World’s Greatest Detective vs. Master Thief.
Lupin plans to pull off a jewel heist at Gotham. Can Batman thwart his plans?
Is Batman prepared?
Batman with prep-time would just be unfair.
Batman tends to react to crimes against property. He only seems to prioritize the crimes of one cat burglar, and that is due to repeated offenses on his home turf (and other personal reasons).
I think Lupine could be in and out of Gotham with Batman leaving the investigation entirely to the police.
Sorry, left a “not” out of that first sentence.
Batsy pretty regularly dealt with thieves through most of his career. Hell, for most of their print history many of his rogues gallery were just bizarrely themed thieves. He has decades of experience dealing with master thieves. Batsy will thwart Lupin’s scheme, but Lupin will elude capture.
Oh, well, if we’re going there, then Lupin pulls off the first one with no trouble at all, gets away with the second while leaving Batman tied up in some oddly-themed trap, and then only receives some kind of comeuppance in the third go-round.
Lupin will, apparently, triumph in the third round…but it will turn out that Batsy replaced the target item with a fake. It will probably have a business card with the bat symbol on it tucked in for Lupin to find later as a fuck you from Guanoman.
What happens when an irresistible force meets an irresistible force?
Lupin has one big advantage: he chooses the time and place. And he isn’t going to leave clues in the form of riddles or jokes!
Hmmph, even the most average thief I know would never be detected by Batman. Try to imagine Batman going undercover to get on the inside of a local project gang, not a prayer
Lupin III could steal the Batmobile, the Bat-Computer, the Batcycles, the Bat-Copter, and Batman’s can of Bat Shark Repellent right off his Bat-Belt while Bruce Wayne is still on the hot-line with the Commissioner.
Of course, Fujiko Mine would then steal it all from Lupin.
Lupin and Bats will discover this is all a trick by someone else seeking a REALLY nefarious goal. Bats stops the supercriminal and Lupin takes the supercriminal’s stash as consolation prize for not getting what he was originally looking for.
At some point in the story there’s a gag with Fujiko trying to put on Selina’s catsuit and realizing that is not going to zip up on her no matter how hard she tries…
My take:
Lupin comes to Gotham to steal something. Batman foils him. A disaster of some sort occurs (I don’t know, Fujiko gets kidnapped by Joker) and the two work together to stop the bad guy. In the chaos, Lupin runs off with his prize, and Batman vows it won’t happen again. But he’s relatively chill about it; I mean, given his occasional relationship with Catwoman, it seems like he’s willing to let a little light thievery go on now and then between friends.
Since they’re both protagonists, it seems to me that any story with both would have to feature both winning in some form.
Only Frank Castle could stop a master thief.
I always heard there was some Lupin III comic where Lupin steals something from Spider-Man and gets away with it, and Spider-Man was drawn in all his trademark infringing glory. Obviously this was never brought over to the US legally.
I recently watched Lupin Vs Detective Conan. It was surprisingly good. I picture a Batman Vs Lupin movie being very similar.
Detective Conan has gone up against Magic Kaito, with the result being that there was actually a third bad guy and Conan ends up going against the real bad guy, with some subtle/sneaky help from Kaito.
I would presume that any such thing, including Conan v. Lupin, would end up the same. You can’t have two good guys directly go against each other. Either they have to call it a draw or you need to introduce a tertiary antagonist.
Unlike other situations, I don’t see any contradiction here. Lupin III very often didn’t get away with his plots, didn’t he? His main claim to fame is being unable to be caught, not that he never fails. So Batman stops him the first time (as Lupin leaves calling cards, so Batman knows he’s there), but he doesn’t capture him.
Now, in an actual special, I would expect this to just be the start of the adventure. And they’d wind up working together, as you say. I would see the ending being that Lupin does wind up getting what he was after, but we also find out that Batman knew and let him get away with it, having Bruce Wayne replace whatever it was, treating it as a payment for Lupin’s help.