Team-ups are nothing new in comics. We've seen Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Spider-Man/Wolverine, Avengers/JLA, and the most recognized team-up has to be Batman/Superman. Their teaming up stretches back to the 1940s when the series World’s Finest debuted. The series lasted until 1986 with 323 issues and had Batman, Superman, and members of their “family” teaming up in the pages of that series. In 2003 the series was re-launched as Superman/Batman and has had the duo teaming up to fight alternate versions of themselves, reintroduced Supergirl, and dealt with the heroes switching powers and more over its current 60+ issue run.

The series kicked off with a six-issue storyline entitled “Public Enemies” which saw President Lex Luthor (yup, Superman’s arch-nemesis was voted President in the DC universe prior to the series launch) cleaning up the economy and getting the heroes to work for him. However there are two who don’t believe that Luthor has reformed — Superman and Batman. To get the “World’s Finest” in line, Luthor has Metallo killed, frames Superman for it, and then places a billion dollar bounty on The Man of Steel’s head.

Batman starts to investigate who is actually responsible for Metallo’s death and he and Superman have to face off against what seems like half of the super-powered characters of the DC universe including Shazam, Hawkman, Power Girl, Mongul, Solomon Grundy, Silver Banshee, and many, many more. Highlights of the comic and movie are the brawl of Superman versus dozens of characters and Batman outsmarting some characters who are much stronger than he is.

The film adapts the storyline very faithfully, down to writer Jeph Loeb’s dialogue and artist Ed McGuiness’s style. Jeph Loeb has said in the past that he saw each storyline as a big blockbuster epic, which is why this story was chosen to adapt. Understandably scenes and characters had to be cut for time, but it was great seeing all the A, B, and C-list characters making appearances to collect Luthor’s bounty. This also sees the return of Tim Daly to voice Superman, Clancy Brown reprising his role as Luthor, and Kevin Conroy as the quintessential Batman. Fans have been asking when Daly and Conroy would reprise their roles and the timing was right for them to return.

There are two versions of the standard DVD. The first is a single disc which has the film, a featurette about the current DC mini-series “Blackest Night” where the dead come back to life with black lanterns and Green Lantern Corps, plus the entire DC universe must deal with friends and enemies back from the dead.

Article Author: Blake Matthews

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