10 Comic Book Villains Humiliated By Batman

3. Darkseid - Final Crisis

Final Crisis Batman Shoots Darkseid gun
DC Comics

Final Crisis is crazy, yes, but it's also crazy good. Grant Morrison's Batman run was phenomenal, and Final Crisis marks the occasion where it went from great to spectacular.

DC's last big universe-spanning crisis event saw the murder of a New God, the return of Darkseid, and the anti-life equation in action. Superman steals the show for a lot of it, as he fights off cosmic vampire monitors through the multiverse, but Batman gets *the* big moment of the comic, confronting Darkseid with a gun that fires radion bullets - a godkiller by any other name.

Darkseid, like so many figures before him, isn't concerned when Batman threatens to upset his plans, calling the Dark Knight a "little man" who wouldn't stand a chance against Darkseid's Omega Beams. Batman's reply? "Try me."

The Caped Crusader fires the radion bullet that would allow Earth's heroes to finally defeat Darkseid, but it comes at great cost. Darkseid's Omega Beams do indeed catch up with Batman, who seemingly perishes in a haze of cosmic energy. It would later transpire that he'd merely been jettisoned back through time, which only further cements this moment as one of Batman's greatest victories.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.