Batman vs. Superman fights have warped our idea of Superman

Two Supermans exist: The Man of Tomorrow is an infant refugee who was raised with hard work and loving guidance to become a man constitutionally committed to sharing his immense gifts with mankind; the Man of Steel is an alien fighter with blazing eyes whose strength raises doubts about humanity’s helplessness and whose fights shake the foundations of the planet. And one of them is winning — at least in Hollywood.

Pop culture has a constant question: Who would win? This is why we are dedicating an entire week of debates to those who have shaped TV, films, games and comics for good and bad. Polygon’s Week on Who Would Win Week is here.

The dark, conflicted Superman, or even a Superman who’s gone fully over — Superman as the Poor guy — commands the current zeitgeist. In the past few years, there have been The Boys, with its mercurial demagogue-in-the-making, Homelander; the neck-snapping Superman of Man of SteelBy Justice League; the laser-eyed unstoppable force of Ikaris in Marvel’s Eternals. Like the shadows of groundbreaking graphic novels from 1980s The Dark Knight ReturnsSuperman is a faithful tool of American imperialism WatchmenNearly three decades later, Superman’s mighty powers have loomed over Hollywood. Smaller productions like BrightburnYou can even make a super-bad guy of itKind.

It wasn’t always this way: Back in 1978, Christopher Reeves and director Richard Donner delivered a Superman worth believing in. And it’s not that you can’t find the benevolent Superman out there — in comics and on the CW he’s a father and truth teller. How did Superman’s popular image of him become so conflicted? Unwitting and naive? You are a puppet of the majority. Oder as a dictator in wait?

The snap judgment might be that today’s creators view cynicism as hand in hand with sophistication, or misunderstand the character’s classic incarnation and assume it lacks the depth to interest an adult audience. It may be that Superman’s more difficult life makes it easier to connect with.

There’s some validity to all of these ideas, but there may be a deeper answer rooted in the way comics history has made its way to the larger pop consciousness: Superman has become a bad guy because we keep making him fight Batman. We keep forcing him to fight Batman and he loses. When he loses it turns him into the villain. When our favorite comic book stories feature Superman as the villain, Hollywood makes it clear that he is the hero. You must be.

Super Frenemies

Image: Curt Swan/Sheldon Moldoff, Ira Schnapp/DC Comics

Measuring superheroes against each other rather than their villains is the superhero genre’s favorite inversion, and “Batman vs. Superman” recurs so often it could be the encyclopedia illustration for “that thing where a slight misunderstanding leads superheroes to punch each other for a scene until they realize they’re allies.” Some of the most influential stories in the comics canon are inverted stories where Batman and Superman stand opposed to one another.

In Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Superman is essentially the comic’s final boss fight. His Kryptonian physiology is young and spry, where Batman is craggy and battered; he’s the loyal arm of a dystopian American state, where Batman has become a hero of the people that makes that state nervous. Batman fakes his own death at Superman’s hands (a Bat victory in the end) and lives to raise a generation of revolutionaries for another day. Miller returned to his original setting in 2002 and closed the second act. The Dark Knight Returns with the entire Justice League, under Batman’s tactical orders, kicking Superman’s ass.

The Family Dies, the indelible 1988 story arc that canonized the death of Batman’s second Robin, Jason Todd, Superman also plays a government stooge, albeit more gently. When Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini appoints the Joker as the country’s UN ambassador, thus giving him diplomatic immunity for all crimes he’d previously committed (I know, I know, just … go with it), the U.S. State Department asks Superman to have a talk with Batman about how he cannot, under any circumstances, seek revenge on the man who just murdered his son, because it would case an international incident. The two heroes don’t actually trade blows, but Batman does belt Superman across the face, leaving himself with an injured hand and Superman looking like a smug and untouchable jerk.

“Superman” as a stand-in for “the Man” to Batman’s rebellion has become a familiar trope in alternate universe books as well. 2003’s Superman’s Red Son imagines if Superman’s rocket landed in Russia instead of the United States, and he grew up to become a socialist dictator of the globe. Of course, the Batman of this universe was an anti-Soviet freedom savage. In the lore of NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice: Gods Among UsSuperman is driven by Lois Lane’s death to kill the Joker, and create a new order in the world with him as the ruler. Batman leads the resistance. In the current Dark Knights of SteelThe series is a fantasy-themed DC Universe. Superman sets out to kill Batman, but he soon discovers that Batman is actually his half-brother, and thus, a threat to the kingly throne.

Superman and Batman battles are part of every day comic book canon. In 1986’s Man of Steel #3 and 2011’s Justice League#2. Superman, Batman, and Superman were briefly at odds before coming to terms as allies. The first issue of Batman: Hush The following was reported in 2002 Superman The following was reported in 2005 BatmanIn 2015 they fight because a villain took control of Superman’s mind.

This piece isn’t a logistical breakdown of how the abilities of a tactical genius have been measured against a nigh-indestructible man. This is simply to establish the ever repeating commonality — the never ending battle, you could say — of “Batman vs. Superman.” And in any case, the Batman/Superman who-would-win grudge match is not a scientific experiment, it’s a story scenario. While stories might not be as predicable as Newtonian thermodynamics, there are observable pressures.

Ubermensch vs. underdog

Image: Frank Miller/DC Comics

Like gravity pulling an inclined plane towards itself, so does the triumph of the underdog. That is the most obvious hook of “Batman vs. Superman.” Not the emotional heft of two natural allies coming to blows, but the tantalizing puzzle of how mismatched they are as opponents. Each retelling of the clash is the superhero world’s David vs. Goliath.

