A Question of Character: The Difference between the early Golden Age Superman and Batman Villains - by Nigel Brown

 The poet John Donne said “No man is an island”. This is true even of comic book superheroes. Superman, for example, has help from Lois Lane (in dramatic terms) in maintaining his secret identity as a weakling, when she subjects Clark Kent to frequent bouts of public humiliation.

Seen in this light, a comparison between villains confronted by the Golden Age Superman and the Golden Age Batman throws up some interesting differences between their core values as superheroes.

A key principle of drama is to have a fair match in abilities between one side and the other. If too unbalanced, there’s no drama because the more powerful side will quickly overwhelm the other and it’s game over before readers can engage with the story.

A good example of how a worthy opponent for our hero can put rocket fuel into a story can be found when Sherlock Holmes encounters Professor Moriarty: the consulting detective versus the “Napoleon of Crime” (‘The Adventure of the Final Problem’ 1893). The reader enjoys seeing Holmes stretched further than ever before to defeat this enemy. At the Reichenbach Falls the stakes cannot be higher, and the unsatisfactory result had the public clamouring for more.

Moving into the 20^th century, past the horrors of the first World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, a hundred years ago we were about to enter what became known as the Roaring Twenties. Western society, especially in the United States, took a huge gasp of relief and it became party time.

Carnivals and fairs became increasingly popular in America after World War One (as stated by Hanif Abdurraqib in his book A Little Devil in America). Stuart Jeffries has written of this in The Spectator magazine (27 March 2021), in reference to the dance marathons of the time. There was also an American obsession for testing bodily limits; weightlifting was met with acclaim.

In these circumstances it’s easier to understand, as well, how the teenager Jerry Siegel come up with a carnival-dressed strongman who was capable of physically going beyond human limits: Superman.

Superman’s origin story, on the first page of Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938) explains that Superman’s core value is to be ‘champion of the oppressed’ and to help those in need. 

 

The Superman Mission

 

Given Superman’s ability to do whatever he wants, this can be seen, for someone with ultimate personal power, to demonstrate ultimate personal selflessness. The antithesis of this would therefore be the characteristic of ultimate selfishness, to be expressed as putting oneself ahead of everyone else (in ‘pulp’ comic book terms as desiring ‘total world domination’).

So how do Superman’s opponents measure up to this antithetic motivation? We can test this by examining the first published stories of Superman.

The generic ‘villain’ of each story is named first, with the stories listed in order of appearance:

 

• Mobsters and political corruption (Action Comics No. 1 June 1938)
• Corrupt munitions magnate (Action Comics No. 2 July 1938)
• Corrupt mine owner (Action Comics No. 3 August 1938)
• Corrupt football coach (Action Comics No. 4 September 1938)
• Collapsed dam (Action Comics No. 5 October 1938)
• Criminal brand licensers (Action Comics No. 6 November 1938)
• Loan-shark preying on circus (Action Comics No. 7 December 1938)
• Fence encouraging boy thieves (Action Comics No. 8 January 1939)
• Police Captain hunting Superman (Action Comics No. 9 February 1939)
• Corrupt chain-gang boss (Action Comics No. 10 March 1939)
• Corrupt oil stock investors (Action Comics No. 11 April 1939)
• Corrupt automobile manufacturer and reckless drivers (Action Comics No. 12 May 1939)
• Jewel thieves New York World’s Fair No. 1 June 1939)
• The Ultra-Humanite, a scientist (Action Comics No. 13 June 1939)
• The Ultra-Humanite, a scientist (Action Comics No. 14 July 1939)
• Gangsters seeking sunken treasure (Action Comics No. 15 August 1939)
• Gambling racketeers (Action Comics No. 16 September 1939)
• Boxing racketeers (Reprint from daily newspaper strip Superman No. 2 Fall 1939)
• Scientist (Reprint from daily newspaper strip Superman No. 2 Fall 1939)
• Businessman (Reprint from daily newspaper strip Superman No. 2 Fall 1939)
• The Ultra-Humanite (Action Comics No. 17 October 1939)
• Blackmailing newspaper owner (Action Comics No. 18 November 1939)
• The Ultra-Humanite (Action Comics No. 19 December 1939)
• State orphanage manager (Reprint from daily newspaper strip Superman No. 3 Winter 1939)
• Jewel smugglers (Reprint from daily newspaper strip Superman No. 3 Winter 1939)
• The Ultra-Humanite (Action Comics No. 20 January 1940)
• The Ultra-Humanite (Action Comics No. 21 February 1940)
• Aggressive warring nation of Toran (Action Comics No. 22 March 1940)
• Luthor, scientist (Action Comics No. 23 April 1940)
• Luthor, scientist (Superman No.4 Spring 1940)
• Luthor, scientist (Superman No.4 Spring 1940)
• Foreign agent (Superman No.4 Spring 1940)

