Boomstick: Iron Man, Marvel's genius billionaire playboy philanthropist.
Wiz: These two mortal men have used their intellect and determination to take their place alongside gods.
Boomstick: And being filthy, stinking rich sure doesn't hurt either.
With Season 8 of Death Battle back up and ready to put 8 more hapless souls in the ground, the stage is set for a battle of the billionaires between two heroes - men responsible for founding the Justice League and the Avengers, no less - who have chosen to break every limit imaginable and rise to become icons of justice all thanks to their nearly infinite amount of resources to throw around and the resilience to back it all up on the battlefield. Neither Bruce Wayne nor Tony Stark are strangers to the show, but now they're unleashing the greatest hits of their respective arsenals on each other to find out who will survive in a death battle.
Episode 148 begins with the return of a very familiar face and backstory; before dressing up as a giant rodent and terrorizing the criminal element of Gotham City with his mere presence - not to mention the unfortunate implications of dragging children to aid him in his crimefighting, the goddamn Batman was born as Bruce Thomas Wayne, heir to the multinational conglomerate, Wayne Enterprises. Once an innocent child set to take over the family business, the murder of his parents Thomas and Martha by a common mugger traumatized Bruce so much, he would dedicate the rest of his life to honing his mind and body to transcend his mortality in a seemingly never-ending quest for justice and vengeance. After years of training and education with teachers from various fields of knowledge all around the world, Bruce returned to Gotham, not just to regain his rightful place as the head of Wayne Enterprises but to rid the city of criminality as the nocturnal vigilante known as Batman.
Batman's resume more than makes up for the legendary reputation he has within Gotham's underworld and more. He has mastered more than 127 martial arts, has trained in stealth and assassination techniques, and boasts a photographic memory - hence his other recurring moniker of his, "The World's Greatest Detective". No clue can evade his awareness when he's on the top of his game, such as the times the League of Shadows has had to erase his memories due to somehow still finding their secret hideouts, or how Bruce was able to determine that a man was killed by a bullet being fired backward in time, despite seeing no exit wounds on the body. Besides his mastery of other fields such as escape artistry, mechanical engineering, and marksmanship, Batman is also best known for the near-endless amount of resources at his disposal. As he is still the CEO of one of the world's largest businesses, Bruce's very well-off financial status allows him to fund development for the various pieces of equipment he carries with him into battle. Combined with his paranoia and need to prepare for any conceivable situation, this means that the Caped Crusader has a tool to take on any foe he can come across.
The Dark Knight's standard Batsuit is the one he dons for his nightly patrols and is made out of both Kevlar and reinforced titanium to provide equal amounts of flexibility and protection. While helpful for dealing with the knives and guns ordinary street thugs can carry, the Batsuit is still incredibly durable enough to withstand a massive city block-sized explosion worth about 60 tons of TNT. His cowl comes equipped with various vision modes and a radio to communicate with others, while his utility belt carries gadgets such as smoke bombs, nerve toxins, his grappling gun, and various types of Batarangs that can be remotely controlled or blown up as grenades. Not only were these tools enough to let him wage his one-man war on crime within his home turf, but they also proved invaluable when a Batman more willing to accept help and cooperate with others founded the Justice League of America, being the sole founding member with no true superpowers to his name beyond reaching the peak of human potential and more.
In elevating himself from simply being Gotham City's nocturnal protector to a leader of the largest collection of superheroes within the DC universe, Bruce's knack for preparation was turned up to eleven, bordering his ability to prepare for anything on outright memetic levels. This includes the time when he created a backup personality of himself - the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh - in the event he suffered a psychological breakdown that would drive him mad, akin to having a backup operating system for a computer. He has even developed contingency plans to defeat any of his fellow League members in the event they turned rogue, which reflects on the other high-level suits he put into development. For example, the Knightfall exosuit was commissioned to allow the Defender of Gotham to battle Bane, while the Justice Buster was designed to exploit the weaknesses of his fellow founding members. He even possesses the Final Batsuit from a sixth-dimensional version of himself, capable of rewriting the minds of others with a single thought. However, none exactly compare to his ultimate trump card - a suit that puts him on the same godlike levels of power that his comrades possess: the Hellbat. Forged by Superman in the heart of the Sun, each founder of the Justice League has contributed to its construction: strength on par with the planet-moving Wonder Woman, reinforcements by the Flash's connection to the Speed Force, the willpower of a Green Lantern battery, and so on. The suit itself is physically composed of nano-kinetic mesh which can shapeshift around Batman's body, operates based on a telepathic link to him, and is capable of flight, invisibility, and chest-mounted lasers shaped like a bat.