Ironically, Batman’s status as the superhero most famous for having no powers at all has so codified his underdog status that he is Also known as a hero who “always wins.” The worse the odds, the more satisfying his triumph, and the more certain it is to come to pass. A tabletop gamer might call this “plot armor,” but this means that stories about Batman fighting Superman are already more likely to be ones where Batman wins.

Superman can use these rules in reverse. If the unstoppable strength of the Man of Tomorrow is on the side of the scrappy freedom fighters, it follows logically that they won’t be scrappy and struggling for long. Superman is easier to convert into a wall than an experienced climber. Superman is easier to transform into a Goliath that to become David.

The character’s surface knowledge is still intact, even though there are many fictional shortcuts. These are not the only answers. The pages of Action Comics, writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson is pitting Superman against an alien dictator-god, who has indoctrinated his enslaved populace into a belief system where one’s chains, metaphorically literally, are one’s strength. In his story, Superman’s battle is where it most belongs: in hearts and minds, not fists and biceps.

This does not mean that Superman will be more popular as an antagonist or a hero. Batman needs to be the DC Universe’s most famous, beloved and financially lucrative character. Batman must be our principal character.

I’m the villain in your history

Let’s take a look at the cameo of the superhero. Narratively, it’s enjoyable to see two otherwise isolated comic book settings come together. Logistically, this story was still published in the same book. OneThese settings were created for fans of the setting. This allows for a more natural and preferred point of view. You’re not throwing down hard cash for an issue of Amazing Spider-ManSpider-Man is on display It is notBe the coolest man in the room

So, while X-Men books portray the Avengers as police officers, Avengers stories depict them as a bunch of hotheads. Superman books often portray Batman as a kind of dork.

Image: Peter J. Tomasi, Jorge Jimenez/DC Comics

Image: Brian Michael Bendis, Ryan Sook, Jason Fabok/DC Comcis

In Batman books, Superman’s usually nice, but out of touch, maybe even naive. And that’s just books with cameos. This principle can be blown to extremes when characters are fighting.

It is amazing to read stories where everybody wins, and everyone is right. This is not an easy task. What you’re more likely to see is one side who is right, and a second side who is wrong, but in an in-character way. Marvel Cinematic Universe’s creators decided to adapt this film. Civil WarIt was in an Iron Man movie and not a Captain America film. The easiest answer to the question “Who is going to come out on top in this battle between superheroes?” is “Whose name is on the cover?”

And in the interconnected web of comic book influences on today’s blockbuster Superman stories, Batman is the thousand pound gorilla. He is not only the dominant screen character, but he also appears in Zack Snyder’s films and Matt Reeves’ movies (as an aside-screen appearance). Wonder Woman(see ); Gotham City’s setting and characters have been featured in the Suicide Squad movies as well as two Lego movies. Teen Titans Go! Go to the Movies, Birds of Prey, JokerSoon DC League of Super-Pets, The FlashAnd Batgirl.

That’s a lot of Hollywood creatives familiarizing themselves with the DC Universe at least partly through Batman. And the best selling Batman book of all time — The Dark Knight Returns, which inspired and was referenced in Nolan and Snyder’s blockbusters — is also the most famous example of Superman taking the antagonist role so Batman can look cool and righteous in his own book.

Snyder’s Batman v Superman – Dawn of Justice relishes in replicating the visuals of Frank Miller’s work in TDKR. Snyder is, after all, a big fan, having made his name with a lovingly accurate adaptation of Miller’s 300. But the Batman of Snyder’s films is also one who is mourning a Robin slain by the Joker — a direct lift from The Family Dies.

Image: Jim Starlin, Jim Aparo/DC Comics

This is not to say that all these Batman stories make creators — and new fans that might investigate the Batman mythos after seeing a film inspired by it — believe that Superman is a villain. That’s clearly not the case with Snyder, as conflicted and frighteningly powerful as his Superman may be.

But, if Batman and Superman have a history of famous clashes, and those clashes are mostly told from a Batman-y point of view, it’s going to lead to the perception that Superman makes a better wall than a climber, a better Goliath than a fellow David. It leads to the perception that the out of touch, kind-of-frighteningly-powerful Superman is the Thinking Man’s version, maybe even the more “standard” version. And for the “cynicism is sophistication” crowd, it hands them the false epiphany of “Superman isn’t worthy to wield the power he holds” all tied up in a nice little bow, ready to be trotted out in the ice cold take of “if Superman was real he would be a tyrant.”

Superman isn’t real, of course. He may have been able to fight Batman quite a bit, but that’s partly because it was easier to extract melodrama from their falling apart. As a Batman fan, I was never really sure why I was expected to dislike Superman — he was Batman’s Your best friend. Batman was trusted so much that he gifted him a secret, kryptonite rings and gave permission for it to be used if he crossed the line. Batman refused to participate in Superman’s funeral procession after his death, as he wanted to prevent bomb-wielding men from ruining the occasion. Superman was an uncle figure for the Robins. Batman bought the Daily Planet to keep it out of Lex Luthor’s corporate hands.

Hollywood is most fondly aware of the fact that Batman and Superman were natural enemies. Superman can always beat Batman, if Batman is able to defeat anybody. And if Batman’s always the hero, Superman becomes the villain. It is impossible for Superman to win by not playing.