Superman and Batman Are Bringing Back One of the Best Tropes in Comics

Before the next Crisis, DC’s heroes are about to engage in a very different battle to save the universe. On Friday, as part of DC’s August 2026 solicitations, the publisher unveiled the first details around Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #54. The book, which has been providing a “recent past” retelling of the DCU’s history, has been charming fans ever since its debut in 2022… and now, it is branching out into a delightful staple of superhero comics.

The solicit and covers for Issue #54, written by Mark Waid with art by Bruno Frenda, reveal that the issue will center around Batman, Superman, and the rest of the Justice League competing in “the wildest baseball game of all time.” More specifically, they have to play against a team of “the vilest, most gruesome demons in the entire underworld”, with the fate of the entire world’s souls hanging in the balance.

BATMAN/SUPERMAN: WORLD’S FINEST #54

Written by MARK WAID

Art by BRUNO FRENDA

Cover by DAN MORA

Variant covers by MIGUEL MERCADO and ADRIAN GUTIERREZ

Dark Knight Returns 40th Anniversary variant cover by BILL SIENKIEWICZ

$3.99 US | 32 pages | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)

ON SALE 8/19/26

Superman, Batman, and their fellow Justice Leaguers are forced to compete in Hell for the souls of all humanity—in the wildest baseball game of all time! Billions of lives depend on an impossible victory against a team of the vilest, most gruesome demons in the entire underworld!

You might hear that and, understandably, immediately think of Space Jam, or a much more intense version of the iconic baseball scene in Twilight. But superhero comics actually have a long history of building stories around professional sports, and especially baseball. The iconography of baseball made its way onto a number of covers in the Silver Age, and is even responsible for the Justice League of America getting their name. As DC editor Julius “Julie” Schwartz explained in interviews in the decades afterwards, the team was rebranded from their Golden Age name of the Justice Society of America simply because baseball made kids more familiar with the name “league.”

DC even ran an anthology titled Strange Sports Stories in the early 1970s, which added genre hooks to otherwise-ordinary games of baseball or football. There was also 1976’s DC Super Stars #10, the main story of which was centered around teams of heroes and villains playing baseball against each other. That particular game was rooted in a different storyline: an argument between Huntress and Sportsmaster, a married couple of supervillains who had debuted back in the Golden Age. Sure, the stakes weren’t as world-ending as Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #54 sounds, but the story was still a lot of fun (and filled with pages of stats about each character’s performance in the game).

This thread also made its way into Batman: The Brave and the Bold, with the Season 3 episode “Triumvirate of Terror!”, which opened with a baseball game between the Justice League International and the Legion of Doom. But we’ve definitely been overdue for a modern implementation of the baseball storyline, especially as the game has taken on a new life and earned younger fans over the years, so I’m excited to see how World’s Finest takes it on.

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #54 will be available wherever comics are sold on Wednesday, August 19th.

(featured image: DC)

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