Franchise · Secondary · since 1939
Batman
No powers, just preparation. The best rogues gallery in comics, the family under the cape, and the handful of adaptations that actually got him right.
It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.Bruce Wayne · Batman Begins
The only major superhero with no powers at all. Everything he has, he bought or built or trained for, which is exactly why he is the one that stuck: the fantasy is not that you were born special, it is that you decided to be and then did the work.
Eighty-odd years, and the character survives every reinterpretation (camp, gothic, grounded, detective, brawler) because the core is stable and the tone is the variable.
BatarangThrown, returns
Grapnel gunRooftop to rooftop
Smoke pelletsHow he leaves
RebreatherTen minutes of air
Explosive gelWalls, mostly
Cryptographic sequencerDoors and radios
Shark repellent1966, and never forgotten
The belt is the character: no powers, just whatever he thought to bring