Batman and Superman: World’s Finest #7

You fight against Joker, against Catwoman, against Two-Face. But this… This is what I fight for.

Let’s start with some background on the relationship between Superman and Batman leading into this issue.

The Golden Age

Superman was introduced in 1938 in the pages of Action Comics, and Batman followed in 1939 in the pages of Detective Comics.

They were both popular enough to soon get their own titles in addition to their anthology appearances.

They were so popular, that by 1941, it was decided they should each appear in a third title. And so World’s Best Comics was created. It name was changed to World’s Finest Comics with the second issue and became a quarterly comic, which featured a Superman story, a Batman story, and several other stories.

Batman and Superman appeared together on the cover, but had their own stories in the interior. They never actually met in the comics. But you might think they had met, after a decade of having adventures on the covers of World’s Finest together.

They finally met in 1952 in Superman #76. Circumstances lead to Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent on the same cruise and in the same cabin. You’d think Bruce Wayne could afford his own cabin. When trouble breaks out, they both think they can get away with changing in the dark in their shared cabin, but neither fools the other. They become friends and allies and agree to keep each others’ secrets.

Finally in World’s Finest Comics #71, 1954, the interior delivers on what the covers had always promised. A story featuring both Batman and Superman. Their regular team-ups will become the feature story of the title for some time.

The Silver Age

By the 1960s, Superman and Batman had been around for a couple decades, but seemed no older. And had picked up a lot of backstory, which 1960s writers preferred to disregard. The explanation came in the form of “Earth-Two”. There is a multiverse out there, and those early 1940s stories took place on a parallel world known as Earth-Two, whereas the modern 1960s stories take place on Earth-One.

Crisis and Beyond

This was all well and good until the 1980s, when the 1960s characters still didn’t seem to have aged much. So there was a Crisis on Infinite Earths. A great struggle across the multiverse. Supergirl died. The Flash died. Entire universes died, and reformed.

And in 1986, the DC universe started fresh with a whole new beginning. The “new” origin of Superman was told in a series by John Byrne called Man of Steel. And Batman’s updated origin was from Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli in Batman #404-407, known as Year One.

Man of Steel featured the story of the first meeting between Batman and a Superman. It wasn’t on a boat. That was the old continuity.

The idea of this new continuity was that we are joining the heroes several years into their careers as superheroes. Hence we could see these glimpses into the past of untold stories about those early years. And we also get a bit of structure for when the major events happened in these characters’ lives. It had always been a bit of a jumble before.

There was later a Year Two story-arc for Batman. And a Year Three story-arc. Year Three is when Batman met Robin.

Year Five is when Barbara Gordon became Batgirl.

A lot had changed for Superman is this new universe. He first put on his costume as an adult, so he’d never been Superboy. And he really was the last survivor of Krypton. That’s what he’d originally been, but over the years, we’d learned that others survived as well. His cousin Supergirl, his dog Krypto, Beppo the Supermonkey, a lot of criminals in the Phantom Zone, the entire city of Kandor… it eventually seemed like the only people actually killed in Krypton’s destruction were Superman’s parents and maybe the guy who delivered their groceries.

Year Seven

By Year Seven, we are no longer in the nebulous past of these characters. These are the stories being actively written month by month in the late 1980s.

In Action Comics #591, Superman found himself transported to a pocket universe created by the Time Trapper. In this universe, there was a Krypto and a Superboy. That Superboy died saving his world in Legion of Super-Heroes #38.

In Superman #22, Superman found himself back in that world, which had been entirely destroyed by General Zod and two other escapees from the Phantom Zone. They had killed an entire planet, and Superman couldn’t risk them getting into our universe and doing the same. So Superman killed the Phantom Zone criminals. This action haunted him, and he had a mental breakdown, unconsciously assuming the identity of a violent vigilante named Gangbuster. Realizing what he’d done, and deciding he was too dangerous and unstable to stay on Earth, in Adventures of Superman #450, Superman heads into deep space in self-imposed exile.

