HGiles: Not really. Angst about parents, angst about violence, angst about terrible city, angst about bad personal decisions - modern versions, at least. The camp versions are all campiness all the time, so it's a change of tone but not more sophisticated.
Common comparison is Batman vs Iron Man. Both rich white dudes who pick up superheroing after personal trauma.
Well, one of them uses that trauma as an excuse to make self-defeating decisions in their personal life, sinks into despair and brooding, and develops a super-creepy abusive relationship with the people they defeat. He uses clearly self-destructive methods of fighting despite *knowing* better options exist and the concern of friends. Lots of brooding while perched on architecture.
The other one refuses to devolve into isolated dysfunctional psychopathy, keeps actively involved in family enterprises, commits to several long-term relationships (platonic and not), and basically stays a functional human being.
Batman is the story of a person who lets their trauma rule their life. Iron Man is the story of someone who uses trauma as a catalyst to pull themselves out of a self-destructive spiral. Batman is kind of a one-note character. Iron Man is invested in the world he lives in.
You're reaching there. I have no particular problem with Iron Man (apart from him being kind of boring as a person and lacking in the villain department), but you're really stretching to find reasons why Batman is worse than Iron Man. What's more, you could say most of that about pretty much all of the superheroes. Something spurs them to go superheroey, and for the everyman superheroes, there's not many things that are going to represent sufficient motivation that aren't tragic.
I wouldn't personally compare the two in that respect. They're both everyman superheroes. You could throw in the Punisher and Green Hornet to make clear why that's such a ridiculous comparison. They're all spurred by tragedy, they all have to use technology as they don't have super powers.
As far as Batman goes, he has a much more interesting world to work with than most of the other superheroes. And ultimately it shows.
HGiles: Bat man stuff focuses on the villain just as much as the 'hero'. You can't bring up Batman without hearing about the Joker, Penguin, Cat Woman, etc. Iron Man stuff doesn't need that. People can talk about Iron Man without need to pull the villains into it to have someone interesting to talk about.
Take Iron Man 3. If someone had subverted the Joker like they did the Mandarin, we'd have had a huge out cry, because the Joker is an integral part of what makes the Batman interesting. But they could do it with Iron Man because Iron Man is interesting enough, *and has interesting enough supporting characters* to not need to rely on villains to make the story feel interesting.
That's always the case with quality superhero stories. The badder the villains the better the hero. And Batman has some of the best villains in the business. It's an essential part of the genre.
Iron Man doesn't need that stuff because you don't want Batman to win. Ultimately, a superhero is very much a product of his or her environment. Take the Green Hornet to Metropolis and it's not going to work. Make Superman clear up Gotham city and it's not going to work. Superman just isn't cut out for the sorts of moral ambiguity that exist in Gotham.
Iron man is boring. I have nothing against him, but I've got no particular interest in seeing more of him, because his villains aren't good enough to justify my attention. As I said, the genre depends heavily upon having quality villains, and Batman has some of the best out there. It means that he has to be tougher, smarter and generally better than he would be if he had to deal with lesser villains.
Likewise, Spiderman has some pretty good villains most of the time. There's a diversity there that's sufficient to make it a genuine question about what the final outcome is going to be.
HGiles: Iron Man's life has enough dimensions to stand on his own. Batman's life falls flat without stage-stealing villains to prop him up.
EDIT: Well, that was a bit longer than I originally intended. Oops.
TL;DR I get tired of the angst wallow Batman can't seem to get out of. The way stage-stealing villains are so important to Batman shows that he has a hard time support a story on his own.
I'm not sure I can agree with you here. You're going an awfully long distance out of your way to justify hating Batman. Of course he's going to be flat and one-dimensional if you ignore the nuance of his universe.
Look at Superman, he has no dimensionality to him at all. There's never really any question about him saving the day, and I've always had the sense that he isn't really ever making hard decisions. Batman at least, occasionally messes up.