Batfappitus Interruptus Volume 1

Welcome to the Glorious Nation of Hurtsville’s newest semi-feature:  Batfappitus Interruptus – where the foremost expert in all the realms on who Batman can and can't beat one-on-one (big reveal: it’s me) goes about 500-750 words into detail about whether and why, totally ignoring how popular said characters may or may not be. Then I maybe say something nice about Batman at the end, because so many Bat-fans take the idea that a mortal man can't single-handedly defeat a demigod as a personal insult. Like how nobody dresses up as the Penny Plunderer when they shoot people on a movie line. Remember this, sub-creatures: power levels don't make a character. I love Multiple Man, but that doesn't mean I legitimately believe that, adhering to the rules of the character and his universe, that he could beat The Hulk or Mister Fantastic. Use your organic brains!

Batman vs. Darth Vader

This idea was pretty heavily inspired by the excellent work done by the guys and gals over at SuperPower Beatdown, and credit to them for their great videos. More credit for correctly having Vader defeat Batman – no matter what the fanboys they polled had to say about it. This one isn’t even worth the debate, which is beyond enticing for me.

The Nitty Gritty:

In the Star Wars Original Trilogy Universe, Vader is the 2^nd-most powerful Force user at the outset, behind only Emperor Palpatine, and only his son has the potential to rival him. While the Emperor may be more powerful in the Force in a general sense, Darth Vader is the deadliest individual there is, and screw Boba Fett. He deflects blasters with half-assed gestures, has a neat cape, and does the whole Force choke thing, which is way, way cooler than pointy boomerangs. On the other hand…

Batman is, well, Batman. He’s smart, he’s trained, he’s got all the gizmos. Not smart enough to design a battle suit like Iron Man, of course, but that’s because he’s also an aberrant, violent sociopath with a serious obsession. That aside, while not the strongest, toughest, or most skilled of his universe’s various unpowered badasses (Bane, Bronze Tiger, Lady Shiva… each one of them has defeated Batman, but then again, they don’t have like 6 comics coming out every month so eventually the novelty wears off and Batman gets to win), the overall package of Bruce Wayne’s skill and resources is generally enough to win the day, or at least throw a smoke bomb at the day, kick it in the balls, and hide somewhere. Batman’s arsenal and strategy allow him to level the playing field, in a Deflate-gate kind of way.

The Fight:

While I admired SuperPower Beatdown’s efforts in making the confrontation interesting, it would be much less favorable for Batman in practice. Vader is a master of the Force, a Dark Jedi, a Sith Lord above all other Sith Lords, and it would be nigh-impossible for old Bats to get the drop on him. Vader was able to sense events happening light years away; he would catch on to a guy sneaking around, thinking specifically about targeting Vader, before Batman even zeroed in on his location. Most of Batman’s non-lethal arsenal would be of little use, and subterfuge is worthless when your opponent is essentially psychic and telekinetic. It would be little effort to immobilize Batman and Force choke him, not to mention that the Force allows the towering Vader to move faster than humanly possible, as well as predict the movements of an opponent. Darth Vader is a warlord, with decades of experience and countless ears on his necklace, who has slaughtered legions of Force users, the least of which would likely prove more than a match for Batman (even Dorsk 81). Excepting for some major coincidence and luck, Batman’s gonna be Dianoga chow in no time.

Character Assassination:

Now, here’s the oft-overlooked part: being more or less powerful is not at all equivalent to being a well-written, layered character with quality storytelling behind it. Batman and Darth Vader can both lay claim to that, especially if we ignore things like All-Star Batman and every movie past Empire Strikes Back. While Batman has undoubtedly proved his longevity, and acted as the template for most every ‘tortured hero’ in comics, Vader is just as iconic in the world of film. Perhaps we should just agree that both of these guys are pretty damn good, especially when handled by the right creative talent.

Brass Tacks:

In a fight, It’s Vader 99:1. The Force is strong with this one - and I'm no Star Wars fanboy (not this century, anyway).

In terms of being worth the paper/celluloid they’re printed on, I’ll give the slight edge to Batman, if only because the nature of comic books has allowed him to be featured in many, many great stories by many, many great writers and artists, whereas Vader appears in 2 good movies and one okay movie. If you’re looking for a unique Batman story without all the recent nonsense, I suggest Death Strikes at Midnight and Three, which is available in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told (1^st volume) by late-Silver Age great Denny O’Neil, originally appearing in DC Special Series #15.

 

Stay tuned to the blog (or check the Twitter @TheFoilerHVX) for the next edition, where things get... fishy.

1,326 Words Complaining About Batman

Hey, here’s a quick caveat: the very first comics I read were from The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, followed quickly by TPBs of The Dark Knight Returns, Prey, various ‘of The Demon’ books, and Year One. This comes from a place of love. Ahahahaha!

Well…

Batman is the most poorly-realized supercharacter of the last 30 years. Overexposed is not descriptor enough.

Look, Batman can't punch Darkseid. Or Superman, or anybody like that. Even Spawn… it’s ludicrous, and I’m the last primeval agitator to defend freaking Spawn. ‘No powers’ does not trump ‘actual powers’. Can you defeat a back-alley rapist with a smoke bomb and a sucker punch? Sure, I guess. But a planet-ruling nigh-immortal alien warlord with an army made up of the entire population of Apokolips? Not so much. Just who or what is Batman, anyway? Is he a mysterious, fearsome urban legend spoken of with hushed whispers and darting eyes? Or an idiot in a fetish costume throwing proprietary boomerangs at plant monsters and 3-eyed aliens jerks with cranial fins? I doubt that Bob Kane and Bill Finger envisioned their creation palling around with Captain Atom and delivering terse one-liners to a room full of people who could shuffle him off this mortal coil with a wayward sneeze.

