Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents Superman Team-Ups volume 1

For a special Christmas post it's time for another look at things over at the Distinguished Competition.

Although I had already encountered many US comic stories reprinted for the British market, about the first ever actual US comic I can remember seeing was an old issue of the Superman team-up series DC Comics Presents. It was issue #75 in which he teamed up with Arion, Lord of Atlantis in a tale spanning many thousands of years. Having looked at the first volume of Batman's team-ups last year it's natural to now turn to Superman's.

Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents Superman Team-Ups volume 1 does as it says on the tin and reprints the team-ups from the first twenty-six issues of the title, originally published between 1978 and 1980. Just as Showcase Presents The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups volume 1 covers the era of Batman's popularity surge with the TV series, this volume covers the period in which the first Superman movie came out and reaches almost the release of the second.

There's quite a lot of creators on this volume with issues written by the likes of Martin Pasko, David Michelinie, Len Wein, Paul Levitz, Steve Englehart, Cary Bates, Denny O'Neil, Gerry Conway, Mike W. Barr, Marv Wolfman and Jim Starlin. The art is a mixture of Starlin, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Murphy Anderson, Curt Swan, Dick Dillin, Joe Staton and Rich Buckler. That's a pretty impressive set of names suggesting this wasn't considered a throwaway title even if the lack of a continuing creative team is a worrying sign. (And yes, there's a separate post for some of the labels.)

Looking back it's surprising how long it took for Superman to get a regular rotating team-up title. For a couple of years at the start of the 1970s World's Finest had switched from the regular Superman/Batman team-up to Superman and rotating guest-stars but even in that short run Batman and/or Robin showed up quite a bit anyway. Otherwise the late arrival of such a book is surprising when Batman and, over at Marvel, both Spider-Man and the Thing had all had team-up books for some years. The imminent arrival of the first Superman movie was clearly the driving force behind the book finally appearing and, presumably, surviving the DC Implosion of 1978 which hit the company just a couple of months after the series launched. But the movie itself doesn't seem to have influenced the content of the series which instead sticks to the standard comic portrayal of Superman. For that matter Wonder Woman is also clearly based on her comic portrayal rather than that of the TV series, which was then in its final year.

As is standard for a team-up title, here's the list of guest-stars:

1. Flash
2. Flash
3. Adam Strange
4. Metal Men
5. Aquaman
6. Green Lantern
7. Red Tornado
8. Swamp Thing
9. Wonder Woman
10. Sgt. Rock
11. Hawkman
12. Mister Miracle
13. Legion of Super-Heroes
14. Superboy
15. Atom
16. Black Lightning
17. Firestorm
18. Zatanna
19. Batgirl
20. Green Arrow
21. Elongated Man
22. Captain Comet
23. Doctor Fate
24. Deadman
25. Phantom Stranger
26. Green Lantern

With the exception of Doctor Fate all the characters are the Earth 1 versions. This selection of guests is drawn very much from the better known end of the DC Multiverse with most of the big name Justice League members represented. With Batman accommodated by the regular team-up in World's Finest the most obvious absentee on the list is the Martian Manhunter. Although time travel appears a lot in the volume the stories and guest stars are rooted in the present day apart from Sgt. Rock who only appears when Superman is thrown back in time to 1944. Also appearing in issue #11, though not billed on the cover, is Marc Teichman, the fictional winner of a Daily Planet prize to spend time with Superman and based on a reader who won a prize on the letters page to be depicted fictionally. There are some cameos by various Justice League members but otherwise the only notable guest-star who doesn't get headlined is Krypto the Superdog, making a rare appearance in Kal-El's adulthood.

There's little in the way of ongoing development in this volume, not least because no writer does more than three issues consecutively. At this stage Clark Kent was working for both the Daily Planet and the WGBS TV station, and we see most of his supporting cast including Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lana Lang and Steve Lombard. However they are all primarily used as part of the general background rather than actually driving any of the stories. The first two issues form a single story and a few of the later issues are linked with Superman following up on foes in a second issue even though the first's guest star doesn't come with him. One of the few long term consequences comes in issue #17 when at the end of their adventure together Superman suggests Firestorm should join the Justice League; however this proposal is not followed up here and is presumably continued in the contemporary Justice League of America.

