Superman Through the Ages! Forum

taken from CBR

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=142868


Wikipedia refers to Batman as one of the world's most recognized superheroes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman



What would it literally take (and how would it have to be gone about) for Batman (or any other random DC character) to take Superman's top spot as THE most recognized superhero?

No.

I tend to doubt it.  

US is not the world.

Other than Batman Begins, Batman has been out of the public eye since the end of Justice League Unlimited.

Superman Returns puts Superman back in the public eye for a bit.

But remember Superman & Batman are a very significant part of Western popular culture, and that is not confined to the U.S.A.

I live in what must be the most remote little outpost of Western civilisation on the planet, yet I guarantee most everyone here knows who Superman and Batman are. I grew up on American culture and happen to love it, but that's by no means a prerequisite for recognising Superman & Batman. Despite general knowledge of international affairs being at a very high level across our population (and Australia's), you'd still probably find more people, young and old, who know what Superman's secret identity is than who could name the president of the U.S.A.

I'm afraid Superman and Batman escaped the borders decades ago. They belong to everyone now, not just Americans.

That went a little off-topic, but to get back on track... Superman and Batman are the Big Two, the primal two, the templates for every single super-hero that sprang up after them. They each cover slightly different territory, and together have it all covered. Possibly you could throw Wonder Woman into the mix, so I'd better include her. Superman will always be the big daddy though... If you take out these three, and also Spider-Man, worldwide I'd say Clark Kent is more well-known than any other super-hero.

I'm talking here of long-lived, proven, and deeply ingrained popular culture; not whoever happens to have a film out this week.

Hasn't this happened already? Batman becoming more popular than Superman, I mean.

Despite Superman's well-deserved seniority as a character, the definite sense I get is that generally of the two, Batman is the one making more money for DC right now (Martin Pasko said as much in an interview a few months ago), and that this has been true for quite some time: the most commonly given reason for the "Death of Superman" marketing stunt" is that Superman wasn't selling that well or seen as being relevant, and this was all the way back in 1993 or so.

And if we go back even further, we see this isn't new. There was an apocryphal story (that is probably true), that in the early eighties, he was selling 800 copies of UNCANNY X-MEN a month. How many for Superman?

Ten.

Superman constantly received "fresh, new" artistic talent to make the book feel hip: at first this included Garcia-Lopez and Ross Andru, and there were rumors that DC was offering a contract to John Buscema as well. Then came the hiring of "cool" Marvel writers, some of whom were terrific (Len Wein), others not so much (Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman). Finally, this ended with the guy they were calling the Next Curt Swan, John Byrne, getting a pushover editor that let him do whatever he wants.

While I have a love of both characters, I can see where Batman would resonate more with pop culture. Batman, like James Bond, has a degree of "coolness" and "sexiness" and "rock and roll" that Superman doesn't have.

But was the question whether Batman sells more comics and merchandise than Superman?  I thought the question was, would he ever be more universally recognized, and more identified as THE DC character in the way that Spidey is THE Marvel character?

As for the latter -- which indeed was the question -- I rather think not.  By now Superman is simply too iconic to be dethroned, and it has little to do with popularity or even the quality of his comics.  That costume, those poses, even just the "S" by itself are symbols of DC, of America, of all sorts of things to all sorts of people.  After all, Toy Story and the Incredibles are cooler and better-selling than Mickey Mouse cartoons, but it's Mickey who represents Disney.  The X-Men have been, I'd argue, bigger than Spider-Man in comics fandom for over 20 years, but it's still Spidey who represents Marvel.

Superman was first.  Say "superhero" and he's the mental image most people conjure up.  He pretty much invented the merchandising and multimedia crossover marketing that defines the genre today.  And because he had all those years to insinuate himself into popular culture while the rest of the longjohns crowd -- including Batman -- languished in the relative obscurity of kid's books, he will likely never be eclipsed.  Think of it this way -- there were better movie cowboys than John Wayne, there were (arguably) better James Bonds than Sean Connery and more people watched The Next Generation than the original Star Trek.  But when people hear "western," "007" or "Trek," they picture the Duke, Sean and Spock.  Period.

