Luthor: <chuckling> What makes you think you can kill Superman when you can’t even handle a mere mortal in a Halloween costume.
Joker: <menacingly> There is nothing mere about “Bat-mortal”.

Batman: <menacingly> Where’s the Joker?
Bingo: Who knows! Making Ha Ha with Harley Quinn! Urk. I don’t know. Honest! I never went back after he muscled in, I don’t want anything to do with that clown.
Superman: That’s enough. I think you got your answer.

It’s a dark and stormy night as an antiques shop owner closes up. A beautiful young-woman stops him from closing the door and tells him “Hang on their Clyde!” She’s Harley Quinn, the Joker’s girl, and this is Gotham City. Moments later the poor man is lying on the floor, convulsing with laughter from the Joker’s gas, and the Joker himself is prowling around the shop. He spies a very heavy carved statue, “the Laughing Dragon”, which he rips from its base and gives to Harley to carry.

The word on the streets is that the Joker is desperate for cash so the police are surprised that he only took the statue. However, the Batman reminds them that “things are never what they seem with the Joker.” Batman analyses a fragment of the statute in the Batcave and discovers that it is emitting a type of low-level of radiation. The Dragon’s owners have a history of dying mysteriously proving that continued exposure to the radiation is lethal. Batman then quips to Alfred that “Isn’t Bruce Wayne about due for a trip to Metropolis?”

Lois Lane is with the White House press corps on-board Air Force One when it is hijacked by a group of terrorists. Their leader panics when he recognises her as “the one Superman always saves!?” Right on que Superman spins the plane like a laundry machines leaving the strapped in passengers unharmed, but throwing the unstrapped-in terrorists around. Afterwards Lois sheepishly asks Superman if he’d like to meet her socially for once, but their conversation is interrupted by an emergency in the city.

The next day as Lex Luthor is heading to work he discovers that his normally efficient driver Mercy has been replaced by the less controlled, but more enthusiastic Harley Quinn. She takes him to a meeting with the Joker. Luthor blanks the Joker’s banter until the clown makes the connection that they both face an “over grown bully in long underwear”. The Joker’s offer to kill Superman for one billion dollars has amused Lex until he sees the Jade Dragon (Joker: “solid kryptonite!”). Lex agrees to the Joker’s request on the conduction that it can’t be traced to him.

Bruce Wayne’s first day in Metropolis is something of a whirlwind. He’s officially there to review the capabilities of a joint business venture with Lex Luthor (the Wayne-Lex T7, an autonomous six-legged robot that has the ability to crawl spider-like over almost any terrain). Wayne’s arrival at a private Lexcorp Airfield is met by the usual Press throng. Much to Clark Kent’s dismay Lois describes Wayne as “absolutely gorgeous” and becomes uncharacteristic coy around the billionaire playboy. Wayne then asks her to dinner before leaving for his meeting with Lex Luthor.

At Lexcorp’s test facility Bruce Wayen and Lex Luthor watch the T7 clamber up a canyon wall and locate a test object. Both men are impressed with the tests, but they disagree on the T7′s potential applications. Lex had been canvassing the Pentagon’s opinion on a weaponised version, but Wayne flatly refused to allow its development. He tells Lex that “I don’t like guns.” That evening, Bruce Wayne meets Lois Lane at an expensive roof top restaurant. He grills her on how she contacts Superman, but she asks to change the subject. Bruce then sweeps her onto the dance floor.

Even later that night Superman (as Clark Kent) and Batman (in costume) are separately searching for the Joker’s whereabouts. The Joker gased a mafiso called Cesaer Carlini, dumped him in the trash, and then took over his gang. The police find Carlini and it’s clear to Dan Turpin and Superman that the Joker has announced his arrival in town. Batman follows his own leads by tracking down one of Carlini’s employees, an old face from Gotham City called Bingo, to the Rockers Nightclub. Batman throws his weight around panicing the clubbers. Bingo doesn’t know anything, but the ruckus is loud enough to attract Superman’s attention.

The two costumed alpha-males instantly dislike each other. Batman shows off by judo throwing Superman, but get body slammed into the wall as Superman makes his own point. Superman’s opinion of the Batman doesn’t improve after he uses his x-ray vision to find out that he’s really Bruce Wayne (the man currently romancing Lois). Superman tell’s Batman “I won’t have vigilantism in my town”, but the Batman pulls a trump card by showing Superman the sliver kryptonite he found at the antiques shop. Even that small amount is enough to cause Superman to stagger. The Batman warns him that the Joker has twenty-pounds of it and then vanishes while Superman is distracted.