In Batman #428, Robin (the second character to bear the name; the first had grown up and become Nightwing) was killed by the Joker in a story written by Jim Starlin. But the Joker ultimately wasn’t responsible for Robin’s death. And neither was it the writer. No, it was the fans who killed Robin.

In Batman: The Killing Joke, Joker cripples Barbara Gordon, Batgirl.

All told, it was a rough year for Batman, Superman, and those around them.

Year Nine was also rough. Superman died, and Batman got crippled.

World’s Finest

In 1999, Karel Kesel teamed with Dave Taylor, Peter Doherty, and Robert Campanella to tell a story of Superman and Batman set across the years. The idea was that by now it had been 10 years since each hero started their crimefighting careers. And this series would feature one issue per year, so we could see where they were in their careers that year. The first issue tells of one of their earliest meetings, before they’d learned to trust each other.

The premise of that first issue which launches the premise of the series is that Batman and Superman failed to work together on this meeting, and so the man they were trying to save, Harrison Grey, died. They then meet up once a year to honor Grey’s death, and renew their commitment to work together to save lives.

Batman and Superman: World’s Finest #7

I’d like to focus on the seventh issue, the story of the 7th year. For the first time, Batman and Superman failed to meet up on the anniversary of Grey’s death. This is because Superman was in deep space.

Serendipity. These titles all have their own stories going on, but sometimes when you step back to view the titles as part of a larger universe, you see these serendipitous connections.

We saw Kurt Busiek use this to great effect in Marvels, particularly in Marvels #2, where he noticed that the wedding of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman coincided in time with the launch of the Sentinels. He found thematic richness in the contrast. The Fantastic Four were beloved celebrities. As were the Avengers. Shortly before this, there was a Wasp-inspired fashion line. And now the Fantastic Four wedding was a huge media event. Crowds gathered to cheer. Celebrities like Millie the Model even showed up. On the other hand, the X-Men are mutants. So while the public cheered on the Fantastic Four, they also cheered on the Sentinels in the same breath, robots designed to hunt and kill the X-Men, and mutants like them.

We discussed above a Batman arc where Robin dies, and a Superman arc where he breaks his vow not to kill. After Joker killed Robin, Batman almost killed Joker, but Superman stopped him.

It’s an interesting bit of serendipity that these events happened around the same time in different comics, and Kesel plays off that here. Superman prevents Batman from killing a villain right after he himself killed his enemies. And before he went into self-exile in deep space.

Batman is not happy to learn this. And tells Superman to leave his cave. Superman refuses to drop the subject, and instead whisks Batman away to Kansas to have a talk.

He shows Batman around Smallville. We see Pete Ross, the high school… Clark speaks of Lana.

Superman speaks of what he fights for.

Batman almost understands.

To my mind, Superman’s execution of General Zod made sense. On Earth, there is a society and a system of laws, and his powers give him no right to judge criminals. But this was another Earth. A dead Earth in a dead universe. There was literally nobody but Superman left to pass judgment on the three that had killed all humanity. He had every right to act as their judge, and his verdict was a just one. As punishment for their horrendous crimes, and for the safety of other worlds in other universes, death was appropriate.

Superman is trying to explain this to Batman by showing him these farmlands, what he was defending when he pronounced his judgment.

“What we do isn’t about death–” says Superman, “It’s about life!”

Superman offers a trolley-problem style hypothetical, but Batman doesn’t bite. He says there’s always another way.

Maybe if you’re Batman.

They continue to reflect on life. And death. The ethics of not killing. The risk their lives puts their loved ones in. Superman has considered telling Lois his secrets, making her a bigger part of his life.

Their reveries get distracted when they are needed. Doc Waters collapsed just before Sarah Muller was about to give birth. The ambulance won’t be there fast enough. But Superman and Batman are.

The story ends with a good-home cooked breakfast from Ma and Pa Kent. As all good stories should.

