I feel sorry for Batman.  Really, think about all the stuff he does; he spends all sorts of time training to have awesome kung fu skillz and be the biggest badass he can be because he doesn’t have any superpowers to start out with and he needs to make up for it.  Both his parents got killed when he was but a wee little batboy, and for most heroes, all it takes is the loss of one loved one to spur you to a life of crimefighting.  Also, he has to go and spend all this money on bat-themed Bat-accessories just so he can compete with all the other superheroes he hangs out with.  I mean, think how angry it must make him to know that while he’s had to spend all his life training to be Batman, someone like the Flash can just ignore his mother’s advice about standing next to a rack of random chemicals during a thunderstorm and end up with a whole slew (that’s nearly a plethora, by the way) or improbably yet useful powers (for instance, the Flash can do a dead on rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee” using only armpit farts).  No such luck for Batman, who has to actually work at remaining awesome.  By way of illustrating the importance of my main point here, please consider this delicious and low-calorie simile:

            Imagine a midget wanted to join the WWF and become a pro-wrestler, so he spent all day working out and traveling to remote Himalayan midget monasteries to study pro-wrestling and finally get good enough to be a pro, despite the presence of his midgetude.  So finally, after years of training and practice, he finally tries to get a spot in the WWF, only to find that he’s not allowed.  This, of course is because thanks to that lawsuit a few years back, the WWF is now the Wildlife Wrestling Federation, and they won’t even let you into the ring unless you’re some kind of panda (and for the purposes of this simile, the midget in question is just a regular old, garden variety midget, rather than a midget panda, cause that would just be too weird).  So, the midget has to go back to the midget wrestling league, while guys like the Rock and the Great Gazoo get to beat up all the pandas (pandae?).  And that’s a lot like Batman.

            You see, no matter how hard Batman tries, he’s never going to be able to say, destroy a comet that’s threatening Earth, or single-handedly destroy a giant killer robot from space.  And yet, since he’s so totally awesome, he’s always thrown in with all the heroes who have real powers, like Superman, Wonder Woman and Dick Cheney.  Really, someone ought to just give him a power ring or let a radioactive something-or-another bite him and give him some real powers (I’d lend him my power ring, but I’m still using it to create a vast herd of green beefaloes, and a guy has to prioritize).  What this all boils down to then is that Batman will always be stuck having to fight supervillians who aren’t so much super and just crazy people who suffered industrial accidents.

            Take the Joker for instance.  He doesn’t have any super powers, he just laughs a lot and has green hair.  In fact, he’s almost less powerful than a normal villain because everything he does has to be clown-themed.  Like he can’t just hit you with a hammer, it has to be a big goofy clown hammer, and he can’t just drive a normal car, it has to be a clown car with like, fifteen other supervillians in it too.  Or how about the Riddler?  He’s really just an unusually clever guy with a knack for puzzles who tries to pull off the most retarded capers ever.  Like he’ll go and kidnap the mayor or steal the Maltese Ham Sandwich or something, and then he’ll call Batman up and tell him exactly how to find and defeat him through a series of simple riddles.  And it’s not like he wants Batman to find him because he know’s he can beat him, cause the Riddler doesn’t have any powers other than a big ol’ question mark-infested suit and a stick to hit stuff with.  And it’s not like this just happened once and then the Riddler got smarter about it.  No, every time he proceeds based on the assumption that his riddles last time just weren’t fiendishly clever enough.  Note to the Riddler: Dude, the riddles are not working.  Just do something Evil next time, it’ll still be more fun than getting beat up by Batman.  This is roughly analogous to Osama Bin Laden telling Arnold Schwarzenegger exactly where to find him by means of a series of cleverly written haikus, and then expecting to choke him with his turban when he finally shows up.

            Just imagine what Batman has to go through every time this happens.  Here he is, all brilliant and tough and capable of solving mysteries of Scoobyesque magnitude, and just because he can’t fly or shoot broccoli out of his ears or something, he has to waste all his talents rounding up psychos that keep getting let out thanks to the revolving door of the Gotham City mental health system.  Just once, I bet he’d love to vanquish a real villain like Lex Luthor or his little brother, Martin; buy nooo, all the good evil geniuses belong to Superman and Microsoft.  I dunno, I guess I’m just saying that if any of you ever happen to decide to become a brilliant and devious criminal mastermind, try starting out in Gotham so Batman can actually fight someone who isn’t all loopy for once.  Trust me, it’ll mean the world to him.