The Hellbat is the physical manifestation of Batman's otherworldly determination to never surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. He notably used it to stage a one-man invasion of Apokalips, in hopes of bringing his son Damien back to life. In doing so, he actually succeeded in going toe-to-toe with Darkseid himself, which is no mean feat; the Dark God's own avatars are capable of wiping out universes and traveling to the edge of the DC universe - which in and of itself is vastly larger than our own - within mere seconds, thus putting Darkseid's own speeds at about 6 quintillion times the speed of light. That same avatar even took a punch from the Green Lantern Alan Scott, who was empowered by the entire DC multiverse. Despite such unquantifiable levels of power at his fingertips, it does have one glaring weakness; the Hellbat's energy is drawn from Batman's own life force, and if pushed to the brink, the suit could very well end up killing him before the fight is even done.
Granted, the Hellbat is also capable of replenishing its power supply by absorbing the biomass of others, but this ties into one of Batman's core tenets: his absolute refusal to kill. By acknowledging that he is by no means the patron saint of sanity, Bruce knows that he cannot afford to take another life lest he continues to do so, never knowing when to stop. In spite of his fragile mental state, Batman has notched many amazing accomplishments throughout his crime-fighting career. He has outsmarted the nigh-omniscient Metron, defeated his twisted parallel universe counterpart - the Batman Who Laughs, and has even managed to defeat Superman himself on several occasions. While such feats were performed with foreknowledge and planning ahead, he is no stranger to being put on the spot with whatever resources he can muster at the time. Even in the face of Armageddon itself, nothing can stop the Dark Knight from mustering everything he can to uphold his ideals and fight to his very last breath.
Now, to focus on his opponent: Iron Man, better known yet as genius playboy billionaire philanthropist Anthony Edward Stark. On a surface level, one could be forgiven for doubting young Tony's destiny as one of the Marvel universe's most iconic heroes, considering that by all accounts the man was hedonism incarnate. After the death of his parents Howard and Maria while he was still a boy, the wunderkind genius was left to inherit Stark Industries, the leader of developing state-of-the-art weaponry with all the military funding in the world at its disposal. He spent days partying with any woman who would pleasure him - his lust only matched by the amount of alcohol he was more than ready to consume, and when not wasting away at clubs and parties, he was off selling his weapons to the highest bidder. This would blow up in his face, quite literally to be exact; during a weapons demonstration outside of the US, Tony was ambushed by terrorists and forced into servitude to make weapons, all while operating on a makeshift pacemaker keeping him alive.
Tony's refusal to cave in indicated that he was built of sterner stuff than others who would've surrendered in his position, and with whatever scraps he could muster, he forged a mechanical suit of armor to fight his way to freedom. Upon returning to the States, he realized how much pain and suffering his weapons had caused while he enjoyed the benefits of being in a system with no accountability, and decided he needed to do more to not just make up for the sins of his past but to leave behind a better legacy for the rest of the world. By refining his original suit's design with the latest developments of Stark Industries' proprietary repulsor technology, he was reborn as the walking arsenal known to the general public as the Invincible Iron Man. In keeping with his desire to protect future generations, he joined forces with a couple of Earth's Mightiest Heroes to form the Avengers, a peacekeeping organization whose ranks have only skyrocketed since.
Being the perfectionist that he is, Tony could not simply stop at one suit of armor. Throughout the course of his career, he has developed several dozen Iron Man armors, all towards improving what he had before. Each of said suits are still at his beck and call, capable of being summoned to him remotely for him to command as a one-man army of his own. At their core, they all have roughly similar abilities: super strength, flight at massively hypersonic speeds, and repulsor blasts that can be fired from his palms or from his chest as his signature Unibeam. His armors also come with onboard A.I., like J.A.R.V.I.S., his newer F.R.I.D.A.Y. system, and even AI backups of himself, all of whom are capable of providing real-time battle information, hacking enemy technology, calling upon other suits to fight remotely on Tony's behalf while operating within picoseconds. Even some of his outdated suits are no slouch in comparison; the Mark 8 Silver Centurion suit for example once decimated a rock the size of Manhattan in a single punch, which would have required almost 300 teratons of TNT to accomplish.
