While reading the earliest Golden Age adventures of Superman and Batman, it really struck me the different approaches to their early Golden Age rogues galleries the stories took.
(Full disclosure: so far I’ve only read the first two volumes of Superman’s Golden Age Omnibuses and one volume of Batman’s.)
Although both had plenty of generic gangsters, Batman was very quickly out of the gate with a burgeoning group of extraordinary ne’er do wells to do battle with. Superman however, didn’t!
Let’s take (Yes! Let’s!) take a quick overview:
Superman’s Early Golden Age Rogues Gallery
- Ultra-Humanite
Details: the earliest of Superman’s recurring villains, a criminal genius who’s initially confined to a wheelchair. He later discovers a way to transfer his brain into another body, so he chooses a young actress, as you do! Perfectly normal. Nothing to see here. - (Lex) Luthor
Details: takes up the mad scientist mantle from the Ultra-Humanite but with less gender-bending! Starts out with a mop of red hair before appearing with his more usual bald look.
Batman’s Early Golden Age Rogues Gallery
- The Monk
Details: only appears in two early stories but they’re important ones, really laying on the gothic mystery. - Professor Hugo Strange
Details: an early mad-scientist villain for Batman to match wits against. When he’s not creating deranged giants, he’s whipping Batman to within an inch of his life! - The Joker
Details: the big one! He also has a surprising number of appearances in this early period, to the point of being a little overused. - The Cat/Catwoman:
Details: takes a few stories before she dons a more familiar Catwoman costume. However, the basics of the character are all there from the beginning; a burglar with a fondness for jewels, not necessarily evil and Batman has a soft spot for her! - Clayface (Boris Karlo)
Details: the first Clayface was a murderously deranged actor. His name coming from the actors’ greasepaint he uses. His real name is clearly modeled on classic horror film star Boris Karloff. - Two-Face
Details: a key Batman villain makes a surprisingly early first appearance. The basics are all there regarding his origin – the scarring of his face in court, his coin with one side defaced, etc. - The Scarecrow
Details: another key villain with an early first appearance. Once again, the character’s essential points are all there from the beginning with the Scarecrow’s obsession with fear.
I think you get the picture!
As these tales are all from the very earliest days of superhero comics, supervillains weren’t really a formalised concept yet. Added to this was the fact that Superman’s early stories are marked by a “social justice” slant where the bad guys were often crooked businessmen and corrupt officials.
Still, Batman had his fair share of crooked officials and plenty of bog standard gangsters, but his creative team also seemed to be pushing at the envelope. It really makes me wish the Superman team took a look over to see what they were doing!
Hang On, What About Dick Tracy?
As I was writing this, it occurred to me that team Batman might have been taking a few leaves out of the contemporary Dick Tracy stories. After checking the dates it’s very clear that the Chester Gould Dick Tracy newspaper strip predates Batman. But if you take a look at this handy list of Tracy’s villains on Wikipedia, the more colourful varieties are near contemporaries with Batman’s.
So perhaps there was a bit of cross pollination going on?
So Why Did Superman’s Rogues Gallery Take Longer to Develop?
I’m no comics historian so the short answer is I don’t really know! Reading these early tales, I do get the feeling that a lot of concepts we now take for granted just took a while to develop. I’d include supervillains in this and as Superman’s powers are physical there may have been an attempt to make his foes more cerebral. The mad scientists Ultra-Humanite and Luthor bear this theory out but it doesn’t explain the general lack of recurring foes in camp Superman.
So perhaps it just comes down to different creative teams with different inspirations.
