It was the fight of a lifetime. On April 28, 1977, Muhammad Ali took on an impossible challenge and faced off against Superman in a comic book showdown for the ages.
In the ’70s, Superman had already featured the likes of real-life American icons John F. Kennedy, Jerry Lewis, Pat Boone and Steve Allen during Joe Shuster’s days as a comic book artist for DC, with Neal Adams’ spectacular cover art, of course. It’s no surprise then that the greatest comic book hero took on the greatest boxing champion in a boxing match in order to save the planet. Yes, you read correctly. Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali fought Superman.
Ali’s fights against Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton and Leon Spinks had already been immortalized in history, becoming the three-time world heavyweight champion, so it only seemed right that he should feature in the pages of DC comics.
The 72-page Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was published in the spring of 1978 and features The Man of Steel teaming up with the heavyweight boxing champion to defeat an alien invasion of Earth. Superman volunteers to fight off an invading alien horde, but the aliens contend that he is not a true Earthling. Rat’lar, the emperor of the Scrubbs, set up the fight between Earth’s greatest champion and the last son of Krypton. Muhammad Ali challenged Superman in the boxing ring, and the winner of the fight would go on to defend Earth.
And you’ll never guess who won.
That’s right. The oversized comic book showed that Muhammad Ali was a champ both in reality and fantasy. Of course, it’s completely ridiculous, and the comic has gone on to be a bit of a laughing matter amongst comic book fans. One of the only DC comics heroes who has ever been strong enough to beat Superman is Green Lantern, and even then, he had some help from Batman and Green Arrow.
That being said, there is something remarkable about the Muhammad Ali vs Superman comic. It’s propaganda in its greatest form. Everything from the wraparound cover illustrated by Neal Adams that shows a host of late 1970s celebrities, including The Jackson 5, Yoko Ono, U.S. Presidents, Ron Howard of Happy Days, the cast of Welcome Back, Kotter (which includes Gabe Kaplan and John Travolta), and many others, to the awesome training sequences in the Fortress of Solitude, it’s all epic.
“To me the idea was to make Superman human,” Adams told Nerdist. “He may be part of the same species — but super elevated in some way — but without that (image) you don’t get a sense for the character.”
The comic started out as a bit of a grudge match between the two, set up by a Scrubb champion, but turned into an iconic team-up with a particularly interesting plot point. In a private moment shared between the two, Ali revealed that he had discovered Superman’s secret identity as Clark Kent, but the two became closer with Ali’s solemn refusal to ever tell a soul.
After beating Superman, Ali went on to fight the Scrubb champion and defend Earth – Superman, on the other hand, took on their space armada. Although the comic might not be a favourite in the eyes of die-hard Superman fans, it is well-loved, especially by those wanting to fondly remember the boxing hero.
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