The creators

Karl Kesel is best known for creating the ’90s version of Superboy with artist Tom Grummet.

My favorite work of theirs is a creator-owned comic called Section Zero, concerning a secret government organization that investigates weird phenomena. I backed a Kickstarter effort to get the series finished and collected.

Peter Doherty and Dave Taylor both came out of the British comics scene and they’ve both worked on the seminal British sci-fi anthology 2000AD and its most famous character, Judge Dredd. Dave Taylor spent a few years working in America. I’ve seen his work on assorted Batman and Marvel comics. Robert Campanella is the inker on a variety of DC comics, often working with Paul Pelletier.

My journey

In August 1999, I was reading everything Marvel. I went to the comic shop every Wednesday and tried to buy basically every Marvel Universe comic that came out. That didn’t leave much room for anything else.

I liked Batman. I’d loved the animated series from the early ’90s, and had an era that I liked that I had several issues of, from the late ’80s/early ’90s, with artists like Jim Aparo and Norm Breyfogle, and writers like Marv Wolfman, Peter Milligan, Doug Moench, and Alan Grant. But I wasn’t keeping up with new Batman comics.

Superman was just a character I was aware of through culture osmosis. I’d seen the movies. Read a handful of comics. I had tuned into the whole Death of Superman/Funeral for a Friend/Reign of the Supermen saga, but my experience with Superman was still pretty limited. Later in life, I’ve come to appreciate him more.

This cover jumped out at me. Enough to flip through the comic.

And the scene that I quoted at the top of this article caught my eye. Superman looking out over his father’s farmlands and saying, “This is what I fight for.”

And then I turned the page and saw the hypothetical philosophical question. I was just about to start university, and may not yet have even been familiar with the trolley-problem. But this was the type of ethical question I was all about.

Batman handcuffed to a bomb, holding onto Joker. Seconds before the bomb went off. He was about to die. Does he let the Joker go to kill again, now unchecked by Batman? Or hold on and take the Joker with him?

The question fascinated me enough to pick up the issue. And then collect the whole 10-part series. And then start trying to keep up with the Batman titles monthly. Soon after, the No Man’s Land saga ended, which seemed like a good jumping-on point for Batman. Greg Rucka started an excellent run on Detective Comics. But of course, I don’t just do things by half-measures. If I was going to be reading Batman monthly, I was going to do it right. That meant reading all the titles, and Robin, and Nightwing. And soon there’d be a new Batgirl series, and an excellent Catwoman series by Ed Brubaker. And…

Still never read Superman monthly.

There’s a new Superman movie in the cinemas now. I really liked it.

I wanted to pick out a Superman comic to spotlight, but also stick to the rules of being a relatively stand-alone single issue that I owned and could scan.

Not something large and unwieldy like Superman: Peace on Earth. I like All-Star Superman, but couldn’t think of one single issue that meant enough to me to spotlight. Same for Superman For All Seasons. I tried to think of single issues that I’d read that had stood out, like the Christmas tale in Superman #64 by Jackson and Guice.

I really like some of the oldest Superman stories from the late 1930s, but there was that arbitrary rule I’d set for this blog series was that I wanted to focus on comics I actually owned. I considered breaking that rule to highlight a story from Action Comics #3 where Superman traps a bunch of wealthy jerks in a mine, so they appreciate just how unsafe the conditions are for workers.

But ultimately, I am more of a Batman guy, and all my favorite Superman stories involve him teaming up with Batman. I had many favorite Superman/Batman adventures, but this seemed like the right one to spotlight.

I did have one more idea for a Superman story to spotlight, but I’ve only read the story in collected form, so have to pick up the single issues to see if any stand out. Maybe I’ll get to that soon if I can track down the originals.

Reading Great Comics

This is the seventh entry in our “reading great comics” series.

1. Sandman #19
2. Kurt Busiek’s Astro City #1
3. The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21
4. Usagi Yojimbo #93
5. Zot! #30
6. The Tick #3