Aww yeah. It's exactly what you think.
Batman (Bruce Wayne) is being represented by ComicStooge
Captain America (Steve Rogers) is being represented by Wolverine08
SETTING:
RULES:
- Morals on
- Combatants start where pictured
- No knowledge
- No prep
- Bruce has standard gear (minus his sonic and magnetic weapons) and suit
- Cap has his trusty shield and MARVEL NOW suit
- Bruce is Pre-New 52
- Win via KO, Kill, Incapacitation or BFR
@wolverine08: 'Murica?!@Comicstooge has the bat factor!
@wolverine08: The gods and Batman watch over @Comicstooge!Your dictatorship ends!
Batman needs no gods.
@reaverlation: The gods watch over Stooge? This is but a nuisance to me since I and Captain America have something greater on our side, 'MURICA!
America can't save Steve from the Bat-kick! Which is fueled by JUSTICE.
Oh man two top tier debaters debating one of the most infamous of match ups?
DO NOT FAIL THE CAP @wolverine08. TO FAIL THE CAPTAIN IS TO FAIL AMERICA ITSELF.
I'LL BE WATCHING.
I think Wolvie08's Canadian.
This man needs no introduction.
Alright. I'm not about to lie here - Steve is indeed Bruce's physical superior.
However, this hardly makes Bruce any sort of chump in comparison however.
Physically, the dude is literally the peak of human perfection in terms of what a normal man can achieve. No steroids needed, just the product of hard work, determination and a lot of money.
Strength:
In terms of raw strength:
However, I bet you're asking yourself 'Well, these are nice feats against inanimate objects CS, but what can Bruce do against actual characters?'
I'm glad you asked that question. Here are some of Bruce's showings against established characters:
I think these scans show that Steve isn't just gonna walk all over Bruce with his strength advantage. No sir, Bruce's strength is impressive enough that his other attributes can indeed allow him to counter this.
Speed:
Another attribute that needs mentioning is speed. Once again, due to the SSS throwing through Steve's veins, he is indeed Bruce's superior in this department too.
However, this won't stop Bruce from keeping pace, at all.
He has other, non-projectile based feats of speed too:
Basically, Bruce is very fast. He'll be able to keep pace with Captain America throughout their battle without getting overwhelmed by his superior speed.
It's relatively common knowledge that Cap can run a mile a minute in terms of running speed.
Bruce can clear 10 feet in less than a second:
This is in a short burst, but still cool.
Alright, I could cover a few more things, but I don't want to go over too much at once. I think I'll just finish up by highlighting Bruce's agility.
Agility:
This will help him avoid Steve's pesky shield throwing tactic.
Overall, I think these feats help to highlight that Bruce is far more fluid than Steve. This will help him manever around the environment better and avoid Cap's shield throws.
Given I think my intro is long enough as it is, I'll go ahead and just give some basic information on Bruce's skill.
While Steve Rogers is undoubtedly a skilled hand-to-hand fighter, I think Bruce is simply better in that regard. While I won't post scans of his battles yet, I will go over various sources outlining his skill, his raw knowledge of martial arts and also his teachers:
Here are a number of source's all confirming Bruce's insane level of hand-to-hand skill:
However, don't just take the word of the sources. How about flashbacks of Bruce learning these techniques as well as revealing his teachers.
I'd say Bruce's training under these incredibly gifted fighters far outshines Steve's training under "private tutors".
And accordingly, Bruce made the most of his time as their student.
His knowledge of martial arts is immense:
All this evidence is just background information to the real meaty stuff, which are Bruce's combat showings. Still, I think this background information is enough to show that Bruce's skill's are more than a match for Cap's.
The sheer wealth of knowledge Bruce possesses and the number of styles will make him a very difficult opponent to counter. He could swap styles during the fight, while recognizing those Cap uses and changing up his tactics accordingly, to keep Steve on the defensive and possibly surprising him.
Overall there is still so much more to go over in this fight and I'm excited to see where this debate heads.
Your turn @wolverine08.
@comicstooge: Let's get down to this potentially awesome CaV, shall we?
The man I am about to present to you is no ordinary man. He's a man of massive stature and his reputation proceeds himself. He most definitely promises to be one of, if not the hardest street level opponent Batman will ever have the luck of trading fistcuffs with. I now give to you the First Avenger and America's Super Soldier, Steven Rogers, Captain America!