The foes themselves are a mixture of original one-off characters to serve an individual tale and longstanding foes, often key parts of the guest star's rogues' gallery. New foes used here include the Volkir and Zelkot, two alien races who evolved from the same common ancestor but who have now been at war for thousands of years, the Skrynians, an alien race from a dying planet seeking a new world with a suitably cold climate, Frank Rayles, a rich crook and brother of an astronomer, the Sabromians, a set of alien invaders, Hugh Bryant, a lonely alien who has been trapped on Earth for millions of years evolving into the planet's dominant life form at any given moment but now devolving backwards into those forms, Caligro the Great, a failed magician embittered by the success and fame of the heroes, Doctor Horus, an anthropologist whose mind has drawn in both his house and people visiting, Bo Force, a crooked oil magnate, the Masters, an alien race who use an infection to turn humans into their own kind, Starstriker, a mutant seeking to activate his own mental powers, El Muchacho, a mischievous imp, Mr. Genarian, a mobster seeking to prolong his life, and N'Gon, an alien seeking extra power to destroy its duplicate counterpart. Note just how many different alien races are used in this volume. Existing foes seen here include Kaskor, Adam Strange's longstanding enemy, Chemo, the Metal Men's old foe, I.Q., an old Hawkman foe but here appearing against the Metal Men, Ocean Master, half-brother of Aquaman, Star Sapphire, the alien warrior possessing Green Lantern's girlfriend Carol Ferris, the Weaponers of Qward, old foes of Green Lantern, Solomon Grundy, the lesser known Earth 1 version of the swamp monster, Killer Frost, Firestorm's recurrent foe, and Tala, the soul seeking demoness enemy of the Phantom Stranger. And there are the generic foes such as the German soldiers in the team-up with Sgt. Rock. Superman's recurring foes seen here are limited to Intergang, the Metropolis based criminal organisation. There's also a brief appearance by the Reverse-Flash, who in black and white looks almost identical to the Flash bar the background colour on their chest symbols.

The one recurring storyline involves Clark's old friend from his Smallville days, Pete Ross and his son Jon. Pete has known of Clark's identity for many years but concealed his knowledge. Now he turns to Superman for help when Jon is kidnapped by aliens and taken to an alien world. Superman promises to rescue Jon but the Legion of Super-Heroes intervene because Jon's kidnap and separation from his father is a crucial moment in history. This creates a terrible dilemma for Superman and his decision to leave Jon there is one that sits uneasily with him for some time. It also leads to a rupture in his friendship with Pete as the latter turns on him and seeks vengeance then succumbs to madness. Later on in the volume Tala seeks to possess Superman's soul, digging at this incident as it is his greatest failure; however Superman resolves to put things right by bringing Jon home whilst the Phantom Stranger battles Tala. Seeing his son again cures Pete's madness and anger, a little too instantly, and there's a reconciliation between the old friends. It's a pity that this storyline is wrapped up so quickly as Pete could have made for quite an interesting recurring adversary who knows Superman's identity and has a strong personal history of friendship with the Kryptonian that not even the Lex Luthor of this era had. And unlike Luthor his motivation would be a lot more sophisticated than an accident that made him bald.

One of the general rules in these stories (and indeed much of DC in this era) is that it is not possible to time travel to a moment in time when one is already present and so it's not possible to meet one's own self. In general this rule is followed even though it can cause problems but there are two times when Superman encounters Superboy. On the first occasion the space-time continuum is temporarily disrupted, suspending the natural law until the two Kal-Els make physical contact and restore the normal order. Later Pete Ross switches his mind with Superboy's and consequently both the mind and body of Superboy are able to co-exist in the present day with Superman, being able to interact and make physical contact. In general the rule can work to put a restraint upon time travel powers and also constrain the excesses of writers, but it's a little unsatisfactory when it can be circumvented so easily.

