Crossover Events. Part 2: The Quickening

Before reading today’s entry, please take the time to read part 1 of the crossover blog. Do it, or I’ll convince the elves that make your cookies to replace the chocolate pieces with other brown matter.

No use in beating around the bush any longer. Batman and Superman should not exist in the same universe. Yes, I said it. Here is my nerd card; you can shred it if you like. And before you ask, yes this also means I don’t care too much for regularly occurring crossovers such as JLA or Avengers, unless the characters present have powers with a bit of consistency amongst them.

Seriously, am I the only one that notices this? Much like the innocent boy who sees the emperor walking around preparing to parry the attack of a midget sword fighter, I feel like there is something quite obvious that people simply CHOOSE not to see. I won’t lie and say that it isn’t fun to see Captain America and Wolverine walking around together pummeling criminals into the pavement, but come on! This goes together about as well as anti-freeze and dog food, and is one of the biggest reasons crossover events just don’t work for me.

“Cactus, you ninny!” a two dimensional dice throwing 16 year old boy exclaims whilst brushing the shame from his button-up shirt “Everyone knows it’s acceptable to have Batman and Superman in the same universe. Hell, even though Superman is stronger, Batman is the only person besides Captain Marvel that can defeat the last son of Krypton and is the one person all the other heroes would turn to if Superman lost his grip on reality and decided the Earth would have more Feng Shui if it orbited closer to the sun.” Well, well, well, aren’t you the cock about town? How could I have never seen this before? You are so wise and omnipotent! Now in case you recently replaced your head with a pumpkin, allow me to inform you that I was not being sincere in that last sentence. So sit right down, grab a Mountain Dew, and moisten your ears, because your squash is about to get shagged.

People always point towards Batman’s intelligence as irrefutable proof that he could stand toe to toe with the man of steel. Hold up! How does that work? Ok, I’ll admit that thanks to a Human’s advanced intellect, we can build powerful weapons like rocket launchers to take down physically powerful beasts like, I don’t know, say a Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, Superman doesn’t just have the power of incredible strength; he also has the power of EVERYTHING! A rocket launcher or a nuclear bomb might serve you well to dispatch a dinosaur, but if that same dino had: laser vision, hurricane breath, flight capabilities, could move so fast that time would go backwards, or hypothetically punch reality to alter the course of history (or have one of his many “clones” do it), I don’t think that doctorate in Sleuthing or a black belt in Jeet Kune Do is gonna help much.

Let’s examine it this way. Assuming Batman did want to kill Superman he would probably come to battle equipped in a Kryptonite flying battle suit, matching AI controlled Kryptonite bat plane, and have access to a satellite in space that shot concentrated bursts of raw magic. If he was sneaky he might even get a good shot off against the man of tomorrow, but the moment Superman realized that Batsy wasn’t playing around he could (in theory) fly several miles away in a matter of seconds to a train yard and start tossing the locomotives in Batman’s general direction. Given the strength of Superman, the trains would be moving unusually fast, and if he threw enough of them in rapid succession, it might prove difficult for Batman to dodge them and would prove impossible for a jet plane to avoid hitting them all together. Furthermore, this is assuming Batman has said flying suit. Most likely old Bats would be on the ground and in some kind of city. If surrounded by large structures, there would be no escape from this scenario. No matter how intelligent someone is, you are not going to be able to escape when several trains are being hurled towards your general direction going faster than the speed of sound and taking out every building surrounding you. Unless of course your brain was made from billions of gallons of soggy bread and could then probably reduce the force of impact.

Also, what about the The Dark Knight movie? In Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie, we are treated to a gritty, noir, detective story that just happens to feature Batman as the main protagonist. This is a cool concept and really elevated Batman to a silver screen legend. The movie works because while it’s not focusing on any one particular Batman storyline from the comics, it does take the very essence of Batman, his uncanny detective work, and shows him at his finest. Would this movie, with all of its edge and cleverness, be made more enjoyable by adding a scene with a man flying past Batman and throwing cars everywhere? No! Batman is a wonderful character who works stupendously within the framework of his own stories. The same goes for Superman.

So what possible scenario could warrant having both of these men join forces to do battle? I suspect if aliens invaded, Superman would fly off to battle whatever forces assailed the Earth while Batman stayed behind to play Yu-Gi-Oh cards with Robin, and by Yu-Gi-Oh cards I mean Batman would sit Robin down and watch Broke Back Mountain until the two of them uncomfortably touch hands by accident leading to gay love sometime in the near future.

By now I fear that I’m starting to sound like a Marvel nob gobbler, but let me dispel that illusion with this uncanny epic level prestidigitation. What the hell is with the X-men, or any mutants for that matter? Why is it that the people of Marvel Universes 616 and indeed all Marvel universes love and praise characters like Captain America and the Fantastic 4, people who received their powers from freak accidents or experimentations, but absolutely hate Mutants? Yeah - that makes about as much sense as a Doctor Strange’s fashion sense.

I would write more, but I’ve had a long day and I am getting super bored, super tired, and if anyone saw that I was writing a blog of this length about the wackiness of comic book rational, everyone would think I was super retarded.