Batman and Superman's friendship, like all long-term relationships, is based on playing on each other's strengths and weaknesses but seldom acknowledging them. Superman is the muscle; Batman is the brains. Occasionally, Superman, in his blunt reporterly fashion, will remind Batman that he's as vulnerable and powerless as a China doll.
But when Batman asserts supremacy in his department it's always more subtle... too subtle for lunkhead Clark to detect with his supersenses. And for extra snottiness, Batman will do it in haiku (not that Clark "How many paragraphs does the story need to be again?" Kent would notice!).
"It's certainly a
complicated gadget! I
wonder how it works?"
I imagine this spoken in the same tone that a parent takes when handed a page full of crayon scribbles which he's told is a giraffe: "Why, it certainly is a giraffe,Clark! I think it's the best looking giraffe I've ever seen!" Superman answers in the solemn-child voice with his version of, "I don't want stupid Kara messing up my picture. I shall put on the very top of my toy shelf, where she cannot reach, so that she will not damage it."
Naturally, what's really going on is that Batman is analyzing and memorizing the design and circuitry so that he can reverse-engineer it, while Superman stands there blankly posing for the Kandorian quarter. Superman loves having his face on quarters.
Before Superman can get around to examining the mechanism at his Fortress, he'll have to shoo the cockroaches out of Jimmy's apartment, convince Lois she's turned into a witch, teach Perry a lesson about eating fruit from alien trees, capture Luthor before he's had the chance to change out of his prison greys, and wonder idly whatever happened to that superpowerful dog he used to live with. Before Superman can get around to examining the mechanism at his Fortress, Bruce Wayne will have had his lawyers file the patents, gone into production, and made several tens of millions on the device, whatever it is. Either that, or his copy will be ensconced on a table in the cave, lit by a single overhead and labeled "Complicated Bad-Gadget", put into use against the criminals of Gotham and dusted by Alfred daily.
What haiku can you compose to celebrate Batman's sneaking condescension of Superman, or the machine that inspired it?
You keep the gadget,
ReplyDeleteor you can trade it in for
Carol Merrill's box.
Not a haiku, but I would pay good money to see anyone in Batman's Rogues Gallery defeated by a "Complicated Bad-Gadget".
ReplyDeleteIs this more or less
ReplyDeleteadvanced than the device that
fashions your spit curl?
Nice one.
ReplyDeletewith respect to Frank Miller,
ReplyDeleteIt's krytonite, Clarke.
It took years, cost a fortune
Luckily, I have both.
--WSAsianBoy
"Batman and Superman's friendship, like all long-term relationships, is based on playing on each other's strengths and weaknesses but seldom acknowledging them."
ReplyDeleteI thought it was based on wearing each other's clothes and impersonating each other at the slightest pretext.
maybe it comes down to the same thing.
That's one of their mutual weaknesses. You'll notice they never talk about it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the matter Bruce?
ReplyDeleteNot one clue? I thought you were
the Goddamn Batamn