#35 - Man-Bat
First Appearance: Detective Comics #400 (Jun 1970)
" Dear God. Is this what I have become? More animal than man. When will the surrender be complete?" ~Man-Bat
It's not often that a character introduced in an anniversary issue pans out and comes a fan-favorite, but Man-Bat is probably the one of the best ones to have bucked that trend. The really interesting thing about Man-Bat is that in many ways, he was a major first for Batman; the introduction of Man-Bat was also the introduction of Neal Adams to the Batman franchise, effectively ending the reign of the lighter, sillier era of the Batman TV series and returning Batman to the darker, more gothic roots of the 30s. A lot of people point to Adams as the end of Batman's Silver Age stories, but I point to Man-Bat as a character who defined that change.
Kirk Langstrom is a perfect character for Batman to tangle with, right there in the vein of a Mary Shelley-type misunderstood brute who can't properly articulate his needs or desires. A Jekyll-Hyde story at its core, mixed with a little bit of Hulk or Invisible Man, Langstrom's transformation leaves an umistakable impression of Curt Connors origin as the Lizard - a man consumed by science, a family left confused, saddened and in peril, a hero who must face a mirror of himself (for Spider-Man it was another individual changed by science, for Batman it was facing someone swallowed by the iconography of the Bat). I think, having read my fair share of comics, that having a hero face a tangible cautionary tale of falling too far down their own rabbit hole gives the reader a chance to see why said hero IS a good guy. What Connors lacked, what Langstrom lacked, what Jekyll lacked... it's all the same thing: moderation. Batman is tempered by an enormous willpower, and that's why he's a BatMAN and not a MAN-Bat. Great characters like Langstrom help us define heroes in ways that aren't readily apparent to readers, but linger long after we finish reading their tales. That's a great villain.
Greatest Man-Bat Story Ever Told: I LOVE the episode "On Leather Wings" from Batman: The Animated Series; this is a tightly scripted episode that uses sparse dialogue and a really quite perfect set of action-based scenes to convey the suspense and danger of Man-Bat and also point out the dichotomy and similarity between Bruce and Kirk. Great stuff.