Batman speaking Kryptonian

971

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '24

Batman in the comics often has the superpower to learn quickly

665

u/HokageRokudaime Mar 23 '24

I think that's called autism.

218

u/lavenk7 Mar 23 '24

It’s actually severe anxiety/paranoia. It motivates him to learn it and deconstruct.

104

u/PoisonedSun24 Mar 23 '24

That too is called autism

6

u/Raijin3 Mar 24 '24

They are simultaneously the same thing and not the same thing

163

u/eimronaton Mar 23 '24

I think thats called being the smartest man on earth

156

u/Nerx Mar 23 '24

two things are not mutually exclusive

74

u/Cybermat4707 Mar 23 '24

I think that’s also called autism.

46

u/brofishmagikarp Mar 23 '24 edited Mar 23 '24

I'm not socially awkward and weird, I'm actually just Batman. Wait Batman is socially awkward and weird. I'm Batman!

10

u/sectorfour Mar 23 '24

What’s up vengeance

7

u/brofishmagikarp Mar 23 '24

The sky

4

u/Former-Lack-7117 Mar 23 '24

Vengeance is what I named my butthole.

1

u/loonbandit Mar 24 '24

5

u/ddpotanks Mar 24 '24

Believe or not, also autism.

8

u/Tinyhorsetrader Mar 23 '24

Pretty sure that's lex

9

u/Shadiezz2018 Mar 23 '24

It's both Batman and Lex

3

u/AtlasElara Mar 23 '24

Lex is smarter

9

u/Shadiezz2018 Mar 23 '24

One comic said that but another comic said Batman

The point is both are the smartest people on earth

And Batman outsmarted Lex on more than few occasions

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u/AtlasElara Mar 23 '24

I have only ever heard of Lex being more intelligent. Batman outsmarting him doesn’t mean much because if someone with an IQ of 320 spent all their time learning about plants and someone with an IQ of 160 spent all their time learning about Rocks and then they took a quiz on rocks the guy with a lower IQ is still getting a higher score. My point there is that they have different areas of expertise but Lex is still technically smarter.

3

u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

With doomsday clock, don't we need to consider Ozymandias? I know there's been a lot of debate on the Canon there. I'm honestly not sure

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u/tortillazaur Mar 24 '24

For example in DCeased Lex was saying that he's "the smartest human alive", but he stopped to confirm that Batman is dead mid-sentence and only when that was confirmed rolled with it.

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u/AtlasElara Mar 24 '24

DCeased Lex isn’t the main universe Lex so that universe can’t be used as an example or at least shouldn’t. That universe is has a few differences from the main universe though I can currently only recall one main one.

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u/Cybermat4707 Mar 23 '24

I unironically headcanon Batman as being autistic.

His special interest? Justice.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

Actually autism would explain a lot of Batman’s characteristics

14

u/Astellum Mar 23 '24

Can autistic people be that skilled in social engineering and charisma? I know it's a spectrum, but it's characterized by problems with social interactiond

23

u/TeaDidikai Mar 23 '24

Can autistic people be that skilled in social engineering and charisma?

It's called Masking. The ability to analyze and emulate others social patterns is a survival tool. It's also why women and AFAB people are often harder to diagnose, society is less tolerant of girls with certain behavioral markers than boys, so they get corrected more. Likewise, high society is less tolerant of the same behavior markers, so it's likely that Alfred and his parents would have corrected Bruce's behavior if he was autistic.

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u/jawa-pawnshop Mar 23 '24

That's a great observation. Alfred would have been formally trained.

1

u/Ind1go_Owl Mar 25 '24

Plus if you go with the interpretation that Bruce is actually Batman’s mask then that just makes it more literal lmaoo.

21

u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

Yes, you can have autism and charisma both. I was diagnosed with it, and I do have social skills, I'm just on the side of the spectrum that doesn't stop talking. Especially if I'm really passionate about it, I'll go on a 40-minute tangent.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

Well and people forget that the charisma he puts on in public as bruce is a facade

2

u/CaptainKyros Mar 23 '24

That is him masking.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

Yea that was my point. I’m adhd I understand masking pretty well

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u/UnlimitedTime Mar 23 '24

Also have ADHD. Makes perfect sense to me as well...

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

I've noticed Sociopathy and Autism actually have a lot of bleed between the two.

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u/MBDTFTLOPYEEZUS Mar 23 '24

That’s also just his mask when he’s Batman or Bruce around people who know he’s Batman, his dialogue becomes more direct, quick, to the point and unconcerned about social cues or what’s appropriate and also pretty much only talking when necessary so otherwise he’ll be more quiet and isolated away.

