World's Finest Comics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see World's Finest.

World's Finest Comics was a comic book series published by DC Comics from 1941 to 1986. The series was initially titled World's Best Comics for its first issue; issue #2 (1941) switched to the more prominent name. Every issue featured DC's two leading superheroes, Superman and Batman. The series was initially a 96 page quarterly anthology, featuring various DC characters - always including Superman and Batman - in separate stories. When superheroes fell out of vogue in the 1950s, DC shortened the size of the publication to that of the rest of its output, leaving only enough space for one story; this led to Superman and Batman appearing in the same story together starting with World's Finest #71 (1954). The series continued in this vein until its cancellation in 1986 at #323.

The idea for World's Best #1 originated from the identically formatted 1940 New York World's Fair Comics featuring Superman, Batman, and Robin with 96 pages and a cardboard cover. The year before there was a similar 1939 New York World's Fair Comics featuring Superman but without Batman and Robin because Bob Kane hadn't yet created them.

A number of World's Finest titles have since appeared:

a three-issue 1990 miniseries by Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude
a three-issue Legends of the World's Finest miniseries in 1994, spinning off of the popular Legends of the Dark Knight anthology
a two-issue Superboy/Robin: World's Finest Three in 1996
Batman/Superman Adventures: World's Finest one-shot in 1997, adapting the Batman/Superman team-up in the Batman and Superman animated series.
Elseworlds' Finest: Supergirl/Batgirl one-shot in 1998
Superman and Batman: World's Funnest, featuring Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite
A ten-issue mini-series in 1999 written by Karl Kesel and illustrated by Dave Taylor. This series explored the Post-Crisis history of the two with each of the ten issues taking place one year after the other.
Superman/Batman (2003 - present)