World's Finest (Deluxe) Book

There are those that make an argument that the two biggest superhero characters, in terms of popularity and influence, are Superman and Batman. It's a good argument. Although Superman wasn't strictly the first "comic strip hero" (characters like Lee Falk's The Phantom debuted before him) he was the first bona fide super hero with powers to die for. He couldn't really "fly" in his first outings, but bounding buildings seems close enough so we'll leave it at that. It's probably fair to say that almost every super hero that followed, was to some extent based on the Superman template, even if the goal was to make them "less like Superman" the criteria still had to be applied.

Batman followed shortly after. Where Superman serves as the template for a powered superhero, Batman arguably serves as the template for a non-powered hero. Using his wits, psychological tactics, tools, deductive skills and martial arts he has for more than half a century been the "real life super hero" that millions of boys aspired to become.

The two characters have been traditionally paired in an attempt to capitalize on their individual popularity, and to play Superman's light off Batman's dark (yin and yang, so to speak) but is the final product better than the sum of the parts? In this case, I don't think so.

For one thing: Superman is heavily under-utilised here in order to let Batman at least feature. This tells me the threat level generated here by the Lex Luthor / Joker pairing is insufficient, or at least not multifaceted enough to justify featuring both heroes. I can't help but feel that this would have made a nice Superman, or Batman, story. The fact that Luthor and The Joker are at odds and not exactly working together may have played a part. Also: The Joker is portrayed as truly clownish and awkward and not very menacing.

I like the DC Universe, and I like both Superman and Batman. As a result I enjoyed this book. It didn't blow my mind, though, and there aren't many surprises. There are better Superman/Batman collaborations out there (you may even want to check out the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman pairing in Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman: Trinity). The art, on the other hand, is very nice and hearkens to the golden era of comic books.