Dr. Daniel P. Malloy said:
It’s a perennial game among geeks of every stripe to ask who would win in a fight between X and Y. What if Spider-Man fought Darth Vader? What if He-Man took on the Hulk? Who would win between Galactus and the Anti-Monitor? One of the oldest of these arguments is what if Batman fought Superman – who would win? The commonsense answer is Superman. Superhuman strength, speed, senses, flight, heat vision, X-ray vision, and superbreath? No contest, right? Wrong. Batman wins. Hands down. Every time. Why? Because he’s Batman. He’s ruthless, he’s intelligent, and he’s always prepared.
In large part, Batman’s string of upsets against Superman is due to the way that the two of them approach the fight and each other. Superman views Batman as a friend in a conventional sense. He trusts Batman and believes (incorrectly) that he would never harm a friend. As Batman himself once described their differences, “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person. And deep down, I’m not.” Superman approaches confrontations with the Dark Knight with kid gloves. He pulls punches, leaves himself open. He expects Batman to fight honorably. More important, Superman understands what he could do to Batman if he wanted to. The power he wields makes it all the more important for him to restrain himself. So even in the heat of battle, he doesn’t use every advantage against Batman. He doesn’t use his speed or ability to fly; he tries not to use his heat vision or his arctic breath. Essentially, Superman wants to come as close to fighting fair as he can.
And that’s why he loses – Batman doesn’t fight fair. He’s not in the same fight as Superman. He knows very well that Superman has all the advantages in a fair fight – so why bother fighting fair? Batman uses the environment to his advantage. Sometimes that means using the city’s entire power grid to stun Big Blue, as he did in Hush. Sometimes that means setting things up well in advance – things like hunter missiles activated by X-ray vision, or charges that will drop ninety tons of rock onto Superman on cue, [or use kryptonite]. Any advantage, however small is worth using.
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