Fifty years ago Marvel and DC teamed up to bring their, at the time, flagship characters together. Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was a tabloid sized comic that saw Superman and Spider-Man not only fighting each other, but also taking on the titanic team-up of Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this book and to, down the road, ride the coat tails of the new version of Superman and Spider-Man teaming up I did a team-up of my own. Joining me to talk about this book is my good friend and co-host of The Overlooked Dark Knight, Andrew Leyland. Andy is one of the biggest Spider-Man fans I know and this seemed like it would be a fun time.

And a fun time it was. Andy and I go over how this wasn't the first crossover between Marvel and DC, how the book came together, how Stan Lee is a lot wordier than Carmine Infantino, the writing, the art, the bits that eventually ended up in Superman The Movie, how Spider-Man's hero identitification was a bit lackluster, the weird way Lex and Doc Ock escape from prison, the parts they liked, the parts they didn't like, and what it's like when Spider-Man notices how hard Superman has become.

(snicker)

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The opening and closing theme is titled Journey and was composed by Pontus Rufelt. It is licensd from Shockwave-Sound.

Next time: The start on an irregular series called Superman: Many Lives, Many Origins where I look at the various tellings and retellings of Superman's origin (it's in the name) starting with Superman: Birthright.

It's a new year, so I'm going to start things like I did last year...by looking back at the previous year.

It's worked pretty well for the past few years and I actually put out a bunch of shows in 2025 and a certain film came out, so there's actually stuff to talk about, which, as you can imagine, makes putting out this episode a lot easier.

Anyway, in this off the cuff, unscripted, and increasing congested episode I talk about watching the final few episodes of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, why I stopped watching Season 7 of Smallville, why I let new books stack up for months before reading them, why I liked the whole Superwoman storyline, the stuff I re-read for shows this year, the podcasts I guested on and more.

I also take about 20 or so minutes and get real honest about what happened to me as a Superman fan towards the end of the year. I know that not everyone is into this sort of thing, so I give plenty of notice before I launch into the naval gazing, so if you want to bail before that I understand. But through this part of the episode I talk about my current thinking on how I want to approach this show and my (lack of) plans for 2026.

Next Time: No clue, but it will be out in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for listening. And eat your Kellog's Pep. If you still have some.

Forty years ago DC Comics published Crisis on Infinite Earths. That twelve issue series (plus a handful of crossover issues) was part celebration of DC's fiftieth birthday and part house cleaning. Worlds lived, worlds died and the DC Universe was never the same.

To celebrate what was, at one point, a holy text to my generation of comic book fans I thought it would be fun to look at what the Superman family was up to during the story. Joining me on this journey is three time Eisner award winning journalist (for Women Writing About Comics) Cori McCreery. Cori and I have been friends for years and I thought it was high time that I had her on the show, especially considering one of the Super Family members we discussed. See, Cori loves Supergirl and considering Crisis was a big story for the OG Kara Zor-El it seemed like "sitting down" with Cori would be a good idea.

While the bulk of the episode (the back half, as a matter of fact) concerns Supergirl, we also discuss two Supermen and a Superboy. We go over my love of the Earth-2 Superman, how the Earth-1 Superman didn't play a huge part in this extremely important story, and the introduction of the Superboy of Earth-Prime, who also didn't play a huge part in this Crisis, but would go on to be part of another Crisis two decades later where things...happened. Then we go into Supergirl and why her death in this story was so important. We also go on a few tangents, which is almost required on one of my shows.

Many thanks to Cori for coming out to play on this one.