DC's Best Martial Artist

[Lord Mhoram]

1. Richard Dragon
2. Lady Shiva
3. Bronze Tiger, Batman, Conner Hawke
4. Black Canary, Nightwing, Manhunter, Batgirl II
5. Mr Terrific II
6. Cheshire, Wildcat
7. Arsenal, Huntress
8. Catman
9. Robin
10. Firebird

Of course KK wins hands down, but as he is disallowed I'd say you have that pretty close. It has been implied that in strait martial arts ability (ie in a ring "fight" kind of situation) Nightwing is better than Bats. I'd rank Manhunter a little lower, and Batgirl II a little higher. Glad you remembered Hawke - he fought Shiva to a standstill for about 4 pages, then she started getting him, and that is among the best anyone but Cassandra and Richard have done.

[Chuckg]

Actually, Nightwing and Bruce had a solo match during 'Fugitive', in the Batcave. Dick having room to maneuver and all.

Bruce humiliated him without even having to punch back, he left Dick wrecking himself against the furniture.

It was very sad.

[Powerhouse]

Ignoring the terrible Richard Dragon series (that last one), I'd rank Dragon above Lady Shiva as a better martial artist. He is simply more balanced and mediative. He actually might not be quite as strong of a fighter but his spiritual side compensates immensely. If those two ever fought, he would probably deflect all of her attacks while never attacking since there would be no point. Dragon doesn't need to "prove" anything. In the end, Shiva would just give up since she couldn't gain what she needed from that fight.

Shiva is above Batman, no doubt. Those two have fought each other to a standstill and that's with her giving up about 90 pounds of muscle and bone to Bruce. Also, while Bruce has devoted himself to mastering many disciplines, Shiva is focused pretty much exclusively on the martial arts.

Regarding Cassandra, her skills fluctuate so much that it's tough to rank her. In her first fight with Deathstroke, he couldn't touch her. Next time they meet, she acknowledge that Slade is just playing with her. WTH? Personally, despite issue 25, I rank her below Shiva due to lack of experience. Also, it was noted that Shiva had a deathwish at the time and may have wanted to lose, albeit in a hardfought contest with one of the few people who can come close to Shiva.

Regarding Black Canary, she has been redefined under Birds of Prey as one of the top martial artists in world (we'll ignore Identidy Crisis 3) in part to Shiva's tutelage.

[Chuckg]

> Ignoring the terrible Richard Dragon series (that last one), I'd rank
> Dragon above Lady Shiva as a better martial artist. He is simply more
> balanced and mediative.

Oh, *Old School* Richard Dragon was *clearly* Shiva's superior. She acknowledged that without hesitation. Clearly Cassandra's superior as well. The old version of Richard was the acknowledged chief zen guru of all martial arts, dude had attained enlightenment and everything. Shiva followed him around like a fangirl for a while.

[snip]
> Regarding Cassandra, her skills fluctuate so much that it's tough to
> rank her. In her first fight with Deathstroke, he couldn't touch her.
> Next time they meet, she acknowledge that Slade is just playing with
> her. WTH?

That would be part of Slade's recent ridiculous power-ups for no reason, him having gone from 'Dick Grayson can repeatedly elude me in close combat' to 'I can punk entire combined JLA lineups like they were children.'

Ignore it. It's the writers make Slade into SladeGod, naught more.

> Personally, despite issue 25, I rank her below Shiva due to lack of
> experience. Also, it was noted that Shiva had a deathwish at the time
> and may have wanted to lose, albeit in a hardfought contest with one
> of the few people who can come close to Shiva.

Batgirl is at worst Shiva's *equal*, though. The two of them are 'any given Sunday', with who wins depending on who's having a better minute... and that's the conservative estimate. Generous estimate, Cassandra laps her.

(Shiva is more experienced, yes -- but Cassandra has literally been trained and mentally conditioned from birth for Ultimate Combat, as a combined project of the entire Society of Assassins, following a master plan laid out by Ra's al Ghul. The girl's just not normal.)

> Regarding Black Canary, she has been redefined under Birds of Prey as
> one of the top martial artists in world (we'll ignore Identidy Crisis 3) in
> part to Shiva's tutelage.

