This issue of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS was another book that I borrowed from my grade school friend Donald Sims to read. I’m almost certain that it wasn’t the lead story that made we want to experience it but rather the back-up reprint story. But we’ll get there. At this time, WORLD’S FINEST COMICS had transitioned into being a rotating Superman team-up series, like BRAVE AND THE BOLD was for Batman. However, recognizing the appeal of the classic Superman/Batman pairing, editor Julie Schwartz returned to it every four or five issues anyway, giving the book some semblance of continuity with its history. This was one of those issues, and it was thus less noteworthy to me in that regard when I first got to experience it.
It has to be said, this is not really a wonderful splash page. The concept for it is good: Superman single-handedly warding off an attack by a fleet of alien space ships. But the angle chosen is just about the worst that could be imagined. So not really penciler Dick Dillin’s finest day. I liked Dillin’s work, primarily due to his long tenure on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, but even as a kid I knew that this image wasn’t what it was supposed to be.
After a skirmish, the aliens introduce themselves to Superman as law-enforcement agents from the planet Krush. They’ve come to Earth in pursuit of an escaped lawbreaker who is hiding out on our planet and they give Superman and Batman only two days to locate the escapee. What’ll happen after those two days is left vague, but the World’s Finest Team takes up the challenge. Unfortunately, they wind up spending their time running down red herrings and dead-end trails, and are unable to locate the woman fugitive. At a certain point, the Krush aliens incapacitate Superman for reasons they keep to themselves, so Batman is left to carry the ball.
The Krush string Superman up alongside a Cobalt Bomb and announce to the Earth that if the fugitive isn’t returned to them by the deadline, they’ll be forced to set the bomb off and obliterate the planet. Batman, though, has an idea as to where the fugitive may be hiding–and Supergirl comes into the story for two panels to assist Batman in entering the Fortress of Solitude (but not in rescuing her cousin or fighting back against the Krush–guess she had more important things to do.) Batman’s guess is correct, but the fugitive is under a death sentence because Krush society is warlike and militaristic and she is a pacifist. Batman refuses to hand her over to the Krush just to save the earth. But he needs some other sort of a plan to win out–and the arrival of a mystery figure gives him the inspiration that he needs.
Batman challenges the Krush warriors to unarmed combat, and despite the fact that they possess powers similar to those of superman (though at a reduced level) he’s able to kick the snot out of them. He tells them that humanity doesn’t abide trash like them, and that if they don’t skedaddle and never return, he’ll feed them to the farm animals. To make sure that they go, Batman soars into space alongside their departing ship and watched them depart. Returning to Earth, the rather obvious ruse is revealed: this is Superman dressed up in Batman’s costume. he wasn’t actually captured earlier, that was one of his defunct robots that he tossed up to them as a decoy. In taking on Batman’s identity, he was able to convince the Krush that all of humanity possesses the same powers that he does, thus insuring that they wouldn’t return to start trouble again.
One of the fun things for me in reading these older books was in experiencing the house ads and promotional pages of the time. So this Direct Currents page, written by assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell (who refers to himself here as “The Big E”) showcases what else was about to be on sale. The DC line at this point was something of a mixed bag, and as a young reader i was really only interested in the super hero titles, but it’s a good snapshot of this moment in time. Nelson paid particular attention to the soties that were being reprinted, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he selected most if not all of them.
When WORLD’S FINEST COMICS moved into the 52-pages-for-a-quarter format that DC tried out for around 14 months, the back-up reprint section was inaugurated as the Bureau of Missing Villains. This allowed editor Schwartz and likely assistant Bridwell to reprint a variety of older stories featuring characters who weren’t normally in the book but which featured villains of some noteworthiness. This issue, for example, contained an adventure of the original Green Lantern of the 1940s in which he first contended with his recurring foe, the Harlequin.
