He falls asleep in board meetings because he spends so much time being Batman. I imagine he spends a certain amount of time just being Playboy Bruce Wayne (not the real Bruce Wayne in his head), going to board meetings and fundraisers and dinners and evenings at the theatre or opera or ballet with the Debutante of the Month, all of which is just cover for Batman: no one would think that that guy who’s always getting written up in the “who’s he dating now?” celebrity news, who’s always being seen at the latest hot restaurant or club with a supermodel on each arm, who works very hard at enjoying himself but you gotta admit is undoubtedly a good guy and does a lot for Gotham City in his own noblesse oblige way was actually Batman.
Meanwhile, as he’s sitting next to the debutante or prima ballerina he’s working out the results of his latest fingerprint-scanning computer test or whatever he’s got going this week. I don’t think he actually has sex with any of them, for two reasons: he doesn’t trust anybody (he’s a romantic who doesn’t do one-night stands) and he can’t trust anybody (as soon as he takes his clothes off, you’d see the old scars and the bruises and newer wounds and WTF??).
He doesn’t have friends his own age because he doesn’t have time for them. They can’t do anything for him. He doesn’t go out club-hopping and whoring around with other wealthy young men because that bores him. And he doesn’t have time for pursuits like golf and polo and whatnot. He has to spend his time exercising and practicing his skills, being Batman (including the down time after he gets injured), and being Playboy Bruce Wayne, and that takes up all of his time.
If we’re thinking of the same story, it’s not that Bruce outmanuevered Lex on the corporate battlefield; it’s that he realized Lex had been using corporate-battlefield tactics on, well, a literal battlefield – at which point our hero sent Green Arrow and Plastic Man to pose as supervillains while using cash aplenty to make sure Mirror Master dropped out of the climactic fight. All of which Batman admittedly referred to as using “corporate takeover techniques” right back at Luthor, but only by analogy (and even that metaphorical display of business savvy apparently prompted Lex to deduce Batman’s secret identity).
The point is, neither man actually did anything involving lawsuits or shareholders or leveraged buyouts or whatever; it wasn’t LexCorp versus Wayne Enterprises, it was Aquaman’s half-brother getting smacked upside the head and the Martian Manhunter telepathically making the Joker sane for maybe the better part of a minute.
Again, if we’re thinking of the same story, it’s not so much that Batman took down Karate Kid; it’s that Batman countered the guy long enough for both combatants to circle warily around each other, at which point Black Lightning – who wasn’t really out cold – zapped the Kid unconscious from behind. Which is danged impressive, but not quite the clean win you’re implying.
I only really watched the cartoons, but what I gathered was that most of Batman’s adversaries were either small-time crooks unprepared to deal with a billionaire with the time/money to invest in crime fighting, or the mentally ill.
Only a few of them were really focused on defeating Batman; many, if not most had some personal scheme/revenge plot that Batman ultimately foiled.
If I’ve spent the last eight years plotting a very drawn-out and malicious method of killing some ex-boss that fired me for a bullshit reason, I am (again) probably going to be unprepared for some guy in a batsuit with high-tech gadgets getting in my way.
Another thing that really worked to Batman’s advantage was the fact that he could inspire fear into evildoers. Many bad guys that fought him weren’t entirely convinced he was actually human, and it was the villains that were a match for Batman that understood that he was just a man in a suit, nothing more. Psychological warfare was pretty effective and (again) since many of his adversaries were mentally ill, playing into their delusions/fears could make the fights pretty one-sided.
The most unrealistic part of Batman’s physical prowess is is ability to recover from physical injuries. In the Hush storyline, Batman falls from a great height into an alley. His skull is fractured, he is hospitalized and undergoes a major surgical procedure and within a few weeks he is back in action.
I think that dressing like a giant Bat helps him to blend into the night.
Also any crook who hasn’t heard of the vigilante running around in a cloak and tights and attacking criminals that he stumbles across on the spur of the moment, are so terrified at the sight of him that they are frozen to the spot, during which time he gives them a good kicking.
