Excuse my extreme ignorance of Superman; I’ve yet to enjoy (and therefore pay much attention to) anything involving the character. I’m sure someone will tell me I’m wrong and why, but I find him uninterestingly powerful. Peril seems like it would have to be even more contrived than normal, and when you can fly up to someone and punch their head off, you don’t even get to watch any particularly interesting action with characters jumping around and swinging on stuff, or something.
But anyway, how does it work? What’s the point of Batman being in the Justice League when they’ve got Superman? I know that in theory Superman + Batman is more useful than just Superman, but it’s a bit of a drop in the ocean.
In all those climax-of-the-story moments of Batman-only stories, when the tension is high and Batman thinks this time the evil-doer of the day might just finally beat him, why doesn’t he just call Superman? He could fly over to Gotham, punch, I don’t know… the Penguin… in the face, drop him at Gordon’s desk and be back at the Daily Planet before anyone even notices he’s gone.
In the upcoming Batman/Superman film, Superman is supposed to be trying to reign in Batman a little, right? Even if you started off a 90 minute film with Kiefer Sutherland telling you events occur in real time, how is it going to take that long for Superman to impose his will on Batman? “Oh no, your batarangs are bouncing off my pecs of steel. Whatever will I do? Oh yeah, my eyes have lasers.”
Superman didn’t punch out villains. He had to out think them (so did Batman, actually).
In their universe, a battle was not necessary. Superman had to figure out what was going on and find a solution (as obstacles were put in his way to make the easy path far more difficult). Eventually, he’d find a solution – by being smart, not strong – and stop the villain.
Batman was the same way. He was known throughout much of his career as “The Worlds Greatest Detective.” There were fights, but Batman usually won on cunning instead of punching out the villains.
Nowadays, comic book fans don’t expect heroes or villains to be particularly clever; just that the good guy can “punch the head off” any villain.
So Batman didn’t need to call Superman in most cases, since the issue was finding the villain, not defeating him one-on-one. Superman, of course, didn’t need Batman, and was dealing with villains the same way: it was how to find them or find a strategy to defeat them, not a fistfight.
For all his power, Supes is only one man, and his power is almost entirely his strength. That’s useful the way everything from howitzers to nukes are, but sometimes you need stealth, cunning and insight, too.
As for how they might battle on equal terms… see the end of Dark Knight Returns. Batman uses a super suit, and kryptonite, but mostly he uses Superman’s own limitations against himself.
OK, good answer. But presumably, there were plenty of times when Batman’s particular tricky situation would be made a lot easier by the presence of Superman. X-ray vision and super hearing or whatever would be boons for any detective, even the world’s greatest one. And finding strategies to defeat your enemies is, surely, a lot easier when you’ve got much greater power.
IMHO, Superman’s greatest weakness is his power. He’s the nuclear option, but that also makes him too much solution for most problems. He can’t be everywhere all the time, but that’s where most of the crimes are.
So there’s kind of an hourglass-shaped graph of superhero response to situations: most of the crimes can be dealt with by most of the heroes (the widest point at one end), a few heroes can handle more serious situations (narrowing), then there’s stuff that only the most powerful (Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman) can handle (the narrowest point), then there’s stuff that requires the most powerful to team up to fight together (widening out again), then there’s situations where absolutely everyone has to get involved (back out to the widest point).
Frankly, the reason the two characters have become such archetypes is in spite of - not because of - their powers.
What makes the two interesting is their own motivations and how they deal with it.
Batman is driven by a desire for justice. For punishment of the guilty. Whatever advances that cause is - mostly - acceptable.
Superman is driving by the simple motivation of saving everyone. When he approaches disaster or villain control that’s his first thought: how do I save ALL the people who are endangered.
It’s the character that drives the characters, not the action. Contrast those two things with each other and there’s things to be said about what makes a good person and how fuzzy that line can get. To focus on their respective abilities is to only touch the easiest part of the better stories involving the two.
Calling in Superman would just be a crutch. Same reason Bats once threw away a GL ring. “It would just get in the way”.
*However I do agree with the long ago 80’s Crisis reboot: “Why are these guys best friends? It makes no sense.” I totally agree. the Pre-Crisis 'World’s Finest comics" are…not very good.
This is such a huge, powerful question that the writers have had to address it at various times over the years. Boiled down, here are some answers. (Based on memories; I can’t give issue dates.)
Superman is not God. He is more like the government. He is a symbol of might as a force of good, but he is not omnipotent. He cannot be everywhere and do everything. People have to be strong and reliant on their own, while turning to him for forces beyond their power.
Superman is God. Why does God allow evil to occur, both natural disasters and human malice? Utopian worlds are suspect. If Superman removed every evil, saved every life, smoothed every bump, then individual lives would have no meaning.
Superman is mortal. Why does he even have a secret identity rather than spending 24 hours a day helping people? Because his brain would crack under the strain. The guilt of failing to prevent some tragedies, of choosing life and death, would destroy him.
Superman is Metropolis. He is a symbol of the city, fashioned when New York was ten times as dominant as it is today. He co-exists with the city, having effects far-and-wide, but predominantly concerned with what is within.
