One of the major reasons I titled this series the way I did is because of the story I'm going to talk about today. Batman is known as a man with a plan. Whenever I hear an argument about who would win between Batman vs. whomever, the most popular phrase that people use in their argument for Batman is, "if he has time to plan and prepare...". This is mostly true. I say mostly because Batman is not unbeatable, and even when he plans something out not everything goes according to that plan. But that's also why he's so great. Batman can adapt to a situation and improvise on the spot.
The most famous story of Batman's strategies, paranoia, and secrecy is called Justice League of America: The Tower of Babel or the animated movie Justice League: Doom. In this book, members of the JLA are being immobilized and Batman quickly realizes that it is HIS fault. He's not doing it, but it's HIS plans that are being used. It turns out that someone stole Batman's plans on how to immobilize the JLA if it ever became necessary.
For this story, the active members of the JLA are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern (Kyle Raynor), The Flash, Aquaman, The Atom, and Plastic Man. In order to not give away too much of the story, I'll just talk about the individual plans to take out each member of the JLA.
First up was Martian Manhunter. Batman knew that J'onn J'onzz's weakness was his fear of fire. Batman's plan for him was to fire a military grade missle at him, but instead of exploding it released a gas. The gas was filled with microscopic nano robots that make Martian Manhunter's skin flammable when exposed to oxygen. So no matter what the poor guy does, he's constantly set ablaze.
The next two heroes to suffer from Batman's plans are Plastic Man and Aquaman. Plastic Man gets shot with a device that freezes him to his core (he can't die) then is shattered into millions of pieces. The Flash has to use his speed to put Plastic Man back together and then he's put into a big tube to help defrost him.
Aquaman is injected with a fear toxin that makes him terrified of water. Obviously, with a name like Aquaman you can guess that that's where he is most powerful.
That still leaves 4 very powerful teammates; Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern. Kyle Raynor is not as experienced of a Green Lantern as Hal Jordan is, but the story is also about how Batman used his friendships against his friends. So there's a flashback scene of Batman talking with Green Lantern at JLA headquarters. Batman finds out that Kyle Raynor is an artist and that's where he gets his inspiration for his projections. Batman's answer to immobilizing Kyle Raynor is taking away his inspirations, so that means taking away Raynor's sight. Green Lantern wakes up one morning to discover that he's blind. It turns out that while he slept a message was suggested into his brain, causing him to lose his vision. I know, I love comic book science too.
Then Wonder Woman and Flash are attacked. Wonder Woman is injected with a device that makes her think that she is in constant battle. She's actually unconscious but in her mind she's fighting for her life. The strain on her mind and body actually causes her to have a heart attack.
Meanwhile the Flash gets shot with a special bullet. Knowing that he would start to vibrate as soon as he felt the pressure of the bullet, this special bullet gets lodged in his spinal column and forces his body to experience epileptic seizures at light speed!
That leaves Superman. Well how do you stop Superman? Magic and/or kryptonite. In this case it's kryptonite, but not the green rock that we're used to. In this book, the bad guy experimented on this kryptonite and increased it's radioactive half-life and therefore shifting the color to create RED Kryptonite. This doesn't kill Superman, but it's radiation is still strong enough to mess with his Kryptonian physiology. It actually causes Superman incredible pain!
Of course, because Batman isn't actually causing these things to happen, he works with the JLA to help his friends. They reunite and take out the villain, as usual, but Batman's relationship with the team is forever changed. They don't trust him like they used to and are now better aware of what Batman is capable of.
So now the question is...What would Batman do against a different super hero team? Say like the Avengers or the X-Men?
We'll get into that next week!
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