Superman and Batman: A History in Scans (original) (raw)
Welcome to a history of Superman and Batman in scans! This top post contains a summary of the basic arc of their relationship from 1982 to 2010. Within this post are links to detailed summary of five different periods of their history...and within each of those posts are links to scans covering specific storylines and capturing the highlights of Clark and Bruce's interactions in them.
I created this set of posts...well, largely for the fun of it, and because I was so baffled by seeing scans where Clark and Bruce were good friends and then scans where they seemed about to punch each other, and I couldn't puzzle out if it was just random or what. With some variation by individual author, though, there is definitely a "story" to the last 25 years, and I've tried to piece it together and document it here. Feel free to use any of these posts as reference for fic--if you want to write a missing scene in "A Kryll Way of Dying," for example, feel free to link the scans in the summary of your story (I know I'm hoping to use them that way!) Also, feel free to comment on anything that catches your fancy as you poke around--I do love discussing meta. <3
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Superman and Batman are two of the oldest, most iconic comic-book characters around. They were in fact two of the first characters to cross over in comics--their shared comic book, World's Finest, began in 1941, but until 1954 their stories were separate. The comic book slump of the 1950s prompted someone at DC to say "Hey, maybe two of our biggest-selling superheroes would sell more if they actually had adventures together!" And thus was born the idea of a larger comic-book universe in which all heroes interacted.
Fifty-five years of interactions across a myriad of different titles is a daunting amount of canon to process! Fortunately for a person interested in their friendship, for all intents and purposes the interesting part doesn't begin until the early 1980s. In the first thirty years or so of their history, Superman and Batman's friendship was a fairly simple thing--they were good guys and chums who stopped crime together. It was only as the comic book audience aged that their relationship became more complex. So this review of their relationship runs from 1982 to the present--"only" twenty-five years of canon.
A note on authorial voice here: I happen to enjoy writing Superman and Batman as more than friends, but I do not, for the record, believe that they're secretly shagging off-panel. Obviously there is no intent of that at DC--they've been friends/allies/comrades/foes, but never lovers (well, except for that one Elseworld...but I'm getting ahead of myself). On the other hand, sometimes it's a lot of fun to pretend that certain storylines/events/exchanges hint at something more, playing the shipping game. As such, any of this kind of speculation I can't resist putting in will be marked with blue bold print. For example:
This essay is an examination of two characters' friendship across time, exploring how they go from deep friendship to near-enemies and back to friendship.
This essay is the history of an epic love story that spans the deaths of both characters, years of silence, and the very remaking of the universe itself!
Material in blue is meant as fannish exaggeration and is not to be taken too seriously.
(Unless you want to.)
The last 25 years of canon break up fairly neatly into five sections, as far as Superman and Batman's relationship goes. This part of the essay is a brief overview of each one, mentioning major events and the basic direction of the canon. However, each section also has a link to a more in-depth discussion of the time period (and each of those sub-essays has discussion of specific storylines...be careful, it becomes something of a maze).
1982 is a somewhat arbitrary date: I picked it because it's the beginning of what ranks as one of the most bizarre, intense, and frankly slashy storylines in the world of comic books. Most of us have seen scans of comic books from that period in which Clark and Bruce are having intimate heart-to-heart conversations in which they say things like "it would be better if neither of us spent this night alone" while the narration gushes about them "staring silently, shattering with with honesty of their eyes all the usual emotional obstacles of embarrassment and discomfiture" (these are exact quotes from World's Finest #289). A large number of these are not scattered and isolated flukes, but part of a deliberately plotted and linear five-issue storyline which begins with Bruce wondering if perhaps there should be more to his life than crime-fighting and ends with Clark and Bruce "weeping and embracing over the ashes of feeling" (another exact quote).
For reasons unknown (but open to some interesting speculation), shortly after that embrace DC took Batman out of the Justice League and gave him his own team, the Outsiders. This break caused (or was caused by) a bitter quarrel between Superman and Batman, which in turn led to much angst on their both their parts. The two made up eventually, but the mega-event Crisis on Infinite Earths happened in 1985, interrupting whatever the arc of their friendship would have been and setting it off in another direction.
(read a summary of 1982-1985 here)
1985-1990: Not Exactly Friends
Crisis on Infinite Earths was a year-long massive crossover in which the universe was literally destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. One of the more striking changes was in Superman's history. John Byrne, brought in to re-invent the Man of Steel, stripped out most of what were considered at the time the "cheesy" elements of Superman's story--Krypto, Supergirl, the Fortress, all the rainbow colors of Kryptonite, etc. As a deliberate attempt to make Superman and Batman more distinguishable, more clearly different from each other, Byrne also wrote the official "new first meeting" between Superman and Batman to frame their relationship as much more suspicious and adversarial, although still respectful. At roughly the same time, Frank Miller published the groundbreaking Dark Knight Returns, a vision of the DC future in which Superman and Batman have become foes. Miller's re-envisioning of the two are inherently and implacably opposed sent shock waves racing "backwards through time" into modern continuity, where more and more it became assumed that Superman and Batman would be diametrically at odds with each other. Despite this, the two were portrayed as still deeply trusting each other when push came to shove, even though they were not at all friendly toward each other.
