3. Superman
DC ComicsBrains versus brawns, law versus justice, the showdown between the Blue Boyscout and the Dark Knight needs no introduction. Although both are servants of the greater good, the two are opposing physical and ideological reflections of the each other, as showcased so explosively in Frank Millers legendary
The Dark Knight Returns. Aged, restless, and brooding as always, Bruce Wayne is ten years into retirement after public opinion turns against vigilante justice. Seeking thrill rides and quaffing liquor like all the distilleries in the world failed simultaneously to keep the blood flowing, Bruce clings to a normal life even as Gotham begins to fall prey to new depravities from a group of deranged droogs calling themselves the Mutants. When old enemies and allies alike begin to resurface while the public does nothing, Bruce finds himself overcome by the justice the Batman so unrelentingly demands. Within days hes once again taken to the rooftops in cape and cowl, administering punishment from on high with reinvigorated savagery to those who stalk Gothams streets. But even the worlds greatest detective cannot see all ends, and soon hes got Clark, now a government lapdog, ordering him to call it quits on account of his somewhat brutal methodology. On the one hand we have a galactic castaway endowed with godlike power, yet who fervently believes in and embodies the values of his adopted world with a little Kansas charm and small-town optimism for the future of mankind. On the other we have sheer force of will fueled by the power of vengeance, a near-monastic honing of the body and the mind to be the countenance of justice; his lone crusade which places him fully within the darkness even as he combats it is not one of happenstance or genetics, but one of choice. Born into wealth that surely could have carried him into a life of forgetfulness and frivolity, he instead has chosen a life of ascetic commitment to his fellow man, a fact that that has certainly earned him respect from his peers. One, standing proudly in the sun, is a hero by birth; the other, operating in the shadows, is a crusader by choice. One inspires great hope; the other overwhelming fear. That the two butt heads over what can, and should be done with their powers, is no surprise. That an elderly Bruce, who is after all just meat and bone like all the rest, even defeats the Man of Steel before his "dying" breath is quite another.