10 Times Batman Won A Fight He Should Have Lost

By Tom Baker /

7. Versus The Mutant Leader In The Dark Knight Returns

Looking back, The Dark Knight Returns actually pointed towards Frank Miller€™s fascistic tendencies long before the likes of Holy Terror! and his now-infamous blog on the Occupy movement made them explicit. This is, after all, a story where a young group of anti-establishment teens are beaten down by an old rich man. Regardless of the politics involved, the elderly Batman€™s triumph over the leader of the €œmutant€ gang is total BS. In fact, The Dark Knight Returns shows how the fight should€™ve ended, with the first confrontation between the two: the elderly Bruce Wayne gets his ass handed to him by the huge, stacked Mutant Leader. Even his newly-designed Bat-Tank can€™t take this one muscly, pale guy down, being almost torn apart with his bare hands. Batman€™s the guy whose whole power set is his gadgets and fighting prowess and, really, neither of those improve much between their two match-ups. He only won the second time so the plot could move forward.