The first aspect that I will be addressing during this debate is the physical difference between Captain America and Batman. You did give a pretty awesome run down in your opener of showcasing why Batman is one of the most physically formidable non enhanced street levelers around Marvel and DC land, but to first start off with my look at these two men's physicality, I want to address just where Captain America's physical state is for the sake of the readers of our debate. One of the things I see most often see argued about during Captain America vs Batman debates is just where Captain America's physicals are among the street level hierarchy. Terms like "peak human" get thrown around to describe what Steve does physically, and does type of generalizations could not be anymore wrong. I'm sorry folks, but Captain America is not a normal human. You can't work hard enough and get to where he is physically. For starters, look at what the scientists who conducted the Project Rebirth experiment on Captain America noted where Steve's physical capabilities had been taken to by the Super Soldier Serum:
They described Steve's physical state after the experiment after to be that of the next step in human evolution. What this means that wherever human beings can potentially evolve to physically is what Steve is capable of performing. The overall point is that no regular, non enhanced human is capable of performing at an equal plain physically with Steve.
Captain America also has bios that explicitly note that he is an enhanced human.
Just for another tidbit surrounding Captain America's physical state, Captain America once called Black Panther(An enhanced human who has done things like bulldog and kill 5 ton rhinos and stopped the charges of elephants themselves) his equal in a bio speaking in his voice.
Ed Brubaker(One of Captain America's premier writers of the modern age) has even gone out on a limb to note that the physical comparisons to Batman and Captain America are silly, and that Steve is at the next step of human evolution physically.
"I agree with parts of a lot of people's comments here and elsewhere. But I think it's a bit funny to see people get so bent out of shape when a guy who's given something called the "Super Soldier Serum" turns out to be a bit more than the average human. He's been leaping out of the windows of eight story buildings and across city streets in NYC, dodging bullets, doing amazing feats of speed and strength, since I started reading the book in the early 70s.
My take has always been that Cap is the peak of human POTENTIAL. What humans might someday be able to do, physically, he already can. If it was just about having an olypic-level athlete, do you really think all these groups and scientists would have been wasting 50plus years trying to replicate the SSS?
All I've done is have him say outloud what's always been pretty clear to me as a fan of the character. He's always been a lot stronger and faster than the average well-trained athlete. And I've always hated the Batman comparisons. Batman trained himself, Cap got given a miracle serum. I'm not making that up or changing anything.
Daredevil is more like Batman, physically, and yet in Born Again, Cap races by him so fast he's a breeze. As for Cap running 60mph. In the comic, I think he says he can run a mile in a little over a minute when he HAS to. It's not even implied that he can keep that up all day. It's a full-on burst of speed, when he has to."- Ed Brubaker
I hope that in depth explanation was good enough to grasp the incredible physical heights Captain America has reached through the Super Soldier Serum. Now that I have hopefully cleared up any confusion surrounding Steve's physical capabilities, I shall get to the nitty gritty of Steve's physicals.
The first two physical attributes that I will be addressing are strength and speed.
One of my favorite strength feats for Steve is shown below:
Steve has shown himself capable of bench pressing 1,100 lbs.
At the time of this incident, Captain America was dying at the moment, and had his body preserved in ice. A cure was eventually found and injected into Steve which lead to the following sequence of events in which he broke free of the ice. Why is this so impressive? Steve had just been restored back to health and was immediately left with the immensely freezing temperatures to deal with and with no leverage or momentum to aid his escape to freedom. Despite all of this, through sheer will power and strength, Steve managed to bust out of ice.
(Right to left)
Steve has also managed to push down a bolted door while he had a bad arm that was heavily bleeding.
He also tosses anchors:
and even pulls down helicopters using a rope with his strength:
Steve has also shown that he is strong enough to leap two straight stories in the air.
Top cap off my look at Steve's strength, I'll demonstrate just how hard Steve is capable of throwing his shield to create devastating damage.
Recently in Captain America: Living Legend, Steve showed that he is capable of throwing his shield with such force that he can completely decapitate and turn over a military tank turret. These things on average weigh 16-20 tons.
