Who is/was the JLA's most redundant member?

[Darthphere]

Yeah, but none of those people are the Goddamn Batman.

 

[trustyside-kick]

I'd say Batman. I mean, all off his specialties are covered by all of the other members:

Stealth: A guy who can fly, turn invisible, sheild himself from all telepathy, and walk through solid objects trumps a ninja any day.

Tactics: Wonder Woman was trained in several forms of armed and unarmed combat and military strategy from a very young age and has proven herself an equal to a living personification of war in both fighting prowess and tactical thinking. Aquaman is an acomplished military leader and a highl savy politician, well versed in many methods of psyhological manipulation. I'm not saying they're better than Bruce, but they certainly cover that territory.

Science: Bruce is smart, and he knows alot about mechanics, electronics, forensics, and metalurgy. But John Irons is a brilliant inventor and engineer and one of the top weapons designers for the military, and Ray Palmer is a world renound physicist, chemist, and inventor who's often called in as a consultant during disasters.

Funding: Aquaman can easily fund anything the League needs, having access to vast treasure troves of sunken antiques that he has little use for. Plus, as ambassadors to the U.N. who often assist U.N. peacekeeping forces abroad, Diana and Orin can easly influence the U.N. to bankroll the League as they (the U.N.) have in the past.

Detective work: People forget that Superman is a highly inteligent and succesful investigative reporter. He's obviously not as good as Batman, but the league rarely has mysteries that require world class detective work.


Really, he's only there because he's popular. If he was brought in every now and then as a consultant for organized crime related cases and the occassional tricky mystery, that's make more sense. But it wouldn't be cost effective.

Incredibly interesting post. I always thought he was on cause of his detective skills and the tactics, but...you proved a good point how few JLA-related stuff are mysteries and J'onn and WW are also good tacticians.

 

[Harlekin]

And lest we forget, John Jones has been a detective longer than Batman has been.

 

[Andy C.]

Hell, even Ralph Dibny is a fairly decent detective. And he's not a huge ass-hole to everyone else in the League like Bruce is.

 

[Harlekin]

Heck, Ralph Dibney is probably in the same league of... detective-ness as Bats.

 

[dmor173]

I dont know why hawk girl is in the new league. She's too smug. Was way better on JLU.

I dont know a lot about vixen but she gets the benefit of the doubt for a few more issues. So she can actually do something.

 

[yenaled]

Ralph is easily as good as a detective as Bruce is.

 

[fifthfiend]

Clearly. You could argue that he's got one more power because he can shoot lazers from his eyes, but lazers pale in comparison to boobies.

Just get Ed McGuinness to draw the book. Boob-deficiency solved.

 

[sinewave]

i don't really find any of them redundant since you can never have enough qualified, battle-tested soldiers on hand. if i had to choose someone from the current roster i guess it would either be black canary or arsenal/red arrow. i love both of those characters but batman can pretty much do the same as either of them.