Having said all that, I do agree Batman is bigger now than Superman, and I think it's got a lot to do with the state of the world, and the strength of the characters.  In the 50s and early 60s, eras of ecomomic prosperity, national pride and a faith in authority, Superman soared while Batman came off as a superflous second banana.  In the modern era of terrorism, rampant crime and disillusionment in authority, Batman offers vicarious empowerment while Superman is a relic at best and a sell-out at worst.  And just as Batman suffered from attempts to twist him into an alien-fighting "Superman Lite" in the 50s, Superman now suffers from attempts to make him a conflicted, kick-butt "Batman Lite."  Characters tend to do well only during eras when they're allowed to be what they were designed to be.

I read something the other day that went something like: each generation believes they are smarter than the one before, and smarter than the one coming after. Not an Earth-shattering revelation, I know.

Toy Story and The Incredibles are "cooler" and "better-selling" than Mickey Mouse? (I loved The Incredibles. And Toy Story is a neat film.) Really?

Nightwing, I think the trouble is, people (our generation) forget how big Mickey Mouse was. They forget how huge Superman was.

The Incredibles and Toy Story are very clever films. But for the next generation it will be different films, and none of them will have characters as big as Mickey Mouse or Superman. I'm not sure why there will never be another universal supergroup like The Beatles. The Incredibles will never be as big as Mickey Mouse. Not even close. He will be king when they are long forgotten. Our generation has forgotten, or never knew, how big Mickey, Superman, and John Wayne were.

Everything in your third paragraph would indicate you know what I mean... But it's more than being first.

I think that for the general public, by which I mean people who don't read comics or buy the associated merchandise, Superman is doubtlessly the more identifiable character. I have seen his likeness in restaurants (a French restaurant chain called Hippopotamus comes to mind, which featured a cartoon hippo in a Superman costume with an H emblazoned on its chest), launderettes, courier services and all sorts of other businesses, all mere inches away from copyright infringement. A handyman in my area drives a van with the word "DIYMan" on its side, accompanied by a crude copy of what seems to be a Wayne Boring Superman drawing. Superman has entered the common psyche like few other characters before him or since, in the sense that he is recognised by people who have never read his adventures; the same can be said for only a handful of characters in fiction, among them Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan.

A Liverpudlian gentleman of some note once mentioned that he and his colleagues in a musical ensemble they had formed were "bigger than Jesus". Well, to illustrate how widely-recognised I think Superman is, here goes: bigger than the Beatles.

Permanus writes:



Well, let's put it this way.  If they did sequels to either of those films, people from all demographics would line up to see them.  If they did a new Mickey Mouse movie tomorrow, they MIGHT get a few parents bringing pre-schoolers.  Might.  That's why anything new with Mickey tends to go straight to video.





Well, being "first" means more than simply showing up before everyone else.  Technically, the Phantom was the first crimefighter in longjohns and Superman stole his schtick from John Carter of Mars.  But Superman got it RIGHT.  Superman was as big as he was because he represented something new and different and DC invented a whole new kind of cross-media marketing to promote him.  Just consider...the guy shows up in 1938 and by 1940 he's already in newspapers around the country, has his own radio show and stars in $100,000 a pop animated shorts.  Some of that's because the character had appeal but some of it, a lot of it, is because the company behind him kept pushing him to new audiences. Before you can like the guy, you've got to be exposed.

I think it was unprecendented for a character to become so huge and ubiquitous in so short a time.  In the 40s you couldn't turn around without tripping over something Superman-related.  Today we're used to that, we see it every summer with every new blockbuster movie. But in 1940 it was a new thing.  And because Superman started it, and kept at it for decades before other heroes got out of the gate, he became the icon, not the rest of them.

You mention the Beatles, and I think they'll remain on top forever for the same reason.  Yes, they were cute, and funny, and almost inhumanly talented.  But they also had the good fortune of meeting Brian Epstein, who promoted them like crazy, and George Martin, who polished their raw talent into something slick enough to sell but not so antiseptic that young fans were turned off...and so on.  In a million years, we will never again see four young geniuses end up together in such divine sychronicity, and have the good luck to meet up with all the right forces at the right time.  There's plenty of talented people out there who never get a break, and plenty of hacks who get promoted, but how many people have both world-class talent AND world-class marketing?  

