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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8789157" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, it is worth noting that that's a Batman who spent--as he explicitly says--"years and a fortune" for that one moment. Ten minutes, in which he exploited the psychology and weaknesses of Superman, where he had everything planned out to the Nth degree, even faking his own death at a carefully-timed moment.But that's the difference between Batman and Superman. I'm not so much trying to diminish your point as add nuance to it. Batman is, and has always been, a Crazy Prepared Detective. He plans, he prepares, he weaves plots within plots, has contingencies for every occasion.Batman is the Odysseus to Superman's Hercules, or perhaps Achilles. That is, Odysseus doesn't have particularly special strength or speed (though he is quite good with a bow), but he is, as the Romans put it, Ulixes sapientissimus graecorum, "Ulysses, craftiest of Greeks." (Technically it can also be translated as "wisest of Greeks," but the force of the phrase is very much emphasizing that he's wily as hell; other descriptors include audacissimus, "the most audacious/daring.") Hercules was also crafty on occasion, as when he tricked Atlas into taking back the job of holding up the sky, but craftiness wasn't his stock-in-trade. The two never had a showdown as far as I can tell, but it's certainly implied that Odysseus could pull off some pretty crazy shenanigans purely through being ridiculously intelligent, guileful, and well-prepared.In a straight fight, with no prep work, Batman gets completely flattened by Superman. His only hope is to somehow run fast enough to escape. But Batman almost never permits a straight fight, and Superman--absent stuff like mind control--is too much of a Boy Scout to stoop low enough to exploit a total lack of preparation.If allowed to prepare to his heart's content, Batman will beat Superman. Raw strength isn't enough. We see this quite clearly in a very different context, All-Star Superman, near the end where he's fighting a super serum-boosted Lex Luthor. Luthor fights like a dumb brute, solely using his strength, and gets outwitted several times by Superman--ultimately, having his powers whittled away by Superman's gravity gun. An unusual case where it is Superman himself who must use cunning, planning, and trickery to defeat someone bearing his own nigh-invulnerable powerset, but without resorting to Kryptonite along the way. But, as with the previous, there's little reason Superman would have to let Batman prepare to his heart's content, if a contest between them has to occur.So that leaves us with an inherent unsolvable question. On the zero-prep end, we know that Batman loses. On the 100%-prep end, we know that Batman wins. But where does any given story fall? The openness of the question is exactly what makes the confrontation interesting. There is no universally-right answer. "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."</blockquote>

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