Superman VS Batman

Ok, this has been talked about to death in my circles, but we never come up with a clear victor. Who would win in a fight between the two greatest superheroes of all time?

DC comics.

It would go something like this.

edited 21st Nov '12 12:53:16 PM by imadinosaur

No one is doing "Batman vs Superman" anymore. It's silly, dumb, and pretty much a breeding ground for Fan Wank. Please stop doing that.

Batman, because he keeps a lump of kryptonite in his utility belt in case of just such a situation.

Also, there is already a Who Would Win thread on this forum.

Superman.

He flies to the sun, uses his telescopic and x-ray vision to find Batman and fly straight to his chest at mach 5.

Anyone that says that Batman would win is highly delusional.

The Spectre

That requires Superman to be willing to kill... so I'm going to assume Red Kryptonite (if that's a thing in the current continuity) or magic (if it isn't); either way, Batman gets him to snap out of it & they team up to beat up Lex Luthor.

That's about as close as those two should come to a fight, in my opinion.

I agree completely that the two shouldn't be fighting in the first place, but if they do :Superman flies into orbit and zaps Batman with heat vision. Or, he grabs him while traveling at superspeed and holds onto him until he passes out from lack of oxygen.

I for one am massively sick of Batman as being portrayed, in his interactions with other heroes, as eternally in the right and intrisically infallible, even if being Crazy-Prepared is his superpower.

Batman can do anything if given sufficient prep time; Superman can do anything at a moment's notice and invents new superpowers on the spot whenever he needs them. Honestly, this seems like no contest.

Batman's also a master of the Indy Ploy, but yeah...

As people have already said, these two should never get to the point where they're seriously fighting in the first place. But for the sake of argument, there's not only that, but also the fact such a thing implies a "out in the open fight between the two." Which is problem with these scenarios in the first place: why would Batman be fighting Superman from a position where Supes could go to the upper atmosphere and zap him in the first place? Likewise, why would Superman make himself open to being Kryptonited when he knows Bats has it in the first place?

Honestly, there's only two ways a real fight between Superman and Batman would go:

• Superman decides independently to take out Batman and uses his superspeed to finish him off before Bruce even knows the two are fighting in the first place.
• Batman decided independently to take out Superman and sneaks a dangerous dose of Kryptonite onto/near Supes before Clark even knows the two are fighting.

Neither of which are fights at all, but rather preemptive sneak attacks that depend entirely on who decides to instigate the fight first rather than what abilities either of them have.

edited 25th Nov '12 7:14:27 PM by KnownUnknown

How? When both of those things are pretty much the same thing.

Because they're not. Superman has no need for "sufficient prep time".

They're functionally the same thing. Batman really doesn't need "prep time" either, because:

1. You rarely have to show it. Batman can whip anything out of his cape and be justified in having it "because he's Batmn".
2. Even if there's no prep time at all, there is literally nothing Batman could do that wouldn't be handwavable with "because he's Batman".

Same deal with Superman and his powers. You can have his powers do almost anything; most of his current powers were originally alternative uses of the initial ones.

TO be fair, Superman hasn't magically manifested new super-powers at a moments notice in, like, decades. His power set is by now pretty well established and well known.

Not having to show the prep time does not mean that Batman doesn't need prep time.

If Batman was caught completely off-guard by Superman, he would be completely defenseless against his multitude of powers. Ditto for if circumstances spring the fight upon them without either being prepared for it.

If, on the other hand, Superman was caught completely off-guard by Batman, his multitude of powers would still be a nigh-impossible hurdle for Batman to overcome. Ditto for if both fighters are aware that they're going to be fighting.

Honestly, the only advantage Batman has that keeps coming up is "kryptonite". He can use kryptonite, he can prepare kryptonite to take down Superman. When has kryptonite ever successfully killed Superman? He's beaten kryptonite a billion times over. The only hope Batman has for winning against Superman is something that everyone and their dog uses against Superman, making him no more threatening to Superman than a particularly knowledgeable rock collector. This matchup is insanely one-sided.

