They only have “superpowers” due to unrealistic writing. But against someone with an actual superpower, and limited to both competing in that one field of ability, they’ll always lose. So it does balance out to some extent.
As I’ve pointed out before, the idea of Batman being a master detective or criminologist is very hard to substantiate. If you start trawling through the stories trying to find any evidence of him actually using detective skills to solve a crime, or doing anything much smarter than a reasonably well-trained police detective would do, it’s very difficult. He has better toys and equipment, and he seems to be very good at fighting people (so long as they are obliging enough to not aim a gun accurately at his head or vital organs). But a super detective? Why would anyone think that?
Remember that, unlike Batman, Captain America is an enhancile. The Super-Soldier serum he was given transformed him out to or beyond the limits of human strength and speed. So he’d not be considered a ‘normal’ human.
They’re superheros because they wear superhero costumes. There are many others – the original Atom, Green Arrow, Black Canary, for example – who have no superhuman abilities.
I was going to come in and say more or less this, but then I looked up him up on Wikipedia, and apparently he’s ‘just’ supposed to be “a “perfect” specimen of human development and conditioning. Captain America’s strength, endurance, agility, speed, reflexes, durability and healing are at the highest limits of natural human potential.”
On the OTHER Hand:
“The formula enhances all of his metabolic functions and prevents the build-up of fatigue poisons in his muscles, giving him endurance far in excess of an ordinary human being. This accounts for many of his extraordinary feats, including bench pressing 1100 pounds (500 kg) and running a mile (1.6 km) in little more than a minute.[70]”
Oh and he’s also apparently immune to disease.
So maybe he -is- superhuman. Certainly, comics are never the most consistent place. Batman, on the other hand, doesn’t even have the “super soldier serum” handwave thing going on, so you could argue the point there.
RealityChuck probably has it though. If you want to dress up funny and fight crime, you too can be a superhero. (a phenomenon parodied in, amoung other places, The Tick.)
wait a minute…that seems to be saying he can run at or approximately 60mph (a 1 mniute mile). Are there human beings who can sustain that speed even for a super-short burst?
Nope, world record for the 60 meters is 6.4 seconds or so, which, if it could be sustained, would be just under a three minute mile. Cap is faster than any human sprinter.
Here I would beg to differ. Usually, any projectile-using hero is described as having super-aim, beyond that of an olympic level archer/shooter.
Batman, imho, is easily as smart as Tony Stark, but for some reason, Stark gets the “super inventor” tag but Batman never does…Batman Begins didn’t help any by making Morgan Freeman the actual inventor.
ianzin: Back in the '50’s and '60’s, Batman regularly solved mysteries, using a wide variety of detective skills. Whether these were far enough ahead of big city police departments to merit the title of “The World’s Greatest Detective,” is a question of YMMV. Personally, I think some of these stories are fairly decent mysteries in their own right.
I think there’s something to be said about the fact that both Captain America and Batman were created when super heroes didn’t really have a bunch of super powers. Superman was created around that time and there were other heroes like the Spectre and the original Human Torch, but most costumed adventurers were not super powered, they just fought crime in funky tights.
I like BLADES, where the police are stumped because the serial killer leaves no clues and has no pattern; as per his angry letters he’s targeting the elderly, but he’ll drop one old guy with rifle fire easy as knife an older couple, and he’ll set a retirement home ablaze because he’s not hung up on using weapons, and he’ll use a rifle on another guy because he’s also not hung up on making every crime different, sure as he repeatedly goes for the kill by just planting explosives and simply not being around when they go off.
In fact, that’s the most maddening part: he’s not there when the explosives go off, because he’s not sticking around to make sure he gets a kill; it happened to work one time, it failed the next, so what? The point is just that he didn’t get caught, and so can try for a rifle shot from quite a distance (which worked) or the burning building ploy (which didn’t).
The point is, he makes sure he never leaves evidence – and, as it happens, is lucky enough to sometimes get the kill. Except, as Batman realizes, that one time he got in close with the knife: making sure he got the kill, while being lucky enough to leave no evidence.
Obviously he was the heir to that old couple’s money.
From the early 90s series Legends of the Dark Knight, no?
I remember that storyline. One good thing about it was its commentary on the “Batman is best at everything” bit, with the competing vigilante, the Cavalier, wondering if Bats were better than he was at his own specialty of swordplay (he wasn’t). Even better was the fact that Bats was human in this story. He irritates Gordon by obsessing over the serial killer case to the exclusion of all else, and he handicaps himself with his lack of objectivity, because the killer, in targeting people the age his parents would be if alive, is pushing his buttons without meaning to.
But the best bit is Batman’s thoughts when he guesses, correctly, that the killer’s next target is an actor who knew Douglas Fairbanks and is frantic to stop him for that reason. Fairbanks played Zorro, of course.
The way I usually have it partitioned in my head is that “Superheroes” use their powers to save the world and save lives in ways that ordinary people couldn’t. (catch crashing airplanes, stopping dams from breaking, stopping super villains from taking over the world) whereas Batman is a “crime-fighter” he’s usually out fighting crime, not stopping planes from crashing and things like that.
