Across the DC Comics multiverse, the Dark Knight doesn't always stick the landing. For every Batman who strikes fear into criminals' hearts and swings gracefully between Gotham’s gargoyles, there's another who can barely operate the Batmobile without crashing it into the Batcave.
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These incompetent Caped Crusaders stumble through Gotham with all the detective skills of a bewildered goldfish, represent crimefighting incompetence at its finest, and don’t come even remotely close to earning the title "World’s Greatest Detective."
Batzarro
The Worst Detective In The Multiverse
- First Appearance: Superman/Batman #20 (June 2005)
Batzarro is a logic-defying clone created by the Joker, inspired by DC's Bizarro concept from the planet of backwards horror, Htrae. Instead of combating crime, his backwards thinking often leads him to misidentify heroes and villains, his detective skills resulting in the opposite of logical deductions.
With his upside-down utility belt and incomprehensible way of speaking, along with his unwavering loyalty to "unjustice," he routinely jeopardizes every mission. Unlike most Batmen who brood over the death of their parents, Batzarro’s folks were killed by him instead. At every turn, his brand of idiocy is a threat to both friend and foe, causing so much chaos that he’s avoided as much as possible.
Batman Of Zur-En-Arrh
Madness & Vigilantism Don’t Mix
- First Appearance: Batman #678 (August 2008)
Originally a Silver Age oddity, Grant Morrison revived Zur-En-Arrh as a psychological fail-safe, a personality Bruce Wayne constructed should his mind ever be compromised. The result is a Batman who’s less prepared for anything and more utterly deranged.
When the Zur-En-Arrh persona takes over, Batman dons psychedelic colors and arms himself with a baseball bat, all while being guided by a hallucination of Bat-Mite. He’s resistant to psychological manipulation…but only because he’s completely untethered from reality. While this might make him less vulnerable to the usual mind games, it also means he’s functionally impossible to reason with.
In this state, Batman becomes a liability. Allies can’t trust him, and even enemies are terrified by his unpredictability. He operates largely on his own and attempts to rescue Gotham by confronting Dr. Hurt and the Black Glove with improvised tactics. The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh is proof that contingency planning can go so far into the weeds that it ends up strangling the gardener. He’s Batman’s own worst enemy, weaponized and let loose.
James Gordon As Batman (Superheavy)
Well-Meaning But Woefully Inadequate
- First Appearance: Batman #41 (June 2015)
In theory, putting a war-worn police commissioner in the Batsuit should be an inspired reinvention. In practice, James Gordon’s tenure as Batman proves why not everyone is cut out for vigilante work. The Superheavy arc drops Gordon into a tech-laden robo-batsuit and unleashes him with the backing of the GCPD (in partnership with Powers Tech). He is, in effect, Batman with training wheels.
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Gordon’s heart is in the right place, for sure. But the learning curve can’t be overcome. He takes on the job as a PR move, immediately undercutting the entire idea of Batman as a symbol of fear and unpredictability. Early clashes leave him outmatched, and the suit, already vulnerable to interference, gets heavily damaged. Perhaps most damning is that he faces skepticism from the Bat‑family, though he earns respect from some allies during his tenure. Even his signature mustache can’t survive the transformation. Gordon’s Batman doesn’t just fail to fill Bruce Wayne’s boots - he trips over them.
All-Star Batman & Robin
Stretches The Definition Of "Hero"
- First Appearance: All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder #1 (September 2005)
This Batman is a walking contradiction, an antihero so toxic he’d make the Joker blush. Frank Miller’s vision is uncompromising: his Batman is a borderline psychopath who kidnaps Dick Grayson, bullies his allies, and turns Gotham into his own personal playground.
It’s not just that he’s brutal, which all versions of Miller’s Batman tend to be, but that he’s actively sadistic. Alfred is reduced to an enabler, and Robin is little more than a traumatized sidekick-in-waiting (which, incidentally, is something that’s explored in The Dark Knight Strikes Again).
Batman’s tactical prowess is overshadowed by his sheer pettiness, like when he assaults Green Lantern after luring him into a yellow-painted room. His personal code is so muddled that even Commissioner Gordon can’t distinguish his methods from those of his enemies.
Batman From "Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader"
Specifically, Alfred’s Sad Version Of Events
- First Appearance: Batman #686 (April 2009)
In one of the (suspect) eulogies recounted in Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, it’s revealed that Alfred was the one orchestrating all of Batman’s "villains" as a means to keep Bruce from succumbing to despair. The result is a Batman whose entire crusade was a placebo, never actually battling real evil.
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In this vignette, every case Batman solves and every criminal he apprehends is a performance staged by the people closest to him. The city’s supervillainy is nothing more than elaborate dinner theater, with Alfred donning the Joker’s face and hired actors playing along, reducing Bruce’s genius to a sad delusion. Instead of triumphing over adversity, he’s coddled into irrelevance. In the pantheon of failed Batmen, this one is the most profoundly tragic.
Batman From "I, Joker"
Batman’s Original Message Lost To The Ages
- First Appearance: Batman: I, Joker (August 1998)
In this grimdark dystopia, Batman, known as "The Bruce," is less a person and more a cult‑conferred title maintained by ritual passed down through generations. The religion built around Batman in this universe twists his original mission into something unrecognizable.
Instead of protecting the innocent, "The Bruce" participates in an annual ceremony where certain citizens are forced to undergo surgical modifications to resemble his rogues gallery before being hunted through the streets. The winner earns the right to challenge, and potentially replace, "The Bruce," while the losers are killed for sport.
What began as vigilante justice has mutated over decades into ritualized sadism, a monstrous perversion of what it means to be Batman. It’s fair to say that this incarnation of Batman is one of the worst, most amoral of them all.
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