5) Sherlock Holmes
On paper, Batman and Sherlock Holmes are natural teammates. After all, they’re two of the World’s Greatest Detectives – the Caped Crusader is even directly inspired by Holmes in many ways. However, it’s still odd to have the Victorian era private eye turn up in Batman’s Gotham City.
To celebrate fifty years of DC, Detective Comics #572 saw Batman and Robin travel back to the 1880s to team up with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. The dynamic duos must join forces to defeat Edgar Moriarty, the great-grandson of Holmes’ nemesis Professor Moriarty. The end of the issue reveals that Holmes is miraculously still alive in the present day, having retired to Tibet to prolong his life. He also totally deduces Batman’s secret identity.
The memorable issue was later adapted for TV in ‘Trials of the Demon!’, an episode of the animated Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The duo have a pricklier relationship in that version though, as they try to defeat Etrigan the Demon.