(Read a summary of 1985-1990 here)
The early to mid-90s were the nadir of Superman and Batman's friendship. Batman and Superman spoke briefly (and bitterly) in July of 1990. They did not speak again in the pages of a comic book until Sept. 1994: a silence lasting four years and two months. For longer than many fandoms even exist, Superman and Batman exchanged not one word in canon. During this time Superman died and came back to life and Batman's back was broken. Those are some pretty big events, and they went by with no interaction between the two of them. Ironically, this time is, in some ways, one of the most interesting and evocative times for shippy speculation. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. But it must have a been a really crappy time to be a fan of them as friends or more. The two speak again only during the Zero Hour crossover event in 1994, and in Legends of the World's Finest in the same year, a small side-canon story in which they're not more than civil to each other. And then that's it for another year and eight months. Which means that in almost six years of canon, Clark and Bruce spoke to each other exactly twice.
Man.
(Read a summary of 1996-2000 here)
This sad state of affairs started to shift in large part due to work of two people: Grant Morrison and Mark Waid. Mark Waid and Alex Ross's mini-series Kindgom Come (1996) is is some ways the mirror image of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns a decade earlier--both are set in a bleak future of the DCU, but where Miller posited Clark and Bruce as natural foes, Waid suggested a future in which, despite their differences, Superman and Batman not only respect each other but are fundamentally good friends. And like DKR, Kingdom Come appears to have had something of a "ripple effect" backwards into the DCU present.
In addition to KC couple of very important things happened in 1996. The first was that Clark Kent and Lois Lane got married, and the second was that Superman and Batman were both in the Justice League together for the first time since 1983. In fact, Clark and Bruce only really started talking together with more than terse exchanges on the eve of Clark's marriage (
and yes, it's an interesting coincidence that DC basically kept them completely separated in canon until Clark was about to be safely married, isn't it?). Their time in Grant Morrison's League was a very important one because it starts to re-establish them as not just reluctant allies but comrades and the beginnings of friends. Morrison wrote them as teammates and comrades-in-arms, not friendly per se (Morrison's JLA is very kick-ass but not very chummy in general!) Yet simply having them on the same team, sharing troubles and adventures and saving each others' lives, was a huge step in a positive direction.
Another important event at this time was the advent of the Superman animated series in 1996, which led to crossovers with the Batman animated series in which Clark and Bruce interacted together. All these factors combined to create an atmosphere in which Superman and Batman were consistently seen together, battling evil side by side without the constant arguments over ways and means.
(Read a summary of 1996-2000 here)
2000 to 2010: Best Friends Again
2000 was another important year for Superman and Batman's friendship. In 2000 Morrison stepped down from the JLA title and Mark Waid took over. Waid's tone was similar to Morrison's in most things, but he immediately started focusing on a couple of key storylines that showed Superman and Batman as having a deeper (if not trouble-free) connection than most of the League in stories like "Tower of Babel" and "Divided We Fall." A second important shift was Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly's growing influence at DC: 2000 saw them work on "Emperor Joker," which contained some very intense interactions between Clark and Bruce in which the two are clearly very close friends and care deeply about each other. 2001 brought the Justice League animated series and a steady diet of television episodes in which the two interact. More and more, Superman and Batman were shown crossing over into each others' titles, not in hostile ways, but as friends. By 2002 the intensity of the relationship was taken enough for granted that DC published an Elseworld set in feudal Japan, "Shogun of Steel," in which Batman is a female character in a romantic relationship with Superman.
In 2003 Jeph Loeb was given a brand-new title, Superman/Batman (
Yes, with the slash), and he proceeded to write the two as deep good friends who don't always agree, but who clearly put each other above nearly everything else in their lives and the world. He even wrote an AU in which the two were raised together as brothers and are almost obsessively focused on each other. His emotional, introspective, and talky style was often parodied and derided, but there was no doubt it was a treasure trove for fans of their relationship.
With Loeb's departure from the title in 2006, the relationship between the two cooled down a bit as other writers picked it up. Nonetheless, right up until the present the two share a very special bond and their deep friendship is taken for granted by most (not all) DC writers. In the movie based on Loeb's first story arc, "Public Enemies," when a distraught Clark thinks Bruce has been killed he tells Luthor that Bruce was his "best friend."
So we come full circle.
(Read a summary of 2000-2010 here)
The Future
It's unclear what exactly DC has in mind for Clark and Bruce's relationship in the long run; it's possible that Batman's return to the present or Superman's experiences on New Krypton might cause a shift in their relationship back toward antagonistic. However, their friendship has survived worse, and it's clear that the pendulum is always swinging between these two. And that's a good thing--as the history between them has piled up their relationship has become more nuanced, more layered and complex. Instead of just being two chums with no problems between them, their friendship now has a backdrop of betrayal, anger, disagreements and silences that only deepen the significance of their connection.