Look how many groups have been touted as "The Next Beatles?" Just using that phrase means it ain't gonna happen.  To this day, boy bands are assembled by record execs to fit the Beatles mold...he's the cute one, he's the brooding one, he's the bad boy, etc...but you cannot fake chemistry and you can't build a new Beatles from a kit.  Lightning in a bottle, they were.

Same with Supes.  70 years on and people are still tweaking the formula, but every hero out there...even Batman...owes his or her existence to the big guy.  And every new X-movie, or Spidey movie, or whatever, might be super-huge this summer, but only by following the strategies Superman's handlers invented.  And as you say, next summer they'll be eclipsed by the next big thing.  This summer, a t-shirt with Jack Sparrow is all the rage, but next summer, and 20 summers from now, people will still be wearing t-shirts with the Superman "S", movie or no.

I guess what I'm getting at is that as we as individuals or a society get older, it takes more and more to impress us.  The boy band of the moment may sell out venues for a year or two, "Pirates" may break all box office records and so on, but in ten year's time, who'll remember any of them?  The ones that endure are those that come first.  Eleven men other than Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.  How many can you name?

The downside, of course, is that eventually the legend outgrows the man.  Or the character.  As Mickey Mouse proves, it's possible to endure as a symbol long after your relevance.  He may sell t-shirts, ball caps and wrist watches, but I'd be very surprised if he'd sell movie tickets.

Boy, am I glad such a fate has not befallen Superman yet! Nothing is more pathetic than the life of a corporate mascot. I think it was Dick Giordano that said that everybody's heard of Paul Bunyan, but nobody cares about him.  Like Aldous pointed out, Mickey at one point was a character with a personality with whom stories were told with, and gets by on goodwill in pop culture, as opposed to anything interesting being done with him.

Buster Brown - from the shoes - was at one point a comic strip character himself, until he was associated with merchandising.



Out of curiosity, how would you reconcile with this pattern, the fact that for a while in the fifties and sixties, Green Lantern was the top-selling DC hero?

Julian Perez asks:



Wow, really?  GL outsold Superman?  I never heard that before.

Anyway, it still fits with my hypothesis.  The 50s and 60s were all about guys with "The Right Stuff," test pilots, astronauts and all that.  Hal was created to fit those times and he did it wonderfully.  Throw in alien monsters and space themes and you've got a recipe for Silver Age success.

On the other hand, when you take Hal out of the pilot's seat and make him a toy salesman, truck driver or O'Neil's aimlessly wandering poster boy for white man's guilt, you end up with a guy who gets his book cancelled out from under him, more than once.  And deservedly so.

I suppose in the era of Watergate, Vietnam and whatnot, it's hard to pitch a hero whose day job is to test jets that we all know are designed to sell to the Pentagon and who's superhero schtick involves being a member of an intergalactic police force.  A cop AND a cog in the defense industry.  No wonder DC got nervous and made him into an aimless bum.

I know we're talking about superheroes here, but it seems to me that there was a precedent for the character-driven multi-media marketing bonanza of Superman in both film, popular music, and comics before 1938.  The machinery was there to promote him because the trail had been blazed beforehand. Charlie Chaplin is a good example of a brand that was in film, cartoons, comic strips and billions of products.  Before that, the early comic strips, beginning with Palmer Cox and the Brownies in the late-1800s, were marketing bonanzas --many of the characters are still with us but most are forgotten.  In the superhero/adventure hero genre pre-Superman we have phenomenon like Tarzan and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers.

I feel that the Beatles legacy will fade more than Superman's as the remaining ones die and the Boomers follow.  Superman is forever young and renewable and it will take longer.  Batman and Superman are like Donald and Mickey --one may be more popular, but the other will remain the masthead figure.

Oddly enough, one of Nightwing's preceding posts quotes me as saying things about the Incredibles and Toy Story that were actually brought up by Aldous, but nevertheless he makes his point very well - in fact, he makes the point I was trying to make. Batman may be outselling Superman today, so may Spider-Man, but in the long run, people remember Superman. To quote from The Big Lebowski: "The dude abides."

