The Man of Steel #3 (November 1986)
The Man of Steel #3 (November 1986)
Superman goes to Gotham City to arrest Batman for being a violent vigilante, because apparently Supes thinks he has a monopoly on crime-punching. However, Batman has prepared for this eventuality by setting up a Superman-detecting force-field around himself – and if Superman triggers it, a bomb will kill an innocent person in Gotham City. Yes, it turns out that the billionaire who dresses up as a bat and beats up people in alleys is kind of insane.
Despite that, the two end up teaming up against a Gotham City criminal called Magpie, whose superpower is that she really likes jewels. Like, a lot. Clearly, this was a two-man job. In the end it turns out that the innocent Batman put in danger was… himself. Batman just banked that Superman wouldn't kill anyone and kept the bomb in his utility belt. Superman realizes Gotham needs a different (crazier) type of protector and lets Batman go, though he still thinks the guy is kind of a jerk.
Even with all the henchmen getting dynamited in the mouth and the villain having a nervous breakdown at the end, this is probably the lightest issue in the Man of Steel miniseries. The one thing that caught my attention is that the first page has a silent nine-panel grid starting at the top of a building and zooming down to the street – a Watchmen homage? So soon?
Character-Watch:
Besides that Batman guy (I believe this is his first Post-Crisis appearance), this issue presents Magpie, aka Margaret Pie (of course), who seems like a sixties Adam West villain only with the eightiest costume possible. Magpie fought Batman a couple more times and then got murdered during that period in comics where everyone thought there was nothing more shocking than killing off a character who hasn’t appeared in twenty years.
Plotline-Watch:
Superman and Batman Hate Each Other: This issue introduced the notion that Superman and Batman didn’t necessarily have to get along ridiculously well. This lasted for a surprisingly long time, until the 1990 Dark Knight Over Metropolis storyline, when Superman finally took their relationship to the next level by giving Batman a ring. Um, I’ll explain that later.
WTF-Watch:
Let me get this part straight: When Batman first heard about a flying super-strong man in Metropolis, he took the precaution of creating an invisible force field around himself that, if breached by that exact person, would make a bomb in his utility belt explode and kill him. So if Superman had just swooped over and caught him, Bats would have ended up as a red splat on his suit. Comics!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
Another issue, another weird preamble from me! I have to say, after the importance of the first two issues (Superman debuting, Lois meeting Superman) Superman first meeting Batman feels a bit out of place to me. Anyone reading this blog knows how much I love Superman, and sometimes I get a chip on my shoulder about Superman not getting his due. I own different volumes of collections like The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told and the like, and almost all of them feature Batman prominently. However, when I'll read collections of "the greatest Batman" stories, they'll feature Superman only rarely. So while I love Batman (he'd be my second favourite hero) I sometimes think he has an outsize spotlight in Superman's mythology that Superman doesn't have in Batman's mythology. For instance, in Batman: The Animated Series, Batman rarely had guest stars (just one episode with Zatanna, and one later with the Demon) but as soon as Superman's show started, it became a launching pad for DC guests (Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern,Doctor Fate, etc), and as a Superman fan it felt like the suits at the WB thinking Superman couldn't carry a series as well as Batman could. When WB animation adapts The Dark Knight Returns into two movies, it's chapter and verse, slavishly accurate to the source text. Meanwhile, The Death of Superman outsold DKR all-time, but in two different direct to video versions of it, almost none of the storyline from the comics made the final cut (I want Bloodwynd, darn it, and I want him NOW!), as screenwriters feltthey had to "fix" the storyline, despite its acclaim. Same as the current line of DC films. Superman gets one successful movie (Man of Steel) and then his next sequel is, in terms of tone, and relative screentime, a Batman film. All of this to say: I have come to resent the lack of reciprocity in the Batman and Superman dynamic. It would seem out of place for Superman to be in a Batman origin mini-series, but in a Superman origin mini-series, such as this, Batman appears before Lex Luthor! (Pant, pant, pant.Rant over.) [Max: Co-sign. Also, Batman always looks cool in Superman guest spots, while Superman gets mind controlled or turns into a government stooge.]