Superman returns to Clark Kent’s apartment. He’s just about to go to bed when Lois Lane calls him to say that she’ll be in late to work tomorrow morning as she’s having breakfast with Bruce Wayne. Clark doesn’t approve, but as they talk he notices a tracking device that the Batman had attached to his cape. After Lois hangs up Clark uses his telescopic vision to find the Batman watching him from a distant rooftop. He smiles and waves to Clark acknowledging that they now know each other’s secret identities. A visibly-annoyed Clark mutters “touché” as he crushes the tracking device.

World’s Finest

The title “World’s Finest” refers to the name of a classic comic which started in the 1940s. Back then comic books were anthologies that contained many different stories often pulled from many different genres. At the time DC Comics was loosely split into two companies – DC Comics which published Superman and Batman and All-American Comics which published Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern. All-American had created an anthology called All-Star Comics which it used to highlight its most popular features. However, that anthology rapidly developed into a full blown team-up book with the All-American characters coming together as a team called the Justice Society (which was later revised as the Justice League).

World’s Finest Comics, called World’s Best Comics for its first issue, was an equivalent title to All-Star which was launched by the other half of the company to highlight their own characters. Those 1940s issues included characters like Zatara (the father of Zatanna), the Star-Spangled Kid, and Green Arrow, but the biggest draw were the adventures of Superman and Batman. However, unlike the JSA their adventures remained as unconnected stories. The only place they actually appeared together was on the cover of the comic-book. Readers were treated to vast array of outlandish and strange covers featuring Superman and Batman (with Robin, always with Robin at this time) goofing around.

It was not until World’s Finest #71 in 1954 that there was actually a story co-starring Superman AND Batman. That started an unlikely partnership that lasted for hundreds of issues and well into the 1980s. It was perhaps only during the 1950s that a partnership like this could have started. Batman’s non-superpowered crime comics had become so outlandish that they weren’t entirely dissimilar to Superman’s science fiction comics. You could imagine Adam West’s Batman and George Reeve’s Superman teaming up in an amicable and friendly manner, but you’d have a hard time imaging anything other than animosity between Christian Bale’s Batman and Christopher Reeves’ Superman.

The later drive to make Batman more realistic (“grim and gritty”) really undercut the logic of the Superman/Batman team-ups to the extent that they were all but eliminated in the 1980s. Post-1985 both Batman and Superman’s comics were rebooted and given a make over. In the new altered continuity they were never been friends and were actually quite antagonistic towards each other. Things changed slowly and the characters’ relationship was redefined. In the old World’s Finest days they were best-friends and no questions were asked. The modern take on that relationship was that they were two professionals who shared the common and often lonely experience of being the absolute-best in their own field.

As odd as the pairing of Superman and Batman is the long publishing history of World’s Finest means that it is an idea that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the comic fans. There was a three-part World’s Finest mini-series in the 1990s by Dave Gibbons and Steve Rube which influenced the story and feel of this crossover (Bruce Timm mentions it in Modern Masters). That mini-series went for a very classic interpretation and look of Superman and Batman. A lot of its story was based around Lex Luthor moving into Gotham City and the Joker moving into Metropolis. The two heroes prove ineffective against their new, unfamiliar opponents so they switch cities to focus on the enemies they each known best.

The concept of an ongoing World’s Finest title was revived in 2003 as simply Superman/Batman. Its first two story arcs were spectacularly popular and have been adapted for the DC Universe direct-to-DVD features as Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. Both of which were voiced by Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy who first played opposite each other as Superman and Batman in this three-part story.

Producers Commentary

On the DVD boxed set there is a commentary to part one of his story by Bruce Timm (Producer), Glen Murakami (Art Director), Paul Dini (writer), Dan Riba (Series Director), and Alan Burnett (Producer/Writer).