In general Superman and his guest stars work well together. Either the guest star has sufficiently comparable power that they contribute strongly to the action or else the situation requires other skills such as detection. The one guest star who feels underused is Black Lightning as his appearance involves dealing with Hugh, whose devolution makes him ever stronger and so by the end of the tale it seems as though Black Lightning is just a bystander as Superman resolves the menace. This may be a consequence of the team-up being seemingly written quickly to meet fan demand on the letters page. On several occasions Superman's powers are temporarily weakened or suspended by events, adding to the tension but also helping to level the playing field. With most of the heroes it's clear that Superman has a long history of working with them, though for the Metal Men this is their first meeting with him.

The page lengths of issues vary a bit, ranging from seventeen to twenty-five pages. It's most notable in the first few issues, clearly due to the title almost immediately getting caught up in DC's expansion plans to only for the DC Implosion to suddenly come along and cut them back. This also sees the series, and DC in general, go through exactly the same cycle as Marvel did earlier in the decade whereby the price and page count both rise for a brief period only to fall back but with the price for the shorter issues higher than before. One sign of overall coherence is that despite the rapid turnover of writers and artists, there are no major mistakes or announcements of forthcoming guest stars who either show up late or not at all.

A team-up book from this era is never going to be the best place to sample a company's overall story structure. However this volume does give a strong glimpse at both the characters and talent at DC at this time. It may have taken Superman a long time to get a team-up title but once established it presents a generally coherent set of adventures that don't lag or descend into excessive formula. All in all this is a good sampler of the DC universe in this period and an example of a title that managed to get things right pretty quickly.

Omitted material: Marvel Treasury Edition 28 – Superman and Spider-Man

Another issue which the Essentials do not reprint but I thought was worth a look at is Marvel Treasury Edition #28. This was generally a reprint anthology series in the huge Treasury Edition format, featuring many different Marvel characters, but occasionally it carried original material. This was true of the final issue, #28, which carried “Superman and Spider-Man”, the second team-up between the lead Marvel and DC characters. Once again this has had a few reprints since, usually to tie in with more recent Marvel/DC crossovers. It cost $2.50 in a year when the regular Marvel titles went for $0.50 and I believe DC’s regular books went for the same price.

The story is written by Jim Shooter, with some plot suggestions from Marv Wolfman, and drawn by John Buscema. Whilst Buscema had drawn a handful of Spider-Man issues over the years, Shooter had written very few but was the-then Marvel Editor-in-Chief. Did he take this one for himself to prevent creative squabbling (his stated reason for later writing Secret Wars)? Or was it for more mundane reasons? Their Superman credentials were more limited – it was nearly two decades before Buscema did his first work for DC. Jim Shooter had, however, written for Superman in the 1960s, whilst in 1981 Wolfman was the regular writer on Action Comics.

Before the main story we get a one page feature introducing both heroes’ origins, but amazingly the Spider-Man section completely omits any mention of Uncle Ben and responsibility. Equally there’s no reason given for why Superman uses his powers as he does (and my knowledge of Superman continuity is such that I don’t know the answer for this particular incarnation).

The main story is presented as a semi-sequel to the earlier Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man and the story in part seeks to compensate for the villain imbalance in the earlier team-up by this time making the primary villain Doctor Doom, with a secondary role played by the Parasite. Now Doctor Doom is not specifically a Spider-Man villain and the two had had relatively few encounters up to this point, but he is the premier Marvel villain and one of the few who can present a world threatening menace that’s a credible threat for Superman. However the Parasite is not of the best known Superman villains outside his own book, and doesn’t feel like he deserves to be in a particularly special adventure. But then this is not a particularly special adventure.

