So when did Superman, Batman and Robin first meet in comics?
Well, they didn’t first meet in comic books at all. They met on radio.
On the March 3, 1945, episode of The Adventures of Superman, Clark Kent found an unconscious boy in a drifting rowboat who turned out to be Dick Grayson. Thus began an adventure that led Superman and Robin to discover the captured Batman in suspended animation in the wax museum of the evil Zoltan. The villain was in the business of shipping scientists to enemy nations in the form of wax statues — but not for long, once Batman got thawed out.
The Dynamic Duo became frequent guest stars on Superman’s radio show, and even took over for him for periods when he was incapacitated. That team was born of necessity, because the afternoon network radio lineup — full of Dick Tracys, Green Hornets and Captain Midnights — had no room for a separate Batman show.
In The Great Radio Heroes, Jim Harmon observed that Superman had “…stooges and foils, but no one he could treat as an equal, a colleague, a confidant. Batman filled this niche.”
You could see Superman and Batman hanging out together on the covers of 1940s’ World Finest Comics, but inside their adventures were separate. They also met glancingly at a couple of the Justice Society gatheerings in All-Star Comics.
But the big comic book introduction wouldn’t come until Superman 76 (May-June 1952), when Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne coincidentally ended up sharing a stateroom on the overcrowded cruise ship Varania. When criminals ignite a dockside blaze, a flash of firelight causes the two heroes to catch each other in the act of switching identities, and a decades-long partnership is born.
The “first meeting” of Superman and Batman would be featured in 1961’s Secret Origins — but that would be a yet another one. That DC giant reprinted a retconned origin of the team from World’s Finest Comics 94 (May-June 1958).
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| A momentous meeting from Superman 76. |
Paul Zuckerman wrote: A subsequent retcon has young Bruce Wayne spending time in Smallville for some unknown reason. The Waynes were apparently still alive yet Bruce is a teenager. He finds out Clark is Superboy but then submits to amnesium or something so that he wouldn't remember. The funny thing is that no one seemed concerned that Superboy would know about his future!
ReplyDeleteIn World's Finest 271-the 200th issue after the first WF team-up, writer Roy Thomas came up with a story that tied all of the first meetings together!