Batman bankrolls the Justice League (of America) and is the president.
I don’t see the others arranging for a takeover.
From DKR #4:
“I want you to remember… my hand… at your throat… I want… you to remember… the one man who beat you…”
A few pages later:
“My timing wasn’t precise enough. Clark heard.”
“Not that it mattered. He’d have guessed it sooner or later.”
Bolding mine.
I’d say that those quotes punch a big hole in your theory.
Point of interest though, people always forget that Superman was at ground zero of a nuclear explosion in DKR #3 and not at full strength. So yes, Batman beat Superman, but it was a depowered Superman.
It’s not like Batman wasn’t depowered. The man was pushing sixty (more or less, don’t remember) and had already sustained serious injuries.
Granted, the difference looks meager when stacked against SuperStrength[sup]TM[/sup], but it can be the difference between dodging a blow and being flattened, or between nailing the target and blacking out mid-shot.
I agree that, with enough time to prepare, Batman could defeat just about anyone. He is incredibly smart and can find any weakness that anyone might have. The fact that he’s human makes it all the more amazing. Speaking of mere humans that kick alot of ass: How cool would a Batman vs. The Punisher comic be?
My username gives away my bias (if you know Spanish), but the simple truth is that Superman is a tool and Batman is a warrior. Superman does what is nice, while Batman does what is necessary. Superman can’t help but let Batman live (wuss), while Batman allows Superman to live in service of a greater goal. No Man’s Land and The Dark Knight Returns make this apparant.
That said, Jesse Custer (Preacher) could take them both down. He figured out a way to beat God himself.
This exists. It’s a two parter where the 1st part is Punisher with the Jean Valley (sp?) Batman, and part 2 is with classic Batman after Bruce Wayne returns. I think I read it in the “Crossover Classics #2” collection.
Not necessarily; all they indicate is that Batman* wasn’t aware* that Superman actually intended to let him go. As far as he was concerned, he won the fight on his own merits. If anything, the above quotes illustrate Batman’s deep-seated insecurity about Superman and the need to maintain the fragile fiction that Batman can somehow emerge victorious in a fight. Of course, Superman himself is not going to work too hard to dispel this illusion, since having been raised as human, he himself would also like to believe that human qualities, rather than superpowers, will win the day. This is probably why he’s had so much trouble with Luthor over the decades (although, in fairness, Luthor generally has a bit more going for him than Batman does).
Nope, sorry. At the funeral you can easily see the surprise on Supes face when he realizes that Batman’s heart has started beating again; Superman got his butt whipped fair and square. Not to mention that if Frank Miller had intended for Superman to throw the fight then he never bothered to share that info with anyone.
Oh, certainly Superman goes to the trouble to display surprise in front of others who are in on Batman’s plan; however, one must bear in mind that he is a brilliantly gifted actor, who can maintain two completely different personalities with simply the aid of a pair of glasses. He may have simply assumed that Batman was capable of timing his death-feigning drug properly (once again, giving more credit to Batman than he really deserves). Once Batman’s heart resumed its beat in Superman’s presence, Superman had to fake surprise; if he didn’t, Batman and his allies would realize that Superman knew Batman’s plan from the beginning. Clearly this is yet another of Superman’s efforts to shield Batman’s eggshell-thin ego. Perhaps Frank Miller mistakenly thought this was so obvious that it didn’t bear emphasis.
A) Frank Miller hates Superman (and IIRC is on the record as saying so). Any Frank Miller Superman is acting out of character IMO. Superman has NEVER been a shill of the government the way he was in Dark Knight 1. (That doesn’t change the fact that it was a great story)
B) When it comes down to it, there are situations Batman can’t win, no matter how much he prepares. Imagine Batman being given 24 hours to prepare for a fight with an Earth-1 Phantom Zone criminal. The PZ criminal can relax over in the next galaxy tracking Batman’s every move via telescopic and X-Ray vision and, at the allotted hour, just fly to the asteroid belt and throw a couple of pebbles at Bats at lightspeed. Or he could use his heat vision to turn whatever continent Bats is on into molten lava. Or uses super-breath to push an Aircraft Carrier piece of anti-matter into our atmosphere. Even if Bats could survive that (and I doubt it), there’s not much he can do without a planet to stand on.
Or, if a mano-a-mano confrontation is necessary, the PZ criminal (Zod, say) gets a running start and accelerrates to 184,999 miles per second. #1) Assuming Batman could track Zod, he doesn’t have the reflexes to act quickly enough to do anything. If he does, the writer’s just given Batman super speed. #2) Bats prepares a boobytrap. 'Cept there is none that would work. When you’ve got the kind of momentum and mass that Zod would have travelling at C-1, NOTHING could stop him. #3) The best hope is that Zod doesn’t track Bats, whereupon Bats could get a draw. He takes out Zod but dies doing it: Zod speeds towards Batman, and realizes that the air around Batman is filled with Gold K dust. Zod, no longer invulnerable burns to a crisp. Nonetheless, his ashes continue on with near-infinite mass and momentum and hit Batman, making him the scariest smear on the planet.