Today marks the day of the publication of the official sequel to Peter Pan, basically a bid by Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, who own the copyright, to extend their property. It's big news today, sure, but will anybody be reading it in ten years' time? I doubt it. Wasn't there a sequel to Gone With the Wind? Whatever happened to that? Like Coca-Cola, people remember the original, even if they are sometimes tempted by ripoff brands.

For some reason, the years 1938-1939 are forever ingrained into the American collective consciousness. Several things from these years of the Great Depresseion endure in pop culture, with a vengeance:

1938:

1. It was, of course, all about Superman. Superman is a summation of what Americans like to think our values are, even moreso than Captain America or others. By 1939 he was selling millions of copies and appearing in metro newspapers.

2. War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles.

3. The March of Dimes was established by FDR.

4. Bugs Bunny debuts (as "Happy Rabbit")

1939:

1. The Wizard of Oz, the most widely seen film, probably in the world, AND Gone With the Wind, the most moneymaking movie in history.

2. Hewlett-Packard was founded.

3. New York World's Fair

4. Batman!

I don't think that either Superman or Batman are going anywhere for a while.

But Superman represents all super-heroes, and probably all comic characters, since he is the No. 1 most recognisable of them all. I don't know if this makes him a "mascot", but for DC he is definitely the icon (is that the right word?) and symbol, and I say with confidence that he is the main man of the comics in the eyes of the general (ie. non-comic fandom) public.

Superman has had to carry an awful lot of weight through the decades, and sometimes people forget how much he represents to the average person in the street. I still maintain that Clark Kent is more well-known than 99 percent of super-heroes.

And please don't think nothing interesting was ever done with Mickey, because I have a lot of comics that would contradict you. I can hand out Mickey Mouse comics from the old days to grown-ups who should know better, and before you know it the room is silent because everyone is reading.

Mickey, like Superman, is an original, and he carries his share of the Disney weight. I don't believe this makes him pathetic even though his role with the company can become questionable at times.  :)

Superman is the corporate mascot of DC but he is also a beloved character and adventure hero with a thriving fictional life.

Ditto Mickey (those Gottfredson comic strips still read well as do the Italian comic books), Bugs, Archie, Alfred E. Neuman, etc.

That is why it is Superman vs Ali, not Batman.  Superman meets masters of the universe, the TRS-80 kids, etc.

Maybe Batman was on the verge of taking over during the tv craze of the 60s but stodgy old family values Superman "abides."
 


Julian, are you saying Buster Brown was a victim of his own success? Or that his strip ended when he started advertising shoes?

I recall reading somewhere that a poll was conducted which showed that the average person not only knew Superman was Clark Kent, but also knew Krypton, (and kryptonite ),the Daily Planet, and who Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White were.

There was no mention of Batman in this story, but I would imagine that Robin, Alfred, the Batcave, and the Batmobile would be equally recognizable.

It's all in the telling (and re-telling) of the story.

Will The Beatles music continue to be popular, and continue to have a large audience twenty years from now?  Yes, if it is still being played and a younger audience is exposed to it.

Captain Marvel outsold Superman in the fifties, yet when I was growing up in the 60's, people associated Shazam more with  Gomer Pyle.  Cap's story wasn't told and retold over and over.  I barely knew who he was until the line was revived in the 70's.

Can you please post the source for that one?

The Green Lantern comic didn't start till the 1960s, and even the Showcase one came out late in 1959....

So it would seem like a stretch to include the 50s.

I agree that world-wide, Batman will likely never be as recognizable as Superman. He has outsold Superman, and I know of other comics/sf/fantasy sites where Batman always comes out ahead in popularity polls. Many young fans consider dark characters as cooler. Batman is also considered to be smarter and hipper. Given enough time to prepare, he could defeat anyone, even Superman, they say. Maybe, but I think the idealism of Superman ultimately endures beyond the "coolness" of tortured figures like Batman, Wolverine, et al. At least I hope so.

I don't get that idea. Superman can destroy Batman with a glance. He can stamp his foot and destroy the Batcave. We're talking about a galaxy-shaking super-being here. He can think faster and move faster than Batman can see or hear. It's nonsense.

Together, they only work for me as colleagues, or allies. Superman versus Batman is ridiculous. Superman is in a different league as an enemy -- but they are complementary as partners, or at least in being on the same side.

