Episode 37 – The Battle of the Century! Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man

Fifty years ago Marvel and DC teamed up to bring their, at the time, flagship characters together. Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was a tabloid sized comic that saw Superman and Spider-Man not only fighting each other, but also taking on the titanic team-up of Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this book and to, down the road, ride the coat tails of the new version of Superman and Spider-Man teaming up I did a team-up of my own. Joining me to talk about this book is my good friend and co-host of The Overlooked Dark Knight, Andrew Leyland. Andy is one of the biggest Spider-Man fans I know and this seemed like it would be a fun time.

And a fun time it was. Andy and I go over how this wasn’t the first crossover between Marvel and DC, how the book came together, how Stan Lee is a lot wordier than Carmine Infantino, the writing, the art, the bits that eventually ended up in Superman The Movie, how Spider-Man’s hero identitification was a bit lackluster, the weird way Lex and Doc Ock escape from prison, the parts they liked, the parts they didn’t like, and what it’s like when Spider-Man notices how hard Superman has become.

(snicker)

For grins, here is the front and back cover as well as a breakdown of how the cover came to be.

Here are some select pages from the book.

And here’s that splash page because it’s awesome.

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The opening and closing theme is titled Journey and was composed by Pontus Rufelt. It is licensd from Shockwave-Sound.

Next time: The start on an irregular series called Superman: Many Lives, Many Origins where I look at the various tellings and retellings of Superman’s origin (it’s in the name) starting with Superman: Birthright.