Well? How badly does Batman get pummeled into Bat-pulp? How long before the Dark Knight’s plaintive pleas of “Help me, Robin! Help me!” start echoing through the night?
Say, you never heard the word “prepared” before?
Given that the Thunderbolt (Pre-Crisis at least) was the only being that could change the past, all he’d have to do is go back in time and teleport Joe Chill into a jail cell or melt the bullets or something. Poof. No Batman. As a matter of fact, he did almost exactly that in JLofA #37-#38 (circa 1964).
Dr. Fate, The Guardians, the Pre-Crisis Superman and even the Spectre couldn’t change time, but the T-Bolt did it without working up a sweat.
Ergo, Batman, prepared or not, stands no chance as long as A)Johnny Thunder can say “Cei-U! Thunderbolt, do whatever it takes to defeat Batman” first, and since the competition is “Batman vs. a mighty Badhnesian Thunderbolt” and not “Batman vs. a slightly dim owner of a mighty Badhnesian Thunderbolt”, we can assume Johnny gets off his command (if he can’t, really what’s the point?) and B) the writer doesn’t cheat.
Fenris
I just looked up the issue–actually the T-Bolt helped the crooks that Batman faced in his first case beat the crap out of him and Batman decides that crime-fighting was a dumb idea and goes back to being a playboy.
However, the T-Bolt was being controlled by the evil Earth-1 Johnny Thunder and didn’t want to do what he said (he went out of his way to misinterpret JT-E1’s commands). Assuming that he’s being controlled by the good, if dim, Earth-2 Johnny Thunder we can assume he’d try to help JT-E2 and choose a more thorough route to defeat Batman (the aforementioned Joe Chill scenarios)
Fenris
Yawn.
Every insanely powerful supernatural being can be tricked into transforming themselves into something small and relatively powerless by the simple application of reverse psychology, flattery and pointed feigned disbelief. Do you people not recall your Puss in Boots? Or your Aladdin from 1,001 Arabian Nights? Or how John Constantine got the Devil to drink the stout made from Holy Water? This was covered in Superhero 101. It never fails.
Anyway: Batman gets the Thunderbolt to – I dunno-- duplicate the powers of the JLA to show how powerful he is. So he demonstrates by shaping solid light constructs like Green Lantern, running as fast as the Flash, shapeshifting like J’onn J’onnz, etc… When the Thunderbolt tries to out-shrinks the Atom on Batman’s outstretched hand, Batman plops the critter into an empty and conveniently Thunderbolt-proof chamber in his utility belt. Ta-da! Threat negated.
Thunderbolt or no, he’s too egtistical not to engage Batman in simple conversation. That’s how he loses this fight.
'cept T-Bolt isn’t egotistical. No ego of his own to speak of…that’d be like Bats trying to fast talk Green Lantern’s ring.
In any event, the T-Bolt don’t take orders or directions from anyone other than Johnny Thunder, ever–it’s a rule of the character. There’ve been cases where JT was dying and still the T-Bolt literally couldn’t act to save Johnny–the JSA had to try to revive Johnny enough that Johnny could order the T-Bolt to help him, (And I’ll repeat, Johnny’s off limits from the OP or it’s just too damned easy.)
How egotistical the Thunderbolt is depends on who’s writing the Thunderbolt, Fenris. Both the Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis versions have had moments of uncharacteristic whimsy and mischeviousness. Ergo, that’s ego.
Batman also managed the power-yourself down trick with the uberlogical Metron of the New Gods and almost managed it via hypnosis with the General Eiling Shaggy Man during Morrison’s JLA run. And there’s been too many Batman-as-a-Green-Lantern Elseworlds – don’t get me started on what he can do with a power ring…!
I dunno. Bats vs T-Bolt is pretty much one-sided, too.
At least if Bats has the option of pre-emptively taking out Johnny or Jakeem, Team T-Bolt stands a chance. (Albeit, not a great one.) It becomes a matter of ‘Can J keep away from Batman long enough to say Say You/So Cool?’, rather than ‘Just how does the T-Bolt decide to win?’
I remember a Pre-Crisis parallel Earth story that disputes this–no cite on the issue. Batman and Robin travel to a parallel Earth, and as fate would have it time passes at a different rate there. It just so happens, by pure coincidence, that they’ve arrived a week before Joe Chill will kill the Waynes.
Robin figures out that there will never be any superheroes on this world (IIRC he does this by looking stuff up in the library. Not some cosmic library, or a magic library, the public library. Or maybe he had a time viewer. I forget which), so they shouldn’t stop the killing. This world needs Batman.
