So, having recently watched the Batman vs Spiderman Death Battle and
seeing the number of people complaining about how Spiderman shouldn't be
able to beat Batman, a few thoughts came to mind.
So let's start with a
question: how can a man, no matter how highly trained have any chance
at standing alongside the heaviest hitters of DC Universe and expect to
put forth an equal effort to the others? The fans would have a large
list of reasons just why Batman can step up to the likes of Darkseid or
Sinistro. They would cite his planning, his resources, his strategic
thinking, his massive array of physical training, However, the reason
that Batman can win out in a lot of the circumstances where he comes out
on top of a super-powered enemy comes down to one thing:
He's Batman.
This
sounds like a weak argument, the sort of thing you'd hear from a fan
boy or girl, but it's true. He wins because he's Batman. Likewise,
Wolverine wins a lot of his fights because he's Wolverine.
What do I mean by this? It's simple. Batman is an impressively popular character.
One
of the reasons he is so popular is that he is one of the few DC
characters that is a more or less normal human being. Likewise, a lot
of the troubles he deals with verge on things that could occur in real
life, rather like an action movie. It's possible, not bloody likely,
but possible. When he came up to join the JLA the writers had to make
sure that Batman was given plenty of chance to shine. Of course, his
fans wouldn't really sit still from him being simply in the support
position, doing strategy and planning. They wanted him to take out some
of the big things here and there.
His massive intellect and
resources provided them with an out on the idea that, if given a chance
to prepare, he could likely come up with a strategy to defeat any
opponent about which he possessed much information. After they'd
established his ability to prepare a few times, then they could later
just write up an explanation referring to that crazy level of
preparation for explaining why he just happened to have something up his
sleeve for the particular circumstance at hand.
The problem is
that it begins to wear thin after a while. Fans read Batman comics to
see Batman overcome adversity and prove that he is a badass. They pick
up the JLA to watch him prove that a "normal" human can stand up with,
as a friend puts it, "Space Jesus, Green Space Jesus, Cosmic Super
Speedster, Divinely Created Warrior Woman and several other similarly
powerful characters". For those that are fans and have been reading
Batman comics for a long time, this is fine and doesn't matter. For
other people, it stretches the bounds of reality, some times to the
point of going "meh".
This is also a reason why you find youtube
entries like "Why Batman can beat the Avengers" and other such things.
Because the fans of the character believe that Batman can beat anybody
given the right preparation and circumstances. Well, guess what,
anybody can beat anybody given the right preparation and circumstances.
The reason Batman gets such things so often is because, as already
said, the fans expect it.
Realistically speaking, Batman is not a
physical threat to most superhuman characters. In the death battle
video that started this, the video starts with showing Batman toss
around Spiderman at the start quite a bit. Even that little bit
wouldn't really happen.
The physical differences are too
extreme. Spider-man has 20 times the strength, 20 times the reflexes,
is capable of surviving a tremendous amount of punishment beyond what
Batman can, and his Spider-Sense is a natural, inborn version of the
holy grail of martial arts. To be honest, neither Wolverine nor Captain
America should realistically be able to defeat Spider-Man and both are
of comparable level of training and skill to Batman with commensurate
higher levels of experience each.
Of course, this is pretty much what the Death Battle crew ruled when they had Spiderman win, and people complained.
Now,
of course, people are going to say "but you're a Spiderman fan, of
course you think he'd win." And yes, I prefer Spiderman over Batman. I
find Spiderman to be the most mis-used and abused character out of
either Marvel or DC. There's loads of potential there and loads of
interesting threads to travel...unfortunately...Marvel wants to keep
Spiderman to a formula and thus plot needs makes him come out weaker and
more 2-dimensional than he really should be.
However, that said,
I am not saying this because of Spiderman. Spiderman has experienced
the same popularity advantage in the past. If you look hard enough, you
will find a Spider-Man vs Superman comic in which Spider-Man wins...and
no, he doesn't use kryptonite.
Realistically, there is no way
that Spider-Man can beat Superman. Heck, there's no reason even Goku
from Dragonball Z should be able to beat Superman in a fight. The
numbers we are privy to across so many comics basically make Superman
the most awfully over-powered character in either DC or Marvel with the
possible exception of such things as Galactus.
I am not
particularly a fan of Superman, I generally find him hard to relate to.
As I noted, one of my friends states that he is essentially DC's
attempt to do "Space Jesus". In reality, I've run across two characters
that do the Jesus metaphor pretty damn well, and without
sledgehammering it too much: Captain America and Vash the Stampede.
Superman just feels rather pretentious and blind to what being mortal
is.
This same can be said of entire universes. The Star Wars vs
Star Trek discussions are legendary. However, a concentrated look at
the numbers involved makes it clear that even a small one or two man
bounty hunter craft such as owned by Jango Fett thoroughly overpowers
every known version of the Enterprise. Also, the Star Wars universe
spans the entire galaxy while the main portion of Star Trek occurs
within a single quadrant. So Star Wars has advantages in speed,
numbers, resources, power, shields and weaponry. A simple investigation
makes it quite clear that Star Wars wins, but the Star Trek fans
continue to claim otherwise.
Of course, now would come the
accusations that I am a Star Wars fan. To tell you the truth, if asked
Star Wars or Star Trek, my answer would be Stargate or Babylon 5.
Babylon 5 tech is very, very clearly not even up to the level of Star
Trek tech. So, in a B5 vs ST war, B5 would
lose....badly...humiliatingly...embarrassingly. Despite this, I much
prefer B5. As to Stargate, hard to say, its tech zigzags all over the
place so I'm not sure. By the end of Atlantis and SG-1 they have ships
magnitudes faster than Star Wars ships and fuel supplies many times more
efficient but I'm uncertain of their comparable shields and weapons
powers. However, if the comparison of weapons was analogous to the
comparison of engines and fuel, then each SG vessel would be several
times more powerful than a death star and the series doesn't bear that
up. I'd say that SG would likely lose, even if their weapons were
comparable to Star Wars (which I doubt). Their fleet is excessively
small, even by the time of Universe, compared to the ST:NG or ST:TOS
Federation. So both of my favorite space opera stories would likely lose battles to either Star Trek or Star Wars.....the numbers do not lie.
The
point is, there really is no point to saying how so and so a character
would win in such and such a fight. Pointing back to old comics to show
them beating similarly powerful opponents is not evidence. Remember,
the reason characters win is because of plot. The reason long-term
characters or groups continue winning against impossible odds is because
people like you enjoy said character and companies fear they will lose
money if they write stories according to the most probable results.
There is no reason to tell someone else "man, my favorite character can
beat your favorite character." The ability to defeat characters or
groups from outside series should in no way be a model of why you enjoy a
character or series. It's a ridiculous metric and just makes problems.
A blog by Luke Garrison Green of Thrythlind Books and Games. Here he discusses writing skills, reviews books, discusses roleplaying games and refers to Divine Blood, Bystander and his other books.
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