World's Finest #1 (of 4)

World's Finest #1 (of 4)
CBR | Dec 2009 | 23 Pages | 34 MB
After tracking down a threat to The Man of Steel – and all of Metropolis – Red Robin must team up with the new Kryptonian Nightwing to end this mysterious threat and rescue Flamebird. But is all this just a red herring to distract the heroes from an even bigger threat to Gotham City and New Krypton? Be here to find out in this 4-issue miniseries from rising star writer Sterling Gates (SUPERGIRL) and artist Julian Lopez. Written by Sterling Gates; Art by Julian Lopez; Covers by Phil Noto

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Single Issue Review: World's Finest #135

Cover Art by Dillin/Moldoff.

World's Finest #135 features the last appearance during the Silver Age of a new Dick Sprang story. There is some indication that this story may have been inventoried for awhile; if you look at the number of stories Sprang had published by year in the late 1950s/early 1960s, it sure looks like it:

1956: 16
1957: 15
1958: 13
1959: 14
1960: 11
1961: 1
1962: 2
1963: 2

The irony is amusing. Early in his career, Sprang's work had reportedly been inventoried by DC as a hedge against the potential that DC's regular Batman artists, including Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson, might be drafted into the military for World War II. Now late in his (comics) career it was released in dribbles, apparently to keep the hope alive that he was still working for DC.

The story opens with Batman and Robin investigating a report of a strange-looking man digging in a farmer's field. They arrive as he excavates a small chunk of Green Kryptonite. When they confront him, he shoots them with a repulsing weapon and escapes on a flying platform.

Batman chases after him in his Whirly-Bat, instructing Robin to contact Superman.



Interesting; I had always known that Batman and Superman knew each other's identities, but not that Robin knew about Clark Kent.

Batman follows the Future Man's trail back to a cave where he discovers a time machine with a then-current date (June 8, 1963) and a notebook which mentions New Gotham City in 2084 and ancient Norseland in 522. Robin relays the message that Superman and he have found the Future Man at the local "Boy Ranger Museum". He has created Kryptonite bullets with which to stop the Man of Steel. Seeing Batman approaching on his Whirly-Bat, he forces the Caped Crusader to execute a daring maneuver:



Is this the finest moment ever in Whirly-Bat history? I'll leave that one to the experts, but it's surely high on the list.

The Future Man escapes and when Superman, Batman and Robin chase him to the cave, they discover the time machine vanishing. Has he gone into the future, or into the past? Superman will cover the former, while Batman and Robin go back to Norseland.

This of course means another appearance for Dr. Carter Nichols, a longtime Batman family member who was about to disappear as well. I don't think this was his final appearance but the clock was definitely ticking. He sends Batman and Robin back through time. Unfortunately, the Future Man has gotten there first and convinces the villagers that Batman and Robin are here to assassinate the local chieftain.

They are knocked unconscious and transported to learn their fate from the chieftain who turns out to be a surprise:



This is one of several "Thor" appearances in DC comics, and I would guess one of the last. It turns out that the Future Man's objective was to steal Thor's hammer, which he does and vanishes back to the present, with Batman and Robin in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Superman has gone into the future, where he initially faces charges for imitating the great hero of the past, but he quickly proves he's indeed the Man of Steel:



He recognizes the Science Minister as the Future Man, but later discovers it's actually his twin brother. The Future Man's minions capture Superman with the Kryptonite and tie it to him with ropes. We learn that the Hammer of Thor interacts with Kryptonite to cause amazing effects, hence the cover image, which scene appears next in the story.

We shift to the future, where the Future Man's henchmen greet his arrival from the present. Rak disintegrates the Kryptonite holding Superman down, apparently in preparation for destroying the Man of Steel himself. But it's a ruse, as Batman and Robin have defeated Rak already (using robots for the cover sequence), and with Superman free they quickly make short work of Rak's henchmen.

If we look at this story for keys as to when it could have been created, it immediately becomes obvious that it is after Detective #257 (July 1958) as this story features extensive use of the Whirly-Bats, which first appeared in that issue. There are plenty of other clues, however.

Superman is show as using his heat vision, not the heat of his x-ray vision. I am not sure of the exact date and issue that switchover was made, but I'm pretty sure it was around 1960.

The Thor appearance is a surprise. Marvel's Thor made his first appearance in August 1962 and he appeared on every cover of Journey into Mystery thereafter. That strikes me as a strong indication that this story must have been written before that. DC did have another Batman/Thor story before that in Batman #127 (1959), but with the heat vision aspect we're already after that.