The Harlequin was the creation of writer Robert Kanigher, and this story was illustrated by Irwin Hasen, who in the present was the creator of the Dondi newspaper strip that I saw in the New York Daily News. She wasn’t a criminal per se, but rather Molly Maynne, a co-worker of Alan Scott’s who had a romantic interest in Green lantern. Realizing that the emerald crusader wouldn’t pay attention to her unless she was a villain, Molly adopts the guise of the Harlequin based on a character in a radio play and goes on a crime spree as a pretext to get GL to date her. Women, am I right? The Harlequin became a recurring femme fatale for Green Lantern, and eventually she became a government agent once her ruse of being a villain had run its course. I was especially interested in the golden age characters, so this story is the reason why I would have borrowed this particular comic from Don.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
had that issue as a kid and remembered nothing about it when I saw the cover now.
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That was odd the writer didn’t have Batman & Superman ask what crime she was guilty of and Superman jumping to the conclusion the Krush aliens were warlike because they shot down the missiles fired at their ships instead of radioing to stop firing ( a Star Trek: The Motion Picture ( 1979 — V’Ger was trying to communicate with them, it was the Ilia probe that told them V’Ger has been trying to communicate with them ) reasons for that, like they don’t use radio to communicate so they don’t monitor for it as a means of communications ). Reason given elsewhere for getting rid of the Superman robots made zero sense. Why would Kryptonian materials be affected by Earth pollution? Plus even if they were, why not just make the robots out of Earth materials or other alien materials. ME, I like the ( Original )Nick Fury LMDs or the Tony Stark LMDs. The Clark Kent robot would have come in handy when he is off planet or off doing something else on Earth.
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IIRC they weren’t Kryptonian materials because where would he get enough of that — or am I wrong? Pollution gumming up what are obviously super-sophisticated circuits seems reasonable to me, though yeah, lots of equally advanced tech worked just as well
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I just assumed he manufactures Kryptonian materials.
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Took a look in the definitive source, Fleischer’s Great Superman Book. There’s no information about how Superman built them, what they’re made or how he built them to have all his powers — other than including “sophisticated electronic circuits.” While I still don’t see how he’d have scavenged that much non-kryptonite material from Krypton I guess I can’t rule it out (or it could have come from some other advanced alien world).
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The Superman Robots definitely weren’t indestructible — there are numerous stories where they were damaged by acid, lightning, etc. So probably not Kryptonian.
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J. Kevin Carrier thanks for reminding me of the Superman Robot in Superman#329 ( November 1978 ) that was covered by a Ser-Ze ( Kryptonian scientist ) created life form that merged with General D.W. Derwent as the Kryptonoid; the robot had a dent made by a bullet. So if the Superman robots are possibly made by Earth materials then why would pollution affect them and not Robot Man’s body or Metallo’s body?
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Maybe Superman just wasn’t very good at designing robots. And rather than call in Doc Magnus or somebody to start over from scratch, he just wrote the whole thing off as a failed experiment and moved on.
I notice the robots in the new Superman movie share their comic book counterparts’ tendency to fall apart easily, and to develop sentience (despite insisting they have none).
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Today I remembered another Superman Robot easily destroyed ( 2 actually ) by Hawkman in Justice League of America#200 ( March 1982 ) using ancient human weapons ( a flange mace ( a real weapon ) & crossbow ( don’t know if he used an explosive bolt/arrow cause it looked like the robot exploded ).
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While the Superman robots clearly aren’t entirely made out of Kryptonian materials since per other comments they aren’t invulnerable, I could believe key parts of the “brains” were Kryptonian tech, perhaps repurposed from the electronics in Superman’s rocket (waste not, want not). It would be amusing if that tech, though invulnerable to physical damage, had problems with contamination fouling it. That would cause it to electronically malfunction, because Kryptonian engineers designed those parts under an assumption of very clean atmospheres (even for a spaceship – in fact, especially for a spaceship). Something like, “Wait, you’re running these in a continuous concentration of 422 pm carbon dioxide? For years on end? Who would ever do that? That’s practically a greenhouse. It’s way out of spec. Those are outer-space rated chips, they’re meant to be in physically sealed environments”.