Sadly the story itself seems overcomplicated for the sake of it, with Doctor Doom spending endless billions on a project to wipe out the world’s fossil and nuclear fuels and then use his ownership of the surviving super reactor to take control of the planet. He’s brought the Parasite along as part of a convoluted scheme to turn the latter into a crystal for the reactor to prevent it otherwise destroying the world. Already you can see the complications in this tale, and it throws in guest appearances by the Hulk (well he did have a TV series at the time) and Wonder Woman (whose series had ended but were there endless reruns?) that don’t add a great deal. Superman and Spider-Man’s interaction is limited to a brief meeting in Metropolis when the Hulk is rampaging and the climax when both investigate Doom’s base but get captured, though they free each other and work to save the day. However we get some extended sequences as Clark Kent briefly relocates to New York and takes a post at the Daily Bugle, whilst Peter Parker is talked into staying in Metropolis for a while and working at the Daily Planet. Peter’s sudden uprooting of his life is hard to swallow but the arrangement allows us to see each hero’s alter ego interacting with some of the other’s supporting cast, and many comment on the similarities of the two.

Lacking the novelty of the first team-up, this story is left looking for something to make it special but doesn’t really find it. It may explore new angles and contrasts between the heroes, but the problem is their adventures and power levels are on such different scales that it’s hard to have them credibly interact for extended periods of time. Instead the title searches for original ideas, throws in extra heroes for the sake of it and presents situations that stain credulity. Doom’s scheme might have been inspired by real life contemporary fears about the energy supply at a time when the oil crisis was still fresh in people’s minds, but by the time the issue came out the tide was already turning.

Overall this story feels poor and uninspired, and probably produced for no other reason than to tie into the-then contemporary movie Superman II. If this is typical of the inter-company crossovers then I can’t say I’m waiting with baited breath for a possible Essential Showcase Presents collecting all the Marvel & DC team-ups.

Omitted material: Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man

We come to another side-step to look at an issue not covered by the Essentials (although I’m not sure it would have been included even if the rights were available) – Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, the first meeting of Marvel and DC superheroes from 1976.

Inter-company crossover stories come in two forms. Either the heroes occupy a shared universe but just haven’t encountered one another before, or else they occupy separate realities and are brought together over the inter-dimensional divide by the events of the special meeting. I have completely lost track of the positions taken by either Marvel or DC as to which crossovers do and don’t count as part of the ongoing continuity (there was a stage when the second type generally did count, albeit as events that were never actually mentioned again) or how they fit into either company’s multiverse. But to be honest that doesn’t really matter – this is just a special bringing together the two companies’ leading heroes (and their respective supporting casts and archenemies of the period) for a fun story

This was originally published as a standalone one shot in the “Treasury Edition” format, which by the standards of US comics is enormous. The regular books from both Marvel and DC were approximately A5 sized; the Treasury Edition format is tabloid A3 and squarebound (and no, I don’t know where the name comes from). To a 1970s child a Treasury Edition must have seemed like the ultimate treasure, although the price might have been more daunting – this one is US $2.00 at a time when the regular Marvels were going for US $0.25 – although some were apparently also sold through bookshops. To both retailers and collectors the format can be more of a pain than a pleasure – squarebound comics from the 1970s often used inferior glue and easily rustable staples that make even the regular sized books difficult to find in top quality, but throw in a huge size that doesn’t easily fit the bags and boxes available (and with many of the Treasury Edition comics being reprints the demand for appropriate storage facilities is reduced further) and you can understand why it’s particularly hard to find these in good nick. Fortunately this story has had a few reprints since, usually to tie in with more recent Marvel/DC collaborations.

The story is written by Gerry Conway, then recently departed from Spider-Man, and drawn by Ross Andru, the-then regular Amazing penciller. Conway had recently moved from Marvel to DC but I don’t know if either he or Andru had worked on Superman before. I have heard that Neal Adams redraw some of the Superman images to maintain visual continuity, although if so this was uncredited.

As for the story? Well we get three prologues, the first two featuring the individual heroes sending their arch enemies to jail on their home patches, then we get a shorter third one as once in jail Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus team up to escape and have revenge on both their enemies. We also get three pages that introduce the core characters for the less familiar and they’re generally fine, but it can be a surprise to remember that this came out during the period when Clark Kent primarily worked as a TV anchorman rather than the newspaper reporter he’s been for most of his history. (Consequently, although Perry White can be seen in some backgrounds, Morgan Edge is the presented counterpart for J. Jonah Jameson.) Because of these it’s not until page 31 that the villains meet, page 36 when our heroes’ alter egos and supporting casts arrive at the same location, and page 46 when the heroes meet in costume. In a 92-page story this is an very long build up.

