In this feature, I spotlight five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Here is an archive of all the patterns we've spotlighted so far.

This week, we take a look at DC's tradition of Batman and Superman meeting each for the first time (much more than once)!

1952's Superman #76 (by Edmund Hamilton, Curt Swan and John Fischetti) famously boasted that it featured the first meeting between Superman and Batman...

Here is how it all went down...

This was, of course, not actually correct, since Superman and Batman's first appeared together in a comic book in 1941's All-Star Comics #7 (by Gardner Fox and Everett Hibbard)...

Four years after writing Superman #76, Hamilton also wrote World's Finest Comics #84 (art by Dick Sprang and Stan Kaye), where a crook is threatening to expose Superman's secret identity because he knows about some missing handprints of Superboy from back in the day. Superboy explains his dilemma to Batman...

Batman puts his mind at ease by explaining that HE was that boy and that he destroyed the fingerprints...

Ten issues later, the Hamilton, Sprang and Kaye team deliver the "real" first meeting of Batman and Superman, which is hilarious since Hamilton is re-writing his own story. In 1958's World's Finest Comics #94, Superman has seemingly found a new partner, leaving Batman and Robin to sadly just reminisce about the first time that they met Superman...

There's something so cool about the same writer writing three first meetings of the characters within six years of each other.

Jerry Coleman next got in on the act with 1960's Adventure Comics #275 (by Coleman and George Papp), where a young Bruce Wayne comes to town...

(Decades later, Roy Thomas explained away the whole "Bruce's parents being alive well into his teen years by saying that the teacher just misspoke when she said "father" and meant guardian).

Lana Lang helps him create a crime-fighting identity...

As you all know, Bruce Wayne will do anything to score with the ladies, so he found out Superboy's identity pronto, but Superboy explains to him why it doesn't matter...

They also would meet up together in 1971's Superboy #182, where Bruce has now lost his parents and is beginning his vigilante days.

In 1981's World's Finest Comics #271, Roy Thomas found a way to work in all of those adventures as well as introduce their first meeting during the Superman radio series into the comics continuity through Superman dreaming of his first meeting with Batman (art by Rich Buckler and Frank McLaughlin)...

On the next page, we move on to Post-Crisis first meetings of the pair!

In 1986's Man of Steel #3, John Byrne and Dick Giordano established the new relationship between Batman and Superman, namely that they didn't have much of a relationship...

(The bomb is on himself, by the way. He's not THAT much of a psycho).

That more or less remained their first meeting until 2003's Superman/Batman Secret Files and Origins #1, where Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale introduced a new first meeting between the two (only sort of a "meeting")...

Superman/Batman Annual #1 in 2006 by Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness re-told Superman #76 for the new continuity, but it seemed to suggest that they HAD met before, so I don't think it overrode Man of Steel #3.

Then the New 52 happened. Now their first meeting took place in 2011's Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Scott Williams...

Finally, Greg Pak and Jae Lee give Bruce and Clark's first meeting in Batman Superman #1 in 2013...

and Batman and Superman later in the issue...

I believe that's it for first meetings between Batman and Superman in the comics...for now! I'm sure you all will kindly point out examples if I missed any (not counting out of continuity stuff like John Byrne's Generations).

If anyone ELSE has a request for this column, just drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!