Batman needing prep time to do this is kind of memetic exaggeration, and at it's worst is kind of more fanon than anything. It isn't present as much as people think in the comics themselves (or even in the adaptations, either) - at least, not as a reliance.

With sufficient prep time, Batsy can overcome most things, but as I pointed out he's mostly shown as a master of the Indy Ploy, making plans in the moment with the general knowledge and tools he has on hand - it's the reason why the utility belt only really has a few weapons that are simple in design but easy to use quickly in multiple ways, depending on the situation.

edited 25th Nov '12 11:53:02 PM by KnownUnknown

Not really. In Justice League stories, Batman has regularly faced Superman-class enemies without any prep time whatsoever and was either instrumental in their defeat or discerned a weakness to exploit very quickly. The thing is, fiction doesn't have "rules", so a writer can really do whatever they want so long as management okays it.

That's the kind of thinking that led to One More Day. "It's magic; we don't have to explain it."

Fiction does have rules of plausibility, internal consistency, etc. Balancing suspension of disbelief is a critical element of good storytelling. You can, for example, write a story where, for example, Batman puts Superman in a headlock SO AMAZING that Superman is powerless to get free of this headlock, and then pinches a pressure point that makes all of Superman's powers stop working and thus defeats Superman.

But it would be a terrible story. It's stupid, it's unbelievable, it falls apart the moment a fan starts asking, "Why didn't Superman do x?", and it randomly assigns a weakness to Superman that has never existed before in continuity just so that Batman can win the fight.

edited 26th Nov '12 7:31:15 AM by TobiasDrake

First of all, Tropes Are Not Bad.

Second of all, I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying that it's a consistent problem whenever writers make the two fight.

To put it in perspective, this fight is a lose/lose for Superman from a Doylist point-of-view. If Batman manages to hurt, hit or foil Superman in any way, it automatically makes Batman look good. If Superman does the same, it's like "Well, duh". The only possible way Superman could equal him in that regard is if he Out-Gambits Batman's best-laid plans.

edited 26th Nov '12 7:45:22 AM by KingZeal

And that is exactly why it's so one-sided. The sheer amount of work required on the part of a writer in order to make Superman v. Batman anything but a Foregone Conclusion is a result of the severe power gap between the two characters.

Generally speaking, Superman wins. There is a very exciting story that can be told in Batman finding a way to defeat Superman, but the reason that story is so exciting is because it's unthinkable. Superman is the dragon (not the trope) of the story; the big, unbeatable, unstoppable beast against whom the very notion of victory is hopeless.

That's exactly the point I was making: Superman v. Batman is a one-sided Foregone Conclusion because nothing short of writer shenanigans can make that fight winnable for Batman.

edited 26th Nov '12 7:53:35 AM by TobiasDrake

Ah. Then we were agreeing in the first place. My apologies.

Nah, don't worry, it happens. I wouldn't be arguing about things on the internet if I didn't enjoy discussing the differences in people's respective viewpoints.

I recently saw Angry Joe's "Reasons why Superman Beats Batman in most circumstances" which I mostly agreed with. Of course I think it's awesome when Batman can hold his own against Superman, but I've realized that like many fights in fiction, it gets into a lot of discussion of "fairness".

On one hand, if a character is constantly stated to "hold back", why doesn't it count as a victory if someone takes advantage of that? At a certain point it may just be a part of their character and their own fault. Though, in Superman's case he's at least shown what happens when he doesn't hold back.

It's an argument that sprouts a lot about what's equal; i.e. If Batman gets prep time, why doesn't Superman get prep time? If Batman can't use his gadgets, Superman can't use his powers since they count as "gadgets" since they're conditional. And in the end, it's like "fish climbing a tree" aphorism. It depends on what each hero wants to achieve. No matter what story makes, there will be holes to point out in regards to who "wins"