"The Super Bat-Man!" is the first story in the collection of DC's Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told, and, oh boy, what a great one to start off with! The premise of the story is that Superman loses his powers, while Batman gains super-powers! The fifties were secretly, or not so secretly, a time of identity flip-flopping!
Here's the cover of the issue it was originally printed in, World's Finest Comics #77 from July/Aug 1955 (art and cover by the late great Curt Swan):
The story starts off in Metropolis where Clark and Lois are going off to get some grub, when all of a sudden Clark (Superman!) overhears some hooligans talking about some professor and a machine he made that will "fix" Superman. Of course, as Clark is listening Lois thinks she's being ignored by him,and so she has a hissy fit and conveniently walks away! Anyway, after a quick change Superman is off to find this Professor Pender who has set up shop in some seedy part of Metropolis. You would think that with his super planet-crushing abilities he had back then, that Superman would have been procured by the city planning department to work on 1950 urban renewal plans! Well, bam, Superman walks (I mean busts a brick wall down) into a trap and gets zapped and loses his powers. Coincidently, Batman and Robin show up at the same time and Batman gets in the way of a power-ray that was meant for the professor and becomes overwhelmingly strong!
So the story is set up. Superman falls out a window because he doesn't realize he's lost his powers and Batman has to fly out and save him from splatting!
(Way to go Batman, saying things you can't say in today's comics!)
Since Batman is all super and stuff he decides weakling Superman needs a car to get around and gives him the Batmobile, newly customized and pimped up as the "Super-mobile!" He also punches out a cave for Superman to hide in. Batman loves caves and is grateful for any chance he can create one for someone else!
Superman doesn't stay in the cave, however, smugly cruising the streets of downtown Metropolis in his new Super-Mobile. Lois, sees him driving around, and of course wonders why he is driving a car! She's always so suspicious!
And while Superman is driving his un-super self around in a convertible in broad daylight, what is Batman doing? You know, because he has SUPER POWERS? Well, he decides to sit at home in his millionaire robe drinking tea! He can't handle his powers properly and breaks the table, making Alfred the Butler to clean up the darn mess.
Before he gives Alfred a stroke, he finally decides to head out to find this Pender fellow to fix things up and to put him in jail. Well, being ever vigilant, he overhears that a powder arsenel has caught on fire and is about to blow up. He flies on over throws the entire fricking building in the air as it explodes! Well, then he realizes all the flaming material is going to hit the city below! So he creates and dons a pair of giant metal bat-wings to flap the material away so the ignorant people below wont realize that explosives were about to rain down and them!
Meanwhile, Superman hasn't performed a super-stunt and suspicious Lois is hounding him. Of course she gets in the way of him rounding up some crooks and almost gets her ass killed. Oh by the way, she is saved because we find out that Superman's suit is still super.
There's a great scene with Batman moving an entire orphanage to a new site and there's Robin jumping out the window as Batman is putting it down. Kind of ironic, since both Batman and Robin are orphans!
Anyways, a bunch of other stuff happens where we find out that Superman was only zapped with a fine-kryptonite ray. As long as Superman kept wearing the same clothes that got blasted with the ray he had no powers. So he changed into a spare costume (glad he did his laundry!) and flies Robin around for awhile and finds a cave where Pender and his henchman (I'm guessing poor graduate students) are about to try and give themselves powers. Well, too damn late. Batman shows up, and even though his powers are fading he, Robin, and Superman knock the crap out of them.
To end the story, Lois gets in their faces and says she knows the two were up to something, guessing they were dressed as each other for the day! Superman and Batman smile knowing what a fool she really is.
The art in this story was incredible. But every page and panel is packed TIGHT! Lots going on, and so much dialogue! The word bubbles take up a lot of real estate! Today's comics pages have moved towards a much less dense of a page. Stories like these back then were usually six to eight pages; nowadays, 22, and then will probably continue into another three or so issues after that. As I blog about these stories, I know it will be a bit of a challenge to "decode" and break them down- but, I'm up to it!
Next: Tomahawk by Frank Frazetta!
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