A few weekends ago, during a car ride, one of my friends asked the following question:

Which business would you invest in? Wayne Enterprises vs Stark Industries

Thus beginning a conversation where we notate the positives and negatives in investing in either fictional company.

In the end the consensus was that with Stark Industries you know what the final products are and you are guaranteed some kind of profit from your investment whileas with Wayne Enterprises there is a lot of research and development going on but it is not entirely certain what they specialized in.

But what being a part of Wayne Enterprises provides are the contacts and network for the political and social games / circles whileas Stark Industries appears to be much more about making money than dealing with the nuances of society.

I won’t go into details of the conversation.

In any case… I came across recently an article that asked how much would it take to be Batman or Iron Man and the numbers may surprise you.

Now I doubt that the average comic / superhero fan would have the money to pull it off, but it is fun to speculate nonetheless. I can’t say that I am surprised that it would cost more to be Iron Man than Batman, but I like to think of Batman as someone that knows how to stretch his dollar whileas Iron Man just tosses money into a general direction knowing that it’ll end up becoming something useful.

So obviously one thing led to another and as thus I decided to look into Wayne Enterprises and Stark Industries just to see what do they specialize in if anything.

Let’s look at Wayne Enterprises. According to the Batman Wiki, Wayne Enterprises appears to have a hand in a lot of businesses:

Wayne Technologies: is involved in the retrieval and research of alien technology.

Wayne Biotech: is mostly responsible for the Gotham healthcare system. The company itself is a facility for researching and developing new medical procedures and systems. It also trains and teaches a huge number of people annually. Wayne Chemicals and Wayne Pharmaceuticals work closely with Wayne Biotech to develop medicines for different diseases.

Wayne Foods: It runs farms and cattle ranches in the Midwest United States, and imports beef from Argentina and other countries. Wayne Foods produces specialized products like ecological foods and natural lines with no additives and controlled growing.

Wayne Shipping: owns dozens of freighters and handles three and a half billion tons of freight each month and is used by Batman to gain an inside view on smuggling and drug trafficking.

Wayne Steel: is one of the oldest steel mills and metal refineries in Gotham and supplies steel for shipbuilding. It also studies and replicates alien technology. Wayne Steel’s alliance with the US Navy and the government has produced numerous contacts for Wayne Enterprises.

WayneYards: is responsible for the building of a large number of naval warships, commercial, and private ships and is currently building a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in Gotham. WayneSteel and WayneYards facilities repair a large number of cruisers and destroyers and also has contacts within the upper pylons of the Navy and the global maritime business.

Wayne Aerospace: builds luxurious and exclusive corporate and private jets and airliners. Its experimental aviation branch produces experimental and research planes built for the United States government and NASA. The military aviation branch designs and manufactures jet fighters and helicopters for the US military. The most notable models of these are the W-4 Wraith fighter and the Kestrel attack helicopter.

Wayne Chemicals: controls Wayne Oil, Wayne Pharmaceuticals and Wayne Botanical. Wayne Chemicals is primarily a research and development firm. Wayne Oil researches petrochemicals and alternative fuel sources. Wayne Pharmaceuticals is another one of Wayne Chemicals’ research and development branches.

Wayne Industries: is the main research and development division used for industrial purposes. The company studies, researches and develops cleaner, mechanical fission and fusion power plants and also owns many factories and normal labor units, from manufacturing cars to making cloth and so on. Wayne Mining is also a part of Wayne Industries, along with the few power stations the company owns. Wayne Mining mostly produces gold and some precious stones in Africa.

Wayne Medical: is Wayne Biotech’s sister company but both have different fields of study and work. While Wayne Medical also studies cancer and AIDS with Wayne Biotech, Wayne Medical is focused more on treating illnesses than researching them and maintains and runs many hospitals in Gotham City and helps the Wayne Foundation with the orphanages.

Wayne Electronics: is a large consortium that manufactures portable radios, stereo and Hi-Fi systems, movie cameras, cameras and electronics, measuring devices, scanners, surveillance equipment, computers and other electronics devices. Its other branches of business include information technology, wired networks, wireless networks and space exploration systems and satellites. It also has contracts with the aerospace, nautical and military industries.

Wayne Entertainment: owns many arenas and stadiums across America, including facilites in both Gotham and Metropolis, leasing out the Sommerset Stadium to the Metropolis Monarchs. Furthermore, Wayne Entertainment has working partnerships with several modeling agencies and multimedia houses and provides a large number of contacts and information.

The Wayne Institute: is a think tank for people looking ahead to solve the next generation of problems confronting humankind. Many decisions on future development, particularly in Gotham, goes through this division.

Wayne Research Institute: is a catch-all research and development division used by Wayne to study issues and technologies that he thought might be helpful in his endeavours.

The Wayne Foundation: funds scientific research and helps research by providing facilities and training.
Through the Wayne Foundation Wayne addresses social problems that encourage crime and assists victims in a way that his Batman persona cannot. The arrangement also provides him with a large network of connections in the world of charities. He finds out about the newest trends and newest arts, but at the same time maintains connections to the streets through the soup kitchens and social services groups, which augments his crime fighting efforts.

The Thomas Wayne Foundation: is a foundation for medicine and medical help. This foundation gives annual awards for medical breakthroughs and lifelong commitment, similar to the Nobel Foundation. The Thomas Wayne Foundation is also responsible for funding the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic in Park Row, and the foundation funds and runs dozens of other free clinics all over the city and in other trouble cities like the Bludhaven.

The Martha Wayne Foundation: is a patron foundation and supporter of arts, families, education and tolerance. The foundation supports and helps to run a number of orphanages and free schools, and provides teachers for those who have learning difficulties. Artists can apply for grants from the foundation to help support them in furthering the arts. The foundation sponsors companies like Family Finders Inc. in Gotham. Family Finders is an organization directed at finding lost people and uniting families. The foundation sponsors and runs dozens of soup kitchens within the city.

At first glance it would appear that Wayne Enterprises does a lot of acquisition that would aid Batman in his need to fight crime at Gotham City and there are quite a few divisions that focuses a lot on research and development.

So what did a quick research into Stark Industries provide? According to Marvel Wiki:

Stark Industries is a multinational conglomerate with facilities in over thirty different countries on all seven continents.

The company’s origins date back to the mid-19th century when Isaac Stark, Sr. began developing new electrical and engineering technology that helped to redefine innovative security measures for the industrial age.

With growing prosperity, Stark Industries (then known as Stark Enterprises) was quickly propelled into the modern era as a major global industrial superpower, due in no small measure to Isaac Stark, Sr.’s direct descendant Howard Stark. Under Howard Stark’s leadership, Stark Industries became the world leader in the development of munitions with its corporate office located on Long Island, New York. Stark Industries quickly branched out into other scientific fields including aeronautics, robotics, micro-technology and fringe science.

Tony Stark continued to aggressively develop new technologies and Stark Industries became a major contractor for both corporate and government concerns. One of Tony Stark’s major coups was securing a contract with the military watchdog organization S.H.I.E.L.D. Nearly all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s ordnance and equipment is based on Stark technology including their primary base of operations the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

So unlike Wayne Enterprises, Stark Industries focuses primarily on the engineering / technological side of the spectrum. Pretty blatant if you ask me.

So interesting, Tony Stark spends quite a bit more in keeping up his “Iron Man” persona, but I would be kind of curious to see how much of a profit his company makes in comparison to Wayne Enterprises…

Ironically enough… after a little bit more of research… someone actually broke it down for us. Over at “The Motley Fool” Mark Reeth actually posted a bit that question… and the opinion is pretty interesting.