Adventure 275 (August 1960, DC Comics)
“The Origin of the Superman-Batman Team”Jerry Coleman and George Papp
In
Adventure 275 we got to see the best of the many team-ups that appeared in a Mort Weisinger-edited book .
Two problems about this story: yes, of course, it flies in the face of the already established first meeting of these two in
World’s Finest 94, published just two years earlier; and it may seem to violate one of Kurt’s criteria, because a Superman-Batman pairing is not a team-up since they always team up.
Let’s deal with both problems at once first. This story isn’t really a Superman-Batman story at all. It’s a team-up between Superboy and the Flying Fox (no relation to the later one from the Young All-Stars), a secret identity Bruce adopts during his family’s heretofore unknown residence in Smallville. Bruce soon becomes the BMOC at Smallville High. When a blushing Bruce asks Lana to the junior prom, she says that she will, but only if Bruce can find out Superboy’s secret identity.
Yes, you heard me. Bruce Wayne was a temporary resident of Smallville when he was a teenager. And his parents are somehow still alive. Even so, young Bruce still ants to be a detective, and better yet, a costumed crimefighter! He begins his career when yet another clever crook in his one-man tank crashes through the wall of the bank, conveniently located across the street -- in this iteration of Smallville -- from the Lang home. Bruce is there because he says he’s curious about Prof. Lang’s exotic trophies, but he’s actually there to check out Lana. He grabs a magical “witch-doctor’s costume” and a rope and swings out the window to knock over the tank.
Thus is born the Flying Fox! One Silver Age thing leads to another and Superboy and FF are working together. Just to make matters more complicated (this is a Weisinger story from the Silver Age, remember), we know that Superboy had used his time-telescope to peer into the future to catch glimpses of himself as Superman fighting alongside Batman and thus wants to be a pal to the future Caped Crusader.
Plus Superboy recalls that he had once been visited by Robin thanks to a time ray, so that he already knows that Bruce Wayne will become future Batman.
Thus Superboy is eager to help his future partner however he can. For instance, he gives him a belt with pouches for “chemicals and gadgets that you can use in case of emergency, and this coil of rope,” while thinking, “They may inspire him with the idea for his utility belt and Batline in the future!”
Aside: Retconning apparently not only the province of Grant Morrison,
et al.
Meanwhile, Bruce is doing everything he can to discover Superboy’s secret identity thanks to handy-dandy “recording device” and an oscilloscope. (!)
And that all gets us to Page 7!
(Forget it, Jake, it’s the Silver Age.)
After that? Oh, just a giant Kryptonite meteor; three crooks of whom there are no photos, thus forcing Superboy to carve their faces in wax onto the side of a mountain, Gustav Borglum-style; and Flying Fox captured, but using his rope and a fuel capsule in his pouch to turn the wax faces into giant candles to alert Superboy, and then mixing chemicals to destroy said meteor and save Superboy’s life.
Just another day in Smallville.
Shockingly, everything turns out hunky-dory. Not only does Superboy inspire a batch of Batman’s future weapons, but Bruce, having discovered Superboy’s secret identity, tells him that he and Clark ‘s voice patterns are exactly alike on the oscilloscope. Which implies another untold story: Why Superman and Clark Kent don’t sound alike.
Bruce feels he’s too young to be entrusted with Superboy’s secret, though, and using yet another device every 1920s doctor had in his office, that as Bruce explains, "will enable you to hypnotize me with my cooperation,… I will forget what I’ve learned about you!”
So the ret-con really isn’t a ret-con, because apparently Superman knew all along that when they did encounter each other as adults, Batman would not remember who Superman really was, and Superman would just go along with it all.
Though that had not been happened in the previous origin story two years before.
Lucky for all of us that this year’s event is about your favorite team-ups, not the most rationally written ones. I first read this in my copy of
Superman Annual 7 in the summer of 1963 and loved it. I had just turned nine, so you can imagine I was neither well versed in the doctrine of continuity nor interested in learning about it.
Besides, why let a previously written story get in the way of a good one? Mythology is full of alternate versions of the same myth, and when forced to choose, go with the best story. I happen to think, this one is better than the previously revealed first meeting of these two, so I’m going with it.
If you haven’t read it, please do, because it’s everything a great Superboy story was: the story of life in a small-town America; an
Archie in Riverdale comic with more danger and mystery;
Kings Row with superheroes for you older movie fans; and unpretentious, well written, and respectful of both its genre and its audience.
As with so many stories from those years, you wish it could have been told over two issues, just so that the coincidences and plot devices aren’t so strained and obvious, but it’s still a little gem sparkling with the innocence un-self-consciousness of the Silver Age.
-- not an auspicious beginning! 