The whole "who can beat who" (whom?) mentality is beyond pathetic.  This is the enduring legacy of Marvel comics (and DC is now not much more than Marvel Lite).  Somehow Marvel gets a free pass as the company with more "mature" and "sophisticated" characters and stories, but ultimately they just cater to this juvenile obsession with schoolyard scraps.  Is it any wonder nobody outside fandom takes the medium seriously?  It's been reduced to the level of professional wrestling.

Anyway, so what?  Mighty Mouse could beat up Mickey Mouse, but Mickey's still the winner, isn't he?  

Frankly, turning Batman into an invincible warrior makes him a weaker character, not a stronger one.

Ahhhh, so I see you've never gotten into lengthy, loud-voiced shouting matches with your friends about whether the Thing could beat the Hulk? :D I always assumed that kind of thing is part of the fun of being a comics fan: the obsession with minutiae, and stomping downstairs to whip out a copy of MARVEL TEAM-UP to prove a point, or writing lengthy essays for fanzines wondering if the Vision's "desolidification" or "other-dimensional mass-shunting" power was somehow connected to the other dimension of the Golden Age alien "Vision," or wondering if Abin Sur ever met Superboy.

Part of the reason that this sort of thing has such appeal is that it is successful in getting across characterization. This is important if you read comics to read about interesting people.

For instance, the Busiek/Perez JLA/AVENGERS had the members of the JLA "beat" the Avengers when they individually broke up to go after power objects AVENGERS/DEFENDERS WAR style, because individually they are the best and are skilled at working independently. But if I remember  when the two teams had a battle royale itself, it was the Avengers that won: because the Avengers are much more about teamwork, group power, group identity and with strategy they can be greater than the sum of their parts.

(Plus, that business about Captain Marvel duplicating Green Lantern's emerald energy was way cool, as was Green Lantern "recharging" the ring from the Cosmic Cube.)

Regarding the actual point to this thread, ultimately it is simply a matter of one's viewpoint or parameters.

Superman and Batman have the unique credit of being rather iconic and proto-typical heros to the comics medium, 2 sides of the same coin IMO.  A super-natural, super-science or demi-god-ish figure in Superman and the apex of human development in Bats.  Another way to view it would be what a human might hope to aspire to if the external circumstances are correct (or modifiable), or what one can do with nothing more than what one has.  I guess another can be "hyper-being" or "human being", and on and on.

For me - if Bats and Supes could be considered to be 2 extreme sides of the same spectrum, then all other heros pretty much fall somewhere in between.

I found it rather interesting in Les Daniels Marvel Universe book, where a point was made to mention Superman as the progenitor of super-heros, and interestingly, Batman was also mentioned as another hero breakthrough.

If the last 70 years is any indication, it appears that one hero might be considered "more popular" - but both being the proto-typical heros they are, each will always benefit the other in media events, a sort of see-saw effect and neither will fade off to obscurity to be overshadowed by the other.  However, because Superman has the grand distinction of being the 1st super-hero, the balance will always come to rest in his direction.

Anyway, that's the way I see it.

The "who could beat who" discussions never bugged me much---seems like harmless fan debate to me (plus the subject of a few stories, such as who's faster, Superman or the Flash). Though I agree that Batman's no match for Superman physically (and I also find the "Bat-God" thing of the 90's/2000's rather stupid/obnoxious).

re: Who's Stronger arguments

I enjoy the occasional speculation or scrap.  The Marvel formula was quite early transposed to DC --a good late-Bronze Age example is the Vixen origin story by ex-Marvelite Gerry Conway. Batnan vs Superman is just silly (although I enjoy the Silver Age versions of that conflict).  Julian is right --it is part of fandom (and arguably pro-wrestling ans other sports promotions stole something from comics).  As long as we are here posting on faniverse message boards, I say the subject is fair game and nigh-near tradition.  Doesn't mean we all have to indulge... :)

 8)

Pro wrestling goes back farther than "what hero can beat up what other hero" by quite a bit...

Criadoman writes:



But is Batman still the sort of figure anyone aspires to be?  It seems to me one reason Batman does better in today's market is that it's possible to make him a completely unpleasant person and still be "cool."  Superman, when written as super-powerful and super-intelligent, was determined to be "too perfect," and thus rejected by fans.  Batman, on the other hand, can be almost supernaturally intelligent and physically perfect to an absurd degree, but as long as he's a hateful jerk (and possibly mentally disturbed) fans let him get away with it.