 

At a superficial level, there’s no doubt that Superman fulfils his remit to be a champion of the oppressed as he battles corruption in all levels of society (ranging from criminal fences corrupting children to corrupt senators in Washington DC), but it’s not until a year later, in Action Comics No. 13 (June 1939), that he’s up against the Ultra-Humanite (defined by his name as ‘beyond human’) and who could be termed a true ‘supervillain’. The Ultra-Humanite is a character that possesses the antithesis of Superman’s core value: he wants to rule the world. Superman has three more encounters with this supervillain, and then – essentially – the Ultra-Humanite is replaced by a red-headed Luthor (who lacks the super-human powers of the Ultra-Humanite but, nevertheless, is a brilliant scientist with a world-ruling ambition).

 

Aim of the Ultra-Humanite

Luthor's Aim

 

Compare this record with Batman:

From Batman’s origin story (not in the first comic featuring Batman, but in a two-page vignette in Detective Comics No.33 November 1939), we learn that Batman’s raison d’etre is to be ‘warring on all criminals’.

 

Batman's Mission

 

So looking at Batman’s opponents in those first stories, matching the Superman tally:

 

Batman (pre-Robin) – 

• A businessman (Detective Comics No. 27 May 1939)
• Jewel thieves (Detective Comics No. 28 June 1939)
• Doctor Death, a scientist (Detective Comics No. 29 July 1939)
• Doctor Death, a scientist (Detective Comics No. 30 August 1939)
• The Monk, a supernatural being and vampire (Detective Comics No. 31 September 1939)
• The Monk, a supernatural being and vampire (Detective Comics No. 32 October 1939)
• A group of scientists (Detective Comics No. 33 November 1939)
• A scientist (Detective Comics No. 34 December 1939)
• An explorer (Detective Comics No. 35 January 1940)
• Hugo Strange, a scientist (Detective Comics No. 36 February 1940)
• A foreign agent (Detective Comics No. 37 March 1940)
• Hugo Strange, a scientist (Batman No. 1 Spring 1940)

 

Batman and Robin –

• Protection racket gangsters (Detective Comics No. 38 April 1940)
• The Joker (1^st story Batman No. 1 Spring 1940)
• The Cat, un-costumed Catwoman (Batman No. 1 Spring 1940)
• The Joker (2^nd story Batman No. 1 Spring 1940)
• Chinese opium ring (Detective Comics No. 39 May 1940)
• Clayface, an actor (Detective Comics No. 40 June 1940)
• Counterfeiting ring (Detective Comics No. 41 July 1940)
• The Joker (1^st story Batman No. 2 Summer 1940)
• The Crime Master, a brain damaged meek museum curator (Batman No. 2 Summer 1940)
• Clubfoot, who murders to own a goldmine (Batman No. 2 Summer 1940)
• Circus owners (Batman No. 2 Summer 1940)
• A scientist (New York World’s Fair Comics No. 2 1940)
• An indebted art patron (Detective Comics No. 42 August 1940)
• Corrupt city officials and racketeers (Detective Comics No. 43 September 1940)
• Giants, in Robin’s dream (Detective Comics No. 44 October 1940)
• The Puppet Master, a super hypnotist (Batman No. 3 Fall 1940)
• Men afflicted with myxedema (Batman No. 3 1940)
• Mobsters running a crime-school for boys (Batman No. 3 1940)
• The Cat-Woman, in costume (Batman No. 3 1940)
• The Joker (Detective Comics No. 45 November 1940)

 

Immediately it’s clear that Batman (and later, with Robin) faces threats much more personified by ‘supervillains’ than Superman.

