Man-Bat was inevitable. Despite his identify, Batman is not a hybrid of human and bat. He’s only a sensible, wealthy man in a cool costume. Still, Batman lives in a colourful world stuffed with comedian guide science and superpowers. Eventually, he needed to battle anyone who truly is a bat-human hybrid. Like most comedian guide monsters, Man-Bat was initially a scientist who’d experimented on himself. Zoologist Kirk Langstrom took a particular bat serum (the explanations fluctuate with completely different variations of the story) and was a humanoid bat.
When Man-Bat first appeared in “Detective Comics” #400, he was very a lot a Mister Hyde-type character (as in Robert Louis Stevenson, not Marvel Comics). He skulked round within the shadows, sporting a protracted coat and hiding his inhuman nature till the climax. It took some time for Langstrom’s alter ego to take to the sky, and even after he did, he was all the time form of a funny-looking man — a human-sized, furry creature with wings for arms and large ears.
In distinction, the animated Man-Bat was fairly horrifying for a cartoon character. Although the animated Langstrom is way the identical, his different half is a hulking, hunchbacked monster with monumental leathery wings. He’s first seen gliding mysteriously previous a police dirigible within the episode “On Leather Wings.” Of course, Batman in the end defeats this larger, stronger Man-Bat, however the creature’s fearsome look helped to determine the fearlessly groundbreaking nature of “Batman: The Animated Series.”