The Amoral Battle Of Batman

Under the assumption that Superman acts at all intelligently, Superman would win effortlessly.

Unfortunately, as the most frustratingly clueless and underachieving superhero ever conceived, Superman would probably lose.

He has only himself to blame, really.

The Amoral Battle

If neither character was constrained by their ethical code, this is an uninteresting battle. Fighting at full strength, Superman would instantly and utterly annihilate Batman. The neurons in Bruce Wayne's brain responsible for even comprehending the situation he's in would have just begun to fire before he was hotter than a supernova and the atoms comprising him distributed evenly across the width of a galaxy.

There is no amount of advantage that could be granted to Batman that would affect this outcome in the slightest. Batman could be wearing a suit lined with kryptonite, sitting in a kryptonite tank the size of a moon, operating a gatling gun that fired kryptonite bullets at trillions of rounds per minute, and it wouldn't make a difference: the battle would simply begin with Batman staring helplessly at a universe of astronomical bodies converging at incredible speeds on his location.

In fact, in the most trivial case, Superman could simply avoid Batman until he died of old age. If some minimal amount of participation was required to prevent that from being considered a surrender, Superman could fling a meteor from across the galaxy from time to time, or even pop down next to Batman, taunt him, dodge a punch or two, and then disappear again. Superman could keep this up eternally; Batman could not.

You could try to give Superman a handicap to level the playing field.

The first problem with this is that recognizing this as a necessity is an admission tha...

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... prevent all crime, and supply the world with tremendous quantities of clean energy (at the very least by turning a giant crank, or something).

Instead, he foils petty crime. And not even by hanging out in orbit, laser-eyeing muggers' and bank robbers' guns at thousands of guns per second, but by coming down and personally involving himself, necessarily ignoring absolutely every other crime happening in the world for that duration of time.

Every second, Superman is squandering an insane amount of his potential.

Superman is terrible at his job.

Superman is terrible at being alive.

(Christ, how I hate Superman.)

(How people can possibly find this character interesting, I'll never know.)

And that's why he'd let Batman get a hold of some kryptonite, and why Superman won't dodge it as it's plunged into his chest.

Because Superman is the greatest moron who ever lived.