Ever since the mid 1980s, Superman and Batman, once considered the World's Finest heroic duo, have many times been portrayed as being at odds with each other. This even extended to the then new Post-Crisis continuity, in which their relationship was far less cordial than before. Several adaptations have used this concept, namely Zack Snyder's 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film.
One of the lessor known conflicts between the two occurred in one of DC's weirdest Elseworlds tales. Superman: At Earth's End featured an aged Man of Steel wielding a gigantic gun while battling a mutated Dark Knight and twin Hitler clones. To make the narrative even stranger, there's even some tacked on social commentary that's about as nuanced as everything else in the book. Here's a look back at the infamous story and why it's one of the more subversive takes on the Superman/Batman feud.
Superman: At Earth's End
Superman: At Earth's End was created by Tom Veitch and Frank Gomez, and it served as a follow-up to Kamandi: At Earth's End. The story stars a much older Superman who lives in a far-flung future that struggles to regain some sense of stability. Although he's been working on restoring his full powers, there is no doubt that Superman's age has made him much weaker than before. He soon goes to Gotham City, former home of Superman's old and long dead friend Batman, to save it from being bombed.
Gotham and many other cities are full of mutants and cyborgs, showcasing how dark the future has become. Some of the bat mutants resemble Batman, who Superman soon learns has been cloned/restored to life by a duo called the Diktators. These two are actually twin clones of Adolf Hitler, who restore the former Dark Knight by turning the remains of Bruce Wayne into a mutant Nazi Batman.
With no other options, Superman kills the Hitlers and Batman with his massive gun, although his own weakening strength and powers made him mortally vulnerable as well. Burning Bruce's corpse to keep it from ever being desecrated again, he also burns himself on a funeral pyre, bemoaning the state of the world which has now lost both of its greatest heroes.
World's Finest Frenemies
The story is absolutely bizarre, and is one of the weirder Elseworlds stories in existence. The story also boasts one of the zaniest battles between the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader. It's meant to explore the place of heroes, namely Superman, in a much darker future echoing The Dark Knight Returns and Kingdom Come in the process. This Gotham of this world has its own version of the mutants seen the world of The Dark Knight, and Superman has aged in much the same way as he did in Kingdom Come, even though here the Man of Steel is much older.
Ironically, many of Batman's usual morals are placed onto Superman, with the Man of Steel initially refusing to use a firearm. His refusal to kill, which was very rarely if ever set in stone, has likewise never involved firearms. This is much more Batman's territory, and is at odds with modern comics.
Superman later says that it was Hitler's arms race that caused the story's conflict, with two youths even stating that the Man of Steel would still be alive if not for guns. This ridiculous anti-gun message is made even more laughable given how equally outrageous the rest of the story is, with its attempts at being topical coming off as comical.
Batman's being reduced to a soulless monster might have been a commentary on his portrayals since The Dark Knight Returns, with Gotham's defender being written as increasingly anti-social and callous toward even fellow heroes like Superman. This idea showed up in the aforementioned Dawn of Justice, where Batman had become an even more coldhearted, vengeful and violent vigilante following personal tragedy. Beyond these similarities, however, At Earth's End has failed to really be remembered or adapted in modern times. Given the quality of its many times goofy content, perhaps that's for the best.