Yup, Dinah's in the top six now. I'd rank her as just alongside the Bronze Tiger, a hair under Batman. And it's not just Shiva, she went and trained under Cassandra and even sparred with Wonder Woman a little. (Diana was clearly holding her strength and speed back to 'compete fairly with peak human' levels, not her full power -- they both admitted that -- but the point was that Dinah was picking up Amazon-fu in addition to other styles.)

[Powerhouse]

Let's see, I would adjust the list as:

1. Richard Dragon
2. Lady Shiva
3. Batman
4. Batgirl (Cassandra)
5. Connor Hawke
6. Bronze Tiger
7. Wildcat (great boxer and all around bruiser)
8. Black Canary
9. Nightwing
10. Cheshire

I might change this but it's not a bad list. I don't see Wildcat as a great martial artist since while he's a great boxer, he tends to brawl alot more but he IS effective. Numbers 4-8 might change up a bit.

[Chuckg]

Wildcat is under Dinah now. The student has surpassed the teacher. They interact like that nowadays.

And Batman has been repeatedly schooled by Cassandra in sparring, sometimes by truly humiliating margins. The one time Batman has ever matched her, she was under the influence of berserker drugs, with God only knows what effects on her. (Supposedly, Batman was as well, but there was that conversation at the end with Babs, where he admits he set it up deliberately...)

[Chuckg]

Oh, data points re: Batgirl (and by extension Shiva, as they share common abilities)...

Her unique training, conditioning etc. allows her to basically be a low-end Master of Sinanju, getting truly superhuman performance out of the human body without cybernetics or metagenes.

Case in point, BATGIRL #14:

The people in these scans are either from the CIA, or from the DEO (Department of Extranormal Operations), the DCU equivalent of DOSPA. They're running the full analysis treatment on footage of Cassandra after, in the last episode, she blitzed a CIA safehouse to rescue a guy some rogue spooks were screwing over. They're trying to ID and classify the powers of this new (to them) player on the scene.

After crunching all the #'s, they come to the clear conclusion -- she's obviously metahuman, with multiples of human speed and strength.

When their geneticist reports that her blood sample has no metagene, they start talking about cybernetics.

(Apparently, they don't believe in ye freaky chi.)

[Powerhouse]

And Batman has been repeatedly schooled by Cassandra in sparring, sometimes by truly humiliating margins. The one time Batman has ever matched her, she was under the influence of berserker drugs, with God only knows what effects on her.

To be honest, I take a very skeptical view of ranking Cassandra because she has been portrayed as SO over the top that it's either bad writing or she's metahuman. I could see her possible beating Batman but not as easily as she has before. Also, if you go by that sparring, then how is Bats able to go toe to toe with Shiva who pretty much matches Cassandra in BG 25? He can't and there's a really bad spiral of logic.

The big secret of BG's success is her speed (I can see that) but also her ability to read people. Take that away and she was nothing. According to Batman, it would have taken her a year to be decent enough to wear the BG costume and *maybe* ten years, if ever, to be on his level.

It gets wierder when you consider that Shiva has that ability too (indeed, she retrains Cassandra in it) but Shiva has never been able to dominate other TOP martial artists like Cassandra did. I guess the argument could be that BG is just better at it because she was trained from birth to use that skill but then it becomes a serious crutch.

Maybe I'm just being creative but my take is that Batman has never gone full out on Cassandra. The only time he came close was in the above time you mentioned and even then, he didn't want to hurt her. That or it's just terrible writing and putting Cassandra at the level they did was just a BAD idea.

[Chuckg]

We appear to have cross-posted, becasue I was digging out (and just posted) the indicators that Batgirl *is* metahuman, or rather, operates at metahuman levels w/o a metagene. As shown by scientific analysis of her abilities by government metahuman experts.

As to Shiva -- Shiva was operating at clearly metahuman levels as well, recently. (Recheck her fight with Batgirl in BATGIRL #25 -- both of them are shattering brick walls with the force of their punches, when they miss each each other and hit the landscape instead.)

