The many times the Caped Crusader knocked the Man of Steel!
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00:00Now, you'd think a brawl between Batman and Superman would be over relatively quickly,
00:03right? I mean, for all of the Dark Knight's gadgets and know-how, a guy who is actually
00:07bulletproof is still a guy who is actually bulletproof. Now, Bats and Supes are supposedly
00:13best friends, but there have been many times where the two have been forced to come to blows.
00:17And some of those times, Batman, through sheer ingenuity or will, came out on top against the
00:22mightiest superhero around. So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:26and these are 10 unbelievable times Batman beats Superman.
00:3010. Batman, Superman, and your number 1
00:32Now, here we are with a fight that sits at the bottom of the list,
00:35since neither party were fighting all that seriously, but it still counts. In this annual
00:40issue of Batman and Superman, the duo find themselves at the mercy of a gladiatorial
00:44arena where they are ordered to fight to the death. Now, obviously, the two aren't actually
00:48going to do this, but in order to buy some time until one of them can think of something,
00:51they at least try to make it convincing. Thus, we see that, in terms of raw fighting ability,
00:56all else being equal, Batman will come out on top. Granted, the conclusion is nothing decisive,
01:01ultimately keeping it from being further up on this list, but the way that the fight was going
01:05at the time showed Batman distinctly at an advantage, so I'm willing to call it for the
01:09caped crusader in this scenario. Also keeping it from getting any higher is the simple fact that
01:14Superman wasn't fighting seriously, so it's hard to truly gauge how well this would have actually
01:18gone for Bruce otherwise. 9. Batman, The Dark Knight, number 5
01:22And this may come as a shock, but the majority of the time, Batman and Superman don't want to
01:27fight each other. Like, not even a little bit. They are friends, and friends don't typically
01:31resolve any issues they have with each other by beating the living daylights out of one another.
01:35So in order to get them to fight one another, writers have come up with rather convoluted
01:39misunderstandings, or failing that, have the tried and true mind-control plotline.
01:44In Batman The Dark Knight, number 5, Batman gets hit with a new strain of Scarecrow's fear toxin,
01:49turning him into a raving lunatic with super strength to boot. It comes down to Superman to
01:53get him to snap out of it, only for Bats to take advantage of the fact that Clark doesn't want to
01:58hurt him by beating him to a bloody pulp. Superman technically wins here, downing Batman with a solid
02:03right hook, which is what keeps this entry from getting any higher, but the caped crusader was very
02:08close to, for the first time, downing the Man of Steel with no tricks, gadgets, or edgelord robotic
02:14suits.
02:148. Superman Red Sun
02:16In this alternate universe where Superman's craft instead landed in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas,
02:21Batman is reimagined as a violent terrorist who hates Superman's guts to the point of gleefully
02:26bombing buildings full of people just to draw him out. Their final confrontation takes place in an
02:31underground mineshaft that the Dark Knight has filled with lamps that all have the rays of a red sun,
02:36thus weakening Superman immediately. If it wasn't for Wonder Woman making the save here,
02:40Superman would have actually, genuinely have been done for.
02:437. Batman Hush
02:45Batman Hush holds the distinction of being one of the most terrifying examples of a Batman-Superman
02:51fight, purely because Batman genuinely comes off as outmatched and way in over his head.
02:55For context, in this part of the story, Poison Ivy has used her powers to seize control of Superman's
03:00mind. When the Dark Knight and Catwoman get close to unraveling this scheme, Ivy sends her new boy toy
03:05to make a nice pair of grease stains out of the both of them. What results is less a fight and more
03:09a desperate struggle to avoid the out-of-control Kryptonian by any means necessary. It doesn't last
03:14long, of course, as Superman demonstrates that if he got serious, Batman wouldn't have even had time
03:18to react before he was murdered. Fortunately, though, Catwoman makes the save by appealing to
03:22Cal-El's primal need to protect others, and she does this by throwing Lois off the side of a building,
03:27thus snapping Supes out of the mind control when he instinctively goes after his love.
03:316. The Dark Knight Strikes Again The Dark Knight Strikes Again follows up the
03:36legendary fight of its predecessor by having Superman invade the Batcave at the behest of
03:40the government, only to find Batman there, waiting for him, with a pair of Kryptonite gauntlets.
03:45No armor this time, which you'd think would make this fight a bit more one-sided, but with Bruce
03:49having wrapped his arms completely in Kryptonite for this fight, Superman can't do much but get
03:53knocked around a lot. This fight is the highlight of this infamous series, but if that ain't faint praise,
03:58I don't know what is. 5. The Man of Steel No. 3
04:01When John Byrne was given the task of rebooting Superman for the first time in the company's
04:05history after Crisis on Infinite Earths, there were, of course, a lot of aspects of Superman's
04:10mythos that suddenly needed to be explained that the original 1930s comics just never bothered with,
04:15one of which being just how exactly Superman and Batman met. With Frank Miller having similarly
04:19rebooted Batman in the pages of Batman Year One as a dark, mysterious vigilante, naturally the two
04:25don't start off on the right foot. Batman claims to be trying to be a little better in his approach
04:29to superheroing, but considering that he starts off their relationship by forcing Superman to help
04:33him stop the villain Magpie or else he'll set off a bomb on an innocent civilian, the last son of
04:38Krypton isn't exactly convinced. It turns out to be a complete lie, of course. After Magpie is put
04:43away, Superman confronts Batman about the bomb, and Bats just puts it in Superman's hand. The only life
04:48in danger was the Dark Knight himself, a ruse he pulled to get Superman to help him stop Magpie.
