Dynamite's Masks #5 scheduled for release on March 20th

This may be jumping the gun a little bit.  Dynamite has not always had the best track record in terms of releasing books on time but I believe they have been punctual with this (limited) series.

Being that this is the 5th issue of the book, it may be rather pointless by now to go into great detail about it.  That said, a Black Bat reimagining in this series was handled more as a surprise than a selling point in the early going.  He appears in only a handful of pages throughout the first three issues (I don't have the 4th one yet) but it seems as though we'll finally see him full Bat-glory in #5.

Writer: Chris Roberson
Art: Dennis Calero
The Justice Party tightens its grip on the Empire State, and the vigilantes and heroes are preparing to go on the offensive. The Shadow, Miss Fury, Green Hornet, Black Bat and the others have gathered enough evidence to prove that the public officials who have established the new fascist police state are merely the pawns of more sinister forces who lurk unseen. No one has heard from the Spider since he left for Albany to investigate the new governor, and he is feared dead, captured, or worse. And while Green Hornet, Black Terror, Miss Fury, and others join the Shadow in preparing to attack the hidden masters of the Justice Party, two fugitives take to the streets as Zorro and the Black Bat.

The Masks version and the character appearing in his own series in May are clearly two different characters, a standard Dynamite practice.  Neither is fully committed to the "real" Black Bat's origin.

I'll be curious to see whether the 30's version continues on beyond Masks.  It's difficult to judge without having read the modern-day ongoing series yet, of course, but I suspect that the pulp version will be more appealing to me overall.

Unfortunately, the above cover is about the only one on which the Black Bat is particularly prominent.  Understandable, since he is not as established as the Green Hornet or the Shadow.  And he can't be drawn in the following fashion to mass appeal.

Not a fan of that kind of thing, frankly, but it comes with the territory, I suppose.