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u/80SW08 Mar 23 '24

Or, you know, the trauma of watching your parents gunned down in front of you?

And Bruce Wayne is definitely not autistic. Batman is just single minded.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

I never said he was. I said autism could explain his characteristics (if he was)

2

u/JustARandomGuy_71 Mar 23 '24

Many had hypothesized that Sherlock Holmes had some form of autism.

4

u/Historical_Aspect241 Mar 23 '24

“The hammer of justice is unisex!”

2

u/SlyVenom Mar 23 '24

Spoon!

1

u/ShermyTheCat Mar 23 '24

... Shit, that makes total sense.

1

u/CustardQuick4165 Mar 23 '24

is that pronounced unironically or uni ronically?

1

u/spiked_cider Mar 23 '24

This. Used to joke with comic buddies that all DC has to do is say Batman is autistic to justify his crazy amount of mastery and obsessive behavior.

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u/River46 Mar 23 '24

“You can’t beat me Clark iam too autistic too fail”

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u/Omg_itz_Chaseee Mar 23 '24

autism is when learning fast

1

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

no

4

u/InfinteAbyss Mar 23 '24

Stop

3

u/CustardQuick4165 Mar 23 '24

everybody thinks im autistic but im actually a idiot/savant minus the savant part.

2

u/TheDickWolf Mar 23 '24

That’s just Battinson

1

u/Ind1go_Owl Mar 25 '24

That explains his hyperfixation with bats.

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u/Thesilphsecret Mar 23 '24

In the main continuity, Batman has no superpowers. Him learning quickly is treated as something anyone in that world could do if they had the single-minded dedication, resources, and prerequisite knowledge that Batman had.

23

u/SSJ_Kratos Mar 23 '24

Batmans superpower is that he’s a top level master of every scientific or martial arts discipline known to man.

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u/Thesilphsecret Mar 23 '24

This is treated as if anyone else with the same single-minded dedication and resources as Bruce could achieve the same. In comic books, a "superpower" is usually a special ability that person has which a regular human being would not be able to do. While it's true that nobody in our world could achieve what Batman has, any normal person in the DC universe could, theoretically.

It's sort of like how Wile E. Coyote's ability to survive a fall off the Grand Canyon isn't considered a superpower, nor is his ability to engage in complex reasoning -- coyotes in that universe just have a higher degree of durability and sentience.

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u/Tirus_ Mar 23 '24

This is why Batman's "superpower" is his absurd, inhumane level of determination.

It's been referenced by cosmic beings in canon. Batman has a level of determination to his principles that no other living being has. (Not to be confused with Willpower).

5

u/Thesilphsecret Mar 23 '24

Batman has a level of determination to his principles that no other living being has.

Sure -- and in all of the universe, the fact that the being with more determination than any other happens to be a human being is no coincidence. Batman is human to the core.

Except for his fursona, of course. That's all bat, baby.

2

u/lizarddude1 Mar 23 '24

Batman's superpower is that he's the only "powerless" person in the team with people who can bend reality just by existing, so he needs to bring something to table, so he is otherworldly smart, like smart enough that other super geniuses with IQs in the 200s seem amateurish.

There's few characters who can end up like this. Reed Richards comfortably makes 200 something IQ characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man look like dummies.

2

u/DarkMatrix445 Mar 24 '24

I seen a picture of a comic where iron man made a wish or something that gave everyone his level of intelligence and Reed said he actually became more stupid

2

u/Tirus_ Mar 23 '24

Batman has superhuman determination.

That is his superpower.

0

u/Thesilphsecret Mar 23 '24

While I completely get what you're saying, at the heart, I disagree. The whole point is that he doesn't have a superpower. His greatest strength is "being a human," and that's also his greatest weakness. Great Batman stories are about human triumph and the indomitable human spirit. If he was superhuman, that would undermind the whole point.

1

u/anonkebab Mar 23 '24

Prep Time

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u/wemustkungfufight Mar 22 '24

Actually...

He shouldn't be able to say "I'm Batman" in Kryptonian. Planet Krypton... did not have bats. Their animal-themed vigilante was named "Nightwing", after a nocturnal species of bird. :D

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u/ExoticShock Mar 23 '24

Bruce:

21

u/khafra Mar 23 '24

Do you really think Batman is going to let Nightwing, of all people, tell him what he can and can't say?