Over the many decades he has spent as an active hero, Iron Man has been conditioned to expect the unexpected and has commissioned several specialized Buster suits to take on specific foes, even going against his fellow Avengers to boot. He has suits meant to go head-to-head against the Phoenix Force, Thor, and even the Hulk at his most powerful - the World Breaker. Even beyond his Buster suits, others come with plenty of unique quirks; the Iron Man 2.0 armor possesses Ghost technology capable of turning him intangible, the symbiotic Endosym armor can absorb and redirect energy from outside sources and his Mark 58 Nanosuit can be deployed remotely via nanomachines. As far as general-purpose suits go, he has the trusted Mark 51 Model Prime, which not only contains many improvements done to his previous suits, but also further refinements such as size-shifting to make it physically match his Hulkbusters in size, invisibility, and even a mode that turns him into a samurai, complete with an energized katana. Iron Man's sheer preparedness doesn't even end with suits, as deep in outer space lies Sol's Hammer, a Dyson Sphere capable of firing a laser powered by the entire solar system; with only 2% of its power, it can easily wipe out an entire planet.
As his career progressed, he's had his fair share of tussles with not just villains like the Mandarin, but also fellow heroes too - mostly born out of the two superhero Civil Wars that Tony found himself in, with one being explicitly born from his decision to support the US government's Superhero Registration Act. Tragedies about those to one side, they at least show some of the impressive feats he's capable of, like beating Captain America hand-to-hand or defeating Magneto - in spite of the Master of Magnetism's powerset being problematic for a man entirely covered in metal - by amplifying his power with Jupiter's magnetic field and even taking a punch empowered by the sun itself with no real damage caused. Tony's ingenuity seems to have no real limits since he's even had many time-traveling escapades to his name; in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was responsible for casually figuring out time travel within a single evening of study, while in the comics, he and Doctor Doom managed to somehow travel all the way back in time to Camelot during one of their battles.
Perhaps the greatest of the Golden Gladiator's inventions was that of an entire virtual universe: the eScape, where the only limits are set by Tony's own imagination. He's even managed to weaponize it by - predictably enough - turning it into a suit: the Virtual Armor, made of solid holograms that can form any weapon that he can think of. Even that pales in comparison to the armor Tony created within the eScape, the Godbuster. The suit's name isn't for show either, as not only was it capable of wiping out the entire virtual universe and the Motherboard AI controlling the eScape, but an earlier iteration of it put Iron Man on par with the reality-warping gods known as Celestials; they and others within their power range such as Galactus, Odin, and Franklin Richards are strong enough to threaten the entire Marvel multiverse with a mere snap of their fingers. Ultimately, the power to defeat gods isn't exactly what makes the Armored Avenger special, as years of protecting Earth and fighting the good fight allowed Tony to retool himself from an irresponsible party animal into a dedicated leader who can give everything he has to save the world, proving that this man of iron has a heart of gold deep inside.
- Tony Stark: You want my property? You can't have it! But I did you a big favor; I have successfully privatized world peace.
With the arsenals at the ready, the heirs of the Wayne and Stark legacies are out of the office and ready to settle yet another grudge match between the two comic book giants. One advertisement for Bluechew treatment out of the way, and now, it's time for a death battle!
On the Watchtower surrounding Earth, the Caped Crusader lies alone, seemingly content to get some rest while monitoring the systems. His solitude is interrupted by an unwelcome guest, as the Armored Avenger busts in, eagerly greeting his fellow masked crime-fighter with an affable tone. While admitting that he can respect a healthy amount of paranoia and all the money in the world to spare on fighting crimes, Iron Man does admit he's there on business since the Avengers (more specifically, Captain America and Black Widow) want to force an ultimatum to the Justice League: take the Watchtower offline, or there will be consequences. With both men unwilling to break from their stances and very much aware of who they're dealing with, there seems to be only one way of settling this dispute. As Tony raises his repulsors to fire the opening shots, a hidden explosive charge planted earlier goes off...
FIGHT!
Batman quickly retreats, tapping into comm lines to inform Superman that the Watchtower is under attack. However, no help is set to arrive, as Iron Man has already hacked his way into ensuring this battle remains a one-on-one affair. The Avenger is able to quickly track down his target, pinning Batman into a wall, only for the Gotham native to escape his grasp and launch a wave of Baterangs in response. The bat-shaped throwing stars are ultimately no match for a handful of repulsor blasts, but it did provide an opening for the Bat to sneak away under the cover of darkness. An exasperated Iron Man bemoans why his opponent would try and prolong this tussle, only to turn around and find a Batman different from what he faced a while ago: the Hellbat.
