Today, we look at five times that Batman and Superman swapped costumes!
In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.
After over a decade of only meeting up here and there, Batman and Superman were finally forced to start having team-ups together when World's Finest Comics, a series that used to have a Superman feature and Batman feature in it finally shrunk to the point where the only option was to have the two SHARE a feature. Amusingly enough, that first issue, World's Finest Comics #71 (by Alvin Schwartz, Curt Swan and Stan Kaye) also featured the heroes swapping costumes.
You see, Clark Kent was in a hurry to change into Superman and so Lois Lane discovered him changing into his costume in a hallway. It was obvious, so it would be very difficult to convince her that she DIDN'T just solve Superman's secret identity, but instead, through some elaborate stuff, the heroes try to get her to think that Bruce Wayne is Superman.
However, since the bad guys have Kryptonite, suddenly Superman (in Batman's costume) takes ill and when Lois finds him, she assumes that Clark was filling in for Batman just like he must have been filling in for Superman...
The story ends with a great bit where Lois is irritated at all of Superman's deceit over his secret identity.
In World's Finest Comics #139 (by Dave Wood, Jim Mooney and Sheldon Moldoff), Superman gets to repay the favor to Batman when Kathy Kane keeps getting close to figuring out that Bruce Wayne is Batman (of course, Batman knows that Kathy Kane is Batwoman, but that's just normal and not a hypocritical position).
Superman fills in for Batman at a circus event that Bruce and Kathy are attending. However, a robbery during the show sees "Batman" and Robin heading off to stop the bad guys but an explosion occurs that would have killed Batman for sure, so Superman doesn't want to reveal that he was filling in for Batman, so instead, there's this elaborate deal where Batman will pretend to be Superman and Superman will play the ghost of Batman.
Once it is done, Kathy gets suspicious about Superman filling in for Batman, so Bruce cleverly has Alfred dress up as Batman and team-up with Superman to throw Kathy off the scent...
Of you could, you know, just TELL HER THE TRUTH.
World's Finest Comics #211 (by Denny O'Neil, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella) opens up with a Bob Dylan quote. I featured it in my 80 Bob Dylan References for Bob Dylan's 80th Birthday!
Anyhow, this was one of those old school comic book adventures where an alien race plans to invade Earth but they are dissuaded when they see that Batman, who is from Earth, is super-powerful. How do you face a whole planet of people like that? So they beat feet and, of course, Batman was secretly Superman...
They really should have just cut out panels from issues of Journey Into Mystery and Tales to Astonish. Missed opportunity.
Superman Annual #9 is a special comic book as it was written by Elliot S! Maggin and drawn by ALEX TOTH and Terry Austin, one of the few times that Alex Toth ever drew a Batman and Superman team-up, let alone an oversized story.
The gist of the story is that Lex Luthor has found a special form of Red Kryponite that forces the person exposed to the element to transform into a duplicate of the first person that they see. So Luthor uses it on Superman, making Superman a double of Lex, which Lex then uses to try to pretend that he is the GOOD Lex Luthor twin and the evil one gets locked up. So Superman is now presumably in prison while Lex goes free. Since he has to keep up his appearances, he actually DOES do some cool stuff.
After some time passes and he's about to go evil again, it is revealed that Batman had been filling in for Superman and used his disguise skills to make himself a double of Lex, while Superman filled in as Batman. Luthor can't believe it, as this means that Batman was just chilling in prison for all of this time, but why would he do that? Batman jokes that they were getting a kick out of all of the good that Luthor was doing!
What a fun story.
There are obviously other examples of costume switches that are more a direct plot situation (you know, like Batman has to dress up as Superman because the bad guy has Kryptonite and stuff like that), but this is such a popular story that I figured I just had to feature it (and it IS a good comic). Batman #37 (by Tom King, Clay Mann and Jordie Bellaire) sees Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, Clark Kent and Lois Lane go out to a carnival on a double date. The problem is that the carnival is superhero themed. Everyone has to dress up like a superhero. So they decide to swap costumes and hilarity ensues (Selina as Lois just meows seductively until she is allowed in)...
It's a very well-written and well-drawn story.
Thanks to reader Graeme for the suggestion!
If you have suggestions for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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