Eh, Batman's a very interesting example because he can work - and work well - in the crossovers, but it requires a comparatively delicate hand and an understanding that Batman's strengths are not the same as those of Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, the Flash, etc. Throw them up against Zodd, and Batman should be pretty out of his depth outside of grabbing some kryptonite and figuring out when to use it. Throw them up against Darkseid? Batman should be borderline useless in a straight fight against anything much above parademon tier.
Toss in Doctor Destiny? You know, the guy who manipulates dreams to create psychological and/or physical effects on his victims? That's Batman's time to shine, baby! See, for instance Justice League's "Only a Dream", wherein Destiny ambushed and locked down Hawkgirl, Superman, Flash, and Green Lantern within their nightmares with potentially fatal consequences. Martian Manhunter leveraged his psychic abilities to help the team overcome their personal demons, while serial insomniac detective Batman desperately hunted down the supervillain himself to stop the attack. For bonus points, this version of Destiny's emphasis on nightmares is kinda familiar territory for Batman, considering that's more or less the shtick of his personal recurring villain Scarecrow.
The trick to leveraging Batman effectively in 'multiplayer' crossovers is that he needs to be thought of as "spymaster". His strengths are in subterfuge, gathering information quickly, and using that to push peoples' buttons the right way, something he does better than most - if not all - of the League. Basically, if you want to do Batman well in a Justice League setting, treat him like old Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond: Less punchy, more sleuthy (see also Barbara Gordon as Oracle). Where it falters, however, is cases where this is taken overboard, like Doom/Tower of Babel (aka "Batman has a plan to take down every member of the Justice League"). To be clear, the spirit of it is very much in the aforementioned niche, but the execution reeks of "my favorite character could kick your favorite characters' asses all at once".
For the one that just plain doesn't work, however? As others have mentioned, that's easily the X-Men. Their entire raison d'etre is "we're different, therefore people are scared of us"...which doesn't really work when thrown into a world where Superheros are a recognized factor, and especially not one where they're practically common. What, you're telling me that people can accept the near-mindless berserker that is the Hulk on the Avengers but the more mellow, scientific, and physically weaker blue ape that is Hank McCoy/Beast is super scary because he's powered by genetics rather than radiation? That in a world where people more or less yell "unclean! unclean!" when they see Iceman, they wouldn't do the same when they saw the Human Torch? That in a world where people were terrified because a meaningful percentage of the rising generation were developing superpowers, they wouldn't look at characters like Spider-Man and simply assume that he was part of the demographic that scared them so much? Give me a break.
Is there some kind of superhero purity test? "Mhmm, myes...We, the Gatekeepers of Superheroics do hereby find that Carol Danvers is not, in fact, a Mutant. She may continue to operate in the open with comparatively little scorn." Heck, when you think about it, the central conflict of Civil War (the comic arc, not the MCU movie) was a tacit acknowledgement by the writers that superheroes weren't treated with the same distrust as mutants were. It's almost a mea culpa admission that a "Mutant Registration Act" was unrealistically limited in scope for the setting, and that it probably should have been a "Superhuman Registration Act". Because, at the end of the day, there's not much of an observable difference between a "mutant" and a "superpowered human".
Toss in Doctor Destiny? You know, the guy who manipulates dreams to create psychological and/or physical effects on his victims? That's Batman's time to shine, baby! See, for instance Justice League's "Only a Dream", wherein Destiny ambushed and locked down Hawkgirl, Superman, Flash, and Green Lantern within their nightmares with potentially fatal consequences. Martian Manhunter leveraged his psychic abilities to help the team overcome their personal demons, while serial insomniac detective Batman desperately hunted down the supervillain himself to stop the attack. For bonus points, this version of Destiny's emphasis on nightmares is kinda familiar territory for Batman, considering that's more or less the shtick of his personal recurring villain Scarecrow.
The trick to leveraging Batman effectively in 'multiplayer' crossovers is that he needs to be thought of as "spymaster". His strengths are in subterfuge, gathering information quickly, and using that to push peoples' buttons the right way, something he does better than most - if not all - of the League. Basically, if you want to do Batman well in a Justice League setting, treat him like old Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond: Less punchy, more sleuthy (see also Barbara Gordon as Oracle). Where it falters, however, is cases where this is taken overboard, like Doom/Tower of Babel (aka "Batman has a plan to take down every member of the Justice League"). To be clear, the spirit of it is very much in the aforementioned niche, but the execution reeks of "my favorite character could kick your favorite characters' asses all at once".
For the one that just plain doesn't work, however? As others have mentioned, that's easily the X-Men. Their entire raison d'etre is "we're different, therefore people are scared of us"...which doesn't really work when thrown into a world where Superheros are a recognized factor, and especially not one where they're practically common. What, you're telling me that people can accept the near-mindless berserker that is the Hulk on the Avengers but the more mellow, scientific, and physically weaker blue ape that is Hank McCoy/Beast is super scary because he's powered by genetics rather than radiation? That in a world where people more or less yell "unclean! unclean!" when they see Iceman, they wouldn't do the same when they saw the Human Torch? That in a world where people were terrified because a meaningful percentage of the rising generation were developing superpowers, they wouldn't look at characters like Spider-Man and simply assume that he was part of the demographic that scared them so much? Give me a break.
Is there some kind of superhero purity test? "Mhmm, myes...We, the Gatekeepers of Superheroics do hereby find that Carol Danvers is not, in fact, a Mutant. She may continue to operate in the open with comparatively little scorn." Heck, when you think about it, the central conflict of Civil War (the comic arc, not the MCU movie) was a tacit acknowledgement by the writers that superheroes weren't treated with the same distrust as mutants were. It's almost a mea culpa admission that a "Mutant Registration Act" was unrealistically limited in scope for the setting, and that it probably should have been a "Superhuman Registration Act". Because, at the end of the day, there's not much of an observable difference between a "mutant" and a "superpowered human".
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