Batman's willpower

[The Laughing Fish]

I reckon if there's one thing coming close to Batman having a superpower; it would have to be his will to overcome anything against all odds. Whether he has been set up in a trap or poisoned by some kind of toxin, Batman has this incredible mental strength to survive. And some people say Batman is the most "realistic" superhero! Don't get me wrong, moments like this explain why I admire the character the most in comics, but I definitely don't think he's realistic. Nonetheless, here are some examples I've found in the comics.

When Batman investigates Robin's disappearance in Detective Comics #477 – The House that Haunted Batman!, he finds a trail leading to an old mansion outside Gotham City, unaware that he entered a 'haunted' house set up by Dr. Tzin-Tzin – a genius in illusion. After Batman encounters a series of terrifying illusions that were supposed to unsettle him till it made him insane, he finds himself – and Robin - trapped inside tubes where they are forced to bounce on a pad underneath until a timer sets off an explosion...unless he begs Tzin-Tzin for mercy. Instead, Batman remains unfazed and outsmarts his way to freedom before defeating Tzin-Tzin.



In Detective Comics #569 – Catch as Catscan, Batman and Robin found themselves tied up in Chinese finger puzzles by one of the Joker's henchmen, while Catwoman gets abducted. Realizing that the finger puzzles are slowly crushing him and Robin to death, Batman concentrates and saves his strength to break free right before Robin passes out.





In Detective Comics #571 - Fear for Sale, Batman was poisoned by the Scarecrow with a toxin that removed the ability to feel fear; causing victims to feel overconfident and take dangerous and potentially lethal risks. Scarecrow kidnapped Robin and set up death traps for Batman, but Batman survived and rescued Jason by focusing heavily on the one thing he most feared that could happen.



One good example of Batman being held as a captive and suffering a hypnotic spell before freeing himself can be found in Detective Comics #593 – The Fear Part Two: Diary of a Madman. Cornelius Stirk – a villain similar to the Scarecrow - tried to use his fear-inducing powers to make Batman confront his worse fears of feeling powerless to protect the innocent, and tests Batman's seemingly weakened state by attempting to murder another hostage. But this only provokes Batman as he uses his fear for the innocent man's life as the strength he needed to free himself and stop Stirk's madness.




Of course, in non-comics media, Batman overcame his own fears of his father disapproving him as induced by the Scarecrow during the BTAS episode Nothing to Fear, which gave us that iconic line as delivered by Kevin Conroy.

These are only some examples I've checked out recently. If anybody else can find other examples, please go ahead and post them here.

[The Dark Knight]

One of the best examples:

For eight days, Cobb tortures Batman in a maze that contains portraits of Gotham in the Wild Wild West that also details Gotham's history. As Batman begins to solve the mystery that is presented to him, he realizes the court is trying to undermine him and his presence in Gotham by "breaking him". Batman comes to a room of caskets, but does not open them, wishing to solve the rest of the mystery first and attacked and impaled by Cobb. Cobb reveals that as Batman was such a worthy foe, the court will hang his bones in the maze, an honor that only three before him have received. Cobb takes Batman to a room full of members of the Court of Owls who decide on what they shall do with Batman. They allow the youngest member to choose Batman's fate, a young girl who says that she wants Cobb to "hurt him more".

Cobb begins to mercilessly beat Batman to the point that he wishes for death, members of the Court then begin to swarm Batman's body to collect trophies. However, refusing defeat, he revives, surprising the court and comes after Cobb with every thing he has left. Batman is then able to defeat Cobb in battle and virtually kills him, stopping at the last moment. Using his detective skills, knowledge of Gotham, explosives, and construction, he is able to escape. He does this by building an improvised explosive from chemicals he obtained from the court's old style camera and blows a hole through some "softer" marble to escape into Gotham's underground river.

[Catwoman]

This is one reason why I love this character so much. How strong his will is. He just will not give up until he wins. He could beat a statue in a staring contest lol.

I love those comic panels yall posted and the scene from BTAS but my fave has to be the last one TLF posted where he literally breaks free. I would love to see something like that in a movie, where he channels his will into brute strength.

One thing I can think of is in the TV show his insane (and absurd) ability to hold his breath, like when Mad Hatter dumps that plaster on him and they have to chip him out or when King Tut had him suffocating somehow I can't quite remember lol. It was when he kidnapped Robin. I think he tried to drown Batman and Alfred finds him and he's like "Master Bruce! You're alive!" and Batsy says with every bit of Adam West's Shatneresque dramatics, "Barely." lol

[The Laughing Fish]

That's another reason why B66 is awesome. I still haven't gotten around to watching that show again.

Another good example in non-comics media are the Arkham games. In Arkham Asylum, Batman overcame the Scarecrow's fear toxin three times, which lead to Scarecrow stunned and telling Bats the injection he took would've incapacitated ten people, leading him to doubt Batman is human. In Arkham City, Batman survived to the very end of the game despite being gravely ill by the Joker's blood poisoning for the majority of the plot.

