It's interesting to see how there are no new ideas in fiction, just innovative ways to combine existing ideas...
Take
The Black Bat.
(Actually,
Black Bat II. The
first Black Bat was a gentleman detective similar to
The Saint
, who ran around town leaving calling cards with a bat. He didn't wear a costume, use gimmicks or have enhanced abilities.)
The Black Bat we're talking about was two-fisted, hard-fighting DA Tony Quinn, who got hit in the face by acid thrown by criminals.
It didn't disfigure him, but it
did blind him!
Quinn learned to function without sight, slowly enhancing his other senses and even returning to practice law!
Then, an extremely-risky eye-transplant operation not only restored his sight, but actually enabled him to see in total darkness!
Quinn decided to keep his restored / enhanced sight from the world, pretending to still be blind, and using his connections in the police department and DA's office, to secretly battle criminals who evade capture and prosecution!
Donning all-black garb which incorporated a bat-like motif (to frighten criminals who are, after all, a cowardly, superstitious lot.), a pair of .45 automatics, and assorted low-tech gimmicks like smoke bombs and grappling hooks, Quinn took on spies and gangsters, not hesitating to kill when necessary.
Like most pulp heroes,
The Black Bat is assisted by a team of plain-clothes aides with specialized skills whose main function in the story is to discover plot elements and be caught by villains, requiring dramatic rescue by the hero.
Considered a vigilante, The Black Bat is hunted by the police, especially Captain McGrath who believes that "blind" Tony Quinn not only
can see, but is
The Black Bat!
As you can see, the character is a real amalgamation of elements of everything from
Zorro
to
The Shadow
to
The Green Hornet
.
But, ironically, NOT
The Batman
!
In one of those weird coincidences that occur in media (print/radio/tv/movie) production,
The Black Bat and
The Batman debuted almost simultaneously!
Black Bat's debut in
Black Book Detective #1 was cover-dated July, 1939. (BTW,
The Black Bat never had his own title! He
only appeared in
Black Book Detective!)
Batman's premiere in
Detective Comics #27 was listed as May, 1939.
However, cover dates varied from 3-5 months ahead of actual on-sale date, so there's a potential overlap of at least a couple of months, and since conception and preparation of material for print took anywhere from three months to a year, deliberate copying was highly-unlikely.
That didn't stop their publishers from suing each other, claiming plagiarism!
Luckily, editor Whitney Ellsworth, who had worked for both publishers, created an out-of-court deal so that the two characters could co-exist on the newsstands.
One of the provisos was that each character would stay within their respective format...no pulp version of
The Batman, no comic book version of
The Black Bat.
There was a slight problem there, since
The Black Bat's publisher (who also published
Captain Future) was incorporating his pulp characters (including
The Black Bat) into his new comic book line (which also featured original-to-comics characters like
The Fighting Yank!
With a few minor changes,
Tony Quinn aka
The Black Bat, became
Tony Colby aka
The Mask (with an owl-motif garb) who appeared in the first 20 issues of
Exciting Comics (but never made the cover)!
Interest in
The Black Bat continues to this day, with both
reprints
and
new tales
currently in print!
And we at
Atomic Kommie Comics™ have decided to incorporate
The Black Bat into our retro-kool collection on
t-shirts, mugs, and other collectibles.
Why not combine one (or more) of our goodies with either the
reprint or
original tales for a pulp aficionado's dream-come-true gift set?
and two 
, so it's not like she has no name recognition...)
, but it is kitchy / campy fun!