The biggest factor in determining net worth between Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne is this: the Wayne’s have been around for generations, and have been amassing wealth that entire time. Tony Stark’s father amassed his own wealth and then passed that onto his son, so as a result of this quick figuring, Bruce Wayne’s overall net worth kind of outstrips Tony Stark’s in a big way, but when you look at their portfolio’s, Wayne hasn’t had to do nearly as much as Tony and he still doesn’t since Tony Stark pretty much invents everything he uses and everything that’s put to use in his company, barring a few things here and there that aren’t really his original idea. But whatever he does get his hands on he tries to make better and he usually succeeds. Batman usually needs someone that can design his suits, his tools, and everything else he uses, where Stark tends to have a hand in everything he makes. Plus, people know that Tony Stark is Iron Man, he’s made no secret of this, while Bruce Wayne has been hiding his life as Batman for so long that it’s amazing more people don’t know who he is yet. While their net worths are definitely different since Wayne’s family has been helping to keep Gotham stable and on an upward trend for so long, they’re still not exactly ‘of’ the people the way Tony Stark is.
While Bruce does what he can to help save Gotham and other areas of the world where he travels to, he’s usually someone that’s causing as much damage as he tries to stop, and he’s operating outside of the law more often than not. Iron Man has the benefit of being an Avenger, someone that people are hoping will show up to kick some major villain butt, even if people aren’t necessarily happy with the Avengers all the time. But where Iron Man has been glorified after his death in Endgame, Batman is still more or less a vigilante that some people love and others would love to see brought down a peg or three….because he’s Batman. But Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne are both very different men, apart from their hero personas, as Tony really isn’t any different once he’s out of the suit, where Bruce has to flip the switch and become another person. Tony gets to be the fun-loving individual that does pretty much what he wants whenever he wants, while Bruce has to keep that dark part of his mind hidden away most times in order to keep people from realizing that he’s the Batman.
When asked who they would rather be, a lot of people would likely say Iron Man since the truth is that he is a pretty fun person, even if he did have a serious alcohol problem at one point in the comics. He’s intelligent, witty, charming, and always has a comeback for just about anything that a person can throw at him. Bruce on the other hand tends to brood, and even when he’s playing the part of the rich playboy he’s still something of a downer since his sense of humor tends to be hidden and buried so deeply that trying to find it might require a map and about a month to really crack the code that would lead to where he’s keeping it. In other words, Bruce has issues, and it doesn’t appear that he really gets to enjoy the money that funds his superhero excursions, while Tony does manage to enjoy life when he’s not on a mission or otherwise engaged in inventing something, which was fairly often in the MCU. When it comes to intelligence the two men diverge in a big way as well since Bruce is supposedly highly intelligent when it comes to detective work, while he can’t even touch Tony’s technical expertise. When it comes to building the tech that he uses, Bruce knows almost nothing. Tony can build an entire suit of armor in the time it might take Bruce to read the manual, but to be fair, Tony isn’t that great at detective work as he doesn’t have the patience or the skill. So just like their net worth, their intelligence differs in a big way since they tend to apply it differently.
When comparing Marvel and DC characters it’s always bound to come down to a bias of some sort that exists between the writers and the fans, especially since both brands tend to go the OP route when it comes to their characters, kind of an ‘anything you can do I can do better’ routine that’s been ongoing for a while now. One of these days it’s hopeful that we’ll see a movie about this and hopefully settle the debate for a while, but until then we’ll have to settle for the back and forth.