But let's get back to the comics and check out more examples of Batman's near-superhuman feats to cheat death.
In Detective Comics #504 – The Joker's Rumpus Room Revenge!, Batman survives a series of Joker's death traps set up for him, and proceeds to surprise Joker by sucker-punching him in the face. Check out this hilarious panel. 



Here is Batman holding his breath underwater when Catman had him tied up to drown to death in Detective Comics #509 – Nine Lives has the Cat.




Batman is known for always having a trick up his sleeve to survive, as we see in 'Tec #477. Another example is in Detective Comics  #532 – Laugh, Killer, Laugh!, where Batman tracks down the Joker's cave hideout in Central America where he holds Vicki Vale hostage, but is forced to surrender when he is outnumbered. Batman had ropes tied up around him while riding on top of a train heading towards Vicki, but Bats is able to think fast and lunges at the top of the cave's stalactites, breaks one of them with the back of his hands and uses them break free, and derails the train with his Batarang before it could run over Vicki.





Another example of Batman's perseverance despite suffering under the influence of a fear toxin is recognising the hazard that's affecting him and Robin as they try to stop the Scarecrow in Detective Comics #540 – Something Scary.



And as Batman figures out the skull device is transmitting signals to provoke the brain's fear center, he jams the destroyed transmitter's frequency to cancel out the Scarecrow's frequency from another copy of his device, so Robin could recover and ambush him for good. Quite resourceful and brave, as Bats explains to Robin in the panel below that he still hadn't fully recovered from his own terrified state.



In Detective Comics #586 – Rat Trap, Batman goes under the sewers to seek after the Ratcatcher, who had sent his pet rats to maul one of his hostages to death when he tried to escape from imprisonment. Batman suffers nasty setbacks along the way, including getting attacked by the rodents, gets flushed out by a sewer flood and vomited after having sh*t covering his mouth. He even shows dizziness as he tries to get back on his feet.




But this doesn't faze Batman too much as he gets up, sets all the deadly rats on fire with a torch and gasoline, and confronts Ratcatcher in his dungeon despite being covered in a dirty, rat-bitten infested costume.




In Batman #251 – The Joker's Five Way Revenge, Batman agrees to surrender to the Joker to stop him from murdering a hostage, and finds himself tied up and fighting to survive against a shark inside an aquarium tank. On top of that, Joker as always doesn't keep his word and drops the hostage inside the tank together with Batman. But Bats uses his strength to fend off the shark and uses the hostage's wheelchair to break the glass with all his strength.





In Batman #321 – Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker...!, Batman surrendered to the Joker (again!) when  Robin, Commissioner Gordon and Alfred are taken hostage and tied up onto overgrown birthday candle bombs. But as Joker ties him up on a candle-like rocket, Batman criss-crosses the wires to set the rocket up in the air, and makes his escape before rescuing the other three hostages by cutting off the candle box fuses with his Batarangs.




I got to say though, as tough as Batman is, he needs to learn to stop surrendering to the Joker. You can't negotiate with maniacs.

[Catwoman]

Those were great!

If you do another set of posts you should just set up the peril, post the images, and then put how he escaped or saved the day below them in case someone (read: me) is too dense to figure it out.

I forgot the Arkham Asylum thing, those Scarecrow bits were scary! But so badass. "What ARE you?!"

That game has his biggest achievement ever though. He stopped Joker and everyone else, cleaned up the Asylum, and found all the Riddler trophies while under the control of ME! lol. Shocking! Of course he had to die like 300 times first (280 of those in Croc's sewer) but that's beside the point.

[The Dark Knight]

The willpower to never give up during Bane's onslaught of villains released from Arkham. And even when he's about to drop from exhaustion, with a fully fit Bane standing before him, Bruce pulls on the cowl "one last time."

[thecolorsblend]

The willpower to never give up during Bane's onslaught of villains released from Arkham. And even when he's about to drop from exhaustion, with a fully fit Bane standing before him, Bruce pulls on the cowl "one last time."

Agreed. I always interpreted that as Batman resigning himself to his death. He wasn't planning to survive the fight with Bane.

In fact, Batman's willpower is such that I've always assumed the only reason he was never selected to be a Green Lantern is because of his darkness and obsession. Yes yes, there's that silly Elseworlds story that tries to convince us he might've been chosen as a Green Lantern under other circumstances but it sucks so bad as a story that I prefer pretending it doesn't exist.

[The Dark Knight]

I always interpreted that as Batman resigning himself to his death. He wasn't planning to survive the fight with Bane.

And really, what choice did Batman have? Bane isn't in Bruce's house for a tea party. He's put down Alfred and Batman is next. Batman putting up any semblance of a fight was irrelevant really. Bane was there to engage.