3. If They're Best Friends, Why Do Batman And Superman Always Fight?
DC Comics
One of the most tiring comic book tropes of recent years has been having different heroes come to blows with each other. Marvel's Civil War is the go-to example nowadays, but it was actually something DC made famous in the eighties with The Dark Knight Returns.
Frank Miller's opus depicted the story of an elderly Batman coming out of retirement to clean up Gotham City once and for all. Superman is presented as a naive puppet of US President Ronald Reagan, and it's what eventually leads them to blows, with the then US President decreeing Batman an outlaw.
The duo had fought before, but TDKR seemed to open up the floodgates to more confrontations between Bats and Supes, ultimately concluding with their first live-action collaboration revolving around them beating the snot out of each other.
This, despite the fact Clark has frequently called Bruce his best friend, as well as the wealth of brilliant stories that revolve around them being allies.
Honestly? There's no easy answer to this one. Readers love a good gimmicky match-up between heroes - as was evidenced by Batman V Superman's box-office receipts - but there's no beating a classic team-up between the World's Finest.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