It's my opinion that modern America doesn't much appreciate intelligence.  Smart people are looked on with suspicion and resentment pretty much from grade school on.  So how to account for all the fan support for Batman because he's "smart enough to beat anyone"?  I'd argue it's because modern age Batman uses his brains in an "acceptable" fashion...he uses it towards his own petty ends to hurt the other guy as much as possible.  Yes, he's a genius, but he's also a psychological wreck and a nasty piece of work, so he's a "cool" genius.  

I guarantee you if Batman was written as a guy who came up with non-violent solutions to problems, cures to diseases or other altruistic achievements, he'd be rejected by fans as completely as "boy scout Superman."  Intelligent and well-adjusted = dork.  Intelligent with zero social skills and a mean streak = cool.


Johnny Nevada writes:



Maybe it's just me, I don't know.  The Silver Age got tons of mileage out of Lois and Lana trying to prove Clark was Superman and I hated every minute of it.  I always thought it was a waste of time and couldn't wait for the action to start.  To me, superhero battles are the same way.  Spidey meets Daredevil, they have some misunderstanding or other and fight for 20 pages, then realize they're on the same side and must team up against the villain.  But wait, we're out of space now, readers, so tune in next month for the battle with Doc Ock.  What a waste of my time and money.  I DO NOT CARE whether Spidey or Daredevil is the better fighter because the ONLY time it matters is when they are fighting *each other*, and that shouldn't happen anyway.  Plus nine times out of ten it all ends in a draw anyway so as not to offend fans of either character.  These stories always came off to me as filler and fluff, churned out because Stan (or whoever) hadn't figured out yet how to move the real plot forward.  They were only marginally better than getting a reprint issue.

Now, I don't know that Silver Age DC fans sat around debating particle theory and alternate universes and time paradoxes just because they were featured in Julie Schwartz's SF and hero books.  But if they did, I wish I was around back then to hear the debates.  I got stuck with the kid who insisted the Hulk could beat up Superman.  And yes, I did get into the debate.  After all, the Hulk is mentally retarded, so anyone even close to his strength could out-fight him easily.  Plus, Superman wins all fights because he can take out any opponent from orbit.  Heck, from Venus.

Well, I don't know if Batman and Superman are as different as all that.

Both of the characters are very savvy, competent white males that when written well fight crime with their brains.

Both characters have a great deal of respect for established authority: Superman does not use several "bad" laws as an excuse to disobey them all, and Batman always insists on collecting proper evidence before a crime, and values his relationship with the police (which is why stories like the Len Wein DETECTIVE where Ra's al-Ghul frames Bats for murder, or the Englehart series where Boss Thorne slaps Batman with a cease and desist letter, stand out: Batman being an outlaw isn't generally how he does things. I mean, there's a big statue of him in Gotham Park!

The two are different in several key ways. Superman is very science fiction, very "over the top."

Batman on the other hand, is more espionage/detective/adventure than science fiction. During the Englehart DETECTIVE COMICS, the most over-the-top gadget he used was a suitcase with a secret compartment.

This run also featured Hugo Strange's evil monster men and attacking cobra, too, but even this makes sense, because like Indiana Jones, Batman's stories are adventure stories but with horror elements. I can totally see Batman going to India to take down the Temple of Doom.



Hmmm, interesting point. Dick Giordano once wrote that, as a kid, he thought the most interesting thing about Batman is that you could grow up to become him.

Batman's mortality does make him stand out. BATMAN BEGINS sucessfully "nailed" the character when they had him do things like struggle to save one man from a falling mountain, or when he fell and scraped himself when escaping from James Gordon.



Batman was a pretty great leap of the imagination to be sure, because...while a character that's the pinnacle of human development already existed in Doc Savage, Batman is very different than Doc Savage in several ways.