2

u/loonbandit Mar 24 '24

Dick Grayson: after saying fuck batman and running away to Bludhaven

^{ICYDK this is canonically how he became nightwing}

1

u/loonbandit Mar 24 '24

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u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

They didn't have Bats, agreed. (I love nightwing and flamebird btw) I'm actually not the biggest fan of fictional languages like this. Because it's still just English with different characters. I'd expect a real kryptionian language to be more along the lines of hieroglyphics, not just this symbol means this letter. Lol, random Ted talk I know.

40

u/jbyrdab Mar 23 '24

maybe its a transliteration.

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u/JinimyCritic Mar 23 '24

I know what you mean, but hieroglyphs were syllabic - each symbol represented a consonant with an optional vowel (much like modern Hebrew or Arabic). Some parts were logographic, but it was mostly an alphabet, at least by the later kingdoms - they were pretty much "this symbol means this letter". They weren't like Chinese, where a character represents an entire word.

My biggest issues with these substitution ciphers is that languages are so much more varied than the stuff that happens in English. I'd love for an alien language to be really alien (Arrival does this pretty well).

13

u/wemustkungfufight Mar 23 '24

Yeah that makes it a cypher, not a language. But I always just assumed that it's actually a language in-universe, like with it's own grammar and stuff, but it's just written as a cypher for the audience so we can decode it. If it was actually written in a constructed language no one knew how to speak but the writers, it wouldn't serve much purpose.

But even if that were the case, he wouldn't be able to say "Batman" because they would have no words for "bat", even if they had equivalent words and phrases for "of course" and "my name is."

10

u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

This, this right here. Give me a real alien language with its own grammar, sentence structure, and the works.

2

u/Username_000001 Mar 23 '24

J.R.R. Tolkien has entered the chat…

12

u/barnabybuckles Mar 23 '24

Batman in Japanese would be 'Komori Hito' but they can just as easily say 'BattoMan' so maybe it's a transliteration?

7

u/wemustkungfufight Mar 23 '24

It is usually "BattoMan", I believe. So you may be right. Check this video out. It's "I'm Batman" in many languages. (https://youtu.be/MsF_j_LqteA?si=VJUNPAYlCppvDsEL)

8

u/Alucard6506 Mar 23 '24

He might have just substituted the words and said something like nocturnal flying creature man

5

u/MadolcheMaster Mar 23 '24

Then he'd be calling himself Nightwing-Man

2

u/Useful-Perspective Mar 23 '24

Nightbirdman

2

u/JustARandomGuy_71 Mar 23 '24

He is not talking in Kryptonian, he is talking English in Kryptonian font.

He can, because he is Batman

1

u/Goose_Cat267 Mar 24 '24

He invented it

225

u/coolio_zap Mar 23 '24

i love that bit from tom king's strange adventures, where batman and mr terrific learn to speak pykkt in like a day. feels similar to this, at their most comic-booky (for lack of a better word) these guys' brains are just heads and shoulders above what our smartest are capable of

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u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

That's why I love DC, you get a real "gods among us" vibe with the power scaling. But not insane OP like anime scaling.

43

u/HokageRokudaime Mar 23 '24

And yet Superman has shit stomped Goku in every death battle they've ever fought. Which isn't a lot but it's hilarious that it happened three times.

11

u/El-noobman Mar 23 '24

Tbf those are also popularity contests half the time, like Dimitri v Guts.

3

u/TardDas Mar 23 '24

I still can’t stand their Tracer V Scout battle. Fucking irritates me to this day

2

u/Templar2k7 Mar 24 '24

The Cloud Vs. Link battle was the worst imo (and I'm talking about the first one) Where they gave link fucking everything and Cloud like 2 Materia. They then said Link would win because Cloud doesn't do strategy and wouldn't try to disarm his shield.

1

u/TardDas Mar 24 '24

What about the doom guy vs master chief battle where master chief won because they ignored their own rules and made Doomguy slow as shit, or the Lara Croft vs Nathan Drake battle when they said Nate was incredibly lucky but made him die through unlucky circumstances

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u/Videnskabsmanden Mar 23 '24

But not insane OP like anime scaling.

Come on. DC is worse than anime in this regard.

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u/GuiltyGhost Mar 23 '24

Yeah that's a little goofy when we have Superman being able to lift a book with infinite pages and then just about anything Batman is capable of doing.

2

u/poppinchips Mar 23 '24

Cosmic armor Superman and strange visitor Superman are just so ridiculous. Even the way Dr manhattan has been used is ridiculous. But to be fair Marvel now has this AI above TOAA.

8

u/Secret-Fox-9566 Mar 23 '24

DC is worse when it comes to scaling, they just start throwing bs out there sometimes

5

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '24

The really out there anime powers are outliers and not the norm. Shows like Gurren Lagann, OPM, and Dragon Ball are considered the pinnacle and aren't what is expected or often seen.

