For over six decades, there has been a war in the American comic book industry. DC Comics started life in the 1930s and grew – thanks to the boom in popularity of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, along with many others – to become the establishment of fantasy and superhero stories. But then, after its emergence in 1960, Marvel hit the streets and introduced a degree of flair to the medium which DC had failed to do. In the grand scheme of events, DC was trounced by a company that was not just more modern, but more creative, more unique in its storytelling, and more popular to many readers. In the sixty years since we’ve seen relations between DC and Marvel range from cautious friendliness (and on occasion, collaboration) to downright nastiness. But in the 1976, after more than fifteen years of competition between the two companies, a form of truce was agreed. And by truce, I mean a one-off where the talents of DC and Marvel could unite. For in 1976, it was time for the two titans to work together.
Despite being just 23 years old, writer Gerry Conway thought he had done it all. From writing characters like Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, and then even editing titles at both DC and Marvel, Conway was already something of a comics giant. But in 1975, his next and most daring challenge materialised. David Obst is a name that many in comics may not have heard of – his talent as a literary agent not only meant that his name is present all over many creative works, but he was the agent of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose politically transformational book All The President’s Men had a profound effect on the US, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It was this same David Obst who approached DC and Marvel with the idea of a collaboration, and as the publishers of both respective companies, Carmine Infantino and Stan Lee agreed, with Gerry Conway appearing as the most obviously suited writer for such an event.
While its patently obvious that the purpose of a crossover between these two companies would be more for financial reasons than anything else, there’s no doubt that a collaboration between the two companies would be big news. And who better to star in the crossover than DC’s famous Man of Steel Superman, and Marvel’s teenage hit Spiderman. Along with Conway as writer, the two artists were Ross Andru and Dick Giordano, with both Lee and Infantino editing this one-hundred-page tabloid-format book which finally hit the shelves in 1976.
So, with Superman and Spiderman as the stars of the show, another question rises – how and why do these two heroes meet? What reason could there be other than the villains. Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus are chosen as the ultimate baddies for Supes and Spidey, and it’s down to Conway to unite the heroes in a story that’s actually worth reading. Fortunately, things don’t begin with a dreary re-telling of the origins of Superman, Spiderman, and their foes. Throughout the special, there are just three pages which introduce us to the four main characters of the story, but they are treated like optional interludes. Conway gives us just the basics that anyone whose been living under the rock would need to know – with Superman and Spiderman getting their own full pages, and Luthor and Doctor Octopus sharing a page about their bizarrely contrasting origins (Doc Ock has some tragedy to his tale after a failed experiment, while Luthor just went bald and blamed Superman). It’s good to see these origins are shoehorned into story and don’t distract from the main plot.
At ninety-one pages, Conway is given a huge canvass to paint a crossover which fans had been waiting for years. Although this wasn’t the first DC/Marvel crossover – they had collaborated on a Wizard of Oz special in 1975 – this was the first one featuring those famous superheroes that readers had come to know and love. So, with plenty of pages, Conway launches Superman Vs The Amazing Spiderman with three prologues. Their purpose is to introduce us to the main characters not through their predictable origin stories, but through adventures which set up the main plot.
Prologue one features Superman in Metropolis City. One day, the city is attacked by Lex Luthor in a giant robot. While his main goal is to steal a secret powerful circuit board from S.T.A.R Labs, he also lures the Man of Steel into a trap so he can defeat his acclaimed hero once and for all. Unsurprisingly, Luthor doesn’t win, but he does steal the circuit board and hides it from Superman. Conway does well to show Superman as the all-powerful hero we all know, but he also presents us with Clark Kent’s world at the Daily Planet, with Morgan Edge in charge of the company and disliking Clark hugely (Edge was created by Jack Kirby as part of his Fourth World saga – he was revealed to be a robot created by Darkseid). If you know the world of Superman and his usual cast of characters, they really are nothing new, but Conway delivers this first prologue mixed with action and interesting dialogue.