The first is that while Batman is a very intelligent, athletic man, Doc Savage is a master of every field of human endeavor, from science to medicine. Batman on the other hand, like Sherlock Holmes, has ultraspecific knowledge: Batman can probably identify a brand of cigarettes by ash, and is an expert in fields like chemistry, forensics, and applied geology, but he's probably not going to know any more than a very, very educated person about Sumerian Mythology or the moons of Uranus. Doc Savage on the other hand, was not only a great chemist, he was a great violinist, too. Violinist.



I don't think hero vs. hero battles keep the plot from getting started: these sort of conflicts can, in many cases, define the plot itself. I'm remembering one of the X-MEN/AVENGERS team-ups, where the X-Men were placed in the ridiculous position of defending their greatest enemy, Magneto, from the Avengers, who wanted to bring the super-villain before the World Court for crimes against humanity. The X-Men, however, realized that because of a recent wave of anti-mutant hysteria, it just wouldn't be possible for Magneto to get a fair trial.

Strangely enough, the Avengers are my favorite superteam at Marvel, but still, every time they and the X-Men have a tiff, I tend to root for the X-Men, because they're "rebels," whereas the Avengers represent "the Man."

Which brings me to my next point...



Though I agree with you that Batman shouldn't be written this way, there is something to be said for the very real appeal of misanthropic, rebellious, or loner heroic characters.

X-Men was more popular, but for my money the guy that got the whole thing down pat first and best was Steve Gerber in his DEFENDERS. No disrespect intended to Englehart, who did some great DEFENDERS yarns, but reading the Thomas and Englehart DEFENDERS was a little bit like watching the first season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION when the actors hadn't jelled or discovered what the show was about.

Gerber, on the other hand, figured out that what brought the Defenders together was not the fact that they were all an ironic "non-team team," but that at some level they were all just not socially acceptable. Gerber gave the Defenders something that only the Legion of Super-Heroes previously had: a team that people respond to with an unusually strong sense of identification.



Yeah, I always hated that; it's for this reason that I loved the Lee/Kirby Hercules/Thor fight where Hercules rather definitively BEATS Thor. Thor's girlfriend, Jane Foster, comes up to comfort him, and Thor pushes her away and says "Get away! I don't want your pity." And then you had the jackal-like reporters say things like "If I were you, goldilocks, I woulda stayed in bed!" Which prompts Thor to wonder, "So, it's come to this. Thor, a subject of jest."

Later on, Thor got his dignity and acquitted himself with honor when he fought to save Hercules when he was trapped in the Underworld by Pluto. But still, what a moment!

Hang on. Wasn't that Superman's line?

I don't agree with this idea in relation to Batman.



I do see what you're saying, but I don't really agree. I don't think Batman is at the opposite end of a spectrum to Superman. And I don't agree with some of the things Nightwing said about Batman's "brains" or "intelligence". The Batman I'm familiar with was not a genius at the top of the heap. I don't recall him ever being a genius like Luthor or Einstein. He was a physical man with a very sharp analytical mind, a detective. He didn't even invent the Batarang....

Batman was an obsessive youth who devoted most of his life, up to a certain point before his crime fighting activities started, to physical training of all types (boxing, martial arts, acrobatics, etc.) and in the sorts of chemical and forensic pursuits that could aid his fight. Without the mental discipline and all those years of intense training, Batman would be a normal man with an athletic build (or, if the average American is anything to go by, a build like the Pillsbury Doughboy), and an undeveloped talent for deduction.

You don't for a minute think he invented and built every component of all his equipment, do you?-----because I don't.

At the other end of the spectrum from Superman I would put someone like Green Lantern. Hal Jordan was a two-fisted scrapper, and I loved that about the character, but let's face it: a Green Lantern can be an entirely cerebral character, activating his weapons through the exclusive use of his mind. That, to me, would set him apart from Superman & Batman. Batman isn't Batman because he's a detective -- there are plenty of detectives; he's Batman because he has a scary image and can beat five men at once in a street-fight.

Superman and Batman are like two peas in a pod, they are like brothers! Best friends for life... on Earth-1. That's the real Batman, all other versions are frauds.

Speaking of which, please DC, release Showcase World's Finest!

proof is on the covers:

http://www.comics.org/covers.lasso?SeriesID=216
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=9160&zoom=4

I saw that comic book on the news-stand in an episode of Adv. of Superman, where the Daily Planet was being sold.