The plot itself is relatively simple – a villain hijacks a new piece of technology to demand money with menaces, and two heroes meet, have a misunderstanding and fight, then team up to track down the villain with a climactic fight to save the world. At the time that may have been all that was needed, but I feel it leads to some extended sequences that ultimately don’t contribute a great deal such as the whole trip to Africa. Also whilst the heroes work together and both contribute throughout the course of events, the same cannot be said of the villains. Doctor Octopus is basically superfluous to most of the plot, with everything having been planned and set in motion by Lex Luthor, and his only real contributions are to even up the numbers in the final fight and be the vehicle for saving the day when Spider-Man appeals to his humanity to stop Luthor from destroying the world. Otherwise he could have been left out completely and another way found to destroy the equipment. We also get the strange spectacle of Superman tearing off two of the tentacles, yet Doc Ock doesn’t appear to suffer any pain.

We get lots of good little moments, with an especially fun scene as Peter Parker rushes to find a phone booth only to discover they’ve been replaced with open stalls – this came two years before an equivalent moment in the first Superman movie. There’s also some classic Jonah as he orders the publication of a special edition of the Daily Bugle highlighting Peter’s photos of the capture of Doctor Octopus without checking them first. By the end of the story Peter redeems himself in his publisher’s eyes with photos of Spider-Man and Superman together. There’s a similar strand of Clark learning he’s going to be replaced as anchor when Metropolis hosts a national convention but again he proves his worth by obtaining exclusive footage. However there are some clunky moments, particularly when upon being introduced to Lois Lane for the first time Mary Jane feels the need to comment on her being “Miss” with a mini-feminist rant which feels both rude and out of character (and now very dated).

The obligatory fight between our heroes (triggered by Luthor impersonating Superman to kidnap Lois and Mary Jane, thus Spider-Man has a reason to not trust Superman) could have been either very one-sided or very silly but it’s enhanced by Luthor secretly zapping Spider-Man with red sun radiation (this was also an era when Kryptonite was deliberately made rare) which means he can fight Superman on equal terms, though the fight is inconclusive when the radiation wears off. Personally I would have thought Spider-Man should win such a fight, not because of personal preference, but because he is used to having to hone his technique and develop his fighting skills whereas Superman can rely of just strength and powers alone. So when on physically equal terms, Spidey should have had enough edge to win out. Maybe another time...

In general this is an okay comic for what it is, but there are some opportunities missed and a more original plot that presented a menace that could only be made by two villains combined would have been far more satisfactory. And it may have been published in a much larger format and have 92 pages with no adverts, but I’m not convinced it was worth eight times a regular comic of the era. Of course nowadays the price economics are a very different matter. Pick this up if you can find a copy easily at a fair price, but don’t spend ridiculous prices or amounts of time searching for it.

Who created Spider-Man?

Superman was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.

Wonder Woman was created by writer William Moulton Marston.

(Although I note that recently the Wikipedia entry on her was also crediting H. G. Peter who drew her first story. That’s a sign of the problems to come.)

Batman was created by... well the credit given in the comics is “Created by Bob Kane” (the original artist). However many have argued that contribution of writer Bill Finger was such that both should have been credited. That’s a battle I’ll leave to others to slug it out over.

The above examples should give some idea of how different comics characters were created differently, and also how contentious the precise label of “creator” can be. There is also a strong tendency amongst comics fans (and a lot of comics historians are fans) to oversimplify things into clear cut heroes and villains (okay we are often talking about an era when the comics themselves did that), to take sides in “battles” between creators who may be long dead and to try to right perceived wrongs.

And so we come to the mess when applying this question to Spider-Man.