Prologue two does the same for Spiderman as Conway did for Superman. In Manhattan, Spiderman discovers a robbery and does his usual web-slinging magic to try and defeat the villains, led by Doctor Octopus. But once again, it’s to no avail. Conway carries on the structure from the previous prelude, focusing on Peter Parker, his girlfriend Mary Jane, and his constantly furious editor J. Jonah Jameson. Conway plays up the similarities between Kent and Parker – both are in the media, both have a knack for taking photographs, and they both have problems in their professional lives. While many readers may already be fully aware of the worlds of Superman and Spiderman, these two prologues are essential. Comics has always been tribal. Many Marvel readers wouldn’t know much about DC characters, and the same applies for DC readers and Marvel (it applies especially to myself as an avid DC fan). Therefore, without these prologues, too many readers would be left in the dark.
As for the third prologue, it stands at just five pages long. However, it’s crucial because it presents us with the first meeting of Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus. In a matter of seconds, Luthor manages to convince Doc Ock on his villainous quest without telling him much about it. Doc Ock is pretty much whisked away by Luthor as they escape to take revenge on Superman and Spiderman. This meeting is good fun and has some dialogue, but perhaps it’s too brief. And that judgement is hugely ironic when it comes to my big gripe with these prologues. While essential, did all three of them together need to be thirty-five pages long? With somewhere between a third and half the book considered a prelude, it’s simply too long and devalues the impact of the main event. Such a colossal meeting between powerhouses needs an imaginative plot with time for it to breathe and develop – fifty pages is still a lot, but the prologues could have been condensed.
The main plot kicks off by getting Clark Kent and Peter Parker in the same place at the same time. They’re both invited to the World News Conference. We’re treated to scenes of small-talk between the heroes and their partners, with Conway writing some genuinely interesting and realistic dialogue scenes between an emotionally charged Peter Parker – still angry at his editor – and a calming Mary Jane. Conway has the magic touch of Stan Lee when it comes to dialogue as you get into the heads of these characters and understand and appreciate their relationships. As for Clark Kent and Lois Lane, things feel more stilted. For starters, Lois Lane is treated throughout as a deputy figure to Clark, a reputation which does not suit her usually outspoken personality whatsoever. Their chats are duller and more typical of the fact that – when you come down to it – Clark Kent is a dull character. There’s little interesting he says or does. Throughout, Conway shines with Spiderman, not with Superman. Anyway, the plot kicks off when Lois Lane and Mary Jane are both kidnapped by Superman. Yes, it’s Superman who swoops down only to transport these two ladies elsewhere. Witnessed by Peter Parker, he heads to the roof to become Spiderman. This is where the eyes of the heroes meet for the very first time…
While it’s obvious that Superman didn’t kidnap Lois and MJ (it’s shown later to be Lex Luthor in a bad wig), Conway wants some drama for the first confrontation between the heroic teenager and the alien god. It’s boringly predictable that the heroes are thrown into a fight, which is made only slightly more interesting by Luthor and Doc Ock, who watch from afar and infect Spidey with red radiation to make him more powerful against Supes. Even with that, I have no idea how Superman doesn’t kill Spiderman here. I get that is never likely to happen, but with the Man of Steel’s strength, Spiderman would be no match for him. But really, this fight does nothing to develop the story, but thankfully it doesn’t go on for that long and the two heroes make up with one another. Combining their two forces to locate Lois and MJ, this is where it really begins.
By using Superman’s X-ray vision, the two heroes converge on an old warehouse in the desert, only to find – after a few pages of dilly-dallying – nothing much to speak of. Sure, there’s a hologram of Luthor and Doc Ock as they boast of their kidnapping of Lois and MJ, but the wild goose chase continues. They head to Mount Kilimanjaro after tracking Luthor’s signal through a computer and are confronted by a tribe who appear to understand very little English. It’s in moments like these that Conway’s skills as a writer – specifically a Marvel writer – emerge. Superman and Spiderman meet the tribe, with the Man of Steel speaking very slowly and basically to get their help. Suddenly, one of their leaders pipes up, speaks perfect English, and recognises Superman from when he studied in London. Moments of comedy and entertainment like this were absent in DC Comics, as if they were afraid of straying too much from the hard-science and plotting of the likes of Gardner Fox. Marvel didn’t take itself so seriously, and that’s why they were – and continue to be – more successful. The story is home to several moments that like that only a Marvel plotter could achieve.