But those cover scenes are just too chummy... All dressed in their tights, no less. More likely the big two would meet for lunch in civvies, and ditch the kid for the day.  :wink:  Sometimes they would feel like acting like grown-ups, I'm sure.

What I like about them is that they are funny. You will never, ever see covers like that again.

Yeah, those are certainly time capsules.  I love them all.  I'd like to see Alex Ross try for some of that good-natured fun in his paintings --him being such a comics purist and all.

I was going to comment that many of those WF covers are perfect fodder for the "Superman is a Jerk"-type out of context blogs since Robin seems to get the short end of the stick and is often condescended to in many of those scenarios, but the other two are victims of the joke as often as not.

What could mean more to a boy than to be the object of gentle ribbing by the two men he looks up to most?

This is sometimes overlooked in our modern, politically-correct times, where you have to tip-toe around minorities, etc. If you are never the butt of someone's good-natured joke, you'd better take a good look at what people really think of you.

I had a friend that argued ceaselessly that Neal Adams was the single most significant artist in comics history; he argued that the Silver Age ended the moment that Neal Adams did a comics cover, because his work could never definitively be "Silver Age."

And more and more, I find myself agreeing with him. You go back, you see covers featuring Superman and Batman playing pranks on Robin or playing baseball, and I say to myself, "Neal Adams would never do a cover like that."

We're talkin about Neal Adams, the guy who had Validus knock out Superboy in the "Fight for Championship of the Universe" to the shock and astonishment of gaping Legionnaires in ADVENTURE COMICS #366. The guy that had thousands of action figure sized Supermans turn on the real one with a face of contorted agony on Superman's face, on the cover of SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #135...this guy, Neal. HE would not have them bicycling together. No way, Jose.

Anyway, as a fan of Adams and his action covers or the way George Perez somehow fits a million figures in at once and they're all fighting World War VII, it may be hard for me to appreciate the snore-inducing pastoralism of these covers. It's a good thing WORLD'S FINEST got their collective spit together later on to produce such insanely eye-catching covers like "WHO IS REFLECTO..AND WHY DOES HE WANT TO KILL SUPERMAN AND BATMAN?"

Boy, I sure thought John Byrne was getting lazy in THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES when his panels were pretty much white space with a person in the center. (This especially got noticeable when the very background-detailed Jackson Guice took over penciling later on.) But Byrne on INDIANA JONES doesn't hold a candle to a lot of the Golden Age covers, where you've got Superman surrounded by yellow nothingness and maybe someone throwing a pie at him in a corner.

By the way, my all time favorite is this one:

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=8471&zoom=4

What exactly is Robin doing in this one? I swear, he's the superhero equivalent of the guy that helps you move a couch by grasping it in the middle.

I wonder what Batman is saying to those beachgoers. Five gets you ten he's saying:

"Hey ladies, wanna make a 'me' sandwich?"

While we're on the subject of these charming old covers, can anyone tell me what is going on in this one:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=4544&zoom=4
Is Superman defrosting the refrigerator? Why have the bananas and an apple fallen to the floor? What is Lois so upset about? Is it that she was trying to break the ice with her hammer and he's doing it with his little finger?

Beyond that, Lois certainly seems to eat a healthy, balanced diet.

Those covers are from the 1940's and 1950's not the Silver Age, they are from the Golden Age.

Once the Silver Age started, those covers ended:

July-August 1958 cover:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=14485&zoom=4

Neal Adams was going with the theme of the day.

May 1960:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=15635&zoom=4

March 1963:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=17559&zoom=4

August 1964:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=18547&zoom=4

Silver Age Covers were more shocking and melodramatic than the care free Golden Age covers.

March 1967
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=20808&zoom=4

August 1967
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21192&zoom=4

1st Neal Adams cover:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21715&zoom=4

The Bronze Age just took that and ran with it, but wasn't as big of a change as the Golden Age to Silver Age covers direction was.

case in point, another Neal Adams:

June 1969
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=22774&zoom=4

compare to

August 1964
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=18547&zoom=4

In this case its also true that Batman and Superman didn't even share the same stories in WF until 1954, so the covers really reflect a bit of fun not unlike something on the Saturday Evening Post...

(http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5460/jasonnealadams4xm.th.jpg)