World’s Finest (But For Real This Time)

When the team-ups were made official!

The World’s Finest may not have started with team-ups (and team ups may not have started in World’s Finest), but that’s where things end up! In World’s Finest #71, in 1954, it officially went from an anthology beginning with Superman and ending with Batman, to an anthology with slightly fewer stories, starting with a Superman and Batman team up! 

In the pages of that issue, as they work together to stop a group of crooks who stole some kryptonite, we even get to see the first (of many) instances where they each swap costumes with each other for a case! In their previous team-up, one had dressed as the other, but here they pull the full double bluff. 

As this team-up goes on, in the earliest days they frequently have to deal with stopping Lois Lane from discovering their identities, and continue their costume switching shenanigans! In fact, not only do those switching shenanigans continue, but they level up a notch: we get a brand new recurring motif, power switching! 

At least once every 3-6 issues, we see an adventure where one or both of Batman and Robin gain superpowers, oftentimes equivalent ones to Superman, and Superman himself loses them. Usually, the focus then goes to Superman as he must deal with stopping a villain without powers, having to rely on things the Dynamic Duo usually would. However, on occasion it would switch, showing growing pains with sudden power gain in either Batman or Robin. 

Also, their rogues galleries team up for the first time well into this new status quo, with Joker and Lex Luthor forming a formidable faction of foes in World’s Finest #88, in June 1957. The villainous duo goes into “business” together in Metropolis, hoping to surprise both of their foes and utilize a batch of androids they manufactured to get rich under the heroes’ noses, then take them out! 

Of course, the heroes fool them right back with a series of tricks, and would continue to do so for years to come. 

We’d continue to see the Duo and Superman teaming up against a series of gangsters, weird dudes, and eventually a massive amount of aliens. 

The mid-1950s to early 1960s were an era of intense sci-fi, often meaning even in Batman’s own comics he’d fight rockets, artificial moons, weird energy creatures, etc. Supervillains themselves became less and less popular, and less and less common, particularly the ones without any powers. Particularly the ones like Joker, Penguin, Deadshot, etc who technically wore actual clothing people would wear. You’d sooner see Batman slugging it out with giant bees from an underground kingdom or helping out an alternate universe version of himself with a purple, red and yellow costume than fighting a mobster. 

As DC Comics became a LOT more sci-fi, we saw the heroes in World’s Finest fighting alien after alien, sometimes from a planet that got a title or a name, sometimes a species that got a name, sometimes not. 

However, ironically, the most common name for a planet they fought aliens from was “Planet X”. Not once was it the same Planet X, but different or the same writers on the run would simply title a planet they didn’t have a name for Planet X, and have the alien be from there. 

Eventually, things turned back around as the years ushered in an era of camp, allowing for more goofy villains to return, and Superman and Batman settled into patterns. These patterns would also include more and more Bat-characters, but I’ll leave that for a future article…

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