February 1966: Long Day's Journey to Nightman

A comic book company with a long history can afford to have a long memory.

DC Comics, for example, could publish a story in Action Comics in 1958, and then a sequel in World’s Finest at the end of the next decade.

The World’s Finest team of Superman, Batman and Robin spent a lot of time conning each other. Usually it was some hoax or ruse to protect one of the other members of the team from danger without their knowledge, but sometimes, as in World’s Finest 155 (Feb. 1966), it was just for fun.

On the anniversary of Superman and Batman’s 1,000^th case together, a new crimefighter appears who eclipses Batman in every way. Batman unravels the mystery with the logical (if immodest) deduction that the only masked crimefighter who could be as good as Batman would be Batman himself.

And yes, Superman had arranged the whole thing as a treat for Batman, using super-hypnosis to persuade Batman to adopt another identity that would be kept secret even from himself.

Superman is surprised to see Batman and “Nightman” appear together — a trick arranged by the Masked Manhunter using his old Batman robot.

“Once, for a birthday present, Batman dreamed up a puzzle that took all my powers to solve!” Superman explains. “To celebrate our 1000^th case together, I decided to return the favor … in spades!”

Superman was making a casual reference to The Super-Key to Fort Superman in Action Comics 241 (June 1958), a tale in which Batman hid out in the Fortress of Solitude in order to provide a birthday puzzle for the Man of Steel.

Interesting that writer Edmond Hamilton would be familiar with an old story by another writer, Jerry Coleman. The Super-Key to Fort Superman had been reprinted in the first Superman annual in 1960, however.

World’s Finest 155 went on sale in December 1965, just one month before Batman would be catapulted to the pinnacle of pop culture stardom.

June 1960: Thrills Times Three

The first issue of Batman Comics I ever bought, as opposed to Detective Comics, was 132 (June 1960).

Artist Sheldon Moldoff and Batman co-creator Bill Finger did the honors, and the cover-featured Lair of the Sea Fox was the primary attraction. With his underwater sleds countered by the Bat-Submarine, the purple-clad Sea Fox was an interesting though limited villain, confined to the seas and sewers and so forth.

The Dynamic Duo had by then taken to wearing their capes while scuba diving, which was odd, but no odder than many other things they did, I suppose.

The issue included what I’m sure is the only Batman story named after a Joanne Woodward movie, The Three Faces of Batman.

I was already familiar with Batman, having purchased Detective Comics 277 (March 1960) and World’s Finest 110 (June 1960).

When I picked up World’s Finest 110, I was intrigued to see that Batman and Robin seemed remarkably effective and undaunted for people who lacked Superman’s vast array of powers. I was also delighted by the bright, contrasting colors of all their costumes.

A big Superman fan, I was particularly pleased to now be able to explore Batman and Robin’s solo adventures in two comic book titles.

The story was a clever one by Jerry Coleman. Let’s say you’re some creepy octopoid invading the planet Earth to shrink and steal buildings for your outer space amusement park. How do you stop the unstoppable Superman, who is sure to interfere?

By siphoning off Robin’s life force so that every blow delivered against the alien invader harms the Boy Wonder.

 Behind the handsome Curt Swan cover was the gorgeous interior art by Dick Sprang, the famed Batman artist who actually preferred doing these team-up stories with Superman because of the wilder freedom of action they offered.

Sprang, Superman, Batman, Robin, Tommy Tomorrow and Green Arrow — all in color for a dime. I had no way of knowing how lucky I was.

February 1960: Peril from the Past

Writers must have found it tricky to keep Batman and Robin relevant in stories in which they teamed up with Superman.

After all, as screenwriter Jackson Gillis observed, the nearly omnipotent Superman could “corral any criminal” all by himself.

One writer who could handle the job of giving the Dynamic Duo equal weight in those team-up stories was Bill Finger, Batman’s co-creator.

In World’s Finest 107 (Feb. 1960), Finger came up with a two-step solution to the problem: one, confront Superman with a monster so mighty his powers cannot overcome it and two, give the Dynamic Duo an autonomous mission that’s crucial to stopping the creature. 

The fact that their mission is separate gives Batman and Robin a chance to shine out from under Superman’s shadow.

When a red-eyed, blazing yellow giant emerges on a Mediterranean island, Superman, Batman and Robin rush to intercept it. But this Time Creature’s force field proves as effective as Brainiac’s in stopping Superman.

Meanwhile, a whistling signal draws the Dynamic Duo to a cave where they discover an ancient telepathic device informing them that such Time Creatures had previously laid waste to other worlds. 

Anticipating the monster’s emergence on Earth, our alien benefactors buried the one weapon that can stop the creature during the beginning of the reign of Alexander the Great. Finding it missing, Batman and Robin use Professor Carter Nichols’ time travel device to go after it in 336 BC (Nichols’ friendship with Bruce Wayne stretched all the way back to Batman 24 in 1944).

Finger bounces the action of this lively story back and forth between Superman’s efforts to stall the Time Creature and Batman and Robin’s adventures in the colorful era of Alexander III of Macedonia.

Artist Dick Sprang once confessed that he enjoyed drawing the Superman-Batman stories more than the solo Batman stories for which he became famous. The science fictional possibilities inherent in the World’s Finest stories provided more visual scope for Sprang’s creativity.

December 1959: The Terrific Trio’s Double Trouble

A guy who can double himself would hardly seem to pose much of a challenge to the foremost superhero team of the 1950s — Superman, Batman and Robin.

But because Duplicate Man’s power had a built-in teleportation aspect (and because of Bill Finger’s clever writing), he managed to give the Terrific Trio a run for their money in World’s Finest 106 (December 1959).

Batman artist Dick Sprang was particularly fond of drawing World’s Finest stories because of the outlandish science-fictional high jinks prompted by the presence of Superman. After all, it’s a rare character that offers you the opportunity of showing him mopping up a massive spill of pancake syrup with his hair. 

Whether the stories were silly, somber or both, Sprang’s art made them prized little gems for seven years, from 1955 to 1963.

At one of Gotham City’s innumerable exhibitions featuring giant props, the Dynamic Duo encounters a man in a blue-and-orange costume stealing a valuable telescope. When they try to stop him, they find he’s twins, and that one of his selves can merge into the other.

Finger comes up with interesting uses for the power. For example, when Batman and Duplicate Man fall off a tall building locked in battle, Duplicate Man can vanish to the safety of his other self. And luckily, Batman had Superman looking out for his welfare.

A criminal scientist who steals inventions, the Duplicate Man wisely decides to keep one of his selves in a lead-lined cavern hideout so that the other can always dematerialize while committing crimes. 

But the superheroes manage to capture him anyway by following Batman’s plan and using hypnotism and a phony teleportation device.

When banner headlines proclaim the Duplicate Man’s capture, a man on the street says of Superman, Batman and Robin, “What a trio! No one can ever duplicate them — or their feats!”

And why a “Duplicate Man?” Probably because that same year, Xerox went to market with something called a “photocopier.”

May 1952: When Meet the Mighty

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).

A momentous meeting from Superman 76.