The second physical attribute I will address is speed. One of the best ways to gauge a street levelers speed is to see how he or she dodges bullets. Now I know you are most likely thinking that dodging bullets is a pretty commonplace street level accomplishment so why does it really prove anything? Well, you have to look at things deeper than that. Most street levelers do avoid bullets, but they are often just dodging the aim of the shooter, not the actual bullet. Captain America is a completely different animal. He's a legitimate bullet timer.
As for why Steve can pull off this insane feat, the scan below gives a clear explanation.
Steve's enhanced brain lets him literally "see" bullets in slow motion. This advanced perception lets him dodge bullets after they are fired.
Now for some of Steve's numerous bullet timing feats.
Here, in one of the tensest moments of Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, Steve managed to dodge a gunshot from a brainwashed Winter Soldier after he asked him to shoot him to see if he truly did not know Steve.
(Right to left).) As you can see, Captain America clearly reacted after thegunshot in question was fired and not only managed to dodge the gunshot, but also precisely throw his shield.
Let us not forget that Bucky is not some random merc we are talking about here. He is a rigidly trained soldier who's accuracy with guns has allowed him to do things like this:
Another infamous instance of Steve bullet timing is shown here:
Analyzing this instance, Steve not only managed to dodge several point blank bullets in this small room, but managed to completely outrun bullets after they were fired in this extremely tight room to save a civilian.
Just one more bullet timing instance for you:
Here, Captain America managed to dodge several point blank gunshots yet again while moving so fast that the shooters didn't even see him or notice that they got disarmed.
That insane reaction has also let Steve do things like dodge three consecutive blasts from Lady Lark, which move at the speed of sound.
He has even vanished like Batman has:
Steve has also been clocked running at 60 MPH on three separate occasions now:
For the final point about Captain America's physicality, I am going to have to counter your assertion that Batman is a more agile physical specimen than Captain America. Among the showings that you used to try back up your claim, I'd say that Batman's performance against Nightwing in Batman #600 is the most impressive out of all of them, and that itself can be attributed to the large skill disparity between Bruce and Richard.
For Steve's agility: Now Batman evading some random guys is indeed a good showing of agility, but what about this instance from Civil War?
Here during one of the escalating instances of Civil War, Director Maria Hill tried to have Captain America subdued by a group of armed Cape Killers. After Steve gave these "little" men a good beat down, he blasts out of a window, and while free falling, still manages to evade a massive amount of bullets. That's insane agility.
Another instance that I feel highlights Steve's agility is shown below:
In this instance, Captain America had just been punched by 50 tonner Warrior Woman out of a roof and into the sky. Despite this, Steve was able to swiftly rebound in mid air with a backflip and still land on Black Panther's plane.
Evading an explosion with great grace is also another feat of agility Steve has picked up over the years.
I think this three instances succinctly show that Captain America is more agile than Batman.
Now, looking at first glances regarding Captain America and Batman's level of martial skill, I am willing to concede that Steve is not Bruce's equal in terms of technical skill. While Captain America does possess an insane level of technical skill himself, it along with his training history do not match up to some other high end martial artists like Batman, Iron Fist, Wolverine, etc. Nevertheless, Steve has a great enough level of technical skill along with his physicals that will allow him to aptly compete with Batman. He also has an X factor that I will expound on later in this post.
For starters, Steve has noted that he has some of the most rigorous training among any fighter(You can see him with a karate gi, indicating that he has a high level of martial training and is rated as a level 6/7 fighter in his official handbook entry.
Steve has even gone panel to note that he is adept in every form of combat known to man while fighting Baron Zemo.
He also has a pretty sweet knowledge of pressure points:
Now for some of Captain America's skill showings in actual combat.
The first two showings I am going to be looking at are unenhanced showings from Steve.
In Steve Rogers: Super Soldier #3, Steve got reverted back to his natural 98 lbs. physical state and still showed enough martial prowess to curbstomp three men who were enhanced by the Super Soldier Serum. Now, I know you may argue that these men may be "fodder", but the showing itself is still incredible. To be reduced to such a debilitating physical state and still defeat three men with physical prowess that exceeds your's so greatly is undoubtedly a great showing of skill.