In good comic fashion, each of these is offered one at a time, and so might contradict the others although there is also overlap. Pure rationality is not a feature of worlds that suspend the laws of physics. What they all have in common is that they present Superman in purely symbolic terms. Being a superhero is itself symbolic: you can refashion these fairly easily to explain Batman or Spiderman. Superman has always been the ultimate superhero because he is the ultimate symbol. Kids latch on to the power fantasies first, but Superman stories always devolve into moral tales. You either get the moral symbolism or not, and accept the moral or not. If you don’t, then there’s not much to Superman because you’re stripping him of almost everything there is to say about him. I don’t always like the individual moral tales, but I find him far more interesting than Batman, especially the insane supervillain doppleganger of the past 30 years.
I know that’s a common interpretation of Batman’s motivations but I disagree. What Batman and Superman both have in common is a desire to save everyone. Most interpretations of Batman have him prioritizing saving lives, even the lives of the criminals he’s trying to stop, over actually punishing them. If there’s a choice between saving the life of a citizen or letting the Scarecrow escape then Batman will chose the former every single time.
Now you’re closer. Supes saves the day because his senses detect trouble city-wide in Metropolis and his speed lets him react. Batman has said fighting crime is about 5% of his activity - the rest in intelligence gathering and threat assessment. So when he needs heavy artillery, yeah, he can call in Superman, but when Superman sees iocaine powder residue it’s Batman that works out who poisoned the Sicilian.
I know there’s an element of facetiousness to my posts, but I really am trying to understand this important matter.
I know it’s possible to fanwank all kinds of reasons for why Superman isn’t doing more. We could all live much more frugally and give to charity far more, but there are limits when it comes to your own sanity. I get Superman can’t save everyone, all the time.
To put the question (sort of) in another way, what does Batman bring to the Justice League? Let’s say Superman and Batman are hanging out in their HQ (I don’t know what they have) and a call comes in. Does Superman say “You should be able to handle this one on your own, Bruce”? And at other times “No offence, but I think I’d better take this one”? Does it hurt Batman’s Batpride?
As a side question, let’s say Batman and Superman are just chilling, watching The Avengers (which Batman tried to illegally download until Superman decided it wasn’t the American Way). What does Batman call Superman? People say his “real” name is Kal-El, but having been adopted by (or having adopted) Earth, and having been raised here, I’d think he would consider Clark Kent to be his real name.
What does Batman bring to the Justice League?? He’s the most dangerous member.
Does it hurt his Batpride? Depends on his mood. At times he’ll go “hh.” At others he would cook up some fantastical, elaborate scheme to show Supes that he crossed a line.
Batman would call him ‘Clark’. Unless he was being facetious, than he’d call him Superman or Kal-El.
Superman’s power seems to be whatever it needs to be for a situation. Either directly (“super ventriloquism!”) or by extension of his more commonly known abilities (“Oh yeah, he flew really fast in a sphere, thus creating a bubble of safety for the people in the acid lake, all the while evaporating it with his heat vision…”)
His weakness, naturally, is existing in a world where kryponite is more common than nitrogen.
I’d just like to add quick mention of how Batman quit the Justice League in the '80s; he’d noted that a civil war was about to start in Europe, such that his super-powered teammates could be a big help if they’d just do X and Y and Z, and – yeah, we don’t do that, Bruce; the internal affairs of other countries aren’t our concern.
Well, then SCREW YOU GUYS, because ME AND MY NEW FRIENDS will handle all of this JUST FINE without you! Who needs Superman and Green Lantern so long as I know a decathlon champ and, uh, an expert fencer, and – okay, this is actually going to be a lot of work, but the point is I’M TAKING MY BALL AND GOING HOME!
What does Batman bring to the Justice League? He’s the master strategist. Superman used to have super-intelligence, but that’s mostly fallen away.
He also can fight lesser foes, or, in a pinch, go after the big ones if he plans it out well enough. So he’s not Alfred or Oracle or whatever they wound up calling Chloe from Smallville, assuming she’s still around.
Remember, he’s the guy who has a method for taking out every single Justice League member. He is crazy prepared.
Agreed. Not about the World’s Finest comics, but about the older comic storytelling devices being not very good. As a Green Lantern fan, I naturally bought the big fat volume that compiled all of the original 1960s Hal Jordan GL comics. It’s generally acknowledged in the DC universe that the GL ring is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the universe, limited only by the imagination and willpower of its bearer. It just had this one weakness … And so every damned story devolved into the crisis of the day happens to be colored yellow. Giant alien attacks Earth? He’s yellow! Experimental military missile goes haywire and is headed for a populated area? The army painted it yellow! Ancient god has awakened and seeks to devour the nearest city? He’s yellow!
But it established the comic book trope that, ultimately, the hero doesn’t win with his/her powers, he/she wins by outthinking the bad guy.
Also, thank Og that the GL’s “yellow weakness” has been written out. Because it was a stupidly-obvious “weakness” invented entirely to be the “necessary weakness”.
Those plans in the Tower of Babel storyline were ridiculously stupid and contrived. None of them would work if not for heavy amounts of plot-induced stupidity.
