Iron Man is objectively better than Batman

1. Tony Stark has a way more interesting and fun personality than Bruce Wayne. Isn't it painfully obvious? Granted, some people go for that brooding "my past continues to haunt me" type of personality, but not me. Tony Stark has a quick tongue and a sense of fun that I wish I had the money to finance. Every time Bruce goes all dark and broody on me, I want to yell at him. Look dude, I'm sorry your parents got killed in front of you. But you're a grown-up now, move past all that and get to living. Tony suddenly lost his parents at 17 or 18. While he was older than Bruce when the parental units died, giving him the maturity to handle it better, Tony had a much shorter period of time to glean himself to take over Stark Industries. Brucey had plenty of time to work up to taking over Wayne Enterprises. Oh, yeah, let's not forget that both billionaires spent time in captivity. And STILL, Tony is way more laid back and easy to be around than Bruce Wayne. I've seen both of them on screen; even with Tony's womanizing ways, I would MUCH rather hang around with Stark than with Wayne. 2. Tony Stark does his own design and engineering work. It is no secret of mine that my favorite character in the Batman movies (the ones with Christian Bale, anyways) is Lucius Fox. The guy is a complete hero! Some of the stuff he comes up with for the Bat to use on his nightly crusades are just so awesome it makes ME want to don a bat costume and go fight crime. But herein lies the problem; Bruce Wayne has Lucius Fox make all his toys. Tony Stark does all of his own designing and engineering, from the power supplies and armoring right down to the little forearm missiles that make blowing up tanks an artform So yes, while Bruce's monster bank account funds his Bat baubles, the Stark stash o' cash funds it, and the breadwinner is the architect as well. Sorry Bruce, but Tony graduated summa Com lade from MIT at seventeen. He gets way more awesome points than you for this one. 3. Iron Man isn't a vigilante. Now before you start yelling at me that Iron Man is just a big a vigilante as Batman, let me explain. Batman patrols the streets at night trolling for villains lurking on Gotham's streets. But, he IS doing the jobs of police officers. It's no secret that what the caped crusader does is technically against the law, whether he's working for the police's and the public's benefit or not. Iron Man has jumped into action to do what the US military was already trying to do. For example, in Gulmira, the US military wanted to go in and free the civilians, but mentioned that they weren't allowed to because the terrorist faction was using human shields. Enter Iron Man and Jarvis's selective targetting mechanism. A giant robotic prototype is being activated! S.H.I.E.L.D. agents can't take it down! Iron Man to the rescue! If you really look at it, Iron Man isn't breaking the law when he does his thing. Batman on the other hand? Yeah. You get the picture. 4. Iron Man is virtually indestructible and vulnerable at the same time. Let's face it; no one likes a Mary Sue. I have not yet met a single person who is a fan of a larger-than-life, nothing-can-harm-me-because-I'm-incredibly-awesome character. But, we also like the notion of someone being relatively untouchable. Batman has his ninja-like stealth and hand-to-hand combat abilities. Awesome. Can you shoot the Bat with a tank and have him just get annoyed? I don't think so. How about run into him with an F-22? I think we'd have a dead flying mammal. Iron Man's gold-titanium allow battle armor makes him virtually indestructible to things that would normally incinerate a human being. But, at the same time, he's vulnerable. Take a look at the final sequences, for example. Obadiah nearly kills Tony by stealing the arc reactor from his chest. This arc is Tony's life support both walking around as billionaire Tony Stark AND flying to the rescue as Iron Man. Now, some of you might be saying that Brucey is better because his level of vulnerability doesn't decrease that much in his Batman outfit (which, Fox informs us, is still vulnerable to knives and gunfire). But let's not forget that no one besides Rachel Dawes (who bites it in The Dark Knight), Lucius Fox, and Alfred actually KNOWS that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Thanks to Tony's little press conference, the entire world is aware of this suave engineer's alter-ego. Making him that much more vulnerable out-of-suit. All in all, I think that Iron Man has a more balanced invincibiliy/vulnerability factor, and is much more interesting to watch deal with such. Sorry again, Bruce. You were close here, but Tony still gets the nod. 5. Tony Stark has more reason to don the Iron Man persona than Bruce Wayne has to don Batman. There, I said it. This is a direct response to one of the reasons my pal gave me for Batman being better than Iron Man. He said that Bruce Wayne doesn't have to atone for the mistakes of his past. While I see where he's coming from, I don't think he's looking at the whole picture. Before being taken captive by the Ten Rings in Afghanistan, Tony was making weapons for the US military, but some of them were being sold on the black market to terrorist factions without his knowledge. He remained oblivious, later citing that he had been "naive before." When he got back from Afghanistan, however, he tried to shut down the weapons manufacturing portion of his company. Stane got him overruled, and continued to sell the things behind Tony's back. So I think that technically, these aren't mistakes that Stark has to make up for, but a stronger, more vital reason for him to become Iron Man in the first place. He tried to do it before but it didn't work, so he's doing it the iron soldier way. Bruce Wayne picked up Batman because he didn't want anyone else to suffer as he suffered when he lost his parents or whatever. While this is a very noble cause, I'm tempted to say "sh*t happens." You aren't going to put a complete stop to crime in the world, and Batman definitely isn't seeing as if you want to get technical, he's a criminal, too. Iron Man getting rid of the weapons being used to attack America? That is definitely reasonable. So don't get me wrong in that I like that Batman is trying to rid Gotham of the terrible people, but that's Gotham and that's a hell of a lot of people who really didn't do anything to him in the first place. Iron Man is destroying weapons that originated from HIS factories and had the potential of being used against the UNITED STATES. Tony wins hands down here.