Looking at another unenhanced showing, Steve managed to beat down Crossbones unenhanced during Streets of Poison. Crossbones has proven himself to be a pretty adept combatant with numerous performances giving Captain America and Winter Soldier problems in fights.
Steve has also curbstomped Batroc the Leaper(The French mercenary who is extremely skilled at Savate)
I mentioned earlier that Steve has an X factor here that will make up for his lack of technical skill compared to Batman. That X factor is Steve's physical talent. When I say "physical talent", I don't mean things like strength, speed, stamina, durability, etc. what I mean is that Steve has an instinctual, almost supernatural affinity for combat that has been pointed out many times.
Kang the Conqueror(A war genius) was flabbergasted by Steve's ability to adapt to zero gravity combat better than warriors who have been training at it for decades.
Black Panther, one of Marvel Earth's most skilled combatants even noted that Steve was able to instinctively adapt to any fighting style thrown at him(This shows that nothing Batman brings to the table skill wise will throw Steve off)
Beast( Another genius) has also taken note that Steve can master any weapon in seconds.
Overall, this almost supernatual instinct for combat situations will allow Captain America to hang with anything Batman throws at him skill wise while also forcing his own will on Bruce throughout the fight.
Well, that's my opener for now. Here take Captain America's shield, Steve thinks Bruce is going to need it after the beatdown he gives him :)
Alright, now for Round 2!
Alright, I think you've made it clear why Steve does have an edge against Bruce, in terms of strength and speed. However, as I highlighted in my first post, these advantages are nothing Bruce can't overcome.
Striking power:
Furthermore, while raw lifting strength is greater, it's striking power that's really important in a debate.
Now, I'm aware of a lot of Cap's more impressive durability feats and I think it's pretty clear Bruce's hits hard enough to make Cap feel his attacks, regardless of his enhanced physicals.
Speed:
In regards to Cap dodging an attack moving at the speed of sound, that isn't all that impressive. As Bullets actually travel faster than sound.
And while true, the skill gap between Nightwing and Bruce may have something to do with Dick not being able to touch him, but I doubt that's all it was. Bruce wasn't even fighting back for most of their fight.
Cap's brain and senses might be enhanced, but that hasn't stopped peak humans such as Batroc, Bucky, Crossbones, Daredevil etc from landing strikes against him. He's not untouchable.
Especially by Bruce.
Even while in freefall Bruce is no slouch in regards to reacting to skilled marksmen either.
Agility
While those were some awesome agility feats from Cap, how's his agility when he's maneuvering in small spaces? The landscape for this battle is hardly a flat surface or up in the sky, this is cluttered city with buildings, ruins and cover everywhere.
Bruce has shown himself to be highly skilled at using his agility to traverse and fight in cities, like so:
Does Cap have any feats to match Bruce in this regard?
You've shown some highly impressive feats from Cap, but Bruce has feats that match or surpass Cap at almost every turn:
Cap isn't the only one who can adapt to fighting in unfamiliar situations.
Bruce has stalemated the likes of Lady Shiva:
Defeated King Snake, another highly skilled martial artist and broke his arm:
And he's decisively beaten David Cain. Cain didn't even land a single strike:
David Cain has trained Bruce himself, Cassandra Cain, Deadshot (in the ways of marksmanship, but this still strengthens my other point). Hell, just look at this guy's bio:
I'd like to point out the line about Cain and fighters on his level, including Batman, fight without a style. They've gotten to the point where utilizing styles is obsolete.
This isn't the first time Bruce's skill has been highlighted in this manner:
"The grim purpose that burned inside him was growing, demanding direction, seeking release. He looked further, to the East. He learned karate from an ascended master in the Paektu-San mountains of Korea--Savate from a convicted killer living as a beach bum on an island off Borneo. Six months in a japanese hermitage taught him the value of Judo and Ju-jitsu. From a chinese woman so old she should have been dead, he learned the secrets of the Tao, that nothing is fixed, everything is fluid, everything is energy. He mastered a dozen disciplines, experimented with them and fused them into something that was uniquely his own."
- Shadow of the Bat #1
Cap won't be fighting or adapting against a man utilizing a style that Cap can adapt to, he'll be fighting against a man who's created the ultimate fighting form.
@wolverine08, your move.
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