With the help of the tribe, Superman and Spiderman locate a hidden base in the mountains featuring an empty rocket silo controlled by Luthor. Superman works out that Luthor and Doc Ock are in space, specifically on board the Injustice Gang’s old satellite. It’s here that Luthor reveals his true plans – with the use of that stolen circuit from earlier, he can operate the launched rocket from the silo to completely wreck the Earth by tampering with the atmosphere. The point of this? Money, obviously. He can blackmail the governments of the world with his power. This insane mad-genius plan is certainly ambitious, but is it really Lex Luthor? Sure, the money part of his plan is fine, but the means to do it feel a tad extreme even for him. Superman and Spiderman turn up and manage to rescue Lois Lane and Mary Jane, but then the Man of Steel has to be the hero and rescue the Earth as Luthor activates the rocket. Here, Spiderman is useless as he has to let Superman do his magic, and it’s shown here too just how useless Doc Ock is in Conway’s plot. Throughout, it feels like Luthor has been dragging him along, and he predictably turns on Luthor at the end because of his crazy plan. Compared to the chummy and interesting relationship between the heroic duo, the two villains don’t really gel too well.
In the end, the world is saved and it’s back to prison for Luthor and Doc Ock. Conway does leave things off with a nice epilogue as Clark and Peter meet and discover the two of them have taken photographs of themselves as heroes fighting the villains for their respective newspapers. As for Conway’s choice of plot, he’s taken a very safe and predictable route. Everything you’d expect from a crossover is here – the villains working together, the heroes turning on each other for a period, and some huge threat to the established order. It’s textbox stuff and could have been more imaginative, but it never becomes unreadable or downright boring.
Conway also makes the story highly enjoyable thanks to the relationship between Supes and Spidey. Some of those moments in the story where the plot stalls or is relatively absent are aided by interesting dynamic between Superman, whose dialogue is more formal and predictable, and Spiderman, who speaks words of energy and a sense of informal-ness and playfulness that makes for some funny scenes. In short, the two heroes work remarkably well together. Okay, you might find the odd example of clunky dialogue occasionally, especially from the ‘we love being evil’ villains, but it holds up pretty decently. In the end, perhaps what Conway does very well is to exemplify just how much better, more modern, and interesting a character like Spiderman is rather than a typical superhero like Superman. Creators like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Alan Moore understand that a hero needs flaws, and that’s why Peter Parker works so spectacularly. From 1938 until sometime in the 1980s, the Man of Steel has no chink in his armour, and that’s why he’s boring. But Spiderman does bring out some of the best in Superman.
At first sight, Ross Andru may appear a worrying choice for such a dynamic meeting between heroes. His Brave and the Bold stories from the late-1960s – while never imitating the flatness of John Forte – weren’t the most energetic of visual storytelling. However, Andru’s storytelling is wonderfully reminiscent of the works of Marvel in his case. It’s impressive in its storytelling choices and page layouts. It looks radically different to many of the usual art you’d see from DC in the mid-1970s, with Dick Giordano unsurprisingly delivering some strong and great inks. That said, there are occasions when the artists forget to add in backgrounds to some panels, and I do feel there is a slight abundance of splash pages and double-page spreads, but that criticism is nulled entirely by comics since the 1990s. All-in-all, Andru outdoes himself.
VERDICT
Overall, Superman Vs The Amazing Spiderman will be remembered as the first true collaboration between DC and Marvel. The plot itself isn’t particularly memorable, despite the excellent dialogue and scripting by Gerry Conway. But perhaps the true effect of this special and its success might come from what perspective of comic books you’ve been reading. From a DC perspective, Conway creates a sense of flair and energy which many DC titles lacked in the 1970s – Spiderman feels like a breath of fresh air. What did Marvel readers think? It’s harder for me to judge, but perhaps their fear of dull personalities like Superman were confirmed by this story. Either way, the story may have its problems, but it should be considered a classic just for its very existence more than anything…
Next Week: Justice League: Forever Evil (Forever Evil 1-4, Justice League (vol 2) 24-25). Written by Geoff Johns with art by David Finch, Richard Friend, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Oclair Albert, Eber Ferreira, Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy, Mark Irwin, and Keith Champagne.
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