Bronze Tiger comments in a recent BIRDS OF PREY that the Shiva of years ago (i.e. -- her first appearance in BATMAN comics) was not as formidable as she is now, so she has apparently only discovered these abilities in recent years.

It's instructive to note that over the past few years, Shiva's appearances in comics have usually not been as a direct antagonist for the heroes, and on the few occasions that she has been, the heroes all react like fighting Shiva = certain death. Even the Connor Hawke fight.

[Chuckg]

BTW, other meta feats for Batgirl involve moving in literal bullet time -- and I don't mean just 'dodging bullets' (every street-leveller from Spider-Man on down to Hawkingbird can do a simple acrobatic dodge), I mean explicit Matrix-time events of standing there, watching the bullets approach her face in slow motion, and then stepping aside while they're still hanging there in mid-air.

She's done that at least three times under two separate writers.

(Whether or not Shiva can do this is unknown -- Shiva has never faced opponents with guns above the mook level, as she specializes in picking fights with martial artists. And mooks, she can wipe out before they even get a chance to shoot. However, given that they are templated off each other... Ra's was attempting to recreate Lady Shiva 2.0 with Cassandra, only better... and their matching each other in all other respects, I'd speculate that she could.)

As with Val "Karate Kid" Armorr -- if nowhere on his level -- Cassandra operates at blatantly superhuman levels via sheer ubermartialartsskillz. Such is possible in the DCU, Val himself being the most notable case.

[Twilight]

I would rank Bronze Tiger higher then Batman as he defeated Batman once before, needing only one strike to do it. Not a cheap shot either as Bruce was clearly ready for the fight but Bronze Tiger simply moved to fast for Bruce to block.

Also, this is still a part of Batman's history Post Crisis as I'm reasonably sure the only part of Batman's history that didn't survive Crisis was Silver St Cloud.

[Derek Hiemforth]

It has been implied that in strait martial arts ability (ie in a ring "fight" kind of situation) Nightwing is better than Bats.

That's an interesting point. I think the way I'd approach it (were I building them for Champions) is to give Nightwing a higher DEX than Batman. I don't see Dick matching Bruce's knowledge of Martial Arts, and I definitely don't see him matching Bruce's strength or damage-dealing capability, but he might very well be faster than Bruce. (Certainly I would rank Nightwing's Acrobatics and Breakfall Skills higher than Batman's.)

If he is a bit faster than Bats, that would explain why he might best him in a ring "fighting" situation. Batman's greater strength wouldn't matter ('cause they're not really trying to dish damage), and his greater knowledge of Martial Arts would be somewhat offset by the fact that many of the real-world moves and tricks that knowledge gave him would not be particularly helpful in the contrived setting of a ring.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Also, though there's no way I could prove such a thing, I think Wonder Woman deserves mention on this list. Yes, I know she's superpowered. But I believe, in terms of pure fighting skill, she's supposed to be the top, or one of the top, combatants in the DC Universe.

In other words, she's ineligible for this list because she's superpowered, but I believe that if she somehow lost her powers and thereby became eligible, her skill alone would place her at or near the top of this list...

[Snake Gandhi]

Also, though there's no way I could prove such a thing, I think Wonder Woman deserves mention on this list. Yes, I know she's superpowered. But I believe, in terms of pure fighting skill, she's supposed to be the top, or one of the top, combatants in the DC Universe.

In other words, she's ineligible for this list because she's superpowered, but I believe that if she somehow lost her powers and thereby became eligible, her skill alone would place her at or near the top of this list...

I'd agree with that. As this scan shows,



Diana trains constantly, and she's referred to have knowledge of every know martial art, from Earth all the way to New Genesis.

[Lord Mhoram]

If he is a bit faster than Bats, that would explain why he might best him in a ring "fighting" situation. Batman's greater strength wouldn't matter ('cause they're not really trying to dish damage), and his greater knowledge of Martial Arts would be somewhat offset by the fact that many of the real-world moves and tricks that knowledge gave him would not be particularly helpful in the contrived setting of a ring.

Now that you mention it, that does seem to be some of the stuff that was in what I read/discussed. That Nightwing has a better DEX and SPD but not the levels or manuevers.