They end up saving the Waynes anyway, and irony of ironies, Bruce becomes Batman anyway. Instead of being inspired by his parents’ murder, he’s inspired by reading books about Robin Hood, and he grows up into a happy, well-adjusted kinder-gentler vigilante, rather than a dark, brooding thug.
That said, the T-Bolt takes down Bats, especially if it’s the blue one.
Well, if attacking Johnny/Jakeem is forbidden, then it’s no contest (short of pulling another being of such power or a mystic whatsit out of his butt, but I agree that would be cheating).
And darned if I didn’t have a solution on how T-Bolt could get first strike and Batman could still win*.
See, this one does require a little bit of cheating, I’m afraid. Batman knows the T-Bolt will come, but that it’s user is somehow inaccessible. So, he gets one of his friends (Flash or Earth-1 Superman perhaps) to deliver a package to the past (that’s the cheating part, but he doesn’t attack Johnny directly). The package is delivered to a young Lucius Fox, and contains a million dollars to invest, as well as a series of videos by Batman. The money and videos will be delivered to Dick Grayson on the event of his parents’ death.
The videos contain an invitation to become a vigilante, as well as instructions on how to contact Bruce’s old teachers for further training. The last video contains three instructions:
- Become Batman.
- The Thunderbolt is not your friend. Take him out before he can take you out.
- Get a time-travelling buddy and have him deliver a million dollars and a set of videos you make as Batman to a young Lucius Fox… Thus closing the temporal Paradox.
It’s a different Batman, but Batman still wins. Dick/Batman knocks out Johnny before he can go into hiding. 
- I’m of the opinion that the point of “Batman wins, if prepared”, is coming up with fun solutions on how Batman wins, not just slavish fan worship and overestimating his capabilities. Batman’s just the most convenient human/low-powered Superhero for this exercise. I mean, can you see Green Arrow pulling teh above stunt?
SEVEN WAYS TO BEAT A THUNDERBOLT WITHOUT
Number one was already done in my previous post.
-
The thunderbolt lives in a freaking pen. Batman walks up to Johnny Thunder and with minimal misdirection needed to distract someone who’s functionally retarded, picks dude’s pocket and walks off. Yeesh. It’s probably in his bat-trophy case by now.
-
As Johnny Thunder mutters “Cei U!” Batman goes on the evasive. Ducking into a conveniently situated nearby manhole, he waits in the sewers in the damp and deep shadows as the thunderbolt pursues him below. Attaching a extenal voice synthesizer to his larnyx, he perfectly mimics Jonny Thunder’s voice inflections and phraseology and gives the djinn a simple two word command that banishes it forever: “Get lost.” With nary a whisper, the thunderbolt disappears, probably to an unsuccessful continuity-be-damned reboot over at the VERTIGO imprint.
-
As the battle commences, Batman questions whether Johnny thunder is really the seventh son of a seventh son born on the seventh day of the seventh month. Batman points that the Thunderbolt is the victim of culture clash: namely, the recording of time. He out that due to the discrepencies between the Badhnesian calendar, the Julian calendar, and the modern Gregrian calendar, the “seventh month and seventh day” applications don’t apply at all (not to mention Pope Gregory’s modifications that basically erased nine days from history!) Although Johnny Thunder may well be the seventh son of a seventh son, Batman convinces the thunderbolt that he’s still got the wrong master. The thunderbolt, flummoxed and befuddled, agrees and vanishes, leaving a woeful Johnny Thunder for Batman to console. “I was perfectly happy to keep this little calendar tidbit to myself, but then you had to come after me,” explains an unrepentant crusader.
-
The thunderbolt reacts to voice commands, making it extremely vulnerable to sonic attacks. Batman whips out the “its-in-Elseworlds-continuity-so-I-get-to-use-it-in-this-scenario” sonic disrupter from the original DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and zaps the genie’s eardrums until it retreats into Johnny Thunder’s pen. Then he encases the pen inside a condom and has someone swallow it and mule it out of the country, where it winds up in a filthy public toilet somewhere south of the border like – I dunno – Palomar.
-
I’m too lazy to think of another one (although I almost had something with the natural vaccuum of space prventing sound from travelling to the thunderbolt and the JLA teleporters activarted by remote receiver.) Ah, let’s just use Menocchio’s ingeniously squirrelly time-travel fake out.