Taking a ‘supervillain’ as being an opponent with a colourful name, and perhaps additional fighting skills beyond the average (not necessarily ‘Super’ in the kryptonian sense), then Superman – in his first 32 stories – fights just two of these (the Ultra-Humanite and Luthor) in 28%, or just over a fifth, of the tales.

Batman, in contrast, battles a much higher rate of nine supervillains, in 46%, or nearly half, of the stories.

Why this difference?

Part of the explanation may be that it was enough of a novelty that Superman, as the pioneer superhero, was shown to be fighting ‘ordinary injustice’ in the form of mobsters, corrupt officials in different fields, and even natural disasters (the collapsed dam). But after a year of this, Superman needed greater challenges and so the Ultra-Humanite, the first of Superman’s many supervillains, turned up in the June 1939 Action Comics.

Note that Batman’s first ‘supervillain’, Dr Death, also debuts in July 1939, within a month of Superman’s first supervillain. So perhaps it’s only a consequence of Batman’s later debut that Batman faces his supervillains at an earlier stage in his career.

 

Dr Death's Plan

We can test this theory by looking at both the Superman and the Batman stories to see if the supervillain ratio changed after the debut of the ‘supervillain’ in June/July 1939 in their respective comics.

Over the next nineteen stories, for both of them:

• The number and proportion of ‘supervillain’ stories are nine for Superman, which is 47%
• For Batman stories, the number is twelve, which is still a higher percentage than in the Superman stories, at 63%.

So something more significant is still going on.

I think that is rooted in the difference of core values between Superman and Batman.

Batman has a much more focused mission in his war on all criminals compared to Superman, with Superman’s more general mission of championing the oppressed. 

As a requirement in the ‘dramatic’ testing of Batman, therefore, it’s no surprise that Batman’s more likely to be encountering specific individuals (‘anti-Batmans’, if you like to call them) to test him (in a dramatic sense: ‘Moriarty’s to test ‘Holmes’s).

Incidentally, this explains why the Joker is such an apt and enduring opponent for Batman. Crime, at its most basic form, is disorder in society. Batman has sworn to war on all criminals, essentially a particular type of social disorder, and the Joker represents – in his purest form – absolute social disorder. To quote Heath Ledger as the Joker in the movie The Dark Knight (2008): “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?... I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”

I think that the existence of the Joker, and thereby the duality of Batman/Joker, has elevated the Batman character to a higher level of literary creation (and Alan Moore demonstrated this magnificently in Batman:The Killing Joke, his 1988 graphic novel). The Joker has been going strong for over eighty years now (almost as long as Batman), and is still popular, even to the point of meriting his own movie without Batman (Joker 2019, with Joaquin Phoenix in the title role). 

 

The Recurring Joker

 

But this does raise the question, does Superman have an obvious equivalent to Batman’s Joker? I don’t think so, and this is to Superman’s detriment as a well-rounded literary character.

Lex Luthor has always been posited as Superman’s greatest foe.

Let’s put him to the test. Is he the ‘ultimate selfish villain’?

Perhaps not. A classic Silver Age Superman story proves that he’s not totally consumed by his selfish demeanour. His altruistic actions and attitude to the people of the planet Lexor are demonstrated in the Edmond Hamilton story ‘The Showdown between Luthor and Superman’ (Superman No. 164 October 1963).

 

Lex Luthor Self-Sacrifice

 

So, given his altruism, Lex Luthor cannot be the absolute antithesis of Superman. So who is?

I’ve suggested another name elsewhere (What’s in a Name? Superman’s greatest enemy we don’t hear about. superstuff73 July 25 2020) but I have another suspect, perhaps frivolous. Not an enemy, but certainly an adversary. There’s one constant character in the Superman mythos who’s been there from the beginning, has always been a professional rival to Clark Kent, has always been totally selfish in seeking their own happiness, and, in many ‘imaginary’ stories, when this has been achieved, Superman has lost his powers (in effect, his existence as Superman has been negated), and, again, I note that Alan Moore had a nod to this in his terrific two-part story “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” (Superman No. 423 and Action Comics No. 583 both September 1986). So, perhaps not so much tongue-in-cheek after all, Superman’s greatest adversary is, and has always been… Lois Lane.

 

 

copyright. © Nigel Brown