• Bruce Timm’s outfit at WB Animation had switched over from making the Batman: The Animated Series to making the Superman cartoon when Kid WB came to them about the possibility of making more Batman episodes. The result of that was a slightly tweaked format and re-design that sometimes gets called Batman: The New Adventures. It was decided to introduce the new look Batman in a team-up with Superman.
• They relied on TMS to do the bulk of the pre-production design on incidental characters and backgrounds leaving Bruce Timm and his team free to work on the new character designs for the Batman cast. This was the first time they’d seen the new Bruce Wayne and Joker models animated. Wayne looks slicker -  they lost the baggy-Bruce Wayne suit as it never animated very well and went with a “crisper” more “tailored” look. Bruce Timm gave Bruce Wayne bat-shaped eye-brows to differentiate his face from Clark Kent’s face. It was Glen Murakami’s idea not to give the Joker red-lips. Paul Dini complained, but was overruled.
• Alan Burnett and Paul Dini worked hard on this story, it took them three months to just get the outline down. The difficulties arose from getting two very different characters to mesh believably. However, once the detailed outline was done the scripts came pretty quickly. This three-parter may be Alan Burnett’s favourite.
• They picked-up the antagonism between Batman and Superman that had been introduced in the comics. They later did two other Superman/Batman team-ups before Justice League – “Night Time” and the one with Ra’s Al Ghul.
• Dramatic license trumps Physics. Often it comes down to what looks right and not what is scientifically accurate. In the third-part they accentuated Batman’s athleticism far more than they’d ever have done on his own series. Partially it was TMS’s anime stylings, but it was also to balance him against Superman and not make him look too helpless.
• There was a bit in part-two where the TMS storyboards showed Batman flying. This puzzled the Americans. Upon querying it they were told that TMS had just assumed that Batman could fly “because he has a cape.” Apparently a anime trope is that any character with a cape can fly.
• The gangsters are in a Mexican restaurant which explains the animals hanging from the roof. One of the oddities of working with an overseas studio is having to explains concepts like a pogo-stick or a pinyata.
• On the commentary the producers rave about the Nightclub sequence, the use of different gels to colour the scene and the muted pallete for Batman’s interrogation. The idea for Batman throwing the cage with the dancing girl still in it was added to the storyboards at the last-minute. TMS brought the storyboards to show to the Americans and Bruce Timm and co. thought it would be a good idea to use one of the caged girls as a projectile.

Bruce Timm commented on watching Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy working together:

I remember it was very interesting having Tim Daly [Superman] and Kevin Conroy [Batman] in the same room together because I do remember that there was… Tim’s a great guy, a great actor, but his voice doesn’t have a lot of bottom end in it and there were certain times we just wanted him to get really TOUGH and MACHO with Superman. And when he was standing in the room with Kevin Conroy and the first time he heard the Batman voice coming out of Kevin’s mouth his eyes got really big and suddenly Tim’s voice started dropping an octive. It’s like, “okay now I’m MANLY Superman because I’m standing next to REALLY MANLY Batman.” It was cool. So he really bought a good performance out of Tim.

Notes

• The music that the Jack In the Box plays is the Joker’s theme.
• The Joker uses what appears to be an old Bugs Bunny trick to stop Luthor’s car.
• The Joker’s comment about the upholstery in Lex’s car “Oooo… Rich Corinthian Leather!” is a reference to a Chrysler advertising campaign from the 1970s. And just to prove that everything eventually ends up on Youtube here is an example.
• If you recognise the female terrorist who speaks to the President it’s because she’s played by Shannon Kenny who voiced Inque in Batman Beyond.
• When Mercy picks up Wayne from the airport she has a bandage under her hat from where Harley knocked her out.
• The gangster called Caesar Carlini is possibly named after the comic-book editor Mark Carlin. He’s voiced by John Capodice who often plays larger than life Italian American characters. Carlini’s lieutenant Binko is played by Corey Burton who usually provides the voice of Brainiac.
• This three-parter was originally broadcast on October 4, 1997 during as a single block movie. It was released on DVD/VHS back in August 1998 as “The Batman Superman Movie”. The first episode of Batman: The New Adventures / Gotham Knights was shown on September 13.
• Shirley Williams was nominated for a Daytime Emmy, “Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition”, for her work on this show.
• Gordon’s rank is misspelled “Comissioner” rather than “Commissioner” in the titles. The characters – other than the leads – are listed in alternating blocks between the Superman and Batman casts,  e.g. Gotham villain, Metropolis villain, Gotham sidekick, Metropolis sidekick, Gotham police, Metropolis police, etc.

My thoughts

I saw this story first when it was released on VHS as the Superman-Batman Movie – I distinctly remember the banter and interplay between the characters. This first part has so much to do. Not only does it have to introduce the guest-stars from another series, but it also has to introduce the an entirely new look for those guest-stars. For the most part this happens effortlessly. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten use to the New Adventures Batman from the Justice League, but his presence seems very natural alongside Superman. I’m not so keen on the Bruce Wayne re-design (maybe because he was rarely used in the Justice League).

Luckily all this shinny-new Batness doesn’t displace Superman’s world from his own cartoon. If Clark does takes a back seat to anybody it’s Lois Lane. On the commentary the producers talked about amping up Batman’s physicality compared to his own show, but I think the entire story has found a tone that allows most situations to play broader than they would in a standalone episode of either series. At lot of that is necessary to accommodate a characters like the Joker and Harley Quinn, but it also plays out in the genre awareness shown by the terrorist leader when he figures out who Lois Lane is.

The Verdict