Come as you aren't -- Superman/Batman #27

Nevermind

Superman/Batman #27

Cover Date: August 2006

Released: 21st June 2006

Even though I'd thought I'd finished all the Pre-Crisis comics Randy Khoo on Twitter kindly pointed out a comic I didn't know about from 2006 that is ostensively set in the Pre-Crisis era. Almost immediately I tracked it down to find a rather pleasant surprise.

Now technically Power Girl doesn't appear in the majority of the comic, at least in spirit, but it will become clearer as well get into the story and explain why I'm more than glad to cover the story.

This is not a complicated story, not that that's a bad thing, the Ultra-Humanite has kidnapped Batman and Superman and put their mind in Huntress (Helena Wayne) and Power Girl. Our two heroes need to track their bodies down before they're forced to choose between their own minds or the dormant (but waking up) minds of our two female heroes.

Whilst the comic had just come off of a long story of multiversal shenanigans, the days of a single verse were very much coming to an end, too some it must have been a little confusing what is going on here. Because to start with apart from a mention of Batman being retired and the Gotham Police Commissioner, it feels very much like a (then) modern Batman / Superman team-up, but then an amazing thing happens around halfway through when Helena begins to wake up.

It happens after the duo has visited a dying Brainwave, a possible error as canonically right now he should probably be in limbo, who has just explained Ultra-Humanites plan. Almost immediately in a classic mirror conversation, Batman explains what is happening to Huntress. He also realizes that Huntress is Helena and that she's doing this to gain revenge for her mom's (Selina) death, he says that she sounds like him but he managed to find peace (technically only a few weeks after wounding Power Girl but y'know) before she willingly gives Bruce back control.

Because this is Gotham the fight obviously ends in an abandoned theme park, the city is riddled with them apparently, and during the fight, we have a parallel scene with Superman and Power Girl. You see Solomon Grundy has joined the fight and they're fighting in a hall of mirrors (what are the chances?). Supes being supes is willing to let himself die and tells Power Girl not to feel any guilt as she isn't reasonable for what has happened. Luckily a Solomon Grundy attack ends them up in the room where Superman and Batman's body are held so Supes get his body back and the battle is quickly ended.

Batman gets his back just in time, but because reasons he doesn't remember the whole thing, including Huntress's identity so he can find out again before dying in Adventure Comics! We end with a tease for what's going on with Supergirl and Power Girl in the city of Kandor, which is tied into a whole load of Crisis shenanigans but that's a story for another time.

This is a solid but not remarkable tale, enhanced by the fact that it's being told on Earth-2 with the familial ties between all the heroes. Reading it now at the tail end of my Pre-Crisis journey it strikes just right, but I wonder how different it would have been to read these a good few decades from the end of the original Crisis. It's a nice cap on my Pre-Crisis reading, and it somehow means that the last few issues all seem to be around similar themes, which I'd love to claim was always planned but is just a happy coincidence!