It’s still difficult to square that with the harsh environments the Superman robots would need to handle. But maybe brief spikes weren’t the same as ongoing lesser stresses. Much like punching a rock won’t hurt it, but a flowing stream can wear down a rock over years.
Anyway, I remember liking this issue just for the bit that the writer remembered that the Superman robots existed at all, and Superman used one like a broken piece of equipment you’d find in the back of a garage and then employed as a step-stool.
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As for the issue itself, I agree — Harlequin, despite the sexism, is way more interesting than the lead story. I did like Molly’s comment that she’s attracted to Green Lantern because she has to hide her brains and athletic ability from men — but he certainly won’t be intimidated by her.
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The epigraph for the lead story is a misquote of the same Bob Dylan song (“Desolation Row”) Alan Moore used for Watchmen # 1 – “At midnight all the agents/And the superhuman crew/Come out and round up everyone/Who knows more than they do”.
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For all that I don’t like Joe Giella’s inks and never have, I think he’s much more suited to Dillin’s pencils than McLaughlin was. He smooths out the overworked stuff and brings through the storytelling.
Not that I’d want him on JLA, but I got so tired of McLaughlin’s disengaged cut-rate Giordano grindwork…
And it’s interesting, in the Direct Currents, that aside from a fleeting mention of Kirby, the only creators mentioned are on the Tarzan books. Maybe he thought they needed it?
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I always thought that Giella was an inker who generally did good but far from electrifying work.
However, every so often, he did a very striking panel of full page drawing that mad you see his (generally) unrealized potential.
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I think Giella buried the penciler’s actual drawing, covering it up with his own style, but without having the attractiveness of a Palmer, Cardy or even Mooney.
I just think Dillin needed that kind of approach, to smooth him out and focus on shapes and forms rather than his too-harsh lines.
I just wish it was a different finish.
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I liked Giella on Infantino’s Flash. His inks were clean and let you see how good the layouts were.
I did not like him on Kane, especially in 1969-;70 on what he did between #68 and 75 of Green Lantern. Anderson’s inks (#73-74) and wood’s inks (#69) were a lot better.
I did think he had the odd panel or page where he enhanced Kane in 1959-’64, In particular, the splash page of Menace of the Giant Puppets in Green Lantern # 1 softens Kane’s art but gets across the dynamism.
With Dillin, it sometimes seemed like he was trying to make the work look like what Dillin had done with Chuck Cuidera for so long on Blackhawk,
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The litmus test for me in determining how good an inker is or isn’t has been how well s/he does when inking Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s pencils. JLGL has been remarkably consistent over the past 50 years (I honestly can’t think of a more consistent artist over such a long time span), so if the pages aren’t as good as JLGL’s stuff usually is, it’s almost definitely the fault of the inker. Looking through those JLGL Superman and Batman hardcover collections that DC put out a few years ago is a good resource for that. By that standard, I’d put Giella on the lower end of the “Good” tier.
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To each their own, I suppose. I’m glad Giella never got a second chance to mess up JLGL’s work.
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“The Tattoo Switcheroo” from Superman #294 (included in that collection) is actually making Giella’s inks shine to the comparison. He was not so good, but fairly not the worst. And yes, the JLGL test is a pretty good test.
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I wonder how that women did after the Bottle City got restored to normal size? I also wonder if she did not have superstrength relative to the normal Kandorians in that environment?
Was she forced to become a hero and use force? That might have been a good story . . . .
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Perhaps the Kandorians gave her the same super-power serum that Van-Zee gave his earthling wife Sylvia…
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The cover is a reminder this issue came out at about the time Neal Adams no longer drew most of DC’s covers.
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World’s Finest Comics#211 wasn’t the first cover that made it look like Superman lost his powers while Batman gained powers: World’s Finest Comics#71 ( July-August 1954 ) Lois Lane accidently learns Superman’s identity while he is trying to rescue Batman and Robin, so Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne exchange roles to convince Lois Clark is not Superman — comics.org. That probably wasn’t the first time Lois accidently learned Superman & Clark Kent were the same person, so you would think that after the second time that any attempt to prove otherwise wouldn’t work.
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