Batman: A Marvel character in the DC universe?

Punisher works best in his own universe for that exact reason. Most supervillains rely on Joker Immunity and Status Quo Is God for obvious reasons, and it makes Punisher look kind of stupid when he's screaming and snarling about how he's gonna rain hot lead and divine punishment on the criminals of New York while people like Norman Osborn and the Kingpin walk around with impunity.

The only ever supervillains he's allowed to kill are lame D-listers like the most recent Vulture.

We had this discussion in another thread, but suffice it to say, Luthor would slaughter the Punisher. If we're going to talk about how he should be glad he doesn't run into heroes who regularly kill their adversaries, can we at least use Thor or Black Adam or some such as our example?

I agree with this. Though I don't mind the one you mentioned where he killed the most recent Vulture. I quite liked Rucka's run, even if parts of it were lifted completely from Kill Bill.

Given how comics have long since been running on popularity power rather than any logic behind their match ups, I'd say the issue of who could kill whom is irrelevant, as opposed to finding a good reason for why they wouldn't do the deed when given the opportunity. To that effect, Marvel demonstrates the wise tendency of not putting popular villains like the Kingpin in particular, rather than disposable knock-offs of equal in-universe repute, against cold-blooded slayers like the Punisher or Wolverine. Such labor distribution policies can easily be translated as the Punisher not killing the Kingpin by virtue of temporary happenstance, rather than any mark of ability.

Conversely, Batman himself is a far greater offender in the "should be dead by now" category, with the added headscratcher of how he can take out an invading alien overlord in one issue, yet still have trouble with a mentally challenged Lewis Carroll fetishist in the next. It's like if Iron Man returned from a bout with the Hulk, only to shudder at the grave peril of the Shocker. As I've already mentioned - if the Cowl were to be transplanted to Marvel's New York, about half of his rogues gallery would be facing heroes just as dangerous but much less restrained, and his own efforts at street-level crime fighting would seem decidedly pretentious given all the resources he's got. He'd be a scaled up Daredevil who actually doesn't scale up.

All in all, the DC heroes work well in crossover titles, but their otherwise nigh-feudal policy of one cape clan per specifically tailored town does make their regular operations look disjointed in a shared universe. Thus, it'd be far easier to put a Marvel cape in the DCU than the other way around. For that matter, the most Marvelesque characters there right now are mostly on-and-off villains and anti-heroes. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are much more valid examples, as is everyone working around Amanda Waller. But the Bat in particular - not really.

You have the it backwards: Luthor used to be an Evil Genius, until John Byrne rebooted him in The Man of Steel to be more like the Kingpin (ruthless criminal businessman instead of a mad scientist). So the current Luthor is imitating the Kingpin, not the other way around.

edited 11th Mar '15 4:35:36 AM by Tuomas

Could just stick Batman in a city other than New York. It's not like every hero in existence needs to be there.

Yeah, that wasn't the point the poster you're quoting was trying to make. They were pointing out that Fisk doesn't have a fraction of Luthor's resources, tech, or political clout, not suggesting that the writers made him to mirror Luthor.

Many modern depictions of Luthor (Birthright, All-Star Superman, even DCAU Luthor, etc) are shown to be technologically apt to the point of genius level intellect. so the "mad scientist" thing is still around, it's just been merged with the "white-collar criminal" aspect that John Byrne introduced.

Anyway, the main problem with Batman is that he's a popular character in a universe populated by people like Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc, so writers often have to REALLY stretch the plausibility of what an even exceptional human would actually be able to do in order to have him be anywhere near a valuable asset to the team. This causes him to be kind of a Gary Stu in his own right - he's the ultimate renaissance man, he has a pretty much supernatural force of will, he has pretty much unlimited funds to the point of being ridiculous, he has the DARK AND EDGY bad boy thing going for him, he has debonair 50's upperclassman good looks, etc.

The idea that "anyone can be batman" has always been dumb. bruce wayne was able to undergo the training that allowed him to be batman in little over a decade in most stories; you can become a star athlete, a great escape artist, a knowledgeable expert in a scientific field, etc in that amount of time maybe, but not all of those at once. This would be mitigated by portraying Bruce Wayne as a genius level intellect as a child, able to learn things very quickly, but for some reason writers have never done this.

edited 13th Mar '15 6:28:00 PM by wehrmacht

Even the main continuity has regularly had Luthor resume his role as underground Diabolical Mastermind/Mad Scientist whenever LexCorp is, for whatever reason, unavailable to him. Off the top of my head both Last Son and New Krypton did that, with the former having him emerge from hiding to take on Zod, and the latter having him cooperate with General Lane has part of a work release program to get LexCorp back.

Back to the subject of Batman, I concur with most of what you've said. I suspect the reason why they don't portray Bruce as having been some sort of Child Prodigy (when he essentially has to have been for the storyline to work) is because it would ruin the fanboy delusion that, with just a little effort, they too could be Batman. They've always sold him that way, despite it becoming more and more unrealistic, and they wouldn't want to stop now.

it's to the point that the Nolan films, which had the entire shtick of being as realistic as possible, had to shed entire aspects of the character in favor of having him go the most "jack-of-all-trades" training as possible in a ninja order, where he could have learned the combat, tracking, and stealth skills that enabled him to be Batman, under one unified training regime. But as a result, Nolanverse Batman isn't really the detective or scientific expert regular Batman is, or at least those aspects of the character don't really play much of a role.

edited 13th Mar '15 10:04:08 PM by wehrmacht

Having Ra's Al-Ghul be his mentor was essentially the only way to get around the issue of "where did he learn all of this". Its similar to how in the comics, we can accept the talents of the various ex-Robins because where did they learn it all? From Batman of course. It's only Bruce himself who's an issue.

Am I on the right track when I say I feel like a lot of this Batgod nonsense started with Morrison's Justice League?

edited 13th Mar '15 11:31:49 PM by Bonerfart

It was certainly prominent there, but it's been around longer than that.

Like, before The Dark Knight Returns?

Yeah, though TDKR certainly made things far worse.

Some notable instances of pre-TDKR Batgod, preferably from Bronze Age stories?

The thing is, even Pre-Crisis Superman jobbed all the time, so going with that logic, you could say Pre Crisis Toyman came close to being Toygod just because he could put decent showings against the guy who could move planets around by using only toys that shot and the like.

Hence "preferably from Bronze Age stories". You twit.

The Bronze Age was also Pre-Crisis, you ignoramus.

Didn't Bronze Age DC have something resembling actual continuity, what with the pressures put on them by Marvel?

Yes it did.

If you ask me, Metamorpho is the one who sounds like a Marvel character in the DC universe. A superhero lamenting the fact that he can never look like a normal human.

edited 20th Mar '15 3:29:47 PM by DS9guy

You also have Beast Boy, Cyborg and some members of the Doom Patrol. There really is not much of a difference between the DC and Marvel universes since the 80s at least.

The Doom Patrol and Metamorpho were both created by Bob Haney in the 60s and I do think he was inspired by what was going on at Marvel. In fact, the Doom Patrol came out a few months before the similar-in-concept X-Men hit the stands.

edited 20th Mar '15 3:39:10 PM by DS9guy

Doom Patrol did beat X-Men to the punch though.

That's what I said.