In universe, who is generally the "lead suspect" for being Batman?

In universe, who is generally the "lead suspect" for being Batman?

Superman. Not kidding.

You see I think of this the way I think of the question "Who's the zodiac."
The question isn't really "Who is he" since he's probably just some fucking rando, the question is "Why hasn't he been caught"

Bats.

well among the general population there's probably a debate around if he even is human so I think that's probably the bigger question

Harvey Dent pre defacement
Jim Gordon

Bruce Wayne.

This

This. Most people suspect bruce but cant prove it.

Why would they suspect some alcoholic playboy who doesn't even show up for company meetings?

Its pretty freaking obvious.

Most people think that batman HAS powers. That the police has MULTIPLE batmen running around, that he is an actual demon given Gotham's story and that5 he is a vampire.

Pre Two Face Harvey Dent was a suspect for people in the know. That is, people who even thought he was human, or even anything but an urban legend.

My question is, who does he spar with? I do MA and if I spend any time out of the gym even if I work out on my own some things start to slip. So before he had the whole Bat family who was he practising/sparring with? Alfred has some shit but in every aspect Bruce is a million miles ahead, it would be like sparring with a child. Even my Sensei's sons holding back in sparring with me is just overpowering even when going slow.

Its gotta be somebody close to his level to keep him sharp. Maybe Ted Grant? Bruce is for sure not going down to the local Teakwondo club beating up all them little kids.

do you not know his origin story? he travelled around the world, he had plenty of people to spar with.
read: zero year

>Ted Grant
Isn't wildcat's fighting style brawling and boxing compared to Batman's more eastern incorporated martial artistry. I feel like Batman vs Wildcat would be like pic related

Lots of people actually do think it's Bruce, but it's literally just one more theory on the pile of them. In universe, Batman and who or what he is is one of the biggest conspiracy theory magnets in the world, up there with stuff like Roswell, Area 51, and MKULTRA on our world.

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Fuck zero year, that was a fucking turd of a story
Year One is the only backstory you'll ever need. And in it, he spars with trees. Because fuck you.

Donald Trump.

couldn't they literally just get some of his DNA off a crime scene to find out who he is

moot point. He's the world's greatest detective, he doesn't leave any. Locard's Exchange Principle.

he's so good at preptime, he doesn't have any dna

What are you talking about? The Bat-man's just a myth used to scare little kids in Gotham into not committing crimes!

>Bruce Wayne disinfo shilling

You think he posts on Sup Forums and Sup Forums?

SHUT IT DOWN!

Even if Bruce Wayne was Batman he wouldn't have the time to post here

Not how it works man. You dont train once and thats it. Its a constant learning and refining. Ive been doing Judo since 9 and you never stop learning. Traditional gyms, sport based gyms. Those years in college put me back, even though I worked out and was home to train on holiday.

Yes he may have travelled and learned a lot, but a coulpe years of just fighting thugs as your inly ne on one training he may loose some of the finer points.

Ufc fighters, boxers, judoka all have of seasons and all have to train back upnto fighting shape. Its summer now, we ae going into tounament season, judo meets all over.

Is Bruse going to the local Bujinkan or Genbukan ninjitsu school once in a while? Does he have so dudes he trains and spars witb privetly some days? Nobody talked? Nobody notices this rich boy can really fight?

>training doesn't matter
>I'm a giant asspull to keep me from getting my ass handed to me

But we basically know who the Zodiac is. And he's dead now.

You don't seem to understand what he's saying.

He spent YEARS training with the best martial artists in the world. He lived, breathed and slept martial arts. He basically spent every waking moment training.

He didn't just beat up thugs for awhile, he fought only the strongest fighters there are.

Yeah for some reason casuals can't wrap their head around that Bruce isn't constrained to their shitty life. He didn't work 8 hours a day, he only trained. For years.

Robins are the giveaway.
Each Robin is a different height, each boy is adopted by Wayne publicly, each Robin has a new costume.

Too bad this was never used as a plot.

Bruce wayne being batman is the equivalent of the ted cruz is the zodiac killer meme

I think the question is who he sparred with during his time as Batman before the Robins showed up to keep himself in top condition without his skills rusting.

IMO that would be a good comic idea. Maybe he had some sort of VR simulation to keep his skills top-notch.

Literally this.

There would probably be tons of fake joke articles about it, and people pointing out "Four Robins = Four Adopted Sons!!!!" ironically, but no one would really take it seriously.

Do civilians in the DC universe know that there are four Robins?

He did have VR in newer versions, before that dummies.

He started working with Dick less than a year after he became Batman.

So, wait... does that mean Cruz IS or ISN'T the Zodiac Killer?

I doubt it. Batman already doesn't make public appearances except with the League and Robin doesn't even do that. Most people probably think Dick and Tim are the same guy.