I don't buy the date shown in the time machine of June 8, 1963. That's about when the comic went on sale (actually June 13, according to the DC Indexes).

There is one more aspect of the story that I have to comment on, and that is the tributes. This does certainly seem to be a swan song for Sprang, and Alfred/Rex and Commissioner Gordon are shoehorned into the story via a silly subplot about Batman's secret identity:



Alfred gets a line, the commissioner just gets to hold his head:



I tend to think that's intentional; if the Future Man really had Bruce's secret identity (and he did), then why would he contact Batman at police headquarters? Why not send him a message at Wayne Manor? The only answer is to give Sprang a chance to draw Gordon one last time. Bill Finger is credited with the script; did he know this was Sprang's last issue?

Comments: Nice story, excellent art as usual (but never again in the Silver Age) by Sprang.

There is a text story; World's Finest was one of the last superhero titles at DC to get a letters column. This one starts talking about frogmen of history, then switches to a discussion of the aquatic spider, then segues into modern skin (scuba) diving.

The second story is The Creatures that Conquered Aquaman. This one requires a small amount of intro. Jack Schiff had inherited the Aquaman strip from Adventure Comics. Initially he put Aquaman into Detective comics, but that only lasted for seven issues before he shipped it over to World's Finest. Initially both Aquaman and Green Arrow shared duties as backup features but effective with #134 they began alternating issues with slightly longer stories. This only lasted until #140; with the next issue Weisinger took over editorship of the mag and put a reprint story in the backup role. I have previously expressed bafflement at these decisions, especially since Aquaman had already gotten his own magazine by then. But in retrospect it seems obvious that although Aquaman had landed a new home, there was no room for the old Aquaman creative team of Jack Miller and Ramona Fradon over there.

This story is a rather pedestrian "Aliens from another dimension come to loot ours." They have these headbands that give them super-powers (mostly beams from their hands and eyes). Aquaman's finny friends help him out:



Comments: A mediocre story that feels padded even though it's only ten pages long. I've always like Fradon's art.

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A Tribute to Dick Sprang

Dick Sprang was a longtime Batman artist, starting in the early 1940s and ending (except for a few special appearances) in the early 1960s. Sprang was the master of perspective, and some of his best work featured overhead oblique views of large areas. Here's a crowd getting a view of the trophies of Batman and Superman from World's Finest #86:


A similar overview of Mechanical City from Batman #114:



In a story from WF #87, Superman has lost his powers, while Batman, Robin and a crook named Eldon Craig have gained them. Look at the camera angles Sprang chooses for the first three panels:

They are carefully selected to show maximum action against an immense backdrop. Note that due to the scale, some of the characters are just blobs of ink. This is a signature of Sprang's work, something that appears in almost every story he drew. The guy could draw the details when required, but he also knew when to step back and show the action.

Check out this amazing little panel from Detective #229:

Is that beautiful or what? And check out this panel from WF #92, as Superman encounters Skyboy:

Another Sprang specialty is to reverse the camera angle from one panel to the next; this gives greater flow to the page as you can see in these two consecutive examples:

Noted for the realism of his historical objects, Sprang drew the lion's share of the Professor Carter Nichols stories in Batman comics.




Update: See also Bill Jourdain's post on the Secrets of the Batcave lithograph. I have the second Sprang litho, entitled Guardians of Gotham, hanging on my wall. They are beautiful pieces, an essential for any Batfan.

Update II: I had to add this sequence, even though it's from the Golden Age:



That last panel is breathtaking.

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More World's Finest Weirdness

I'm working my way through the early Weissinger issues and I have to admit, I didn't realize how odd it gets. Batman exposing his secret identity is just part of it. Both Batman and Superman are characterized horribly in several stories, and some of the wacky stuff that works for Jimmy Olsen or Lois Lane is completely misplaced with Batman as the co-feature.

Consider the topic of mental illness. In WF #143, Batman is accidentally struck by a bullet that ricocheted off Superman. At the hospital, he shows signs of depression:



Superman decides to cheer him up by letting him solve a mystery. So that Batman will believe he's really needed, the mystery is set in Kandor, where Supes doesn't have his powers. A friend of Superman there is in on the gag. But does Batman brilliantly deduce that he's being patronized?



