Don't Be Fooled!

Maybe you're fortunate enough to have never watched Rise of The Black Bat. I can assure you that the recently-found image below makes it look like a far, far better film than it is. 

My hopes that a new version of the film (or a new one altogether) was in production were dashed against the rocks rather quickly. Further inspection revealed that this is actually the background image used for the original 2012 movie's Amazon Prime Video presentation.

Rise of The Black Bat is currently sitting at a rating of 1.3 out of 10 on IMDB, and that is assisted by the occasional reviewer grading it a 10 as a cinematic masterpiece or some such. It's difficult to determine if those reviewers are supportive friends/family of the cast/crew, being sarcastic, or suffered a number of concussions in the past.

Whatever the cause, do not let the "repackaging" of this film con you into watching it and directing you towards a downward spiral of self-loathing by emphasizing your inability to make sound decisions. Just...Don't.

Black Bat GN Cover

 A recent Instagram post by artist Mike Belcher confirms that AMK Comics' Black Bat graphic Novel is still...well...it hasn't been completely set aside. 

I didn't include the image here upon first seeing it on IG last week because I thought I'd done so in the past. After inspection, it appears I was remembering a different one and this was indeed a new reveal by Mr. Belcher. Very good, we'll keep an eye out for more. 

The Bat, Volume 1

Well, ain't that something? Only a few days after stating that a Lucky Comics compilation of its three 8-page The Bat books didn't appear to be on the horizon, there it is on Amazon.

The Bat Volume I

The Golden Age Black Bat's legend continues with the Adventures of Michael Quinn --The Bat!

A string of murders in Hill Top City leaves only one credible suspect: The Bat! Can Detective Kelly and Cyber Jane uncover the truth behind the crime spree or will the mysterious caped vigilante rule the streets? 

Collects The Bat 1-3 (24 pages)

Words John Michael Helmer and Dan Solano

Art by Dan Solano

Edited by Michael Waggoner

I tracked it down by searching for Lucky Comics on Amazon, then selecting John Michael Helmer as an author from the write-up for one of the anthology books. Trimming down the search results this way helped a great deal.

It would be easy to take a wrong turn here, however. There's a separate author named Michael Helmer as well and Amazon seems to be confusing the two, so make sure you select the "John Michael" version.

The book is also available on drive-thru, as usual. You can take advantage of that option at this link. 

It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to enjoy a (Black) Bat comic book! Looking forward to its arrival!

The Lucky Comics Anthology Books

Let's see...

• Four issues of Black Bat Tales
• Two guest-starring roles in Beetle Girl 
• One Free Comic Book Day feature
• One appearance in Dixie Squad
• One spotlight in Pulp Legends
• One story in Unknown Tales
• Three books of his own "The Bat" series

By my math, that's 13 times the Black Bat has shown up in a Lucky Comics series, whether we refer to a version of the character set in the present, or to a more traditional one set in the 1920s or 1930s.

This past fall, Lucky Comics made a number of their stories available on Amazon in an anthology format and the Black Bat has found his way into a couple of the more recent issues. The first of these is issue #9. 

He is displayed on the cover but the material in which he's included is actually one of his guest appearances rather than from one of his own titles. Issues #8 and #9 of Beetle Girl are reprinted in this book. The Bat features prominently in the latter.

Art by Saulo Silva

He's a much bigger deal in issue #11 of the anthology book.
 

This one also collects a guest-appearance, from Beetle Girl #11, but the first issue of The Bat is included as well. The character appears in two of the three books featured in this anthology.

Art by Geanes Holland

That's the most recent issue to be released, so unless I missed something along the way, there are still ten "Bat books" that can (and should) be reprinted.

I'd love to see a compilation of all the Black Bat material in one paperback edition similar to what was done for Beetle Girl. There's no indication that's on the horizon but if it does materialize, I shall make it mine. For now, here's the link for issue #11 of Lucky Comics.

O Morcego Negro

The image below was among the results of a search for "Black Bat" on flickr.com, of all places. Hoping to perhaps come upon someone sharing pulp-related art, I was instead rewarded with an early 1950s cover to a Brazilian publication spotlighting the Black Bat. Clicking on the image will take you to the page on which it was found.

The poster, going only by Komic-Kazi, has an album specific to that publication. All images appear to have been added during the second half of 2022.

I've tracked down the following information from Komic-Kazi's Facebook page.

Komic Kazi International has been involved in archiving and researching international comics and art on a scale not seen before.

Founded by Mr. Ott and assisted by his sons, Skye, Stefan, and Shawn this family owned and run operation has been collecting vintage comic books and comic art for over 50 years.

Their total collection includes over 125,000+ rare international issues and thousands of pieces of original published comic book art from across the globe. Both the rarity and high state of condition of their holdings cannot be overstated.