They might know about Damian, at least after a couple years.

Remember, like 95% of the time when someone actually sees Batman, it's while they're getting their fucking ass kicked.

It's dead obvious he is, user.

Morrison even played with this. There's an issue where Bruce is trolling the CBR forums saying that Batman is Bruce Wayne.

This is actually how Tim Drake figured out who Batman was in '89. He figured out that Nightwing was Dick Grayson, and from there Batman couldn't have been anyone other than Bruce Wayne. As far as I know though nobody else has ever done the same tho.

I've heard that it's Superman, but I'm not sure where that's from.

Oh really well my fault for being a casual then. That's pretty cool.

Didn't Batman meet Dick during Year Three? I'm working off of Dark Victory though, so I don't know how canonical that is anymore, or even if it ever was.

Several trained soldiers. How else can he get around so quickly?

1) Bruce's DNA and fingerprints aren't on file anywhere, nor are the Robins. Whenever they get on file he moves heaven and Earth to have the records deleted, erased or altered. No records search will turn up a match because no one has a copy of Bruce Wayne's DNA to match to.

This second one I can't source... I know I read someone mentioning it in an ancillary Bat-book exactly ONCE.
Bruce has bribed/convinced the medical examiner to spoil all samples of Batman's blood. They did it consistently enough that after a few years everyone just assumed that "Batman did something to his blood" to make it un-sequenceable. It became the prevailing logic and so no one tries to match his DNA anymore.

That always seemed fishy to me, bribing the ME, and I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else again.
That having been said -- I CAN picture a chief medical examiner choosing to spoil all the samples him/herself, and that seems like a very Batman-mythos explanation. One good cop, covering for Batman.

Fully in-universe... Bruce would probably get the Martian Manhunter to make the lab guys spoil all the DNA samples they got AND reinforce the general notion that Batman's DNA can't be read. But that's not a very Bat-ish explanation.

Either way, there IS a canon explanation (however obscure) and, depending on how you think Bruce goes about it, it makes perfect sense. (Especially combined with Bruce's fanatical devotion to keeping himself and his wards' DNA and fingerprints out of circulation.)

>Do civilians in the DC universe know that there are four Robins?
They've gotten newspapers (or at least websites) to publish pictures of other people wearing the Robin suit to confuse the issue. ...at least that happened pre-Flashpoint.

Luthor pulled it off the same way
Whole world knew who he was that time though so it makes no sense luthor was the only one able to work out bats identity from there

Pre-Flashpoint Tim had the best secret identity.
Post-Flashpoint lots of people know he's Red Robin... including at least one government agency. (But Tim apparently never lived with Bruce during the 6 months he left his family behind to be Bruce's sidekick. I guess he had an apartment?)

Post-Flashpoint is an ungodly mess and should really just be ignored. Didn't they say straightfaced that Dick never lived with Bruce or something?

Wasn't Dick just a kid that hung out with Bruce in the new 52? It's still stupid that Dick having a public identity is never a plot point until the third Grayson annual and even then that's more about other heroes knowing about him and not his time as Nightwing.

>Wasn't Dick just a kid that hung out with Bruce in the new 52?
The New 52 is 12 ounces of stupid in a 6 ounce jar.

Just ignore everything they've stated on the issue. Now that Rebirth is here they're just gonna soft retcon everything, like the Secret Files and Origins books in the late 90's constantly snipped and tucked the worst inconsistencies cropping up after Crisis. (It's why book flourished, a consensus on what history had been like was finally reached and so writers were able to build off it instead of avoiding it!)

It'd be really interesting if part of the Titans losing their memories also includes key moments in the lives of the sidekicks and their mentors.

Youre forgetting that Batman is a fictional character who can take on a bunch of guys with guns using just his bare hands.

I dont think he's really constrained by needed to train as much as a real life person.

Well he lived in Bruce's house in just about every flashback, so no

I doubt they knew the difference between Dick and Jason. They probably do see the difference between Tim and Damian since they wear very different costumes.

But Ted Cruz is alive

Turned out Leviathan was just Talia al-Ghul, again.

I was pretty disappointed tbqh.

Yes but nobody ever caught the interracial couple that burnt him alive.

They all have blue eyes and black hair.
The public doesnt thing he adopts them, they think bruce is a manslut that had those kids in the past, he adopts his own bastards

heh, Tom Waits was fun in that movie

considering the latter WAS batman, they gothamites may be smarter than we give them credit for

he spars with criminals every night, also robins and robots

This is awesome!

They know there were different Batgirls. It was mentioned in a Birds of Prey issue, somebody said they saw a redhead girl wearing a bat on her chest, and another asked if it was like the "old" Batgirl, the one that they remember for having massive tits.

