World's Finest

This week is team up week here at On My Mind. Five days of Team up books. The first of these would have to be World’s Finest. It started out as a special issue as the New York World’s Fair Comics in 1939 with Superman as the star. A year later it was released again in 1940 with Superman and Batman but in separate stories. It was made a regular series and early on had various titles like World’s Best. Soon it settled on World’s Finest and an anthology series was born. Yes it was an anthology series. It had various characters and its stars were Superman and Batman together. However, they were in different stories. The series ran for the entire 40’s and a few years in the 50’s before they hit on the winning combo of Superman and Batman. Actually it was Superman, Batman and Robin. If you only bought books for the characters this was a winning deal. It was 3 for the price of one. Now the timing of this was great. Batman started out as the dark avenger of the night. He even shot people in his early days but then took a vow to not do that again or even carry a gun. He did violate that vow once in the 1960’s but to my knowledge has not done it since. Anyway by the 1950’s the comic book industry was under fire from the government as being bad for kids. So Batman was softened up and by 1952 his demeanor was much like that of Superman. They became fast friends and even shared in keeping each others secret identity after they accidentally found them out. Over time a fourth character was added into the mix from time to time. After all Batman had Robin helping him so sometimes Jimmy Olsen would come to help Superman. The 1960’s is the era that I am most familiar with. It was probably boosted by the popularity of the Batman series and reruns of the Superman series. They did a lot of “imaginary” stories with the most memorable being the Kent’s adopting both young Clark and later a young Bruce Wayne. They were raised together as brothers. At first Superboy thinks that the new Batboy who is in town is a super villain and tries to stop him. Soon he realizes that he isn’t the villain and discovers who he is. They team up to become a crime fighting team. In another story, to show that comic books were still fighting WWII in the 60’s they team up to fight a Nazi who was still running a concentration camp. For a time there were even stories of there super sons fighting crime. At the time these were not called imaginary stories but I have considered them that. It was probably the first time anyone had seen the art of Neal Adams and I loved the stories that had them fighting the Superman-Batman Revenge Squad.
These were fun to read for me but by the time the mid 1970’s came around I stopped reading them. Not because I didn’t like World’s Finest but because I hardly ever saw it for sale. The only time I did see it when I bought it at a King Kwik Mini-mart and it was a reprint of one from the 1950’s. I felt cheated as I was hoping for a new story but I did enjoy it. So I guess I wasn’t cheated after all.
The series was running on fumes by the 1980’s and was soon canceled. This was during the pre-crisis days at DC. Batman has changed to being the dark avenger once again and while Supes and Bats are still friends it had been uneasy since then. The book has since been published in prestige format with some success but no monthly on going series has been published since then.