Doppelganger Batarangers: Seven Times Batman’s Teamed Up with Batman
Thursday, September 17th, 2026
For this year’s Batman Day, we’re celebrating in a big way with an exclusive story you can only find at your local comic retailer. The tantalizing Batman of Two Worldspresents two different versions of Batman: the Caped Crusader from the current DC Universe and the hulking, brutal Dark Knight of the Absolute Universe. Batman has teamed up with a lot of remarkable costars over the years—in fact, there have been entire series dedicated to that very concept. But has Batman ever had the opportunity before now to team up with Batman?
Of course he has! This is Batman we’re talking about. He’s done everything. So, we wracked our brains and tried to come up with as many instances as we could of Batman teaming up with himself.
Some rules and stipulations going into this exercise. Both Batmen in question had to be Bruce Wayne. No Batman of Zur-en-Arrh, no Batman Beyond, no Batmen of Many Nations. This is pure Bruce-on-Bruce action. Even by those strict guidelines, we managed to put together a nice collection of precedents. And so, as we prepare for Batman Day, here are a few more stories where you can multiply your Bat-Factor.
The Brave and the Bold #200 (1983)
Despite coexisting for decades, the Batman of the Pre-Crisis Earth-One and the Batman of the Golden Age Earth-Two spent most of their time coexisting across universes without ever working together. That changed with the final issue of The Brave and the Bold,Batman’s premiere team-up comic, which closed out its run with a story featuring a tale of two Batmen. And yet, just like in the new Batman of Two Worlds,our main heroes never cross paths as they do. Rather, both contend with the satanic Nicholas Lucien, an enemy of the Earth-Two Batman who possesses his Earth-One counterpart to have another go at another Batman upon his defeat. Although these Batmen never work directly together, they do unknowingly spend Batman’s last Pre-Crisis Brave and Bold adventure putting away the same villain.
Superman: The Man of Steel #37 (1994)
One of the strangest events in DC history was 1994’s Zero Hour,where time and continuity began to fold into itself while the villain Extant attempted to reorganize the timeline. The ’90s Superboy met the Smallville Superboy, Batgirl walked once more and don’t even get us started on the tangle-up over in Hawkman. One of the many time crises Superman found himself dealing with was a confluence of too many Batmen in the tie-in issue Superman: The Man of Steel #37. Here, the aforementioned Earth-One and Earth-Two Batmen finally domeet—as does the Batman of The Dark Knight Returns. After taking care of some Mutant gang members from the Millerian Batman’s future, Superman moves on to deal with the arrival on Earth of his own parents. It all gets sorted out from there in the main miniseries…eventually.
Justice League Unlimited, “The Once and Future Thing, Part Two: Time, Warped” (2005)
Two of the most memorable episodes in a wholly memorable Justice League animated series were a two-parter that took Batman, John Stewart and Hawkgirl back and forth through the timeline in pursuit of the time bandit Chronos, ultimately ending up in the future of Batman Beyond.It was here that we got to hear premiere Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy pull double duty, with his Justice League Batman pairing with his Old Man Bruce of the future timeline. As their enemies would soon learn, out of the two, it was the Old Man you really had to be afraid of. This is the only item on our list that involves time travel as opposed to reality travel, but Batman tends not to cross his own stream too often. After all, the man already spends so much time living in his own past.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “Game Over for Owlman!” (2009)
We actually had a couple of options from this Batman team-up animated series to choose from for this list, including the popular “A Bat Divided,” where a nuclear reaction splits Batman into three distinct personalities. (This was where we learned, quite emphatically, that “Batman does not eat nachos.”) But to meet the spirit of this list of different Batmen across the multiversal continuum working together, we have to go with the finale of “Game Over for Owlman!,” where Batman rallies to his side a whole collection of Elseworlds Batmen in an impromptu alliance against a collection of the series’ most notorious villains. Together, these Batmen of the Multiverse prove that if there’s nothing Batman can’t do, then evil doesn’t stand a chance against seven of him.
Okay, this one is not like the others, but we do still have to technically count it for meeting our criteria. Both Dark Nights: Metaland its sequel, Dark Nights: Death Metal, are centered on the idea of multiple incarnations of Batman from a wide variety of universes teaming up together—except this time, it’s not to defeat a villain, but to defeat the Justice League. The motley collection of Dark Knights here is where you’ll find the infamous Batman Who Laughs, the Doomsday-like Devastator and various incarnations of Batman each amalgamated with a dark version of another member of the Justice League. Or perhaps who ended up studying magic instead of martial arts. Or who uploaded their consciousness into the animatronic T-Rex in their Batcave. These events are where you’ll find the most defined Batmen all working together for a common cause anywhere…it’s just too bad it’s against us.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20-24 (2023)
It’s long-established superhero tradition that before a big team-up, the two parties involved have to scrap with each other until the misunderstanding between them is resolved. Such was the case in Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s Return to Kingdom Come,a pseudo-sequel, semi-prequel to the Elseworlds epic. Here, our own Batman and Superman encounter their Kingdom Comecounterparts and come to blows over a mutual misunderstanding before teaming up against their true enemy: the old god Gog, seeking his own end in an apocalyptic war with Darkseid. Along with the rest of the heroes of the Kingdom Comeuniverse, this duo of Worlds’ Finests manage to circumvent the end of their world and find a possible path to redemption for the wayward Magog, once Superman’s lost ward, who started it all.
The concluding chapter of Chip Zdarsky’s “Bat-Man of Gotham” featured a carousel of increasingly unlikely Batmen from across all media and history while contending with a psychic plague that was birthing Joker origin stories across all time and space—and spreading the mental virus across Batmen of the Zur-En-Arrh persona as he went. Batmen of every kind, from the TV series of the 1960s, to the cinematic Batman of 1989, to the Arkhamvideo games of the 2010s, all came to Batman’s aid in this crucial hour. Adam West’s Batman even provided our comic book Batman with a can of Bat-Shark Repellent just in time to dispatch some Joker sharks. As it turns out, no Batman in any universe beats the ‘66 variety for preparedness.
Batman Day is September 19th! Get your copy of Batman of Two Worlds this Saturday at your local comic shop, and learn more about the Caped Crusader and his comics, movies, games and more by visiting our Batman Day hub.
Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly “Ask the Question” column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.
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