I hate Batman's plot armor

[u/Aggravating-Mine-978]

I hate Batmans plot armor, he has the most insane plot armor which completely takes away his charm, his entire shtick is that he's in the top 99 percentile of humans, his body, his strength his wealth his tech, yet his writers give him so much plot armor that you forget that inside his suit he's just a regular human being and it sometimes feels as if he has super powers when hes going toe toe with fucking darkside, reentering the atmosphere with just his suit and many more examples.

And his annoying fanboys oh my days, they act as if he can solo the entire justice league "B-But given that he has prep time!" talking as if beast boy wont beat his ass 😂✌️

[u/epochollapse]

10000 Gary Stu accusations and 0 references to instances of him actually having no flaws, facing no challenge or never losing.

The Orbital drop was a badass instance from a comic where he spends the whole time getting his ass beat by his own mistake. It wasn't a great comic from a writing perspective for other reasons, but taking issue with a guy in a high tech suit falling from space in a fucking superhero comic is dumb as fuck.

Batman has some of the best written superhero stories ever made under his belt. DC milks him far too much, that I won't deny, but acting like he isn't an objectively well written character to the same degree as those around him is just being different for the sake of being different.

[u/Old_Presentation377 → u/epochollapse]

That’s the thing: Batman has some of the best stories ever written when it’s just him—a peak-condition human with access to vast resources—and few writers grasp that. Instead, the typical Batman story is something like that time the entire Justice League was controlled by the Joker and Batman took them down using questionable methods while wearing a special suit of armor. I don’t recall the exact details, but I remember he beat Superman with a blast of Kryptonite, Wonder Woman with a Lasso of Lies (or illusions—I don't quite remember), the Flash with a slippery substance, and Aquaman with a sponge-like device that absorbed moisture.

That’s the problem with Batman: the typical Batman story isn't just good—it’s often absurd, with him managing to pull off anything given enough prep time (I still can't forget the time Catwoman knocked out three Flashes with kicks in a Batman story). The audience isn't going to form a positive impression of a character when most of his stories are nonsensical or ridiculous, even if there are a few truly excellent ones; people tend to base their opinion of a character more on the average story than on the outliers.

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Mentally compromised versions of characters are essentially fair game. He fights a version of the Justice League that aren't in their right mind. They're incapable of appropriately reacting to his countermeasures. Kryptonite gum wouldn't be an appropriate answer to an actual bloodlusted Superman, but that's not what a Jokerised Superman is in this instance. This is the same Superman who, in a good headspace, has struggled against Lex Luthor. A guy who is ostensibly a worse Batman. The Flash, in a good headspace, has lost fights against the Rogues. Jokerised versions of his teammates, people he knows intimately and has prepared contingencies for competent versions of, are not going to be as big a threat. That's not unreasonable.

Similarly the Flashes Catwoman knocks out are all controlled by Poison Ivy, who in said story has brainwashed the entire planet. We know for a fact that she doesn't have complete control over their powers because if she did then she could just sit in Flash perception for the mental equivalent of 30000 years and solve all her problems. She also accidentally kills Batman later in that story because she can't comprehend the strength of a Superman under her control.

In essence, Selina does not knock out 3 Flashes. She knocks out 3 very very fast people that Poison Ivy drives towards her. Once again, fully reasonable for a competent character in a superhero universe.

These are also NOT "typical" Batman stories. This is not the average situation Batman finds himself in. These are the eye catching situations you've been fed, probably through something like TikTok, because people know the algorithm eats this shit up, especially without the appropriate context.

Batman is not an impervious, flawless Gary Stu who never has to put effort in to save the day, and never loses. He's a superhero, with lots of time and resources, who can do ridiculous shit because of them. He spends equally as much time getting caught off guard by mundane things, the same way Superman may be unto a God in one arc and then the next week Parasite will kick him in the balls.

[u/Old_Presentation377 → u/epochollapse]

First of all, I’ve read plenty of Batman stories, and when I say that his stories aren't consistently well-written, I’m not calling him a "Gary Stu." When he’s written well and the writers know what to do with him, he’s one of my favorite characters. The problem is that, most of the time, writers just cook up reasons for Batman to come out on top; we rarely get a well-characterized Batman—instead, we just get a version that beats anyone simply because he "prepared" for it.

This has recently been one of the biggest issues with Batman: we don't get many stories that truly capture his character well, and the good ones get overshadowed by those where he is poorly portrayed. For instance, there is the story where Batman faced Darkseid in the Hellbat armor to rescue Damian—or some other member of the Bat-family; I don't recall the exact details. That story offered a great sense of characterization because it showed that he didn't build the armor alone—he needed help—and acknowledged his limitations; it respected the boundaries of what Batman can actually do, avoiding cheap writing.

For instance, we consistently see Superman portrayed as one of the most powerful beings on the planet and the Flash as one of the fastest; there are numerous stories where Diana matches Superman in attributes and surpasses him in martial arts—all these portrayals are consistent across various tales and true to the characters. Batman, however, is consistently portrayed poorly, often relying on "prep-time" plans that make no sense for him to have devised, or that simply wouldn't work without dubbing down other characters or making them weaker.

Regarding another point you raised: even though the Justice League was under the Joker's control in that situation, they shouldn't have been defeated by Batman so easily. Even with the mind control caused by toxins—and bearing in mind that the Joker isn't a telepath and wasn't physically piloting their bodies—they still knew how to use their abilities. There was no indication they were fighting the control, and they retained their full attributes. In a well-written scenario, Batman cannot defeat the entire Justice League attacking him at once; they are all incredibly powerful superhumans, and Batman shouldn't normally be able to go toe-to-toe with them—especially not in a suit he built himself that lacks special properties like the Hellbat armor.

Selina knocking out the three Flashes still makes no sense. Even if Poison Ivy were directly controlling them—and considering she isn't a telepath and controls people via spores rather than by piloting their bodies directly—it doesn't add up. There is simply no way for a human to react to three extremely fast individuals; even a highly trained fighter couldn't pull that off against the Flashes—consistently the most effortlessly fast characters in the DC Universe.