Another hopeless scenario for Bats: A (non-stupid) Thanos with the Cosmic Cube.
Thanos (secure in a fortress on the other side of the universe that he’s wished is Batman proof)says: "I wish Batman/Bruce Wayne didn’t exist any more. In addition, I wish that no-one but me remembers he ever existed and all traces of his existance are replaced with other, equally plausible explainations, so no one can even suspect that he once existed. Also, none of this “Nature tries to fill the void” crap where someone decides to take his place. Furthermore I wish that the nature of the Cosmic Cube changes such that this wish cannot be unwished. Oh and by the way: The nature of the univers changes and now wo one but me can ever use ANY cosmic cube, Infinity Gauntlet, etc ever again
Batman says “Oh shi…” and vanishes.
Don’t get me wrong. Most situations, Batman can handle by careful planning, sheer brainpower, resourefulness and a sneaky streak a mile long. It’s just when the over-the-top Grant Morrison-esque overstatement “Bats can defeat ANYONE if he’s prepared” is bandied about that I object.
I’ve had a theory that Grant Morrison’s Batman had some sort of magic device that made everyone in the universe but him about 20 IQ points dumber than they should be. Case in point? The White Martians. They had X-Ray vision (“martian vision”), super hearing, super-smell, super-touch…they should have been able to sense where he was by the air currents. And they’re in an oxygen-rich atmosphere…explosively flammable by their standards…and their HQ doesn’t have flame retardant or sprinklers? When they’re allergic to fire. Uh-huh. Sorry, but as fun as that story was, watching Batman beat up on stupid bad-guys is no fun. He’s a detective first and a fighter second. I wanna see him challenged mentally.
Fenris
Fenris,
Back in the old DC Comics chatroom, we joked that if Galactus ever attacked Gotham, Batman would just pull the old Bat-ultimate nullifier out of his utility belt.
I like your Cosmic Cube theory in particular, but although I think Superman proved that you couldn’t undo Batman’s existence in the “Emperor Joker” storyline. 
Fenris, Fenris, Fenris… Poor Fenris! I can see you have never debated me before.
In the case of Batman versus a Phantom Zone criminal, the key is that Batman, forewarned of the criminal’s impeding escape and knowing what an escaped Kryptonian could do, would never allow him to escape in the first place, and his 24 hour preparations would be designed to prevent just that from happening. Alternately, Batman would enter the Phantom Zone himself with various Kryptonian weaponry (carefully itemized via e-mail and teleported by his buddy Superman from the Fortress of Solitude into a lead-lined room in the Batcave, where the criminal couldn’t see what was happening, telescopic vision and X-ray vision notwithstanding) and incapacitate the criminal there in all sorts of messy ways.
Tsk. Your Thanos with-Cosmic-Cube scenario, while admittedly much more thoughtful than 99% of Thanos’ OTHER plans, foolishly presupposes only the existence of the Marvel Universe and thus, only the so-called Bruce Waynes/Batmen that might be found visiting there. Further, Thanos’ wish – as stated – omits safeguards against the millions of other potential Batmen via Hypertime, the concept of a Multiverse, the Thomas Wayne Owl-Man from Earth-2, time-travel, the interference of The Linear Men and the dozen or so sorbiquets Batman is also known by, such as The Dark Knight Detective, The Caped Crusader and, uh, The Midnighter. One of them would figure out how to stop Thanos. But HEY. It was a good try, Buck-o.
Batman could take out Galactus easily: a borrowed Mother Box to summon a Boom Tube to go the antimatter universe of Qward and deflect the same aircraft carrier sized piece of anti-matter his escaped Phantom Zone criminal was going to use, only this time aimed at (non-lethally, of course) Galactus’ kneecap. Batman knows what I know: it takes an outlandish Kirby concept to defeat an outlandish Kirby concept.
All joking aside, I would similarly like to see Batman mentally challenged by a worthy opponent, and so modestly suggest the following conflict, submitted for your approval: Batman versus John Constantine.
Batman has even beat Batman on several (weird) occasions. What else can you possibly say?
The real problem with the Thanos w/ Cube scenario is that it could work against pretty much anyone, just as well… even Thanos.
Askia: A better challenge would be offered by the first superhero of all, Doc Savage. In any fight between Doc and Bats, I put my money on Doc
The Phantom Zone criminal (same power set as Superman, right?) scenario is still winnable: Bats uses kryptonite (which he already has on hand, to be prepared against Supes going bad) as you mention, but surrounding some sort of decoy, not himself. Yeah, it’d have to be a pretty elaborate decoy to fool someone with X-ray vision, but he’s got the resources for that. And a decoy is versatilely useful enough that it’s not too big of a stretch to suppose that he already has that, too.