Spidey’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 has a simple credit at the bottom saying “Stan Lee & S. Ditko”. Stan Lee, usually credited as the writer/editor, is by far the best known of the two, having been the public face of Marvel Comics for several decades now. Steve Ditko, artist and later credited as a co-plotter then plotter, is a total recluse who almost never gives interviews, not even when Jonathan Ross made a brilliant documentary about him a few years ago (now available on YouTube – Jonathan Ross in Search of Steve Ditko). Nor does he allow his photo to be taken much, hence the use of a self-portrait from the 1960s.

For a long time it has been standard to credit Lee as the sole creator, especially outside of the comics world itself. As comics historian Peter Sanderson notes in passing this is probably because in most of the wider world there is normally a single creator or primary creative force for a particular work. However in comics in later years it has become commonplace to treat the writer and artist as coequal creative forces, coming up with ideas together. This is particularly true with the “Marvel Method” whereby many stories are created by a writer coming up with a rough outline of the plot, giving it to an artist to draw and then adding dialogue afterwards. Sometimes the plot and dialogue are done by separate writers, sometimes the writer and artist develop the outline together, sometimes the artist comes up with the plot all by themselves. All of these methods have been used on Spider-Man stories over the years.

To a very great extent this whole question of who created what hinges very heavily on the precise definition of “created”. It is not uncommon for talented people to have a meeting and each come away thinking they’ve come up with at least the primary components of an idea. It’s also the case that precise records are often not kept of who suggested what – after all in 1962 who knew that a cultural icon was being created? And the whole issue about creators’ rights in the comics industry didn’t really kick off until the 1970s. And just to compound things Stan Lee claims to have a notoriously bad memory, and has also said (part jokingly) he’ll take any credit that isn’t nailed down, whilst Steve Ditko’s lack of interviews means that it’s hard to evaluate his claim in depth. For what it’s worth Lee has said that he believes the creator is him as the person who came up with the initial idea, whereas the argument for Ditko as co-creator is that the initial idea on its own is not enough and it took the artist to flesh out the concept into what became successful even though he wasn’t the first artist given the assignment.

And those aren’t the only two names in this.

The original artist assigned to the strip was Jack Kirby, who had co-created Captain America back in 1941 and more recently had collaborated with Lee on the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Thor and other strips. Kirby reportedly told Lee of an aborted proposal for a character called “Spiderman” by Joe Simon (the other co-creator of Captain America) who would have been a boy living with an old couple who got powers from a magic ring.

It’s all rather complicated! It’s probably fairest to say that Lee came up with the initial idea, inspired by either the 1930s pulp character the Spider and/or seeing a spider climb a wall (the story varies in interviews, perhaps also because many audiences will not remember the Spider), and then discussed picked up ideas from discussions with Kirby who drew some pages but they weren’t what Stan was looking for (although Kirby subsequently drew the famous cover after Steve Ditko’s take on the same concepts – reproduced on the right – was rejected). Then Lee finally gave the assignment to Ditko who brought the concept to life. The input from Simon and Kirby was sufficiently minimal that they don’t really rate on the same level as Lee and Ditko.

Perhaps to side-step the whole issue the Spider-Man movies have carried the credit “Based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.” Note the precise wording focuses on the finished comic and does not make a definite statement about the creation of the character. (For what it’s the same wording is used on the Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk movies in regards Lee & Kirby. I presume other Marvel movies have similar – I haven’t checked them all.)

However the 2008 animated series The Spectacular Spider-Man goes for "Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko". So has Marvel's position on this matter shifted, or did they fail to send a memo or did the series producers have carte blanche on this matter?

Has Stan Lee unfairly stolen Steve Ditko’s credit? No, I think Lee and Ditko are both right by their respective definitions of what constitutes “creating” Spider-Man and it’s certainly not Lee’s fault that Ditko has not taken the opportunity to tell his version of the story more widely.

But does it precisely matter? At the end of the day the Spider-Man strip and character was successful because of both the writing and the art, and it’s silly to get too wound up over how to precisely word a creator credit.

Besides there’s never been a creator credit on Spider-Man anyway (unlike Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman.)