Of course, something's gone wrong and suddenly the menace they're facing is real, but Supes can't convince Bats, who snaps:



Eventually Batman is convinced of the reality of the menace, defeats it, and manages to shrug off his "inferiority complex".

Weissinger appears to have been copying a bit from the Marvel comics, which often featured the heroes bickering. The difference was that in the DC Silver Age universe, everything had to be restored to normalcy at the end of the story, so it was always some sort of temporary mania.

Or alien hypnosis as in WF #145:



Which causes Superman to snap:



In WF #148 Superman decides to check the security of his secret identity. He uses a "selective amnesia ray" to eliminate Batman and Robin's knowledge of his secret identity, so that they can try to crack the mystery. They do this fairly easily, wounding his pride. So he uses the ray on himself to create a challenge to discover Batman's real identity. But the obsession becomes a distraction from his real work:



So Batman decides to let Superman win:



In WF #150, Batman decides to check out Gambler's Isle, a legal offshore casino. He suspects something's crooked because people are losing their life savings. But get how he checks whether the roulette wheel is fixed:



It's not, and so Batman engages in a little "mathematical" gambling:



And:



Hitting on 17? Apparently the great game theorist didn't play a lot of blackjack!

It all turns out to be a plot by gambling-mad aliens to lure Superman and Batman to their world. As all aliens must be, they are a different color:



But (conveniently for plot purposes) their women are not:



Yep, another LL girlfriend for Superman.

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The World's Finest Teamups--Part I

In the Golden Age, DC put out a couple oversized, omnibus books. Comic Cavalcade (initially) was dedicated to the All-American superheros: Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, while World's Finest (called World's Best for the first issue only) featured Superman, Batman, Boy Commandos and several other features. These comics cost a little more (15 cents instead of a dime), but they contained 92 pages, so it was worth the extra nickel.

Initially, there were no Batman and Superman teamups in World's Finest, with the notable exception of the covers, which generally featured Batman, Robin & Superman behaving like, well, teenagers. Here's a particularly amusing example:



But inside the book there would always be a Batman story and a Superman story, with no crossover.

That changed with World's Finest #71, July-August, 1954. DC decided to slim down the book to the standard 36 pages (including covers), and pare the price back to a dime. They maintained a couple of the backups (Green Arrow and Tomahawk), so to fit the other two features they were combined into one story.

This was not technically the first crossover of Batman and Superman. There was a one-shot teamup in Superman #76, in which (improbably) Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent share a room aboard a ship and accidentally discover each other's identity. However, outside the comics Superman and Batman had often paired up in the Superman radio series.

The first seven issues (WF #71-77) were illustrated by Curt Swan, who would go on to the great Superman artist of the 1960s and 1970s. But in WF #78 the series was (mostly) turned over to Dick Sprang. Sprang had been a longtime penciller of Batman stories and his style worked with Superman as well.

Sprang's specialty was perspective, and he always seemed to have the "camera" aimed in the right direction to give the reader the most entertainment. Here's a terrific example from WF #80:



Note that in the first shot, we get the crowd looking up at Batman and Robin, and in the second, we get almost exactly the opposite angle. This was a continuing theme with Sprang.

Sprang would go on to do the lion's share of the next 40 issues of World's Finest. Along the way there were a couple of significant stories.

In WF #88, Luthor and the Joker teamed up in Superman and Batman's Greatest Foes, a story in which the respective nemeses apparently go straight and set up a robot-building business together. Of course, it's just a front for a new criminal endeavor. This is the first super-villain team-up of the Silver Age and one of only a handful in DC history at that point.

World's Finest #90 featured The Super-Batwoman, the story where Batman decides to allow Batwoman to continue her crime-fighting career. He had forced her to retire in Detective #233 by discovering her secret identity, but now he was convinced that she had what it took to handle criminals.

In World's Finest #113, Bat-Mite and Mr Mxyzptlk teamed up. Although neither was truly a villain, this is still a significant early crossover. The Joker and Luthor got together again in WF #129, while Bat-Mite and Mr M renewed their acquaintance in #123.

By this time the editorial reins had been handed over to Jack Schiff and the stories suffered for a number of years with the same monsters, aliens and weird transformations that plagued Batman and Detective of the era. Dick Sprang only did three stories after WF #119, including WF #135's The Menace of the Future Man, his last work in the comics for many years. Schiff's own finale as editor was #140; in the next issue Weisinger took over this book, and that's a pretty good breakpoint.

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