The Back Bat Pulp Review

Here I’m back again with another pulp review, this time “The Black Bat,” a masked avenger not unlike Batman, but very different all the same. I’ve been through the three volumes of new stories at Airship 27 by now and I really, really liked him. Not to mention I think he might actually make a good movie hero as well. Perhaps a better one than Batman, if done well.

So who or what is the Black Bat and why do I think he’s better than Batman? Well, he’s cooler and hanging out with quite some interesting characters. Let’s do a bit of a comparison first (I’m going to use the basics of Batman, who had a lot of iterations over time).

Name and occupation:

• The Black Bat: Anthony ‘Tony’ Quinn, lawyer
• Batman: Bruce Wayne, millionaire and playboy

Posse:

• The Black Bat: Carol Baldwin, Butch O’Leary, Silk Kirby
• Batman: Alfred, several Robins, several Batgirls (and assorted others)

Origin Story:

• The Black Bat: blinded in court while still working as DA in NYC, later on had an eye transplant (rather a cornea transplant), regained his sight and gained the ability to see in absolute darkness, decided to use his new ability to fight crime
• Batman: was forced to watch the death of his parents through the hands of a petty criminal, grew up training his body and became a vigilante

The interesting thing for me about Tony Quinn is that he, despite no longer being blind, still pretends to be just that. It serves several purposes: many people aren’t as careful around a blind person and Tony sees more than just perfectly well behind his dark glasses and he’s less likely to be considered for the Black Bat. There is one person, however, who is absolutely sure Tony is the Black Bat and hence tries to trap him at every chance: Lieutenant McGrath from the NYPD. However, McGrath is no bad person at all and there are times when he and the Black Bat work together against a greater evil. At least the new series has no strong recurring villain on one level with the Batman’s Joker, but the villains nevertheless vary greatly, from your average mobster over a German superhero-turned-villain to people with the ability to light someone up from high up in the sky. Still, everything stays in the realm of science, at least by pulp standards. There is nothing truly supernatural.

The interesting thing about the Black Bat’s posse is that all of them have a very personal connection to Tony. Carol Baldwin is the woman who offered him her father’s eyes for the transplant after her father, a small-town sheriff in the mid-west, was killed in action. She stayed with Tony, they are in love, but won’t start a relationship while Tony is still the Bat (which is actually pretty standard in pulp). Carol rarely gets treated as the damsel in distress and rarely stays in distress for long - she’s trained with firearms and Tony relies on her just as much as on the two guys in his posse. Butch O’Leary is officially Tony’s driver and a former price boxer. He’s the one for the physical work. Silk Kirby is officially Tony’s valet and a former con-man. He’s the one with the underworld connection and the glib tongue. Both have first met with Tony during his work and both are reformed now.

Tony leads the life of a blind man in public, has withdrawn from his post as DA after the attack, and now works as a regular lawyer. He has independent wealth, which means he doesn’t need the job all that much, but he’s not on Bruce Wayne’s level money-wise. He does have a few gimmicks (especially depending on who writes him), but he mostly relies on his highly trained body, his amazing eye sight (which allows him to fight in a completely dark room) and heightened senses, and his twin pistols - unlike Bruce, he does use guns. He does, however, also dress completely in black, wears a tight-fitting hood (which mostly serves to hide his identity and the very telling acid scars around his eyes), and a wide, bat-like cape which he also uses to glide on air currents.

What I like about the stories is a lot, actually. I like the characters. Tony Quinn with his sense of humour and constant acting (to convince people he’s blind), Butch with his quick temper, Silk with his even darker humour, the confident Carol who isn’t cowed at all by her male companions. I like the stories, which usually don’t go as high-risk as with “Secret Agent X” or “Jim Anthony” (there’s even a crossover between Tony and Jim in one of the books), but are full of twists and turns and closer to crime stories than to pure adventure. Tony is using his mind just as much as his body and this shows in the stories. Bruce is often called ‘a great detective,’ but these days, he rarely detects.

“The Black Bat” is a nice one, if you like your pulp stories without too much exaggeration and enjoy the main character playing cat-and-mouse with the police and with society. The stories are good, even though the formatting of Volume 2 leaves a lot to be desired.