Now boasting more than enough power to turn the tables around, the Dark Knight goes on the offensive, ragdolling Iron Man and sending him out of the Watchtower and into orbit. Realizing the need for escalation, Tony calls upon F.R.I.D.A.Y. to prepare Sol's Hammer, just in time to see the Hellbat wielding the Watchtower like a baseball bat and using it to launch Iron Man down back to Earth while getting a few good blows in. Landing on a city street, the Model Prime proves to be no match for Batman's heavier gear, as the Guardian of Gotham takes his seemingly defeated foe, hoists him in the air, and literally tears him apart limb from limb. Victory is not assured yet, as it is revealed that the Model Prime was being controlled remotely; the real Tony Stark had just arrived with an Iron Legion of remote-controlled suits while he himself is adorned in the Godbuster. Boasting how he has a suit for anything, including busting would-be gods, Iron Man and his small army charge in for the kill, only for Batman to reveal another trick up his sleeve by releasing a flood of bats to lower visibility.
Despite the numbers game being in his favor, Tony is unable to stop the Justice League's resident strategist from tearing the Legion apart one by one, although he himself in the Godbuster proves to be enough to match his opponent blow-for-blow. The Caped Crusader gains the upper hand, suckering in Iron Man with a sickening haymaker that sends his back against a wall of a building. With enough distance between the two, both seek to end the fight with a clash of gigantic lasers - one which Batman emerges victorious from, not only sending Stark Industries' CEO through multiple walls while leaving his bat-shaped mark through them but wrecking the Godbuster in the process. Now looking upon the unarmored form of his foe, Bruce seeks to end the bout in one blow, but finds out that Tony is indeed still armored; the Virtual Armor helps keep Batman at bay long enough for Iron Man's trump card to kick in when the Hellbat is rendered immobile because of a hack Tony had started. As the Justice Leaguer is trapped in place, Tony calls upon Sol's Hammer to fire on him, using the last of the Virtual Armor's durability to keep him protected.
With an entire city block eradicated, both heroes are left with no high-tech suits of armor to fight with. This plays into the Bat's strengths, telling Tony that it is time to settle this, man-to-man. Leaving himself open to snark at his foe, Tony is unable to do much as an errant punch is punished by the head of Wayne Enterprises breaking his arm and leaving him in no room to fight. With nowhere left to run, the Avengers' Master of Machines reveals that he still has one last suit of armor left to play, but he wouldn't be wearing it; in a matter of seconds, Batman is surrounded by the nanomachines that comprise Iron Man's final trick, the Mark 58 Nanoarmor, which Tony implanted onto Bats' person while both of them were still on the Watchtower. As he limps away while Batman struggles against the inevitable, an injured Tony commands F.R.I.D.A.Y. to self-destruct Mark 58, getting away just in time for the explosion to reduce Bruce Wayne to nothing more than a charred skeleton. With the Watchtower lying destroyed (albeit entirely through his opponent's own actions) and the Dark Knight down for the count permanently, Tony takes a moment to sit down and rest, asking F.R.I.D.A.Y. for a drink to calm down after a harrowing mission.
KO!
With the battle over, Boomstick laments that Batman would've been able to win if all it boiled down to was a hand-to-hand fight, but there were more layers to the battle that needed to be unpacked. Bruce Wayne was definitely a character defined by his tenacity, preparedness, and utter genius, but for that matter, so was Tony Stark. Neither could rely on that shared skillset to take the win, which is where their respective arsenals are called into question. The Batsuit may be surprisingly durable for what it is comprised of, but it was never going to hold against a man who can destroy Manhattan-sized rocks in a single punch, let alone the platter of crazy powers each of the Iron Man suits had at their disposal. If enough time passed, Batman would have certainly devised counter-strategies to take them down, but the same would also end up applying to Iron Man, a fellow super genius. Even factoring in some of the other Batsuits would not have worked; the Justice Buster was specifically customized to battle the Justice League, but many of its armaments would be ineffective or countered by other Iron Man suits, while the Final Batsuit's mindwiping abilities may not be effective due to Tony's various back-up AI personalities that could continue fighting for him, not to mention his own resistances against mental attacks thanks to his encounters with the likes of Mephisto.
