SUPERMAN HAS HIS KRYPTONIAN

superstrength and laser eyes, Wonder Woman has her Amazonian agility and lasso of truth, Aquaman has his hydrokinesis, The Flash has his superspeed. Meanwhile, Batman… is Batman. Of course, the joke is that he has tons of money, as Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne matter-of-factly told Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen in Justice League. Indeed, Bruce Wayne - and his alter ego Batman - never possesses a superpower. So, what makes the Caped Crusader a mighty figure that stands tall among the pantheon of godlike beings in DC’s gallery of superheroes?

FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD: HE’S RICH

HE’S ALSO STREET SMART

You can’t argue that a huge part of Batman’s strength he acquires through his wealth. He built a Bat Cave full of state-of-the-art gadgets with Wayne’s fortune. It’s how he funds his entire crime-fighting endeavor: the sleek Batmobiles with all their weaponry, the high tech Batsuits that practically render him as invincible as Superman himself, not to mention the many fancy armories he’s got lined up. Even James Bond would be envious of Batman’s collection! The fact that he even has a Bat Cave hidden underneath his sprawling manor is a testament to how inextricably linked his riches and The Bat’s might are.

Of course, none of the fortune would matter without the man in the suit. He made a choice to use his money for good, and that is the true strength of his character. The closest comparison in the MCU would be Tony Stark. Without the suits, both are “genius playboy billionaire philanthropists,” though Tony has a massive edge in the genius department. Bruce isn’t the brainy type, but he’s certainly street smart. He knows his limitations and utilizes what he has to keep up.

He surrounds himself with smarter people like Lucius Fox to build his armory and the surveillance devices to monitor his enemies. He also knows how to keep good, loyal people by his side; people like Alfred, Robin and Commissioner Gordon who are in it for the long haul. You can say the Wayne Enterprise heir is an astute businessman with his Batman venture as well.

HE’S GOT INHERENT TRAUMA THAT KEEPS HIM GOING

HIS ALTER EGO ALLOWS HIM TO MOVE IN DIFFERENT CIRCLES FLUIDLY

Being both Batman and Bruce Wayne, he’s got an advantage in mixing with the bottom of the barrel and the elites. Bruce deliberately presents himself as an insipid playboy who cares little about the world, distancing his image from Batman’s uprightness. As Bruce, he’s able to access the upper echelon of Gotham’s society: the mayor, law enforcement, the power players - all the people responsible for making the city better or worse. As Batman, he’s able to mingle with the seedier part of the city, depicted so well in 2022’s The Batman. This allows him to do what officials are too restricted to do, as well as discover things hidden from society. He can embrace the worst of both worlds, a key strength in his ongoing quest for justice.

Wise men say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. To Bruce, that is his lasting trauma caused by his parents’ murders. Quite bleak, but think about it: at its core, Batman is a story about a grieving orphan taking on the mantle of a vigilante hellbent on cleaning up the crime-riddled streets that killed his parents. That is literally Batman’s raison d’être, as explored in various iterations. The story almost always begins with a scene where a young Bruce watches Martha and Thomas Wayne get gunned down in an alley. In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, this inherent grief pushed him to search all over the world for a purpose, landing him in the League of Shadow before subsequently leading him to take up the cowl. Critically, the culmination of Nolan’s Batman was when he finally let go of the alter ego and contentedly lived on as just Bruce. The Batman also made this the crux of Bruce Wayne’s journey. Pattinson’s version turned Bruce into a recluse, hiding behind the cowl to cope with the lasting trauma of losing his parents. His character arc involved him realizing that his parents had left a more complicated legacy than he previously believed, forcing him to re-evaluate his entire motivation.

Bruce’s backstory mirrors that of another superhero whose innate drive comes from a parental figure dying: Peter Parker with his Uncle Ben. Without the tragedy, Bruce is almost definitely going to grow up to be just another Gotham billionaire content with running a multinational empire.

BY MATTHEW TIMPANELLI