04:53Now, Batman doesn't defeat Superman in the classical sense here, but he does start off
04:57their relationship by establishing a key difference between them, and that is, I am smarter than you.
05:034. World's Finest No. 240
05:05The Silver Age of Comics was the Wild West for DC, and I don't just mean that there were entirely too
05:10many cowboy comics during that time. Literally anything could and probably did happen. For example,
05:15one of the first instances of Batman becoming a rebel against a tyrannical Superman was actually from
05:20this time, and in true Silver Age fashion, it was very weird. In this story, Cal-El is pressured
05:26into assuming the leadership role of the shrunken city of Kandor, and in a twist that I'm sure will
05:30never be copied by cynical edgelord decades later, almost immediately becomes an emotionally erratic
05:35tyrant over the poor Kandorians. Sensing that they perhaps made a bit of a mistake, the Kandorians
05:40call in Batman to deal with the problem. Bruce agrees, and soon discovers the true route of the Man of
05:45Steel's turn to evil. The monstrous creature responsible for corrupting Superman into a vicious
05:50fascist tyrant is… a cat from outer space. If you caught that reference, congratulations,
05:55you've officially watched way too many Disney movies. So anyway, through a hilariously convoluted
05:59series of misdirections, Batman manages to get the cat off of Supes and get him back to his senses.
06:05Basically the same conclusion as the previous entry, really, but nicer.
06:083. Superman Batman The Trust
06:10This beautifully rendered mini-story by Chip Kidd and Alex Ross is one of the best encapsulations
06:16of Superman and Batman's friendship and how deep it runs. Brainiac has now seized control of the
06:21son of Krypton and is using him to wreak havoc. Now, Superman and Batman aren't idiots, and have
06:27discussed what measures need to be taken should something like this happen. So, Batman pulls out
06:32a gun and gets to bloody work. As you can probably guess, the gun is loaded with kryptonite. So,
06:36as Batman grapples onto Superman's legs and takes aim, it appears the story is headed for tragedy.
06:41But Clark is Bruce's best friend, so of course Bats would never break his one oath when it came
06:46to the Big Blue Boy Scout. Instead of a bullet, the gun is loaded with a kryptonite dart that
06:51accomplishes the same thing without killing Superman, allowing Bats to finally remove Brainiac's
06:56control device. A glorious win for the Caped Crusader, and a touching reaffirmation of their
07:00friendship as well.
07:012. Batman Endgame
07:03The biggest problem with Batman Endgame as a story, besides it being one of the worst offenders
07:08of Scott Snyder's need to insert a chapter's worth of text into a single bloody panel, is
07:13that it played its trump card way too early. The storyline starts on Batman having a knock-down,
07:18drag-out fight with the entire Justice League, and it's so glorious that anything after this
07:22can only lead to disappointment. Case in point, the star attraction of the first half of the story,
07:27a joker-fied Superman going toe-to-toe with an already-run ragged Batman. The world's greatest
07:32detective has used the Fenrir armor and all the countermeasures it has to neutralize half of
07:36the Justice League, but not without taking some licks himself. And while the suit is tough,
07:41this is still bloody Superman that we're talking about here. At the end of it all,
07:45Batman just barely manages to eke out a win by spitting kryptonite gum in Superman's eyes,
07:50sending them both to the bottom of Gotham Bay. Thus demonstrating Batman's ultimate point during
07:55these first two issues, who wins between Batman and Superman? Well, I will take neither.
08:001. The Dark Knight Returns
08:02Despite our dig at Frank Miller in the opening of this list, it could only be this fight at the top
08:06of things. This fight is the biggest reason why anyone remembers The Dark Knight Returns.
08:11Batman and Superman had fought in the comics before, but Miller sat down and asked,
08:15okay, no holds barred, both sides giving it their all, who would actually win and how?
08:20Superman, now a stooge of the openly fascist American government,
08:23rolls up on a blacked out Gotham to bring the caped crusader in. Batman, knowing that this was
08:28always how it was going to end when he took up the cowl, has prepared for the fight with the now
08:32iconic armored suit. The resulting fight is one of the best in comic book history,
08:36a genuine back and forth with both sides employing a mix of strategy and brute force to try and get
08:42the other to stay down. But Batman has something that Superman doesn't, Green Arrow, who hits him
08:48with a kryptonite arrow the second that he isn't looking. The kryptonite doesn't kill Clark,
08:52and Bruce seemingly dies immediately after due to a heart attack, but killing Clark wasn't the
08:57point. The point was to show the world that the US government's superweapon wasn't invincible,
09:01that they can be defied, and even defeated, and that real change can come. And boy howdy,
09:08does that sound pretty good these days.
09:09And there we go my friends, those were 10 unbelievable times that Batman beat Superman,
09:13I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in the
09:16comments section below. As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at
09:20RetroJ but the O is a zero, or you can swing by Instagram where it's the same handle, RetroJ
09:25but the O is a zero. As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that,
09:30and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.