All that ranting aside, it's another important issue, as Byrne once again changes the history of Superman as a character in a way that is totally radical for its' day. To this point, as Max pointed out on his own solo blog, Batman and Superman were always depicted as the closest of friends. So to recast them as uneasy allies was a game-changer, and indeed has served to be the template for all the media that has followed it (and I would argue, to the detriment of both characters).
We start again with the split screen cover, and man, can John Byrne ever draw Batman. The long ears, the flowing cape, the aloof body language—it's a great image.
As Max pointed out in his review, I think that first page is indeed a Watchmen callback, and an interesting way to frame the story from Batman's point of view. The first full look we get of him on page 2 is maybe the best of the book, with a more golden age costume (sans yellow bat logo), wide jaw and long ears. Just awesome.
I'm not sure if it's Byrne or inker Dick Giordano who is to blame, but throughout the comic there's what I feel is a lazy handling of the shadow on Batman's cape, where the ridges created by the structure of the cape are drawn as sharp water-like waves. Not on every page (page 3 has a nicely rendered cape, for instance) but quite a bit elsewhere.
The effect of the force field is well drawn (and coloured) on page 7.
As Max pointed out, Magpie being the first villain they face is such an odd choice, but I kinda dig this character, just for how purely 80s she is. To me she has always looked like an evil punk version of Madonna, so that's how I heard her in my mind.
I quite like the low-tech look of the early Batmobile (reminiscent of the early leaks we've seen of the Pattinson Batmobile). [Max: I don't see any bat imagery, so technically it's just "Mobile".] John Byrne's obsession with early computer graphics is seen in this issue, with mixed results. Batman's microscopicstudy of the fibre uses it well, but the toxic gas crystalizing in outer space isn't great. On the whole, I had to double check that this issue had the correct page count, because the story is so A-to-B, it felt like not a lot happened. Just me? [Max: Yeah, that's what I meant when I called it the "lightest" of this mini. All the others have a lot going on but this one is focused on one thing. A lot of the story feels like an excuse to draw Superman and Batman doing cool poses together.]
BYRNE NOTICE (the odd things that Byrne does that make you scratch your head on a second reading):
My goodness, does Batman ever talk to himself a lot in this issue. For the entirety of page 4, he's just talking, out loud, to himself. It's so weird! As weird is Batman's super-talky explanation of the flimsy psychology behind Magpie. The line "you think I don't?" in response to Superman saying he feels sorry for her is particularly weird and defensive. "You think I don't?" "I dunno, Batman, we just met. And then you said you had a bomb on an innocent person, so who knows how your weird mind works?"
They never really explain why exactly Superman is trying to arrest Batman in the first place. He just picks him up by his rope and is like "jail time, dude!". If there had been some incident that Superman was responding to, this would have made a lot more sense. Instead Superman flies across the country (I think Byrne had Gotham near Chicago)just to arrest Batman for basically no reason. Why didn't Batman just say "Police headquarters? That's where they have a giant electric light to signal me for help, dingus."
Why does Byrne make such a production out of giving the goons prominent last names? Last issue Luthor made a meal out of "Guthrie" his limo driver, and in this issue, Magpie specifies for her goons "Carling! Gruenbach!" to help her. Those are both the names of cities in Germany, but I'm missing their importance otherwise. [Max: I can't blame you because I only noticed this recently, but: Carling and Gruenbach are clearly best buds Mike Carlin and Mark Gruenwald, who were still both at Marvel at this point (before Carlin moved to DC and started editing these very comics). I posted the visual evidence to our Twitter!]
More signature John Byrne fake swears, as Magpie shouts "Blast them! Blast them! Blast them!" as though it's a normal thing for an American to say.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
I do like that Batman doesn't know all of Superman's powers, and guesses that mind-reading (or at least, lie detection) might be one of them. That's a neat detail.
Byrne does a good job of these exposition flashbacks,and seems to savour the macabre ways these villains kill their victims. While they can be a bit gross for me, I appreciate his restraint in the way he draws them, avoiding gore for the most part. [Max: However, if you're morbidly curious and want to see how the "Happy Birthday" incident ended, you can always watch the gruesome Looney Tunes cartoon it's based on…]
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