Tales to Astonish #30, April 1962. Stan Lee cover script, Jack Kirby pencils, Sol Brodsky inks, Stan Goldberg colors, Artie Simek letters.

We’ve already spoken about the medley of supervillains and criminal enemies a superhero will accrue over their career. But there also exists a type of enemy that is sometimes far more hated, and far more personal, than even the archest of archenemies. These people won’t be mustache-twirling, blunderbuss-wielding supervillains. They won’t even be petty criminals. These people will rub elbows with our hero on a day to day basis. And boy will they rub them just the wrong way. Their smug grin. Their stupid side-eyes. Oh they think they’re sooooo great because they’ve built a sunglasses-shaped solar rover. Who the heck even wants to rove the sun anyway. Astronaut-helmet shaped lunar rovers are where its really at. Have you seen the moon? It’s full of cool rocks. What’s the sun have? Gas? It’s just a big ball of gas? Ha. Fitting. Speaking of big balls of gas. Heh. Let’s talk about superhero rivals.

Rivalries can form in many ways. Maybe the two of you joined your superhero team at the same time. Maybe you were placed in competition to even get onto the team. Maybe the two of you were classmates at the secret mountainside ninja academy where you got your powers. Maybe it was due to a hilarious misunderstanding. Like, you tried to introduce yourself to this other hero but they were actually in the middle of a mind-swap adventure and their body was inhabited by a supervillain who you’d actually defeated once. So they were (understandably) super rude to you. Now the hero has their own body back but you were never told about the entire mind-swap thing so now every time you see them you’re rude to them so they respond by being rude to you and so it goes!

There is one superhero rivalry that is rather infamous amongst the superhero community. It’s time for us to come clean about something. We haven’t been totally honest about Hatman’s superhero career and his fleet of hat-shaped vehicles. Now, we’ve never lied to you. Everything we’ve ever said about Hatman has been unequivocally true (including that time we heavily implied that should there ever be a superhero named “Batman” then they would definitely and blatantly be ripping off Hatman’s image). But there’s one salient detail we somehow managed to leave out. Hatman has his very own superhero rival. His name is Glassesman. He’s kind of a ragbag. 

See, every time, every single time that Hatman achieves something, Glassesman shows up and does him one better. Hatman introduces the first hat-themed super-dirigible? Glassesman shows up with two glasses shaped dirigibles! Each one is shaped like one lens. So there had to be two. You understand don’t you Hatsy? He’s always calling Hatman “hatsy” disrespectful. You can’t even do the same thing with Glassesman. Glassesy? Glassy? Glassy... Lassy? Glassy Lassy! Ha! There it is! Glassesman shall hitherto be known as Glassy Lassy. Anyway, Hatman starts a superhero civil war over Ultiman’s dubious garlic mayo opinions. Glassesman starts two superhero civil wars over Ultiman’s dubious garlic mayo opinions. And so on and so forth. Hatman will obviously respond by one-upping Glassesman. Glassesman will take things one step further. And so on and so forth. It’s exhausting for them. It’s exhausting for the rest of the superhero community. It’s especially exhausting for Ultiman. There’s got to be a better way.

Fortunately, there is. Rivalries don’t have to be all bad. There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly one-upmanship. A bit of not-so-friendly banter. But only if it’s channeled into doing something useful. If you find yourself locked in a schoolyard rivalry with a fellow superhero try entering a competition of doing good. It can’t be something with too high stakes though. Like, you wouldn’t want to relegate the saving of people from a burning building to a competition. Save those lives because you’re a hero and that’s what you do. Not to show up a colleague. But littler things, things like picking up the most trash off the sidewalk; or returning the most shopping carts in the supermarket parking lot. Or even stopping and capturing the most criminals (a different kind of picking up trash off the streets.) Things that aren’t life-or-death or at the possible cost of the entire universe and everything it. This way you’ll be doing some good while still being able to make your rival eat their stupid smug words. Plus in this scenario, even the loser of the competition is still doing some good. So there’s an overall net-gain to this competition. It’s a lot better than just wailing on each other with your fists in an abandoned parking lot. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Props to you for beating the snot out of each other in an empty parking lot, thereby reducing the amount of collateral damage and civilians who aren’t going to be able to get to work or take their kids to school tomorrow. But punching each other isn’t really going to determine which of you is the best superhero. It might determine which of you is the worse superhero. Superheroes are not supposed to cold cock other superheroes. But I can’t imagine that that’s what you rivalry was about.