#BATTMAN CLASSIC COMICS SERIES#
#BATTMAN CLASSIC COMICS CRACK#

He actually decides that if he can’t get justice he’ll have revenge and teams up with Lex Luthor. And when Batman finally realizes that it is impossible to prove Superman’s guilt, he makes amends and the two live happily ever after. He even gives Batman a flight belt so they can zoom around together. Later on, Batman accidentally becomes friends with Superman, who turns out to be really nice. kill anyone!”įor the fairly reasonable suggestion that maybe Batman jumped to conclusions about Superboy, we get the slap heard round the online world: Image: Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan/DC ComicsĪfter Robin refuses to become part of Batman’s big Superman Revenge plan, Batman wipes his memory of ever being Robin and sends him to an orphanage. “You must be wrong, Batman,” Robin insists, “It couldn’t have been Superboy! He could never. The problem is that Dick Grayson is a pretty big fan of Superman, and when he found out that Batman’s whole deal is that he wants to ruin Superman’s life, conflict erupts. Just like in the main universe, Bruce Wayne eventually witnessed the death of the Flying Graysons, adopted Dick as his ward, and trained him to become Robin. This is the part where Batman slaps Robin He takes on a costumed identity “so that Superman won’t suspect me.” Why a bat-themed identity specifically? Writer Edmond Hamilton declines to explain this, and most of the story proceeds as in the main universe.

#BATTMAN CLASSIC COMICS CRACK#

Bruce swears to become the world’s greatest detective in order to crack The Case of How Superboy Definitely Killed My Dad. Image: Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan/DC Comicsīruce is an orphan, but nobody will believe that the great Superboy could commit such a terrible crime without evidence. Fortunately, Bruce managed to catch a glimpse of the killer before they fled through an open window, and he came to some conclusions. Both Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are teens now, the latter known as the internationally beloved hero Superboy.īruce’s dad, a medical doctor, was in the process of researching an anti-Kryptonite serum to help Superboy against his enemies, but he was murdered by a prowler on the same day that he refused to hand the serum over to Superboy, saying that it needed more testing. The story inside is called “The Clash of Cape and Cowl!” and takes place in an alternate universe where Batman’s parents were not killed when he was a child, so his mother lived long enough to die of unremarked upon natural causes instead. This is both a little silly and a fascinating refinement of the idea of comic book “canon” into three words. The cover of World’s Finest #153 touts its contents as “an imaginary story,” rather than the usual totally real stories featured within the book’s pages. Image: Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan/DC Comics Eventually, things had to start getting weird. For the next thirty years, if you wanted to see Batman and Superman team up, you read World’s Finest.Įven just by 1965, that was a lot of Batman and Superman team ups. That is, until in 1952, when World’s Finest put a pushpin in history by featuring the first team up story between Superman and Batman.

#BATTMAN CLASSIC COMICS SERIES#

The long-running 1941 series began life as a vehicle for reprints of Batman and Superman comics, with a name inspired by a promotional comic given out at the 1940 Queens World Fair - giving it the “world” in “World’s Finest Comics.” The cover of the book always depicted the two superheroes hanging out together, but within its pages the two starred in their own solo stories. World’s Finest, in case you’re not up on your DC Comics naming conventions, is a traditional title for Batman stories and Superman stories, but it took awhile in the lives of both characters for the two to actually hang out together. To which I’ll say, “I wasn’t done.” World’s Finest #153 Image: Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff, Ira Schnapp/DC Comics “But Susana,” you say, “that doesn’t explain anything, and, in fact, raises a whole host of new questions.” The shortest answer is that the panel is from an alternate universe story where Batman is convinced that Superman murdered his dad. It’s been flipped horizontally, and one word balloon altered to overlap the other, so that Batman appears to be slapping Robin mid-statement - but that’s it.Īnd so the question remains: Why did Batman slap Robin across the face? The meme format is an actual comics panel. I had always assumed the image was a fan recreation, thinking there couldn’t possibly be an official panel of Batman absolutely belting one on Robin.

Battman classic comics