The Craziest First Appearances in Comic Book History

Every great character has to start somewhere. Sometimes a hero gets a fully fleshed out introduction and literally nothing will change for decades, but other times our favourite characters start out as unrecognizable as a regenerated Doctor and have to slowly morph into the characters we know and love.

Like how …

Batman Used to Kill People

Any decent nerd knows that there are two rules in Batmanning: no guns, and no killing. The Dark Knight is a symbol of justice and does not take human life, even if that means letting the Joker live to kill thousands of people. But Batman didn’t always feel that way, in fact in his first appearances he had a pretty ho-hum attitude towards the whole murder thing like in the below panel from Detective Comics #27 where Batman makes his first appearance and first kill.

The schmuck in the blue suit was just a mobster with a gun who had literally no chance against the incredibly well-trained Caped Crusader which makes the fact that Batman watches with complete indifference as he falls to his death surprisingly heartless. Oh wait, there are even less fucks he can give apparently as he then comments:

Batman’s murder trend didn’t stop there though. In the next issue Batman causes Dr. Death to burn alive and watches him die so casually I’m surprised he didn’t pull a bag of popcorn out of his utility belt.

For Batman’s final kill I’ll leave you with his most ruthless, which took place in Detective Comics #29, his third ever appearance and the one where he straight up murders a henchman he easily could have just disabled.

I will segue for a moment to mention much I love the art in these vintage panels. We like to think we’ve made huge advances in art styles, but the broken lines on the cape and the slimness of Batman as he swings is really sleek.

But back to murder!

The reason Batman was so kill-happy in the start is that Batman wasn’t really Batman yet. He was put in Detective Comics as kind of a filler that was never expected to go too far and drew heavy influences from the Shadow.

Six months later in Detective Comics #33 Batman finally got his own backstory involving his parents’ deaths and a little over a year after that he became the Caped Hypocrite we all know who no longer abided anyone using guns or killing.

 

Captain America and Bucky Dressed in Drag

I admit, I’m breaking my own article thesis with this, as this entry is not a first appearance and is actually from Captain America #2, but that kind of makes it worse to be honest.

Imagine you’re a kid in 1941, the middle of World War II, and you just read Captain America #1, this great comic about a super soldier and his sidekick taking out Nazis and punching Hitler in the jaw and you’re eagerly awaiting the next issue to see what adventures Cap and Bucky will have next, and you get this:

As much as I’d love to let that panel standalone in all its glory, I’ll give a little plot detail to quench your curiosity of why Cap is Mrs. Doubtfiring. The story where this takes place involves an American war financier who was kidnapped by Nazis and taken to Europe, so Cap is given the job of bringing him home safe. And what does our hero do? He dresses himself and Bucky up as a granny and a sissy boy to go undercover in Germany, and this is Plan A! They didn’t go through half a dozen unsuccessful schemes first to find the guy, this was Cap’s go-to idea; fight Nazis with cross-dressing.

We may be witnessing the most amazing serious panel of all time above as Granny-Cap and Bucky hold hands while casually discussing whether they should take five minutes to clean up all of France of Nazis, but decide to head to Germany and fulfill their mission instead [spoilers: they rescue the guy].

I also have to applaud Cap and Bucky’s commitment to their undercover work as they even leave the outfits on while they’re alone in their hotel.

Alfred Didn’t Raise Bruce (And Was a Big Bumbling Oaf)

Batman has kind of a messed up support system in general. Most of his allies don’t know his real name, his girlfriends tend to be bad guys and he rotates Robins more often than his bat tires, but through every point in his life Bruce Wayne has always been able to turn to his faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth, who has raised him since childhood.

Except originally Alfred totally didn’t do that as he wasn’t introduced until Batman #16, when Batman had been crimefighting for about 4 years already.

Unlike the calm and collected Alfred we see nowadays, the original Alfred was a fumbling mess who considered himself an “amateur criminologist” and had left the family tradition of butlering to be an actor, I’m guessing to limited success. He shows up on Bruce’s doorstep completely out of the blue because his father, who had been Bruce’s butler years before, died and made Alfred promise to be Bruce’s servant whether Bruce wanted him to or not, which is officially the worst deathbed promise of all time.

Despite being vigilante crime-fighters, Bruce and Dick don’t have it in them to make Alfred leave so let him stay to take care of them. Alfred ends up being kind of a goofball in the beginning who manages to help the Dynamic Duo by stumbling onto clues, sometimes literally, like when he figures out their identities by falling onto the door of the Batcave.

 The “Alfred raising Bruce” part of the mythos doesn’t get added until much later down the road, but Alfred gets his signature thin and refined look just a year later when he goes on vacation and suddenly comes back the size of a rake.

He tells Batman and Robin he spent his time away exercising to be a better detective like them, but the change is so drastic I have to wonder if he wasn’t secretly undergoing chemotherapy and just didn’t want them to worry.

 

Honorable Mention to Catwoman’s Cat Mask

This is an entry I wanted to mention briefly for two reasons: one, to let everyone know that Catwoman used to wear a ridiculous cat-mask, dress and heels combo that I can’t imagine was really designed for roof chases and probably should have ended up killing her.

And two, because I refuse to miss any opportunity to share this incredible panel from Batman #1 where he meets Catwoman for the first time.

If you know of any other comic book characters who had a dramatically different first appearance I’d love to hear about them in the comments.