is possible to travel. There is no boundary to the influence of knowledge on physical reality short of the laws of physics themselves. Stellar mechanics give way to galactic mechanics and science fiction conforms to scientific fact. Knowledge and intelligence are amongst the most powerful forces in existence—the singular endowment of all creative agents and the most versatile ability in all of printed comics. This leads to the rather ironic conclusion that Batman and Superman—as well as every other member of the Justice League—have exactly the same inherent power level. They are all people. Blood, sweat, skin, bone, flesh, brains: people. Superman choosing to use his muscles over his canonical “8th level intellect” (a notion in direct opposition to universality, but whatever) is a weakness far greater than Kryptonite ever was.
Batman had it easy.
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True apart from the Saitama bit ;)
Banger 🔥🔥🔥
> Will the Sun explode in five billion years? The answer depends on two things: gravity and man.
I guess, we can generalize this to: “Everything depends on two things—Men and the laws of nature.”