The Man of Steel #3
Released July 17, 1986
John Byrne – Writer & Penciller
Dick Giordano – Inker
Tom Ziuko – Colorist
John Costanza – Letterer
Andy Helfer – Editor
I didn’t realized until I was doing research for this post that this issue is technically the debut of the Post-Crisis Batman.
I mentioned in an earlier post that there was this unusual interregnum period in DC publishing that was released after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, but wasn’t Post-Crisis in a continuity sense. It’s a complete departure from how DC has handled all their reboots since then. ONE YEAR LATER actually kicked off before the finale of INFINITE CRISIS. THE NEW 52 restarted all of their books in the same month after FLASHPOINT concluded. REBIRTH was also a line-wide relaunch in the same month.
So it was surprising to look at the dates and realize that once CRISIS concluded, the new launches were staggered. True, Batman had THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS publishing from February 1986 to August 1986, but that was out of continuity while the mainline books continued on. The first issue that’s truly recognized as Post-Crisis continuity for Batman was Issue 401, and that came out three weeks after this issue. (Even then, BATMAN: YEAR ONE didn’t start until issue 404, released in November!)
If any of this put restrictions on how Byrne could depict Batman, you never feel the issue straining at it. If you take a closer look at the story, you notice that none of Batman’s supporting cast appears – not even Commissioner Gordon – and that the story uses an original villain with a clean slate rather than a familiar antagonist.
Of course the reason you don’t think about this is because this is a story about Superman and Batman’s clashing ideologies and so the villain isn’t the true antagonist of the story. They’re just a means to an end. It would be too big of a plot if they were hunting The Joker or Two-Face. A villain like that upstages the heroes and their mad scheme would have to take center stage. But by using a D-List level villain, the story has more room to breathe.
I first read this issue as a kid with almost as much knowledge of Batman as I had of Superman. I endlessly watched the Adam West BATMAN series in reruns, often with my OFFICIAL BATMAN BATBOOK in hand. I’d seen Batman and Superman work together in SUPER FRIENDS. BATMAN FROM THE 30s TO THE 70s gave me a sense of the various eras of the character and how he evolved.
I also was familiar with one of the earliest stories of Superman and Batman teaming up in SUPERMAN #76, where they immediately regarded each other as the best of friends after their secret identities were accidentally exposed to each other.
If you read that story now, the set-up is contrived in a way that will have you thinking you’re reading slash fanfic. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent have both booked cabins on a cruise ship, but due to overcrowding, they have to share a room together. In the real world, this would never happen. That cruise company would give millionaire Bruce Wayne the one free room and tell the nerdy reporter that shit happens. An emergency arises before the boat even leaves the dock, provoking both men to change into their other identities in the dark while hoping the other one doesn’t notice. Of course, light shining into the porthole blows that plan and they spring into action, shocking before we ever get an awkward scene of the men debating how they’re going to resolve the math problem of two bodies and only one bed.
But this is Post-Crisis now, and the gritty realism of the day demands a more grounded approach to teaming them up than merely serendipitous travel plans. But before I get into that, I just have to say, GODDAMN does Byrne draw an amazing Batman.
Batman is shaking down Bull, a henchman working for Magpie. Either Bull is having the luckiest night ever or Batman is still early enough in his career to have a slip like this, but Bull gets away from him before he has to give up any info. Batman swings off into the night only to find his Bat line is being held by Superman! The Man of Steel is intent on taking this “outlaw” to police headquarters. Obviously it’s not going to be that easy.
Superman goes to grab him again and Batman warns he’s surrounded by an intangible field. See, ever since Superman first showed up eight months ago (Time Jump Alert!), he expected they might cross paths, so he came up with a precaution. If Superman penetrates the field around Batman in any way, it will trigger a signal and set off a bomb hidden somewhere in the city, killing an innocent person.
Pre-Crisis had Superman and Batman bunking together in their first adventure. In this one they can’t even touch each other. That shows you the difference in comics post-SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT by Fredric Wertham.
Anyway, we find Magpie furious that Bull didn’t take the opportunity to mislead Batman with bad intel. And in an action that seems just a little extreme – she blows him up,
It’s her bad luck she didn’t know Superman was in town because the sound of that explosion leads him and Batman right to her at the Old Gotham Museum of Antiquities, closed for years now.
Though they round up her thugs, Magpie gets away using toxic gas as a distraction. Fortunately, Batman uses his Batmobile’s portable crime lab to examine the shards of Magpie’s gas vial, and finds a fibre that’s 5,000 years old. He tells Superman, “There’s only one place in Gotham City where she’d come into contact with five thousand year-old cloth of precisely THAT variety! Follow me!”
Personally I think Superman lets Batman have this win. Magpie isn’t exactly what you’d call inconspicuous and someone with his abilities could have found her pretty easily. Either way, this clue leads them to another, unnamed museum, where they intercept Magpie and boast that they checked the employment records of this museum and found the name “Margaret Pye.”
Then, just to dunk on her, Superman grabs her wig.
Yes, all of this is a little too easy and pat, but like I said, the villain plot isn’t the real story here. It’s about the interactions between Superman and Batman. Byrne’s not trying to write the ultimate Batman and Superman team-up – he’s just after a story that let’s him establish their contrasting views and evolved them a little. And by that standard, this issue is a success.
Superman points out there’s still the matter of Batman’s hidden bomb, and he’s stunned when Batman reveals where it’s hidden.
Batman not only foresaw Superman coming for him, he also was ready in case Superman called his bluff, and so the only way to make it work was to plant the bomb on himself. That is one cold SOB.
But it allows them to part on friendly terms, if not as friends. Batman’s final thought is interesting to me, as he muses “In a different reality, I might have called him ‘Friend.’” For years I just assumed that to be a wink at Pre-Crisis continuity, but it’s also a line from the STAR TREK episode “Balance of Terror,” spoken by a Romulan Commander who has gained respect for Captain Kirk.
Over the years I’ve realized Byrne used to use some sneaky references like this and I’m looking forward to spotting some I might have missed before.
When MAN OF STEEL is stacked up against other Superman relaunches, a common knock against it is that unlike some of its competition, it’s less of a singular narrative and more of a collection of short stories. I’ll dispute this to some extent. Issues 1 and 2 flow continuously from one to the other. Issue 4 also would flow pretty smoothly from 2 in a narrative sense, despite the time jump. Issue 5 has standalone qualities, but follows pretty effectively on 4, and then Issue 6 is a solid bookend to the first issue.
This issue is the only truly standalone tale within the miniseries. It’s not connected to any of the other issues and none of the other issues connect to it. But given the ground that THE MAN OF STEEL is trying to cover, I’d rather it tell its story this way rather than force Batman into a larger story where he doesn’t belong, just so we can get an understanding of how he relates to Superman in this continuity.
And for my money, this tension between Superman and Batman is much more interesting than the SUPER FRIENDS days where they had basically the same personality and got along. There’s a long game being played here with this relationship, and I like how every subsequent team-up with Batman builds their mutual trust and respect just a little bit more until finally they get to the point of being real friends.
The advantage of resetting the continuity is that you can write so many of these relationships as slow burns. I’m sure there were fans frustrated by it at the time, just as I’m sure fans were impatient to get Clark and Lois together. But because comic books have so much story space to fill, you don’t want to rush your characters to the end point. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. One of the joys of the Byrne Era and Post-Byrne Era is that incremental character growth and development over long stretches of time.
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