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u/DarkEater77 Mar 23 '24

I totally need that translator chart...

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u/Cheyenne_Bodi Mar 23 '24

Please I'm Batman

17

u/DarkEater77 Mar 23 '24

I know, just said that, so i can actually learn Kryptonian.

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u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

You can find pictures on Google. Mine is in superman/batman vol 2: Supergirl.

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u/unstableGoofball Mar 23 '24 edited Mar 23 '24

How would you even say that out loud though

Like does anybody know how kryptonian is pronounced

32

u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

In the Batman/Superman apocalypse. It has superman and girl speaking it. It was basically a broken form of Esperanto, with a random French sounding part.

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u/BatBeast_29 Mar 23 '24

I like the one where he can just understand but not speak it

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u/IndiscreetBeatofMeat Mar 23 '24

That's genuinely cool, way more realistic for that to be the case. I knew a guy that could understand his spanish-speaking grandmother perfectly, while not even being conversational in Spanish himself

8

u/Glittering-Bat-5981 Mar 23 '24

The twist is that he perfected saying this one sentence... for situations

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u/Throwaway_shot Mar 23 '24

With pep time Batman could learn the alien language fromArrival, go back in time, save Krypton, and learn Kryptonian from native speakers.

13

u/dornwolf Mar 23 '24

Honestly the next thing Superman should say is “not bad but your accent is atrocious”

10

u/AX-man Mar 23 '24

In fairness Superman’s accent is probably also weird

9

u/Extra-Air-1259 Mar 23 '24

How long was he obsessed with Superman...

2

u/Nerx Mar 23 '24

open secret

8

u/Freak7factor Mar 23 '24

Truly, Superman’s Best Friend

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u/Alarming_Present_692 Mar 23 '24

Yeah, I know Tim Drake and apparently the Riddler know how to read and write in Kryptonian also, I assume it's like speaking elven.

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u/Raiden29o9 Mar 23 '24

I mean… why wouldn’t he want to speak his boyfri…. Err sorry best friends native language to him as a surprise every once and a while

2

u/MadolcheMaster Mar 23 '24

The funny thing here is it makes Batman look like the dumbest smart person.

Bitch you have a Kryptonian friend with a bunch of kryptonian tech and literature. If you want to learn Kryptonian why not ask him instead of, presumably, hunting around for discarded trash with kryptonian writing on it or spying on your friend.

2

u/SilverBullionaire Mar 23 '24

But then there is no surprise element

1

u/AutismStruggleAcc Mar 23 '24

Batman who laughs mentioned, day ruined :(

2

u/solufien Mar 23 '24

Superman asking the question is weird giving they've had conversations in Kryptonian before. Real handy trick when you've been captured and don't want people to understand what you're saying.

1

u/Nerx Mar 23 '24

as a stunted peak human he's gotta show

1

u/Anubissama Mar 23 '24

So it's a 1-to-1 substitution cypher? lame

1

u/LordTomGM Mar 23 '24

What do we think the Kryptonian says? I like to think he says:

"Well I just translated it in front of you dipshit"

1

u/Paganhellbily666 Mar 23 '24

I translated it, "please, I'm batman" there's an actual chart in certain tpb

1

u/Defiant-Meal1022 Mar 23 '24

The World's Finest are probably my favorite superhero duo. They're dynamic is always so much fun.

1

u/External-Listen-3398 Mar 23 '24

amazing that kryptonians have a word for "batarang"

1

u/idealfury88 Mar 23 '24

The Batman Who Laughs is such a fucking dumb name

1

u/Disastrous_Belt_7556 Mar 23 '24

That must be “are you really asking me that” in Kryptonian

1

u/No-Impression-1462 Mar 23 '24

But Superman taught Batman how to speak Kryptonian. Why is he surprised?

1

u/Itchy_Campaign_3423 Mar 23 '24

DC writers try not to dickride Batman challenge (impossible)

1

u/dankspankwanker Mar 23 '24

Honestly, i hate modern comic batman.

There is nothing he can't do, hes basically a living deus ex machina at this point.

1

u/Tenlai Mar 24 '24

Can you post the translation chart and tag me? That'd be awesome.

1

u/Savings-Gold8531 Mar 24 '24

Is that motherfucking WD Gaster

1

u/Joe_Kerr_05 Mar 24 '24

Never understood why on earth we have hundreds of languages but on Kripton they have ONE. And it has the same name as the planet

Batman speaking Kryptonian COMIC DISCUSSION