perfidy

Via ace, we find that the ever useful Forbes magazine runs the numbers for how much aspiring crime fighters will need to throw down to become a Batclone. Short answer, a lot. 3,365,449 samoleans, to be exact. And that’s the bargain basement price, for those without access to a billion dollar inheritance. (According to the Forbes ranking of the richest fictional individuals, Bruce Wayne comes in at number seven just after Willy Wonka. If the Bruce were real, Forbes believes he’d eb a notch below Rupert Murdoch.) So how do you become Batman? Let’s take a look.

For the bat-fu, Forbes suggests Shaolin training:

A good place to start would be an internship at the birthplace of kung fu, the Shaolin Temple in Henan, China. One month of training at the prestigious Tagou school costs about $740, including a private room and training with a personal coach. It'll take a while to get good enough to stop the Joker's worst thugs, though, so count on spending at least three years and about 30 grand for the trip.

I had no idea that Shaolin training was that cheap. If I had known that ten years ago, I would now be the baddest technical writer in world history. But I don’t think Mrs. Buckethead would approve of me going off to China for several years at this point.

Where do you stash your gear between missions? Seeing as the underlying geology of New York is not conducive to cave formation, Forbes recommends another alternative:

So what's a budget-minded vigilante to do? We recommend you find yourself a nice out-of-the-way warehouse. In the outer boroughs of New York City, a decent-sized ground-floor commercial space can be leased for as low as $2,000 a month, particularly in isolated, questionably safe neighborhoods, exactly the kind of place the Bat would fly.

That’s not a bad deal. Certainly cheaper than what my friend Drew is paying for his condo in Battery Park.

This is the kind of hard hitting, informative investigative reporting we need to see more of.