Batman has this, to the point where the trope could be renamed to "
Batman Publicity". Like Wolverine, there are a few reasons for his constant cameos:
- He slides into any story quite easily; between his Comically Serious nature, his Detective skills, and his ability to fight and sneak, he can show up in any story involving either crime or superpowers, and have an obvious role to fill.
- Batman's already well known for being an in-and-out operator, so having him show up for only a page or two and leave when he's no longer needed is entirely within his character.
- He's usually either the #1 or #2 most popular character at DC at any given time, often alternating with Superman.
- He's got a very large supporting cast who have their own books, requiring he frequently cameo in them for subtly obvious reasons.
- He's got a lot of research and development infrastructure, which makes him a logical port of call for any story requiring a "hero consults with other heroes about something" scene, if that something involves Gotham City, crime in general, martial arts, or countering superpowers.
- He's innately suspicious of other heroes, is very sneaky, and always tries to have the advantage when "on-duty", making him a good candidate for a brief Let's You and Him Fight scenario.
A few examples:
- A particularly bad offender of this is the back cover of the Catwoman collected volume Relentless. The back cover shows Catwoman and Batman kissing. While this TECHNICALLY takes place, Batman doesn't show up until the last 5 pages, barely has 2 pages of screentime, and serves mostly to talk Catwoman out of her Heroic BSoD. The kiss is Catwoman drunkenly coming on to him.
- Robin (Damian Wayne) appeared in Batgirl and a bunch of other titles shortly after Final Crisis. He was even briefly added to the floundering Teen Titans series as part of a heavily-promoted sales stunt, complete with multiple variant covers celebrating his arrival
- Earth 2:
- An alternate version of Batman was used to hype the series, along with an alternate Superman and Wonder Woman, but the three were killed off in the first issue.
- A second Batman was added to the series and featured on the cover of Earth 2's first Annual — despite the story mainly concerning Earth 2's Atom.
- Justice League of America's Vibe had an issue with Batman on the cover, with the tagline being "Betrayed by Batman!". Except he only appeared for one-and-a-half pages, and it wasn't even him — It was someone who made herself look like him.
- July 2014 almost parodied this in its exposure. The line-wide variant covers all included Batman, even if he had nothing to do with the comic and had never been involved, or even didn't really fit in on the cover either. July 23 was proclaimed "Batman Day" by DC Comics on top of this. The exposure would not be much of a problem in hindsight, considering this was in fact the month of Batman's 75th anniversary, but no similar publicity ever came up regarding Superman the year prior, on his own 75th anniversary. Other examples pervaded media in this month, but they were related to his then-upcoming movie, which is an entirely other story altogether.
- There is a trade paperback featuring 3 issues that detail the first meeting of Green Arrow and Green Lantern and 5 issues about the first meeting between Green Arrow and Batman. What this Green Arrow team up book called? Batman: The Ring, The Arrow and the Bat, of course.
- WB made sure to give Batman a cameo in Suicide Squad (2016), complete with the trailers making it clear he was in the movie.
- Lampshaded in Brightest Day, where Deadman assumed that his role in proceedings was to bring the White Lantern Ring to Batman, reasoning that Batman is usually the one who ends up becoming the main hero in situations like that. Turned out not to be the case that time around, but still.
- When McFarlane Toys took over the DC Multiverse toy line, the first wave contained no fewer than three separate versions of Batman (Jim Lee Batman, Animated Batman and Hellbat Batman). The second wave had two, as well as two versions of The Joker (from Arkham Knight and Batman: White Knight, respectively). Then Wave 3 took this up a notch, being inspired by the alternate universe Batmen from Dark Nights: Metal, meaning it had four versions of Batman (The Grim Knight, The Dawnbreaker, The Devastator and The Murder Machine), with a fifth (The Red Death) appearing in a two-pack with The Flash.
- Likewise, when Spin Master got the license for DC children's toys in 2020, they launched with two lines: a Batman series dedicated to him and his supporting characters, and then a general DC Universe line for everybody else (Superman, Wonder Woman, the Justic League, ect.) published by DC.
- Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia. Batman is featured very prominently on the cover and while, aside from the titular Wonder Woman, he is the only other hero in the book, his actual page time is rather limited. It's not a very dignified showing for him, however.
