Black Noir Vs Batman: Who Would Win In A Fight?

It can be daunting trying to root out the answers to life's most complex questions, knowing that — in the end — one's contributions are never their own. For all our efforts, our discoveries are merely the next generation's common knowledge, waiting either to be taken for granted or righteously debunked. Even still, we are driven — even tasked — to determine with empirical certainty which fictional characters can and cannot beat up Batman.

It's difficult to put your finger on exactly when Batman became the baddest badass in the DC universe. Maybe it was back in the '80s, when Frank Miller painted over Bruce Wayne with a fresh coat of gristle and had him heel kick Superman in the face. Or when Michael Keaton's Batman started dangling muggers off the sides of buildings and blowing up fully staffed chemical plants. Whatever the case, he's the team to beat in any self-respecting rhetorical action-figure fight.

Black Noir, meanwhile, is The Boys' analogue for the Dark Knight. Black Noir is Batman to Homelander's Superman. He's a man of few words dressed in matte black, stalking the shadows, and generally seeking justice. Black Noir works in even darker shades than the ones Batman tends to paint with — see the time he tore off that guy's jaw for receipts. While it's generally agreed that you can't beat an original, we've seen Black Noir move at superhuman speeds and shrug off explosions, whereas Gotham's Dark Knight once had his spine broken by a guy whose super power was "doing more steroids than most people." Could Black Noir beat Batman in a no-holds-barred street brawl?

No. Probably not. Maybe.

Look, to have this conversation the right way, we're going to have to dive into some potential spoilers, ripped from the high-contrast pages of The Boys in its original comic book format.

In the comics — and who knows if the Amazon series will follow suit — Black Noir is revealed to secretly be a clone of Homelander, created as a contingency plan in case the all-American hero ever needed to be put in the dirt. That being the case, he has all the powers necessary to drop a superhuman with Kryptonian-esque abilities. He is also, compared with all of the TV version's atrocities, cranked to around a 13 when it comes to evil deeds.

That said, Batman is, well, Batman. He's the only character in the DC stable whose name can be used as a proper noun, a verb, or an adjective. Behold: "Batman just Batmanned that guy, it was totally Batman." He's taken down the entire Justice League, every member of the Legion of Doom, fought Darkseid, and seems to wake up every morning just hoping that Superman will give him an excuse to break out the kryptonite gloves or the red sun flashlight or the anti-Superman galoshes he's been tooling around with in the shed.

Of course, it's also worth mentioning that The Boys producer Eric Kripke told Collider in a recent interview that Homelander (and, by extension, a potential Homelander clone) doesn't have physical weaknesses. Without glowing green beat-'em-up rocks in play, the Dark Knight might be in a lot of trouble. He'd have to Batman pretty hard to get out on top.

So, let's try to logic this out. If Black Noir is essentially Superman without weaknesses, and Batman has been able to defeat Superman before, though only by exploiting his weaknesses, then we can't say for certain he would have the same success against Black Noir. It's hard to imagine any amount of Bruce Wayne gadgets actually having an effect on Noir. As Homelander points out on The Boys, Noir does great work. 

We give this epic title bout to Black Noir by a cloned hair.