The Hellbat was Batman's ace in the hole, as its power and speed would easily trump the majority of Iron Man's suits. However, the Godbuster was enough to contend with it; while the Hellbat kept up with Darkseid, an earlier version of the Godbuster fought against Celestials, who were reality-warping space deities on a similar level. Even beyond that, Iron Man was well-equipped to indirectly exploit the Hellbat's biggest weakness; as Bruce could only stay inside the Hellbat for so long before it killed him, Tony could stall the fight or outright end it with other tricks up his sleeve, like going intangible, forcing nanomachines into Bruce's body, absorbing the Hellbat's power or hacking it useless. Even further, Tony's ability to control his suits remotely means that he could have easily won this battle without being physically present in the first place. Simply put, while both heroes truly deserve to be called gods among men and are prepared for anything that can be thrown at them, the Armored Avenger just had the superior tech and versatility needed to overcome the Dark Knight.
- Boomstick: You might think it's an injustice that Batman's gonna need Avenging, but Iron Man was in a whole 'nother League.
Wiz: The winner is Iron Man!
Batman vs. Iron Man contains examples of:
- Actually a Doombot: The Iron Man that Batman fights for the first half of the animation turns out to be remote-controlled, with the real Tony Stark inside the Godbuster when the Hellbat shows on Earth. The analysis points out that because he can remotely control any armor, Tony could've won this battle without having to physically confront Bruce himself.
- Call-Back: Batman's first seen listening to an anime-sounding song - the same one from when he fought Black Panther in Season 5.
- Just like how Lex found himself in a similar situation to Tony from their original battle in his updated fight against Doctor Doom earlier in the season, Iron Man now takes Lex's place as the instigator of the battle — being the one responsible for invading, albeit for different reasons. Tony even manages to successfully use a orbital laser to attack his immobilized opponent and destroy the suit he was using - the exact same strategy Lex used to destroy the Hulkbuster 6 seasons ago.
- Colony Drop: The Watchtower falls from orbit, albeit because a Hellbat-powered Batman decided to use it as a bat to smack Iron Man back to Earth.
- Combat Breakdown: By the end of the fight, both Tony and Bruce have exhausted their armors, culminating in a fistfight where Batman gets the upper hand. Subverted when Tony reveals his final trump card: having snuck the Nano Armor into Bruce's bloodstream much earlier on, and using that to form over him and self-destruct to kill him.Batman: "No more armors, Tony. Just you and me, man to man."
- First-Name Basis: With each other during the fight animation.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Iron Man first charges at Batman while in the Godbuster, the armor's interface shows that it's in the middle of hacking the Hellbat, which comes into play later. And an even smaller frame (after Tony's "I thought we were grown-ups here!") shows that Tony was hacking it before it showed up.
- Friendly Fire: Batman manages to take out one of the Iron Legion suits this way by evading a punch from it at the same time another suit fires its repulsor, blasting it in half.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Replace wizard with “Genius Inventor”. Batman has had better training than Iron Man and his Hellbat armor’s power exceeded almost all of Tony’s suits. However, Tony access to dozens of different suits and other technology, and the sheer number of abilities they possess as a whole were more than enough to counter everything Batman could throw at him, with Batman having almost no counters to Tony’s more unique abilities; like phasing through matter, absorbing energy, or inserting microscopic armors into his body.
- Mythology Gag: Tony kills Batman by trapping him in an Iron Man suit and ordering his A.I. to self-destruct, mirroring the same move he employed against Aldrich Killian (albeit with less successful results) in Iron Man 3.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Near the end of the fight, Batman emerges from the wrecked Hellbat and pummels Tony, even breaking his arm before the Armored Avenger manages to turn the tables.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Batman tries defying this at the beginning of the fight by calling for Superman, but Iron Man hacked the Watchtower's communications systems to prevent that from happening.
- Took a Level in Badass: The "normal" rules of Death Battle were relaxed here to allow Batman and Iron Man to carry suits far more powerful than their usual everyday gear, which translates to two ordinarily normal men fighting with the power of gods on their side, putting both of them on a level far beyond what either got from their previous episodes. The Hellbat and Godbuster are ruled to be near equals in power, given that both can easily scale to characters that can threaten the DC and Marvel multiverses with ease.
- Victory by Endurance: One factor that played against Batman was that the Hellbat drains his life force the longer he's in it, forcing him into ending fights quickly. Conversely, Iron Man had different ways to prolong the fight enough to indirectly target this weakness, not to mention that his top tier suits have no such limitations for using them.
- You Are Already Dead: Tony's very first successful attack (the Model Prime grabbing an unarmored Batman by the face) was enough to seal Batman's fate by implanting him with the MK. 58 Nano Armor, which was later used to trap Batman and self-destruct to kill him.
