BATMAN vs HULK  
​THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY

The shrieking of startled bats reverberated off the cave walls like a wailing security alarm, but the Dark Knight needed no warning to know that danger was near.
 
The Hulk was coming for him.
 
Batman hadn’t yet deduced the emerald brute’s motivation for attacking him, but at this point it no longer mattered. The dark figure in the cape and cowl had only seconds to work out his strategy and set up his defenses before the menacing mountain of muscle made his appearance.
 
The stalactites overhead shook violently as the towering teal terror, instinctively using his own massive density and momentum like a 2000-pound battering ram, punched a jagged hole in the darkened roof of the bat-cave and dropped to the floor like a living atom bomb directly across from his masked adversary. 
 
While the World’s Greatest Detective was a tall, imposing man with a ridiculously powerful physique, he looked like a child in a Halloween costume standing before the not-so-jolly green giant whose curled fist dwarfed the self-appointed vigilante’s entire torso. The caped crusader had trained all his life for this, honed his body to perfection, and faced down the worst of the worst: the Joker, Ras Al Ghul, Bane… but strength and combat techniques would be useless in this conflict and Gotham’s Defender would have to call in every bit of strategy, cunning, acrobatics, and ninja training he’d ever learned to keep one step ahead of his fuming foe.
 
This was it.
 
Batman vs. The Hulk. 
 
Man vs. Monster. 
 
Brain vs. Brawn.
 
This was to be a no-holds-barred confrontation and conflagration the likes of which mankind had never beheld. Superhero aficionados from around the world and beyond would give their life savings and their firstborn child for a ringside seat to watch these legends fight like cats and dogs, or more accurately, like bats and one-ton killing machines. This was destined to be the brawl to end all brawls, the battle against which all other battles would be compared for time immemorial.
 
“Hulk smash!” the brutish behemoth roared as he charged forward.
 
“Sorry, Big Guy,” the living shadow known to the city as “Crime’s Worst Nightmare” called out as he dodged left and right, weaving like a boxer. “But if I let you get even one hand on me, that will be the end of aaaaaaaaaugh!”
 
The nearly large lime leviathan’s enormous fingers had closed around his all-too-human arm, crushing it like dry kindling. With his other hand, the gargantuan granny-smith-apple-hued goliath rammed his fist into the midnight detective’s cowl-covered head, separating it from his body. The oversized olive ogre picked up the limp body of what was once Bruce Wayne and slammed it down over a stalagmite, driving the rocky protrusion up through him like a stake through a vampire. Roaring in anger, the stupendous shamrock-skinned steamroller beat on the lifeless corpse again and again until every organ, bone, and muscle was flattened, pulped, and liquified. 
 
The Batman was dead. 
 
The giant jade juggernaut dipped one colossal finger, as big as baseball bat, into the bloody remains of the winged hero and smeared it on the wall, drawing a crude bat signal, his rudimentary finger painting serving as the only epitaph for the heralded half of the dynamic duo.
 
From the gloomy recesses of the cavern, a hidden door squeaked open and a motion-activated light clicked on, revealing Robin the Boy Wonder poking his head in.
 
“Did you say something, Batman?” the late superhero’s crime-fighting partner asked.
 
With a grunt, the ferocious force of nature leapt straight up, his mighty legs carrying him through the fifty feet of solid rock above him and high into the sky. 
 
Behind him, the unstable bat-cave crumbled, burying Robin alive.