And didn’t I just read in another thread that the Cosmic Cube is Marvel? No sense in pitting Bats against things which, so far as he’s concerned, don’t exist. What’s the most insanely overpowered thing in the DC universe?
The real problem with “Batman always wins, if he’s prepared” is that it assumes that the other guy hasn’t prepared. For instance, Superman might prepare by wearing lead armor, and anyone at all could win by just killing Batman before Bats knows there’s a threat. If you count “pre-emptively killing your enemy” as “preparation”. Just remember: You’ve got to sleep some time.
The Peyote Coyote: 1930’s pulp fiction Doc or proposed-movie-with Arnold-Schwarzeneggar-as-Doc-Savage-Doc? 'Cuz the Superfriends version of Batman can pimp-smack an Ahnuld “Duk Sahvige.”
Askia: I sure as hell hope you’re joking because Arnie can’t pull off Doc’s intellectual prowess. I’m getting ill just thinking about it (and I liked Arnie in the Terminiator movies). I’m referring to Lester’s Dent version.
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I like your style. But I’m gonna whup ya nonetheless… 
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Point the first: If Bats can’t keep the Joker (a regular human being, in terms of power) inside a jail/asylum in his own back yard, he can’t stop a Kryptonian from escaping.
Point the second, to have the fight, the Kryptonian has to be outside the Zone anyway. You can’t fight inside the Phantom Zone. You’re just a ghost.
Point the third: you still haven’t dealt with the fact that the Kryptonian can move faster than light, time travel, is (in terms of memory and raw “number-crunching” smarter than Batman) and can casually blow out suns with super-breath, the least of his abilities.
Plus he can attack from across the galaxy.
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See point the second. As for the lead-lined room, the Kryptonian has an 8th level intellect (Luthor had, IIRC a 10th and Braniac had a 12th), and super-hearing. He can probably figure out what’s going on inside that room just from the noises
Or, better, he can use a combination of heat vision and telescopic vision to MELT the lead room, boiling Bats alive in molten lead. While sitting on one of Saturn’s moons where Bat’s clever gizmos can’t get. (Bats can’t get help, that’s cheating. Morrison’s Batman NEVER needed super-powered help when in “I can solve any problem” mode)
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Ok, Nitpicker-Lad ( ), it’s not Thanos with the Cosmic Cube, it’s Darkseid (who’s much smarter anyway) with the Miracle Machine. Same wish.
Fenris, Trivia-Boy
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Yup. Same powerset, but many of 'em are better fighters: they grew up in an environment where they could have sparring partners who wouldn’t break…and I DID state the Earth-1 version, so you have the real Superman’s level of power, which includes pushing planets out of orbit without too much effort.
And, regarding the substitution, a couple of problems:
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It would have to fool at LEAST three senses (sight, smell and hearing…and sight includes microscopic, x-ray and telescopic vision, so it’d better be a damned good duplicate.)
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Granting that, Bats would have to be able to anticipate that the particular tactic that Zod would be to fly into Bats at lightspeed as opposed to, say, using heat vision on Bats from somewhere around the orbit of Pluto and burning him like a bug under a magnifiying glass.
And even if Bats DOES guess…which I’d be prepared to grant that he can (but it would only be a guess…remember, he can’t see Zod coming…Zod has crowded up so close to the speed of light that the light reflecting from him is preceeding him only by a fraction of a second), there’s not a lot Bats can do anyway. See, um… I checked with a pal who can do the math and if something with a rest mass as massive as a kryptonian (he dug up a obscre factoid that said Superman weighed a ton. Literally. 2250 lbs) smacked into the Earth at (the speed of light is 186,282.396 miles per second.) Zod accelerates to 186,292.395 miles per second.
Because of the laws of General Relativity, his mass has increased by a factor of nearly 100,000,000. This results in an impact with about 50,000,000 times the energy of the ‘dinosaur killer’ impact 65,000,000 years ago. This goes WAY beyond an extinction-level event; this would release enough energy to blow off a chunk of the planet the size of the moon, blow off the atmosphere and the crust of the planet down to about 1000 miles, turn the remaining crust into magma, sterilizing it of all life and release a TON of radiation. Bats can’t survive that. Neither could anyone short of the Spectre.
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The Miracle Machine from Legion, I’d guess (Everyone repeat after me "The Green Lantern Power Ring is NOT “the most powerful weapon” it’s “The most versitile tool”. Only a moron would ignore it’s other, non-weapon uses.) It does the same thing as the Cosmic Cube.
Fenris, Trivia Boy
Yeah, but: Zod is dead in the Post-Crisis DCU.
Pre-Crisis, Bat-mite would just get rid of him FOR Bats.
Post-Crisis, you’re stuck with that crappy Joe Kelly Zod who’s been a mystery for, like, 5 years now.