-
Batman suggests that the Thunderbolt go back in time to the 1950s and turn Gotham into a series of easily broken into warehouses where all kinds of oversized gadgets and novelty items are sold. The Thunderbolt turns pink, round, short, pulls on a homemade bat-suit, dubs himself Bat-Mite and everyone lives happily ever after except the 1950s Batman.
Oops. That should be " SEVEN WAYS TO BEAT A THUNDERBOLT WITHOUT ATTACKING JOHNNY THUNDER OR JAKEEM"
Say, you don’t have to be insulting.
JThunder. I hated to be that blunt about it, but it needed to be said. You should here the things I call Tony “You may be a Major, but your imagination is minor” Nelson.
Sounds like he ought to have become Green Arrow, in this case. 
If it is a straight up fight between Batman and a Badhnesian Thunderbolt under no one’s control, with no “preparation time” for Batman, then Bruce is toast. No getting around it. What is Batman going to do, punch him? He’s a flippin’ GENIE, for crying out loud. Think “all-powerful, extra dimensional entity”. If the T-bolt is intent on attacking Batman, there is nothing Batman can do to stop him. The T-bolt would simply erase Batman from existence. -POOF-
If the Thunderbolt is under someone else’s control, Batman has a fighting chance. Depending on how the command (or wish, if you will) was phrased when given to the T-bolt, Batman (or more likely T-Bolt himself, if someone he doesn’t particularly like is controlling him) could theoretically exploit a loophole allowing Batman to make it through the battle.
If Batman has time to prepare (say, a day or two), then we’re in business. All Batman has to do is find somebody else who is the seventh son of a seventh son, born on 7/7/1917. He probably also has to get access to the Zodiac belt and access to the mystical rituals to bind the man to the spirit. Not easy, but not entirely impossible. Then he only has to pay off this old codger to “counter-command” the T-bolt when he attacks.
Failing that, he could locate a Badhnesian, who have been known to wrest control of the Thunderbolt from Johnny Thunder, or at least block his control in the past. There are some continuity issues with this solution, but it isn’t completely without merit.
This shouldn’t really work, since the Gregorian calendar is a convenient fiction backed by papal authority. But who am I to undo 60-odd years of DC continuity by pointing out a critical error? Maybe we can chalk it up to “consensus reality.”
sigh. Well, a T-bolt (which doesn’t exist) shouldn’t be attacking a caped vigilante (who also doesn’t exist), but at some point you have to suspend your disbelief. I could poke holes in your “7 ways to defeat the Thunderbolt” too, but what would be the point? Suffice to say, it was good enough for the Badhnesians, so much so that their rituals actually worked – Johnny can control the T-bolt, regardless of what year he was “really” born.
Psycho Pirate. Oh, go ahead. Poke away! I honestly don’t mind, and hope you don’t either. The point of doing it is that it’s fun as long as you don’t take it seriously. Deconstructing superhero myths and logic has been all the rage at least since, Nivens’ “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” essay and I enjoy debating the goofier points of superhero origins, powers, mores and fashion.
The idea that an omnipotent extradimensional imp can be made to go away just by pointing out a flaw in the logic that binds him to a person or reality was inspired by an Alan Moore (who else?) story in SUPREME story a few years back.
Oh, I don’t really mind. It just seemed unnecessarily pedantic to focus on the year being wrong when accepting the T-bolt’s existence at face value. I took the point of the thread “literally” – given DC comic’s extant continuity and character portrayals, how would Batman fare in a battle with the T-bolt. Ergo, I took it ‘seriously’, or at least as seriously as one can take a discussion involving two fictional characters engaging in hypothetical combat. Thus, it wasn’t my intent to deconstruct the logic of DC comics. However, I see your point, and I take your post in the spirit it was given.
I don’t really want to take the time to rebut all of your ideas, but there are problems. For example, #5 is pure speculation that the T-bolt is extremely vulnerable to sonic attacks. The only thing I know that “genies” are vulnerable to is being bottled up (there may be something there for Batman to use, though). I also see #7 as especially lacking. The T-bolt is just simply going to follow Batman’s suggestion that he travel to 1950 and live as Bat-Mite? I appreciate the concept of “two entities with similar powers are really the same entity”, and the concept of explaining why Gotham was ‘the way it was’ in the 50’s (crazy gadgets, easily-broken-into warehouses) is humorous. But in ‘DC reality’, Batman has no control over the T-bolt, so I see no way for this gambit to succeed. Admittedly, this is probably one of those times where I shouldnt’ take it so seriously.
And it’s a great idea. I really need to pick up his Supreme stuff.