Or it could be that they are so bemused by his dressing like a total twat, that they are laughing too much to fire accurately/put up a fight.
I once saw a scan of a comic scene where Hercules grabs Sentry by the cape and throws him, with a comment of (paraphrased from memory) “I can’t believe you’re still wearing a cape! Why do you think I stopped wearing a lion skin over four thousand years ago?!”
Leonardo gained his skills over a lifetime. There is no disputing that he was a polymath by the time he died at the age of 70, but the point is that he was 70. And while he was certainly unusual, he was also not all that different to many people both before and after him. He was a genius artist in several media, a very good engineer/designer and competent at one or two other things such as mathematics and botany. But that was it. There were many things he could not do, even directly relating to his own work. For example, though he was a good designer, he wasn’t able to do his own smithing, he needed to hire others. He was a good sculptor, but he was incapable of actually quarrying rock. He could design a boat, but was notable to actually sail one. IOW while Leonardo was remarkable, he clearly wasn’t superhuman.
In contrast, Batman is one of the top 10 in the world at:
Athletic:
At least 6 martial arts.
Rockclimbing/rapelling
Horseback Riding
Hangliding
Scuba diving
Swimming
Skin diving
Weight lifting
Archery
Handgun and long arm target shooting at all ranges
Thrown weapons
Orienteering
Contortionist
Acrobatics of all and every form
Mechanical, he can operate
Any construction machinery from gantry cranes through bulldozers to forklifts at least as well as anyone in the world.
Any road vehicle: semis, body trucks, motorbikes, cars, hovercrafts. He is an expert racing/combat driver in all of them.
Helicopters
Fixed wing aircraft, propellor or jet
Sped boats
Yachts
Supertankers (though he may be only really good at this, not world’s best)
Security/Espionage
Lockpicking
Computer Hacking
Bugging/Tapping
Disguise
Voice impersonation
Forgery of all sorts from passports to keycards to old master paintings
Camouflage
Business:
Well he is simply the world’s best at any business activity he associates with.
Professional:
Any kind of science he has demonstrated at least Master’s level skill in. Ecology, biochemistry, zoology, pharmacy, toxicology, psychiatry, optics, electronics, computer sci., palaeontology, surgery and so forth
Virtually and military skill, from commanding groups of soldiers including tactics for small groups up to brigade size groups, logistics.
Virtually any social science he has demonstrated at least Master’s level skill in. He constantly demonstrates an encyclopaedic memory of the minutiae of history, geography, anthropology, literature, all the fine arts and so forth. And not just for Earth, He apparently has the same knowledge base for Krypton and Mars, the history of the GL corps and so forth.
Miscelaneous
He has trades level skills in electrical repair, automotive repair, medieval swordmaking, fletching and anything else the plot demands. If Batman needs to be able to do something, he amazingly has an ability to do it.
He can speak at least 4 languages fluently in at least 3 totally unrelated language groups.
And this is not in any way an exhaustive list, it’s just the skills we’ve seen the character exhibit.
By my reckoning, Batman has displayed skills equivalent to *at least *10 different Masters level professional degrees. He also has skills in at least 20 vehicles equipment and so forth that would each take a bare minimum of 12 months practice, 8 hours/day to attain. He has Olympic level abilities in more than 20 athletic pursuits, any of which would take a normal human a minimum of 6 years intensive training to achieve.
So that means that Batman would have needed to study for at least 180 years to attain the level of ability that he is shown to have.
Maybe he somehow tailored his studies just to those areas that he knew he would need? Nope. Impossible for two reasons. First off, there is no way to know in advance what knowledge he needs. For example, when informed by a villain that he intends to poison the water supply with a radioactive isotope. Batman knows on the spot that radiation from that isotope won’t hurt him from a distance but will hurt him i he fall in the water with it. That sort of thing happens in almost every issue. Batman’s memorised knowledge is encyclopaedic and comprehensive on a huge range of topics which there is no way of knowing the relevance of in advance.
