World's Finest Comics #321
World's Finest Comics #321 lands just two issues from the end of DC's longest-running Superman–Batman team-up series, arriving in November 1985 in the thick of the post-Crisis editorial restructuring that would soon retire the title for good. The story uses time travel to force Batman to revisit the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, a device that crystallizes the Pre-Crisis Dark Knight's tragedy in ways that would echo through the imminent wave of darker Batman stories—most immediately Frank Miller's work—that were already in production. As one of writer Joey Cavalieri and artist José Delbo's final issues on the book before its cancellation with #323, it represents the creative team's attempt to give the series emotional weight in its twilight months. The resolution—Batman witnessing his parents' deaths again yet choosing not to intervene, emerging with his conviction to fight crime strengthened rather than shattered—prefigures the psychological tone that would define the character into the Modern Age.
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Joey Cavalieri had become the primary writer on World's Finest well before this issue, taking over from earlier contributors as DC consolidated the book's direction during the mid-1980s; the series ended with issue #323 in January 1986, making #321 part of the final handful of issues. José Delbo supplied pencils throughout this closing run, with Alfredo Alcala on inks—a stable creative unit working under mounting awareness that DC's post-Crisis restructuring would retire the Pre-Crisis Superman–Batman partnership. The Chronos story arc had been seeded across the two preceding issues (#319 and #320), where the villain appeared in cameo scenes before taking center stage here.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover-dated November 1985; part of the final arc of World's Finest Comics Vol. 1, which concluded two issues later with #323 (January 1986).
- Story title: 'The Time of Your Life.' Script by Joey Cavalieri, pencils by José Delbo, inks by Alfredo Alcala.
- The villain Chronos uses a time machine to send Superman back to prevent historically catastrophic bombs, then traps Batman and transports him to the moment of his parents' murders—intending either to psychologically break him or cause him to erase his own origin by saving Thomas and Martha Wayne.
- Batman, sent back to witness the Wayne murders, chooses not to intervene; rather than breaking him, reliving the trauma deepens his resolve to fight crime—an unusually psychological beat for the Pre-Crisis World's Finest format.
- Superman is dispatched to two separate points in history: he stops bombs from destroying the Wright Brothers' aircraft and is also forced to prevent the Enola Gay from being destroyed, a morally fraught moment since doing so allows the Hiroshima bombing to proceed as history records.
- Chronos had been seeded in brief cameo appearances in issues #319 and #320 before becoming the primary antagonist here; he is dispatched in this issue when, in a desperate escape attempt, he enters his own time machine and is absorbed into the timestream.
- The mysterious 'Power Broker' who commissioned Chronos throughout the arc is never identified or resolved—a dangling plot thread left unrewarded likely because the series was already headed toward cancellation.
- The issue appeared in both a direct-edition format and a newsstand edition, consistent with DC's dual-distribution practice of the mid-1980s Copper Age.