Ep. 38, Page 72

smbhax on Nov. 12, 2019

^ The cover of the Comixology version of World's Finest Comics #303, May 1984. Cover pencils by Ed Hannigan, inks by Klaus Jansen, letters by Gaspar Saladino.

This was me indulging myself in a bit of comics nostalgia: World's Finest 303 is the first superhero comic I can remember possessing. My dad had been bringing my brother and I the occasional Richie Rich or other similarly cartoony comic now and then, but then there came the day when he plopped down before us this gleaming, kryptonite-green expanse of poisonous snow, weird skeletons, mass casualties, a stricken, desperate Superman, and Batman in a crazy environment helmet thingy. We weren't in Harveyville anymore! : o

I may be biased, but I still think this is a pretty great cover. : D

~~~~~

Going even deeper down the '80s comic rabbit hole: the cover of the issue before this one is another Hannigan/Jansen piece, this time featuring Batman punching the snot out of Superman with kryptonite-green gloves. Going back a bit further, issue 285's cover is a sort of generic Batman/Superman pose by Frank Miller (inked by Dick Giordano).

Why am I singling these out? Well, it seems likely to me, given their involvement with the series in this period, that Jansen and Miller would have recalled that Batman-socking-Superman-with-kryptonite cover two years later when they were doing their story of an out-of-retirement, gauntlet-clad Batman socking the stuffing out of a kryptonite-poisoned Superman in the climactic issue of their epoch-making “Batman: The Dark Knight” mini-series.

Or at any rate, it's an interesting coincidence. ^_-