Secondly, you can’t actually study that way. For example, you can’t study pharmacoloigy without a solid grounding in biochemistry. And you can’t study biochemistry without a solid grounding in calculus, physiology and chemistry. And you can’t study chemistry without studying quantum physics, nor physiology without zoology nor calculus without algebra. There is a reason that universities have pre-requisite subjects for their courses.
No matter how carefully tailored Batman’s skill set is, he would still need to have studied for many, many decades to achieve the abilities that he is demonstarted to have
Bruce Wayne is portrayed as socially inept, but that is an act. Batman in disguise is regularly demonstrated to be able to infiltrate organised crime gangs, street gangs, police stations, seduce women, get jobs working anywhere from a janitor to an accountant and befriend his coworkers whenever needed and so forth. Batman may be a sociopath in the sense that he doesn’t care for human company, but he explicitly shown to be a master manipulator, charming, persuasive, assertive, unobtrusive and seductive whenever needed. He is portrayed as being the most socially adept person in the world. basically he has all the abilities of The Mentalist.
Well, how unbelievable would it be if Bruce has a photographic memory which he’s simply and literally committed an encyclopaedia’s worth of information to? Is that comic-book plausible? How much time would it take for a (comic-book) speed reader?
I have read somewhere that just swinging from rooftop to rooftop the way Batman is portrayed as doing would dislocate both your shoulders.
As far as his double life, it would be like finding out Paris Hilton was really a member of Seal Team 6. In reality, a person in Bruce Wayne’s position would probably channel his anger into buying an Island, drugging himself into a stupor and banging models until the pain goes away.
Of course that is what makes him larger than life and as much a superhero as Superman.
The point is that he hasn’t done that. He *understands *these subjects.
Somebody who had memorised an encyclopaedia might be able to parrot the following facts:
Isotope X emits only alpha radiation
Alpha radiation is harmless if it is intercepted by more than 0.005mm of dead epithelium.
The epithelium of the lungs is mucous membrane.
By reading the above sentences you now have access to the same quality of information that a comic book “photographic memory” would provide. But could you tell me what would happen if you fell into water that contained isotope X? I’m guessing not because you don’t actually *understand *nuclear physics or physiology. All you have is raw, unconnected data. you haven’ actually *learned *anything.
Or to put it another way, if I gave you access to a set of encyclopaedia, how would you go about determining how close you could get to isotope X on land an in the water? There is hardly likely to be an article titled “mimimum safe distances to Isotope X in aqueous and terrestrial environments” is there? The only way to extract that information is by understanding the information in the articles in the lungs and aqueous solutions and Isotope X and then putting the information from the different sources together.
And that is just what Batman does. He knew that the isotope would dissolved in the water, and therefore if he fell into the contaminated water, the he would inhale the water and thus be poisoned by the radiation. That is a fairly high level of understanding of physical chemistry and physiology in addition to the memorisation of the behaviour of several hundred radioactive isotopes.
The practical distinction between Batman knowing nuclear physics and physiology to Master’s level, and having memorised large numbers of textbooks is non-existent. If Batman can memorise and recall these facts and put them together in novel situations, then why couldn’t he obtain a Master’s degree? What is the barrier? He would obviously ace any coursework.
Either way, Batman has Masters level knowledge in that area.
I believe he would ace the coursework and could obtain a Master’s degree; it’s merely that he doesn’t want to as Bruce Wayne, and can’t exactly show up for class as Batman, and has no special desire to spend time and money getting documentation regardless.
No, I think that could just be a quick data point likewise.
Silly as the Silver (and even Bronze) Ages often were, I liked it better when Batman had more human limitations. He didn’t design or build the Batmobile himself; he hired it done. He was sometimes intimidated by his fellow JLAers–not just the demigods like Clark, Diana, and Barry, but by Ray Palmer’s scientific genius.
All comic books are unbelievable, of course. But I’d say the Uber-Bat is bad storytelling. He’s as invincible as Silver-Age Superman, and even more inconsistent.
Totally unrealistic and usually written by someone who has never been in a fight (much less a fight involving weapons). It’s why I prefer my superheroes to be otherworldly or have some superhuman power (helps me suspend disbeliefe).