DC's Early '90s Trading Card 'Batman Ban' Led To Some BIZARRE Edits

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COMIC LEGEND:

DC licensing the trading card rights to Batman separately from the rest of the universe led to some bizarre edits.

STATUS:

True

Here's one of the most fascinating lesser known effects of widely available DVDs and streaming of movies. There once was a time when once you saw a movie in the theater, you would have to wait for it to eventually show up on television to watch it again (or for it to be re-released in theaters, which used to happen a lot more often. For instance, most of Gone With the Wind's box office over the years came from its re-release in theaters). Even when VHS tapes debuted, there were still enough of a market for people to want to recreate their enjoyment of a given movie that trading cards of the movie became big business. People wanted to relive their love of the film by looking at still shots of scenes from the movie. Hey, what can we say, it was a different time.

Anyhow, when Batman was released in theaters, the trading card set tying in with the movie was so popular that they did a SECOND series! Can you imagine that? People loved collecting moments from the movie so much that Topps needed to do another volume of it!

Since the card set was such a big seller, Topps, of course, got the license to do another set for 1992's Batman Returns...

Here is the downside of that. In between 1989's Batman and 1992's Batman Returns, the non-sports trading card market sort of exploded. There were a few comic book trading card sets before 1991, but they were pretty much the most slapdash stuff that you could imagine. Even with that in mind, there was still a market for stuff like literally just "Here's a scene from a comic book on a card. Enjoy." Marvel changed the way the industry looked at non-sports cards, though, with their 1990 Marvel Universe trading card set. Original art spotlighting the characters, stats, etc. It took a similar approach to sports cards and it was a huge hit. The follow-up in 1991 was an even BIGGER success.

DC, then, had to get in on this action, as well, and so in 1992, DC cut a deal with Skybox, the same company that did Marvel's cards (they were called Impel when they did Marvel's first sets), for a DC Cosmic Cards trading card set that was just like Marvel's set....only with one hitch. Batman, as noted, was licensed to another card company!

So despite having ads that talked about how the set would have every DC hero from A to Z, the set did not have, you know, DC's most popular character at the time, or any of his villains (or Robin). It did have Nightwing, though, who they hilariously had to describe his history without mentioning Batman...

The funny thing, though, is that until DC could work out a non-exclusive arrangement into these licensing deals (something that likely didn't even truly occur to them that they would have needed to do back in 1989), DC was barred from using Batman in their other trading card sets and, this being the early 1990s, EVERYONE HAD A TRADING CARD SET.

So DC had to be creative with some edits for some of these sets. The most notable of these was the popular Death of Superman trading card set. The set was not the most inventive of sets, mostly just re-using established artwork, but the Death of Superman comic book storyline was so popular that the cards sold well, also.

The thing is, Batman was heavily involved in a lot of the stories set after Superman's death, dubbed "Funeral for a Friend." So when the cover for Superman #76 was adapted into a trading card, Batman and Robin had to be removed.

Captain Marvel took Batman's place and Changeling took Robin's place. The problem was that Captain Marvel was already on the cover, so Supergirl (who really should have already been on the cover) took Captain Marvel's place.

A much easier fix was needed for the adaptation of Superman: Man of Steel #20, which also needed to have Batman and Robin removed.

Here, since they were in the background on a rooftop (too cool for school, guys?), they were simply erased from the rooftop, easy peasy.

One of the main pieces of promotional art by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding for the funeral of Superman was a poster showing Superman's pall bearers, and of course Batman was one of them. When this was translated into a trading card, however, it was as a nine-card "puzzle" where the cards combined to form the larger image. Once again, Captain Marvel and Changeling took the place of Batman and Robin (I imagine Superman thinking, "Wait...Changeling was one of my pall bearers? For serious? And why did you guys throw my cape off of the Daily Planet? What was the deal with THAT?") and hilariously, Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, took the place of Captain Marvel (equally hilarious, it turned out that DC didn't actually have the rights to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, but that wasn't discovered for quite some time)...

Finally, in 1993, DC did a trading card set with Skybox to tie in with the Bloodlines crossover, which introduced a good deal of new superheroes (and villains) in to the DC Universe. All of the new heroes got trading cards...except for the heroes who debuted in issues of Batman comics! So Edge and Jamm? Sure! Geist? Not so much!

Within a year or so, the licensing deals were all sorted out (contracts likely expired, as Batman Foever's trading card set was handled by a different company than Batman and Batman Return), so Batman got to appear with the other DC heroes in the last few trading card sets that DC licensed out in the 1990s.