Listen: we’ve all had terrible first dates. The kind that makes us want to crawl into a hole and never come back out, or makes us want to move and adopt a new identity. Why should superheroes be any different? If I have one complaint about Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #12, it’s that it didn’t come out on Valentine’s Day for peak hilarity.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #12
Tamra Bonvillain (colors), Emanuela Lupacchino (pencils),Dan Mora (cover), Norm Rapmund (inks), Wade Von Grawbadger (inks), Mark Waid (writer), Steve Wands (letters)
DC Comics
February 21, 2023
This review contains spoilers for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #12.
Ever since World’s Finest #2 hinted at it, I have been begging to see what happened on this date between Robin and Supergirl, so when this cover got solicited a couple of months ago, it was instantly on the top of my reading priority list. Yes, I read this issue before Superman #1 and have no regrets. A part of me worried that seeing this series of terrible moments might ruin the mystique and humor, but rest assured, this disaster is even better than I had imagined.
From that issue, we knew some things about the date from Kara and Dick arguing with each other. There was a monkey. Dick was in costume. There was a fountain and an avalanche. There was showing off and there was alleged flirting with a server. That was enough to stoke the fires of imagination, so let’s dive into how all of that unfolded into a date that will live in infamy in both the Bat and Super-families.
World’s Finest #12 opens with what will be a background gag for most of the issue, but is importantly one of the defenses Dick threw out when he and Kara argued: “Who knew there’d be a monkey there?” So now we have an escaped pet monkey named Bingo and an owner who spends all issue looking for him.
The next pages are the immediate aftermath of the date, with Robin and Supergirl lamenting the terrible idea to their mentors. Notably, Robin is busy designing a new costume, with a disco collar, as a way to hide from Supergirl forever. This is both hilarious and a piece of continuity gold that you can really only get from a writer like Mark Waid. You see, one of the few things that have nagged at me about the series of events as they’ve played out is that I was unsure if timelines could match up. Kara is wearing the version of her costume that first appeared in Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #13. She is not yet wearing the headband she put on four issues later. My concern is that that issue came out in 1983, and at that point, Dick Grayson was also going through some changes. But sure enough, looking up specifics, Dick was still Robin when Kara started wearing that costume; it would be another eight months of comics before he’d become Nightwing. And now we know that part of the reason is that he had a terrible date with Supergirl.
From Kara’s point of view, we see their meet-cute at the beginning of the issue. Busy fighting an invasion of Man-Bats, Dick impressed Kara when he saved himself, without her needing to break off from the fight to do that for him. “I didn’t know a human could do that. Of course, I asked him out.” And that’s where it all goes downhill as we flash back to the date itself.
I particularly love the page of Kara picking an outfit. The faces she makes as she rejects various dresses are excellent explorations of emotion from Emanuella Lupacchino — the implication that Kara looks at five different dresses before the first even hits the ground is absolutely perfect. But all her effort in picking the right dress is in vain as the first sign of a bad date happens. Dick has decided to go to a fancy dinner with a beautiful girl in costume. So to preserve her own identity she has to switch out of her cute green dress and into her costume and suffer all the attention that comes with that.
This goes right into Kara’s complaint from World’s Finest #2 that Robin was showing off. He even admits to that, saying that it will give the other diners something to talk about, and from there, Dick continually puts his foot in his mouth. As I read the issue, I said “RICHARD” out loud more than once. I didn’t even know you could get second-hand embarrassment for fictional characters until now.
That’s not to say that Kara was completely in the right here, either. There are several times where she adds to the terrible date, including rambling on about the different types of Kryptonite. And, of course, there’s the alleged flirting with the waiter. But really, she said he looked like Hal Jordan and is that really a compliment?
So, that’s four of the six mentioned events. Now, where are the fountain and the avalanche? Well, that brings us back to the escaped monkey. The escaped monkey who causes a delivery truck of bowling balls to crash. Which is where the avalanche comes in. So now the date is interrupted by Supergirl and Robin needing to be superheroes, and well, at least they’re in costume. The action leads them to falling into a destroyed fountain, and now we’re six for six, and our heroes are soaking wet as they head back to their date.
The end of the date has some of the funniest gags of the issue, and I won’t spoil them here other than to say that I once again said “RICHARD” out loud. But what really makes me happy about this issue, is that for all the animosity in issue #2, Kara shows a lot of growth as she’s talking to Clark about the date. She realizes that while Robin’s contributions to the date were bad, hers were no better. She felt judgmental and manipulative and realized that she doesn’t like who she is around him and that it was not entirely his fault they were not compatible. Meanwhile, Dick finishes the issue by asking if Talia has a sister. Still some growing to do for that guy. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #12 is the exact terrible first date story I’ve been waiting for for the last ten months.
