Saw this on another board, thought I would find out what people here thought.
So who’s richer? Tony Stark, or Bruce Wayne? Does Lex Luthor even enter into it?
Ay, tough one! I voted Bruce Wayne since Wayne Enterprises has its hands in a lot more diverse contracts than just government/defense.
Bruce Wayne is very clearly at the Bill Gates level. He’s richer than God and could buy and sell Luthor and Stark ten times over.
Luther is next and probably around the Michael Bloomberg level of billionaires. He’s got some money, but it doesn’t compare to Wayne and his political ambitions are what matter more to him anyway.
Stark is probably closest to the Thomas Golisano level of billionaire. Someone that is still insanely rich, and very well known within his sphere of influence, but has the average person saying “who?” when they’re discussed on the news. This is pre-Iron Man of course.
Scrooge McDuck or Richie Rich (at least his parents) is my guess. They have a company for literally any product you can think of.
The Revenant, in PS238.
“Sometimes I think access to massive amounts of money is a superpower of its own.”
It’s gotta be Luthor. He has his own SPACE STATION!
Bruce Wayne is the richest of the three in the OP: Wayne Industries makes all sorts of different things, and doesn’t really seem to have any meaningful competitors for any of them. Stark Enterprises, meanwhile, pretty much only does defense contracts, and they have a lot of competition even there. Plus, Wayne seems to have a bigger slice of his corporation: Stark seemed to be facing some significant repercussions from his board of directors. Lex Luthor is a bit harder to pin down, and at his peak might well exceed Bruce Wayne, but if you average out over continuity, you’ve also got to take into account the times when he’s an out supervillain and his assets are seized by the authorities.
I’m actually not entirely certain that the Revenant is rich, or at least, not phenomenally so. He has access to massive amounts of money, but then, he (and Moon Shadow) have demonstrated that they have access to plenty of things he doesn’t actually own.
Still, though, Scrooge McDuck is so far ahead of the pack that it’s only really meaningful to debate over second place. He’s managed to amass such an incredible quantity of wealth that it’s six dimensional. Let’s see anyone else pull that one off.
I don’t think it’s necessarily as clear cut as some make it out to be.
Lex I have no idea, I haven’t ever regularly read a Superman title.
For Tony and Bruce there are a couple of points to consider around Tony’s business -
- Stark’s fortunes have fluctuated wildly over the course of his comic run, plus
- again depending upon where in the run you want to pin it, Stark’s company(s) have often been far more than a mere defence contractor.
So a lot depends on where in tiem you want to draw the line, and indeed if we’re talking exclusively comics Tony & Bruce or movie Tony & Bruce.
Early in the Iron man comics Tony was CEO and a shareholder of Stark Industries, which was indeed mainly a defence contractor. It was bought out be a competitor and sometime later Tony started Stark Enterprises (I think) as a start up tech company, which built up into a massive corporate entity which had interests in all matter of tech related fields, not just defence. Several references have also been made in the past to Tony personally owning numerous lucrative patents completely apart from his business holdings.
Bruce is one of the few comic book multimillionaires who hasn’t gone broke - and while most regain their fortunes eventually, clearly they couldn’t just jump back to the state they were before.
I’m unsure about Tony, but in Lex’s case, he had almost driven Lexcorp into the ground near the end - he was full on crazy by this point - and had large chunks bought out from under him by Bruce, and was divested of the rest due to his crimes. Lana Lang was brought in to bring the company back to solvency - and she succeeded, but as she was beginning to get things done, she was driven out by a screwy clause in her contract about never helping Superman (I did mention Lex was full on crazy, right? It’s questionable how a clause he put in could be enforceable on someone hired after he was forced out, but whatevs), so what was given back to him after New Krypton was a fraction of what Lexcorp was at its height. Still a rather large company with many holdings.
Bruce, right now, isn’t what he was at his height, either, as Tommy Elliot impersonated him for a time during his sort-of-death-thing, and did some minor damage to his assets before Alfred, Tim, Dick, Selina, Zatanna, and the Outsiders brought him to heel. But the business and real estate remain intact, including subsidiaries and properties that used to be part of Lexcorp.
At their respective heights, Lex would have been far wealthier than Bruce…right now, Bruce ought have the edge. In a couple months time…we’ll see what Lex’s current status quo is.
After consultation with my husband, I’ve gone for Bruce Wayne, on the basis that he was able to finance the Justice League Watchtower.
I’d have to go with Bruce. Whereas Tony’s business seems to operate fairly realistically, where as Bruce is just a guy with an infinite pot of money.
I’ve got a Batman story where he has to fly to the jungle, and rather than find an airstrip somewhere, he parachutes out of a private jet, and sets the auto pilot to crash the jet into the ocean. Are there any real world billionaires who would write off a private jet, simple because its more convenient than parking? How would you explain this to the accountants? In another story, he steals (and destroys) a helicopter gunship from Wayne Enterprises, claiming he can always claim it back on the insurance. Wouldn’t his insurance premiums bankrupt the company?
Not only did he fund it, but per the Justice League pilot episode, he was able to hide his funding of the space station by burying it in a bunch of different WayneTech projects. Bruce Wayne is so rich, he can build an orbital space station by raiding the petty cash of his big projects.
That’s rich.
Funny, I’ve always seen it differently:
1)Luthor: criminal mastermind with a worldwide corporation. Gets elected Prez against the wishes of the JLA. For me he looks like the one with the most powerful organization, so I’ll have to assume it’s also the biggest money making outfit of the three.