I know nothing about X-9 Magazine specifically but Komic-Kazi's displays helps a great deal.

At a glance, the ones featuring the Black Bat seem to range in publication date from 1942 to 1958. Many of the covers are near-replicas of the Black Book Detective ones and the titles, translated from the Portuguese, would also suggest that most stories are reprints of the original material.

Neither of those two criteria apply to the cover displayed above, however, unless "Simpson's Curse" is an original story under a different name. Either one of the great many German stories was translated into Portuguese instead or, much like the German novels, publisher O Globo also put out a few original tales of their own. 

The most recent update to the album was Christmas day. Hopefully Komic-Kazi has more to share. This has been a fun find.

Bud's Closeout Sale!

Bud's Art Books website has a Closeout Sale section to which I'd like to draw people's attention. The Sanctum Books Black Bat reprint material has been on sale there for some time and continue to be as I write this, along with many others including The Phantom, The Shadow, The Avenger, The Phantom Detective and Doc Savage. Check that out here. 

I took advantage of the sale and snatched two books that I might have otherwise waited on. The first was Gentlemen Prefer Domino Lady from Moonstone Books. I had planned on ordering it when Moonstone's June 2022 Triple Threat issue became available, but I couldn't pass up Bud's sale.

I was aware of a Black Bat guest-appearance in one of the stories in this anthology. What I did not know was that the story in question is Kill The Lady Goodbye by Taylor Grant.

That story has been available for download for some time on Amazon. I purchased it shortly after its release in 2017.

I admit to being initially somewhat disappointed at not getting new Black Bat material, but I'm pleased that I have this one in print format now, and a bunch of Domino Lady stories to get into. I believe every story has a guest appearance from characters such as the Phantom Detective, the Woman in Red, and Ravenwood.

The other acquisition was the fifth issue of Sanctum's Black Bat reprint series. 

I've added Market of Treason to the Recommended Reading page. It's notable for being the book in which the Black Bat sheds his cape but is entertaining regardless of that milestone moment.

The rest of the team is heavily involved, particularly Butch, which isn't always the case. McGrath can be said to score a rare win in his rivalry with Anthony Quinn as well. A one-sided rivalry is no rivalry at all, so you can't help but be a little happy for him.

And we get to meet his wife again! In reviewing a past issue, I mentioned that Mrs. McGrath had a few lines and how that came as a surprise, as she so often seemed to be out of town or otherwise unavailable when a scene takes place at McGrath's house.

That book was from 1948 while Markets of Treason was published in winter of 1944. I was unaware that we'd heard from Mrs. McGrath so much earlier. It tickles me that she is given the first name of Mary in Markets of Treason while Lieutenant/Captain McGrath (rank depends on story) is never given one throughout the entire series.

Something else caught my eye. In a scene in which someone sees Tony Quinn for the first time, Quinn is said to look about 30 years of age. This is as specific as I've ever seen Quinn's age referred to. He is usually described as a being unusually young for a district attorney when he was attacked and lost his sight. That would put him in his mid-20's in 1939. Seems to fit.

Since much of the story was described on the Recommended Reading page, there's no sense in rehashing the rest of the information here. I instead want to point out that I love Sanctum's format for these books.

They are slightly wider than your standard DC/Marvel graphic novel. Perhaps it's a result of reading the original, faded, yellowed material of late, but I found the text and image restoration very clear.

This applies to the Mask comic strip. I'd seen a few of those in the past and I figured they would be tough to reproduce but Sanctum did a good job of it.

There were a number of typos, it needs to be said, but I found those in the original Black Book Detective as well. It doesn't ruin the experience or story clarity. I enjoyed the additional essay providing historical background on the two Bat stories as well.

It's been quite some time since Sanctum reprinted Black Bat stories. They stopped after nine issues (a tenth was solicited, I believe, but never released).

I doubt that they'll resume doing so any time soon but if they do I'll now be more likely to purchase it. The only thing preventing me in the past was that I'd already acquired the material in some other format. But if you are new to the character and want to sample his stories, I would very much recommend these books as a means to do so.

Moonstone Triple Threat, June 2022B

I almost didn't scroll down far enough!

First Comics News shared Moonstone's June solicitations last week. They include one of the publisher's Triple Threat books, an ongoing series of three-story anthologies. Each book seems to run between 70 and 100 or so pages in length for the three stories combined.

Moonstone rarely has many books solicited in any given month. When I saw a Triple Threat issue that did not include the Black Bat, I figured it was another dry month for our favourite characters and was prepared to move on.

That book was labelled "Jun '22A", however, which strongly implies a "B". Clearly, reading all these detective stories has made me mentally razor sharp. Sure enough, there are two issues of the Triple Threat title scheduled for June and the second includes our boy, as seen below. 

