World's Finest: Batman and Superman

by Bill Finger, Curt Swan (Illustrator), Dick Sprang (Illustrator)

Two men - one from a distant planet - one from the planet Earth - fighting together in the never ending battle against crime and injustice. Five fantastic adventures in one Batman - Son of Krypton, The Destroyer of Krypton, The Menace of the Atom Master, The Duplicate Man, and The Day Superman Betrayed Batman.

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

William "Bill" Finger was an American comic strip and comic book writer best known as the uncredited co-creator, with Bob Kane, of the DC Comics character Batman, as well as the co-architect of the series' development. In later years, Kane acknowledged Finger as "a contributing force" in the character's creation. Comics historian Ron Goulart, in Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger", and a DC Comics press release in 2007 about colleague Jerry Robinson states that in 1939, "Kane, along with writer Bill Finger, had just created Batman for [DC predecessor] National Comics".

Film and television credits include scripting The Green Slime (1969), Track of the Moon Beast (1976), and three episodes of 77 Sunset Strip.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

World's Finest from Tempo Books was released around 1978 as part of a box set with five similar books, together known as "DC Superheroes." The book reprints four stories from World's Finest Comics #97, 101, 106, and 146. The first story in the book is a two-part one where Batman begins to believe he is a Kryptonian. All of the original stories were published between 1958 and 1964, and all are pretty silly. Here the panels are reprinted in black & white and manipulated to be about two panels per page. This necessitated some editing on some of the larger panels. The format reads quite well, though, except for the last story, "The Duplicate Man," which for me was the worst of the bunch. Best for nostalgic DC fans and young children, though some young children may see it as a coloring book.

[Rich Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are two goofy periods for World's Finest Comics: The late fifties/early sixties, where they just had whacked-out stories and one-shot bad guys, and the late sixties, when editors in their late fifties were attempting to write hip and relevant storylines. Luckily, most of the tales reprinted in this one are from the former period, with the exception of a crappy story in which Batman thought he somehow came to Earth from Krypton. The other tales include the first appearance of Atom-Master (one of the Forgotten Villains). Nothing outstanding in this Tempo paperback, but a fun read nonetheless.

[Melissa Jacobson · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75

This was a very bizarre and...weak comic collection. The characters and the dialogue were extremely stilted and the stories felt lazy. I did enjoy the art though and the fact that my absolute favorite robin, Dick Greyson was included. Besides that though this was pretty boring and trite.