Nuance is weird sometimes.

There are two statements that co-exist in my head.

I love it when Superman and Batman are written as being the best of friends.

It will always be at least a little weird to me when they are written that way.

It shouldn’t be, but it is.

It isn’t a mystery to me why this is. It’s the era when I started reading comics. I’m a Post-Crisis kid and during the first decade or and change of the Post-Crisis era Superman and Batman were not friends. Their “first meeting” in Man of Steel #3 ended with Superman telling Batman to not blow it for the rest of them and Batman thinking that in another reality he might have called Superman a friend. There was trust. They knew each other’s real identities and Superman even gave Batman the Kryptonite ring at the end of the Dark Knight Over Metropolis storyline, but the two weren’t social.

I knew intellectually that this wasn’t always the case. Thanks to reprint collections I got to read some of the team-ups from the days when Superman and Batman were pals. Their first meeting (in the comics at least) in The Mightiest Team in the World from Superman #76 (May/June 1952). Another first meeting in The Origin of the Superman-Batman Team from World’s Finest Comics #94 (May/June 1958). Superman and Batman Greatest Foes from World’s Finest Comics #88 (May/June 1957). The Super Key to Fort Superman from Action Comics #241 (June 1958). They were also chummy on the various iterations of the Super Friends and I would later learn that they teamed up on the radio series.

But in the then modern DCU? They weren’t pals.

That all started to change in 1996. Grant Morrison’s JLA series brought back the “magnificent seven” Justice League line-up and suddenly Batman and Superman were on the same team. Literally. That’s when the ice in their relationship began to thaw. Then, in the main story from Superman: Secret Files and Origins #1 (January 1998), another, more significant change took place. Who Is…Superman? (written and penciled by Dan Jurgens with inks by Jerry Ordway) had an old college friend of Clark’s named Gordon Selkirk stopping by the Kent farm. Through the conversation he has with Jonathan and Martha we see the Post-Crisis origin of Superman, which was one of the points of the whole Secret Files and Origins specials. Towards the end of the story the old friend leaves. Superman visits the farm and is confused by some of the things Jonathan says about his former roommate. He realizes it wasn’t Gordon that spoke to his parents.

It was Batman.

Superman heads to the Batcave to confront Batman and finds out that the reason for the ruse was that Bruce wanted to learn what made Clark tick. Instead of leaving, Superman assumes his non-electric form (this was during the Superman Blue era) and the two have a cup of coffee.

I vividly remember reading that story back in November of 1997 and thinking something had changed. I was 21 and didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life, so this counted as a big deal for me.

Over the next decade or so the idea of Superman and Batman being friends gained more traction. The biggest shift towards this was when the Superman/Batman title launched in 2003. Things at DC were changing in a big way around this time and old ideas and characters that had been set aside after Crisis on Infinite Earths started making a comeback. Jeph Loeb was the initial writer of the series and his take on the book was that stories where Superman and Batman team up should be summer blockbusters. After roughly three years he left the book and it eventually became a showcase for creators to come in and tell Superman/Batman stories.

Superman/Batman ended in August of 2011 along with all of DC’s other titles to make way for The New 52. During that era, Superman and Batman were friends. Full stop. That’s how it was played in their own titles and in the various books DC published that teamed them up on a regular basis. Batman/Superman, which showed how the balance of power between the two characters had shifted with Batman getting top billing, began in 2012. That series lasted thirty-two issues and had a variety of creative teams.  In 2019, a new Batman/Superman book premiered, initially written by Joshua Williamson began. That book came out in the wake of Dark Knights: Metal and initially followed up on characters and concept from that event. That series lasted 22 issues.

Then, in 2022, Mark Waid and Dan Mora launched Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. That title is still ongoing and is about to celebrate its 50^th issue. I’ve read most of the story arcs and short form stories and they have been an absolute ball.

And yet, despite the fact that, more often than not, Clark and Bruce have been good friends, it still feels a little weird.

I love seeing them together, but still…weird.

Which brings me to World’s Finest Wednesdays, a new feature here at The Bailey Planet. Every Wednesday, hence, the name, I’ll have a review of a Superman/Batman (or Batman/Superman if you need the Dark Knight to be on top) story. Sometimes it will be a Silver or Bronze age story. Sometimes it will be one from the post-Crisis era. Sometimes it will be one of the newer ones. Sometimes it will be an overview of one of the radio serials. I just want to read (or listen to) one of their team-ups and then write about it here.

Hopefully by reading (listening to) more team-ups I can make the idea of them being friends seem less weird in my head.

We’ll see how that goes.

More to follow…