No Stupid Questions

Batman has to be free from the need for a real job, plus be able to run the Batcave research infrastructure that developed the Batmobile, the Batplane, and all that. Plus keep Alfred on staff and in on the secret, plus stay with his backstory of Thomas and Martha Wayne being murdered. Wayne Enterprises came much later. Bruce Wayne's original guise was being an idle playboy in Wayne Manor.

Spider-man isn't rich. If you want a non-rich superhero, you might check him him out.

Or heck, I'm old enough to remember Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman.

If you made Bruce or Tony middle or lower-class people, you could still make an adventure out of that. It’s just that all of the heavy infrastructure would need to be completely rewritten. Skills and abilities would allow them to do amazing things, but they just wouldn’t have million-dollar tech at their disposal.

The character would be the same, but the story would have to take a very different path.

Iron Man and Batman can only do what they do because they have the time and access to resources to do it. Guardian from Alpha Flight, for example would be something like "Working Class Ironman." Common engineer who found out the mining suit he was building was going to be sold off to the military so he stole the prototype and became a superhero. He's kind of an "Iron Man's brain, Captain America's heart" kind of character, so if you wanted the non-rich Iron Man, it exists, it's just not Tony Stark. Tony needs to be rich or he's not Tony Stark.

Same with Batman. The Shadow is a former soldier who uses stealth, martial arts and magic tricks to fight crime. But he's not Bruce Wayne because being a billionaire playboy is what makes Batman possible.

Why recharacterize heroes with totally new backstories when the not-rich version is already a different superhero.

Absolute Batman is street-level and has little to no resources, and it's new... read it up.

BTW, Absolute Joker's a rich sociopath, everyone's an altered fucked version of themselves.

Batman rocking up on a black Toyota Camry... Gadgets in his belt bought on Amazon. No Alfred. No mansion. No true cave, but let's say he calls his basement the bat cave. I mean regular people already call their basements "man-cave" so I guess this gets a pass. Oh he probably has a day job too. I don't know. The plot could work, but it'd be very different.

Stark and Wayne need to have the financial means to do their thing at that scale because they're not magic. A mid level manager of a domino's would be far less convincing in those roles. If you add magic to the mix, income becomes less relevant. The royal nepo god baby Thor could be dead poor as long as he had the hammer.

I'm not sure if the Equalizer franchise is based on a comic. That would be an argument for a more relatable living situation for a former super soldier who isn't magic. He just enjoys working at a Lowe's.

Unless they are metahuman - probably, yes.

There are exceptions, like The Punisher, but he's not really a "super" hero (at least, not in any of the media I've consumed, which is admittedly not very much). Heroes like this are great at saving the day, but its just not believable that they can save the world or the galaxy or the universe.

Iron Man without money is some dude in a garage who spends his lifetime building the arc reactor and the Mark I. By the time he's gathered enough resources to build a Mark II, he's already 60.

Batman superpower is his resources. If he's not rich, then how would you explain custom made rocket car in his cave garage?

Batman probably doesn't need the money; he was originally just a really good Sherlock Holmes type detective. Didn't have gadgets. Hell, he even used guns.

Ironman, on the other hand... I'm split. In the movies, he builds his suit in a cave with scraps sure... But he didn't make the power source. The other dude with him did. In the animated series I've seen, his father made the power source. IDK about the comics; I was more into Spider-Man than anything else so I never read Ironman. Tony is smart and capable; but only when it comes to engineering. And if he can't engineer a power source for his suits, he has no chance of being as helpful. Dude is also kind of an asshole and an alcoholic. If he didn't have money, I don't know how much people would have put up with his behaviour.

Batman: I could see a street level Batman without as many gadgets in a more rudimentary batcave still be Batman. I think this is because if you take away all of the wealth Batman is still Batman, an excellent detective with extensive martial arts training who enjoys terrorizing criminals.

Iron Fist: that's a title, like Ghost Rider or Spawn there are other Iron Fists that are not rich. So while not exactly the same there are some Iron Fists that are not rich.

Iron Man: I don't think Iron man without money would work. Either you would have to change a core detail of him or it wouldn't make sense that he's not rich. The main defining characteristic of Iron man is his suit, which requires an extraordinary power source. So either he doesn't understand the power source (e.g. it's an alien artifact) or you would have to explain why he doesn't sell products with a similar power source and becomes rich.

iron man , bruce wayne is your rich billionaire that is funding the other superheros.

gifted is somewhat reversed, the "rich person a mutant is funding a Mutant state for them to live in through the use of "terrorism".

For Tony Stark, being poor makes him more of a Peter Parker equivalent. Also, having a suit of high tech armor likely means he's sourcing his components from some very wealthy companies anyway. I feel like owning the companies feels a lot more moral than stealing from them.

For Bruce Wayne, being poor makes him more equivalent to the Punisher. By himself, Batman has to be at odds in hiding his secret identity and, to some extent, getting lost in his alter ego. In the Justice League, Batman ends up being de facto leader a lot of times because that is because he is funding the organization and his leadership skills in Wayne Enterprises and up matching well for the Justice League.

You should watch Ironheart. Riri Williams is a black girl from inner city chicago, and she built a suit of power armour in her garage. She has a lot of money problems.

Also, in the comics Moon Knight is rich, but in the MCU he works at the London Museum gift shop.

I say that for Batman and Tony Stark, their super power is their brain. They design these gadgets that turn their brain power into brawn power. It only makes sense that someone as smart and innovative as that could easily start up a successful tech company.

And I'm pretty sure the first iron Man suit was built without any access to money.

Depends on how much the story is built on them being rich. If Tony Stark weren't rich, maybe the story would still work but it would be very different

One of DCs currently running batman series called Absolute Batman is quite literally this. Bruce Wayne is born to a school teacher Thomas and a social worker Martha Wayne who are on their best day maybe middle class. His only advantages in this run are that he is still extremely intelligent and he is a 6 foot 8 behemoth. There are other differences that make this run of batman compelling but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may want to read it. The first issue covers most of the differences between this batmans universe and others. I'm quite enjoying it personally.

Lewis Robinson

You could create different backgrounds, other than rich, and still make the stories pretty similar. It'd still be different though. I don't know that you could change any major factor of a character and argue that they aren't different.

Apparently a bunch of y'all have never heard of Absolute Batman.