Three pulp-action-adventure thrillers! The Lone Ranger stars in “Bad Company”, The Black Bat in “The World is Sick”, and Domino Lady and Judgement star in “Served Cold”!

David Boop has some experience with the character. He co-wrote (with Josh Vogt) one story for Moonstone's The Black Bat Returns anthology called Light And Dark in Symphony teaming the Bat with Domino Lady, and wrote another called The Blind Leading The Brave.

The cover is by John K. Snyder. This particular issue is said to be 70 pages long for $6.49. Even assuming he gets a full third of that page count (which I doubt based on cover prominence), that's not a lot of room for Mr. Boop to work with, but I'm still eager to see what he has in store for us.

Black Bat Merchandise From Doctor Multiverse

A Twitter search earlier today revealed the delightful Black Bat products below, among others, available for purchase from Teepublic. The design is the work of one Doctor Multiverse.

I need another coffee mug like I need another bout of Athlete's Foot but I could not resist this. The good Doctor also has a Black Cat / Miss Fury design which can be applied to various items if they're more to your liking.

The Murder Maker (June 1948)

After a significant dry spell in my attempts at locating some of the original Black Bat material from Black Book Detective, I recently had the good fortune to find The Murder Maker for sale and snapped it up.

The book gets off to a quick start. A gentleman named Gallaway comes to visit special district attorney Tony Quinn at the latter's office. Gallaway has spent years and large sums of money attempting to rid the city of crime. He now believes that there have been two attempts on his life and that there will be more. He hands Quinn an envelope containing the name of the person he believes will murder him, as well as the motive behind the attempts, but does not want the envelope opened until he is killed, should that come to pass.

Naturally, Quinn is intrigued and believes that if the man will not give Anthony Quinn more information, perhaps he will be more willing to do so for...The Black Bat!!

And that's all covered just in chapter one!

Sure enough Gallaway is killed in short order and the Black Bat and his team are on the case. The matter is further complicated in that the person named in Gallaway's envelope seems to have a very solid alibi.

A few things stood out in this story. 

One of the Black Bat's aides is not entirely on board with the team's perception of the primary suspect. It doesn't reach the point of conflict within the little crime-fighting club but it raises an eyebrow nonetheless. Disagreement within the team is something I've rarely, if ever, seen in the original Black Bat material. Normally, the Tony Quinn/Black Bat, Carol Baldwin, Silk Kirby and Butch O'Leary team are all on the same page with little hesitation or doubt.

Also...we meet Captain McGrath's wife! She even has a line of dialogue or two! She has been mentioned numerous times but always seemed to be visiting a relative out of town or some such whenever the Black Bat dropped by McGrath's unexpectedly. I thought she had never appeared in-story. 

Finally, writer Norman Daniels did a nice job with an action scene around the middle portion of the story. As more original material was acquired, it came to light that not all of Daniels' action scenes needed to be shootouts or fist fights. Sometimes, the Black Bat may be trying to find his way out of a burning building, or perhaps he's involved in a car chase.

In this book, the Bat needs to escape a battle on a ferry on a foggy night. Daniels does very well in describing the challenges caused by the water, the cold, etc, faced by the character. And while the Black Bat can normally see in darkness, fog is another matter. 

The only area in which I might criticize the story is in its lack of a true mystery. You may not know exactly how Gallaway's murder (and other illegal activity) went down, but you do get a sense early on of who is responsible for it. That aside, Murder Maker pretty well hits all the right notes.

Forthcoming Black Bat Novella Cover by Jeffrey Hayes

This jumped out at me when doing a search on the character's name this morning on Twitter. It's more than a week old so I am kicking myself for neglecting that Twitter account as of late. 

Here are artist Jeffrey Hayes' comments about this image, lifted from a Facebook post from July 4th. 

Just got approval from author Marlin Williams to reveal the completed cover to his upcoming novel featuring the “Black Bat” due out later this year or early 2022. This was a blast to work on.  There plans for a few internal illustrations, but that will come a bit later.

You can view more of Jeffrey's graphics work on his website and have a look at Marlin Williams' past work on his Amazon author page. 

As much as I love the original Black Bat material, I'm always interested in other interpretations. A traditionalist nonetheless, I often joke that if you include the scarring around Tony Quinn's eyes, we can be friends. I've seen instances of artists displaying the scars when Tony's in his blind DA persona but not doing so when the Black Bat mask comes on. That irritates the hell out of me.

But I quite like what Hayes did here. The original stories often mention that when Quinn needs to revert to pretending to be blind, his eyes turn milky white so whether intentional or not, the white eyes in the image above are consistent with that description of the character's appearance. I tend to think that a full mask with scarring showing through the eye holes would be the most intimidating version of the Black Bat's look but what Hayes's has done here works very well on that level too, perhaps even better.

Gorgeous work. I'll be paying closer attention to see those interiors, too!