Batman vs. Sherlock Holmes

Who would win?

image source

Batman/Bruce Wayne and Sherlock Holmes have much in common: they are both incredibly smart, athletic, and charming men who solve and fight crime.  To me it's interesting to note that in the latest movie adaptations of these characters, the former is an American comic book character played by Britain-born Christian Bale, and the latter is the second-most famous male British character (after Harry Potter, duh*) and played by the American Robert Downey Jr.  Both are my heroes, and I'm not the first person to compare and contrast them.  The following is just my own take on the debate, based on several categories:

In terms of physicality the characters are very well matched.  Had he so desired, Sherlock could've become a boxer and made a career out of it.  He's 6' 0" and has the capacity to be very energetic and athletic, but he has the proclivity-- and capacity-- to solve crimes without ever leaving the comforts of home at 221B Baker Street.  Batman, on the other hand, is always on call and, uh, gets into lots of fights with criminals.  He actively fights them in addition to solving and preventing past and future crime.  Due to the nature of Bruce Wayne's daily (or should I say nightly?) life, I think he'd be the one in better shape and more likely to win if pitted against Sherlock.

When it comes to a battle of wits: never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

I kid.  I think neither men are even remotely Sicilian anyway. But I'd put money on Sherlock winning this round.  Batman is smart but he gets a lot of help thanks to the technology and information he has at his fingertips.  But Sherlock's brain is like a computer, and there's no wasted space in there because every iota of information stored is useful and important.  He's literally written the book on hundreds of types of cigar and pipe ash so that one may be able to figure out crucial information about the person who smoked and left the ash behind.  Sherlock's mind is purely logical and sharp as a tack, capable of deducing in the blink of an eye what Bruce Wayne's computers would take a few seconds to figure out. 

Okay, so both have brains-- good brains.  But what good are brains if you can't get women? I kid.  But that conveniently brings me to the matter of their skillz with the ladiez.  In this category the win goes to Bruce Wayne.  Sherlock is good looking and knows how to turn on the charm when it comes to women-- in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton he woos a maid and proposes to her within a week of meeting each other and she accepts him.  But he only wooed her in order to get information about the man she works for and the layout of his mansion.  If he wanted to, he could get a wife, but women don't interest him.  He's heterosexual, but only slight; he's mostly asexual and uninterested in the female sex and domestic life as it was in his time.  He seems to have had a complicated relationship with Irene Adler, who is the one woman named as a former love interest, but she seems to be mentioned only to prove that Sherlock is human.  Irene Adler was kind of like his Catwoman, except more mysterious and less tortured.


Batman/Bruce Wayne: 2
Sherlock Holmes: 1
But this is only beginning...


*I don't have any research to back this up, but I think that the boy wizard has eclipsed the singular detective.