They knew that Cass, Steph and Babs were all different, just not specifics.

Riddler and Joker knew Dick wasn't Bruce just by looking at him, didn't they? They're not normal, though, I guess.

Isn't the answer Ted Cruz?

The dude who turned into a Werewolf in the O'Neil/Adams story where it shows Bruce being super homoerotic with some dude called Remus or Lupus at the gym before discovering it's a werewolf.

Batman sparring with a werewolf makes sense.

A major Red Robin arc centered on Vicki Vale using Barbara's impairment to work outwards and deduce the identities of several Gotham heroes. Tim and Dick had to team up to derail the investigation and punch holes in her theories.

Yeah, but Tim "Mary Sue" Drake is considered to be a fucking genius. Also he discovered it was Dick due to some acrobatic feat and Tim basically got lucky with that random clue.

All of Batman is canon. Read Batman RIP to understand why.

>even Zero Year is canon along with Year One Bruce has taken lots of drugs
>both intentionally and unintentionally due to Joker/Scarecrow/Poison Ivy/half the Gotham villains

About the whole Robin thing outting Bruce as Batman, does anybody outside the superhero community really even know much about them? The general public probably just assumes its all the same Robin.
Or like two different ones at most.

Jason should have been the giveaway.

I'm pretty sure that media was having a field day and rumours were everywhere when Bruce adopted Jason. A street kid out of nowhere. And Robin seems younger and shorter. Then, Jason died in some really suspicious and strange circumstance, Robin suddenly disappeared and Batman is acting really crazy.

I means, come on. That should have been freaking obvious.

Nobody would have known that Robin disappeared and Batman was acting crazy. Only criminals would and they wouldn't have brought it up because it would be openly confessing to crimes.

How old jason was when he got adopted by bruce? And how much younger than dick he actually is?

12, and he was younger than dick by 7 years.

>MKULTRA

Except MKULTRA did happen and has been declassified by the government. No theory, just a fact of history.

I'm pretty sure that they did. Gordon himself was suspicious that something happened to Robin.

In pre-crisis when Dick left the Robin mantle and Jason has yet to take it, newspapers were wondering what happened to him and it was a big in the front page when he finally appeared.

Isn't Year One only canon to the Millerverse?

>younger than Dick by seven years

Damn that must have been hard to swing when Damian came on the scene. How old was Dick supposed to be towards the end of Post-Crisis? Nearly thirties?

The fact that some evil genius hasn't invented face recognition technology that can discover super hero identities is nothing short of amazing.

Luthor used one long ago to find out who Superman was, then dismissed the results. NOBODY considered doing a project like that?

I guarantee you that when King started writing Batman he viewed Year One as Batman's origin.

And I'm confident if you asked Scott Snyder the origin of Batman he'd also actually say Year One.

Zero Year is a hallucination of Batman due to drugs he took willingly or unwillingly. Willingly to understand the Joker (Batman RIP for reference); or unwillingly cause half the villains use mind controlling drugs.

Jason is meant to be sixteen when he dies. So that would make Dick 23.

What is that people dislike about Zero Year anyway? I thought Year One was as dope as the next guy does but Zero Year was solid, it was my favorite Snyder story honestly.

But then Jason is dead for some time, comes back, exists as Red Hood for a while, etc. How old is Dick by the time Damian rolls around and gets established?

Why does only Earth 1 Batman have money on his bat belt?

Which is totally in character for Bruce, he once frequented an investigation forum along side Riddler and Detective Chimp, back when Riddler reformed.

because visa is everywhere you want to be

Captain American Express btfo

So he actually closer to Tim's age than Dick's?

Yeah, he was older than tim by 1 or 2 years at most.

>Nearly thirties
I think he was 30 and jason was 23 by the end post crisis.

>Good thru: FOREVER

I like to think that the gangbangers generally choose whatever cop hassles then the most and try to tell others that he's totally Batman so they look good for having been beat up by a cop.

Also I like to think that nobody expects Bruce Wayne. Instead there are tons of weird ideas about who he really is. I mean a drunk playboy who ritually adopts children probably has a ton of theories floating around. One of which is that he's totally The Joker.

The only people who would see them together are people about to get a concussion or Jim Gordon. Batman is all about stealth and I doubt most people can see him or his accomplices long enough to identify them.

Came to post this.

I remember there is a strip from old NTT comic where Dick says it doesn't take a genius to figure out Batman't identity once people know his identity. So Post-Flashpoint is just really really dumb, makes Luthor is the only one with average intelligence,

Clayface literally did this
Except he took DNA straight off of Batman's face

Hi Bruce.

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This is some terrible art.

A man with the time, discipline, dedication, resources, and motivation: Lex Luthor !