It doesn’t work both ways, even in the realm of comic book logic. Think about Wolverine – you can have him fight the Hulk because his bones don’t break and he heals and all that. Fine, ok. While a ‘street-level’ character at his core, Wolverine’s specific ruleset allows him to sort of ‘scale up’, since the skeleton, healing factor, and claws are all effective against more powerful threats, and even then it mostly plays out as him attacking and getting knocked away repeatedly while Cyclops inevitably saves the day. But even Logan doesn’t go toe-to-toe with Apocalypse. He and the Hulk fight. Once the death-rays and alien fleets come into play, well, that’s a job for Phoenix or the Fantastic Four or whomever. Have Gambit go up against a pissed-off Banner and all that’s left is half a deck of cards and a chunky puddle with a stupid accent (no insult to any real-world Creoles, but Gambit straight-up sucks). 

Imagine Gangbuster taking on Mordru, or Lock-Up trying to slug it out with Mongul, (Richard Dragon vs. the Anti-Monitor? I can keep going) and then explain how the guy who ritually refuses to use the technology at his disposal to arm himself suitably would stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of even surviving long enough to think about throwing jabs at a demigod. Forge once built a gun that had the express capability of killing the Hulk, but that doesn’t mean he can do it. Batman throws novelty shop spy gimmicks and swings on ropes. People lost their shit when Aquaman, one of the most powerful beings on the planet, 'merely' on the Wonder Woman level and godlike in his own element, stabbed Darkseid in the face with his trident (the Trident of Neptune, I might add). Yet where was the outcry when this obsessive sociopath (Batman, not Aquaman) put on some totally rad 90's gauntlets and attempted to bring fisticuffs to a guy who can match Superman on a good day? Batman is beyond effective against other humans (mostly), and shitty metahumans that have gimmicky abilities. Still, old Brucie has been bested by the likes of Bronze Tiger, Lady Shiva, and that guy who led the Mutants gang in The Dark Knight Returns (the comic I blame for planting the seed of this moronic trend). Oh, and that Bane guy. So is he an accomplished hand-to-hand combatant with few peers and a bevy of tools at his disposal? Well, sure. Is he patient, skilled, and using advanced military-level tactics? Of course! But it avails him naught when you’re talking interplanetary monsters. Tony Stark might be a pussy in a business suit, but Iron Man is a regular guy with basically the same resources as Batman, and while he turned that into more than some kind of autistic Halloween, I still don’t see him beating Darkseid or Superman, or even putting up much of a fight.

The point is you can’t just throw an established character into any situation based on popularity and/or visibility with no regard for the myriad stories that have come before (I sound like such a dick, I know). The stories have to make sense inasmuch as following the basic rules/laws/characterizations they have established, or it's just a cheap pop, going for shock value and a comic panel that ends up in the forum signatures of people who write things like “not changing my sig until I get a stand-alone Ten-Eyed Man movie” or some such impotent crap. If you write a story where Batman gains Superman-level powers, fine. It’s been done, but it doesn’t’ stick because the primary value in that sort of story is giving a different take; this is what made so many of the Batman Elseworlds one-shots so much fun. But those renditions of the character are one-offs for a reason, and since we’re talking about regular-continuity (for all 3 months that continuity lasts in the DCU), let’s just tell a story where the characters act and perform in a way that doesn’t crap on the near-century of established canon (not that DC Comics has cared about canon since the first Crisis). Batman IS NOT Superman, or Thor, or Peter Cannon, or Doctor Bong. He’s Batman, just Batman, and that’s fine.

Batman needs to stop fighting oversized starfish in the middle of the day if he wants to keep up the 'urban legend' nonsense, and I think audiences today realize that petty criminals are not part of some secret society of ne’er-do-wells anyway. Maybe mugger-stalking Batman just doesn’t resonate anymore, in a world of modern fears and globalization? Is that why he's put into so many conflicts outside his purview?

If Batman breaks some purse-snatcher's leg, he doesn't get on his ham radio and alert every other petty crook when he gets released from the hospital, or put in a call to Killer Moth (there’s an underused character if there ever was one) from a payphone that costs a nickel. No, he uses a normal phone to call his lawyer and sue the city for allowing a vigilante to assault citizens without any kind of authority or justification. Batman is a nightmare for the legal system even in a city as corrupt as Gotham (which seems to have a police force of 6). The rich have beaten down the poor since time immemorial; Bruce Wayne (who studied law at Gotham University, according to my memories of various Silver Age flashbacks and The Untold Legend of The Batman) is apparently unaware that crime, especially nonviolent crimes and theft, is a last resort for people without resources or options in life. His billions could be better spent on educational programs or even funding the GCPD, but true to form Batman is selfish and narcissistic, more intent on satisfying his (unachievable) personal vendetta than making a lasting difference. ‘Superstitious and cowardly’ is a much more fitting descriptor for Batman himself, as the average criminal is more likely to be desperate and in need of social services than not.

So much of the character is couched in a pre-WWII sensibility about the nature of crime and socioeconomic relationships (I really didn’t think I was going to end up going this way when I started this) that these ideas are probably out of the realm of context for a mainstream superhero book. It’s funny, when I see Captain America get in Thanos’ face, I’m like ‘Cap, you selfless beacon of humanity, you better hope Adam Warlock shows... oh, there he is. Late to the party again, Adam. Now make with the anti-Thanosing, could ya?’, but when Batman is in the same position, I think ‘How is that grappling hook going to stall Imperiex, exactly?’