Showcase Presents World's Finest Volume 2

The first volume to collect the Superman/Batman team-ups from the pages of World's Finest had many flaws. Silly plots that repeated frequently. A pesky Lois Lane trying to determine if Clark Kent really is Superman. Aliens. My god, the aliens! Those blemishes, I could overlook. But the one thing I couldn't forgive was that there weren't any Jimmy Olsen stories in that collection!

Volume 2 starts to dip it's toe into the various Robin & Jimmy Olsen Vs. Superman/Batman stories. We only get 2 or 3 such tales. But it's better than nothing!

The inclusion of Jimmy Olsen added a level of complexity to the World's Finest universe. Before the inclusion of Superman's Pal, the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader would often pass Robin off like a child visiting divorced relatives seemingly every other issue. The Boy Wonder ended up being a major third wheel. Now with Jimmy Olsen, it's like Robin's got a playmate. 

Sadly, my volume ended. But there's a volume 3 and 4. Yes, both are OOP. But I am on the hunt. There's so many great adventures awaiting me. Plus, we start to curve away from the various alien invader capers which work fine for Superman. But Batman just seems out of his element in those sci-fi romps.

Tons of fun that promises to get even better!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Showcase Presents World's Finest, Volume 1

Presenting some of the most off-the-wall adventures starring the Man of Steel, the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder. Aliens, love-sick dames, giant robots and rather unusual new teammates to the trio of heroes make up the list of opponents faced by the World's Finest. 

This black and white collection also contains the first ever meeting between Batman and Superman from the pages of Superman. The original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, attempts to shatter the glass ceiling in competition with Batman and The Man of Tomorrow. Lastly, in an all-time classic, The Joker and Lex Luthor join forces against their arch-enemies.

But where's Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen? The cub reporter was an integral part of the World's Finest issues of my father's that I used to read by the literal trunk-load as a kid. Jimmy and Robin would often have a generational gap competition in the pages of this DC Comics team-up. Not having the ginger teen in these stories is just rather weird to me. Perhaps he'll pop up in volume 2...

One unforgivable disappointment is the overuse of plots. Yes, with comic books, being nearly a century old, it's nearly impossible to not reuse plot lines. But to have so many repeat plot lines less than a year apart in time; things got predictable quick. Maybe if I was a reader in the mid-1950s approaching these as they were published on a bi-monthly basis, I wouldn't have noticed the lack of imagination. But I doubt it.

Still, this was a great collection of 1950s DC stories. Their naive optimism was a nice transition from the bleakness of the Atomic Knight and Great Disaster stories that I had been reading prior to this archive of Golden Age works.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.