Episode 21: Tonight Is The Night When 2 Becomes 1…
Welcome to the twenty-first episode of The Overlooked Dark Knight. The is a non-index index show where the hosts, Andrew Leyland and Michael Bailey, look at Batman comics that rarely, if ever, get talked about. In the second episode of the month they discuss the various books that were associated with the animated Batman shows of the nineties, though just about everything is fair game.
Except for this month.
This month Andy and Mike are celebrating Superman’s birthday.
Why?
There are two answers to that question.
One: Superman and Batman are best mates.
B: Andy and Mike like Superman.
So there you go.
To celebrate Superman’s birthday and the friendship of the World’s Finest team the guys have chosen two stories that could be considered twice told tales. First up is World’s Finest #271, which celebrated the 200th comic-versary of Batman and Superman appearing in stories together in the pages of that title as opposed to sharing the cover and nothing else. In this titanic tale Superman is attacked by the Atoman and we are treated to the many and varied origins of the Superman/Batman team. Included in this segment is a healthy discussion of the Superman radio show, which is awesome.
The radio show is awesome. The discussion is okay.
After a quick break and a snippet from a Spice Girls song Andy and Mike discuss Superman/Batman Annual #3, which was published in 2009 and featured a modern take on the favorite character of Rob and Shag from The Fire and Water Podcast ; Composite Superman! Much love is given to the late Len Wein’s writing, the cover by the late Bernie Wrightson and the interior art by Chris Batista, who obviously liked the look of the Michael Keaton version of Batman.
Below is a gallery of covers and pages from the comics we discussed this time out.
Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.
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Next Time: Mike and Andy discuss Batman Adventures #25 as well as provide a commentary for the Superman: The Animated Series episode “Knight Time”.
Great episode guys! Cindy and I covered WF #271 on Super Mates a few years back, and that episode proved how much she really loved me because MAN, that was a lot of story packed into that $1 comic! I love that issue, because I bought it right off the stands, and it gave me SO much info I never knew before, and because many of the stories represented were reprinted in the very first “old” comic I ever bought, WF #179, an 80 page giant I picked up at a flea market when I was like 4 or 5. So I have a lot of nostalgic love for BOTH comics. Needless to say Cindy didn’t quite have that same nostalgia for it, so it was honestly a bit of a slog for her. But both #179 and #271 are two of my favorite comics of all time.
I haven’t read Supes/Bats Annual #3, but now I REALLY want to. How did I miss this? I love me some Composite Superman, despite him being verboten on the Fire & Water Network. I’m going to have to see if Cindy has this trade at the library.
Awesome sauce as usual gents,
Chris
Oh, and Firefly’s design here is directly lifted from “The Batman” animated series of the mid to late 2000s. I know it well, because both myself and the son have the action figure, and when he was a wee lad, he lost the removable helmet down our bathroom drain…and we had to hire a plumber to fix the clog!!!
Chris
Hi guys,
I want to add some context for World’s Finest #271. When it was published, DC had not been printing any reprints in their regular comics for more than five years. The digest books had reprints, but they were still relatively new. Less than a dozen had been released at this point. Readers like me, who had come on board during this time, had very few opportunities to be exposed to the rich heritage of DC stories. Roy Thomas’s choice to mine all these stories was, ironically, refreshing and exciting! Of course, he had the infinite resource of E. Nelson Bridwell to help him. Like Chris, I loved the knitting together of all theses disparate, and goofy, stories. I had read the cruise ship story in Superman: From the 30s to the 70s, so I have fondness for it. That book also referred to the radio show initial meeting, and greatly intrigued me. (It was hard to find specific radio shows on LPs back then. Hooray for all the digital archives!) Sure, they had to use a crowbar and lots of axle grease to fit it all together, but I’m glad they did!
I completely forgot! In between listening to current podcasts, I listen to Michael’s (and Scott’s) Tales of the Justice Society podcast. Th most recent one I heard, # 49?, Michael speaks of Andrew Leyland and how much he admires his podcast!