2)Tony Stark. International corp but not to the level of Lexcorp. Lots of innovative techs developped. Stark doesnt restrict himself to weapon tech, he very often invests in possible breakthrough techs. So, he has money, that is invested in fields nobody has yet invested in and which will usually prove rewarding (even though there’s always a SV around to mess with the plan)
Luthor and Stark are new fortunes (even Stark, though he technically inherited his starting fortune from his dad, he restarted almost from scratch in the eighties), they’re on the move, they’re dynamic. If one deserves the Bill Gates epithet, it’s them, not Wayne.
3)Wayne. Old fortune. Wisely invested usually, but as Batman is heavily linked to Gotham, I can not see how his money could top Lex. Wayne is regionally rich, not worldwide rich, like Luthor. And if he really was the richest man on the planet, the Gotham (or even Blundhaven) crime situation would be long resolved. The millionaire aspect of Wayne is a facade, contrary to Stark and even Luthor, who seem to manage their business daily. Wayne uses his money to support his crime war, he doesnt work at it. In fact, if he had any heir of legal age, control of his assets should be taken away from Wayne, considering the squandering of his family fortune on batshit crazy ideas (“what? You financed a killer laser satellite?”).
As it is, I tend to see each fortune as reflecting each character’s status in their respective world:
1)Luthor:worldwide
2)Stark: international but not worldwide, usually focused on the USA
3)Wayne: mostly Gotham and its region
P.S: besides, if you take away the “richest man on the planet” award from Luthor, you only end up with a bald git with a poor temper. That’s not great characterization for what is the second most important villain of DC comics.
How about Adrian Veidt, from WATCHMEN? He’s got a company for toys, cosmetics, shoes, medicine, a television series, plus a whole book-publishing thing going on, plus adult-movie distributors and baby-food corporations…
…all of which is small potatoes compared to his other holdings, since his worldwide shipping company bankrolls the R&D company that bankrolls the institute studying extra-dimensional energy sources, all in tandem with the genetic engineering project he’s financing on the island he purchased, meant for use with the intercontinental teleportation device at his Antarctic base of operations after he’s blanketed the globe with super-power-negating rays from all the tachyon generators he’s put in orbit. The guy quietly owns everything from a taxicab line to a weekly newsmagazine to a construction company, y’know?
That is simply not how it is portrayed in the comics. As the primary stockholder of Wayne Enterprises, Bruce Wayne is richer than god. Here is a list of some of the subsidiaries of Wayne Enterprises.
Wayne Industries - Primarily a holding company. Also general research and development. Also controls a number various minor industrial production facilities, most too small to for their own subsidiaries.
Wayne Aerospace - This is a Boeing/Lockheed-Martin sized aerospace company, one of the largest players in the industry.
Wayne Bio-tech - Provides medical equipment and the like.
Wayne Chemicals - A Dow-Corning sized chemicals manufacturer.
Wayne Fuels - A division of Wayne Chemicals, a decidedly minor player in oil, gas and alternative fuels.
Wayne Oil - A division of Wayne Chemicals and a minor player in oil. Although they are growing having recently purchased Luxor Oil.
Wayne Mining - Owns mineral and gem mines in Africa (and likely elsewhere).
Wayne Pharmaceuticals - Major developer and producer of new drugs.
Wayne Electronics - One of, if not the largest personal electronics companies in the world. Everyone has something from them. Think Sony or bigger.
Wayne Entertainment - A subdivision of Wayne Electronics (taking the Sony example further). Includes multiple local and cable TV stations, book publishing, model agencies and newspapers including the Daily Planet.
Wayne Foods - Owner of hundreds of ranches and farms across the Midwest and Western US. Also includes meat packing and basic grain processing facilities. Does not seem to produce end consumer food products.
Wayne Research Institute - A university research partner. Also funds most of Batman’s pet research.
Wayne Institute - A non-partisan political think tank.
Wayne Medical - Regional healthcare company centered in and around Gotham.
Wayne Shipping - Owns and operates a large trucking company, container ships and Air transport.
Wayne Steel - Traditional rust-belt steel company. But it is also currently one of the largest producers of reversed-engineered alien metals.
Wayne Shipbuilding - Producer of small to medium commercial ships.
Wayne Yards - Producer of large ships including warships and submarines.
WayneTech - Computers and AI development.
Wayne Foundation - Bruce Wayne’s charitable foundation. Not actually part of Wayne Enterprises nor a source of wealth. I still thought it worth mentioning.
And there are other listed companies/divisions including Wayne Botanical, Wayne Healthcare, WayneTech Landscaping.
Lex can and does compete with many of these. Wayne and LexCorp are the two dominant Ultra-Mega Corps on the planet in the DC Universe. But in general if you research or produce anything you either work for Bruce Wayne or are in competition against him. He not just a regional player.
You know, I thought Stark when this first came up, but Adrian Veidt may be the winner. Hadn’t thought of him.
Don’t forget monarchs who effectively own whole countries with certain technological monopolies: King T’Challa, Victor Von Doom, Namor, etc. Unlike Wayne, Stark, and Scrooge McDuck, these guys are so fabulously wealthy that money isn’t even a consideration in their story lines. You’ll rarely see them taking time away from their respective pursuits of justice, world domination, revenge and invisible chicks to attend some stupid shareholders meeting.
Damn! I voted too quickly, before I saw the “probably Scrooge McDuck.” Scrooge is undoubtedly wealthier than any of them: Who’s richer, Bill Gates or Scrooge McDuck? - The Straight Dope
Bruce Wayne is probably richer than Tony Stark. Scrooge McDuck is richest.
I wonder if some of the over-the-top Batman wealth elements are in the comics now due to Richie Rich being cancelled. If Richie Rich were still going, an editor might look at a pitch and say, “No, that’s too Richie Rich.”