Warning: Spoilers for Man-Bat #1 are ahead.
whether or not Batman truly is a hero from story to story, there is no stranger character to the axis of heroism and villainy than Man-Bat.
Man-Bat, also known as Kirk Langstrom, is a scientist based in Gotham, and is usually written as a villain. He monster comic book characters from the early 1970s. While developing a serum based on the sonar of microbats to "fix" his deaf sister's hearing loss, Langstrom turned himself into a horrifying bat/human abomination. As Man-Bat, Langstrom lacks control over his basic impulses, leading him down a road of nocturnal chaos.
In a new series from writer Dave Wielgosz, artist Sumit Kumar, colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr, and letterer Tom Napolitano, Man-Bat's bizarre place in Gotham gets even stranger. Based on issue #1, the series leans into Langstrom's narrative as a scientist possessed by his own pursuit of perfection, even as his social relationships crumble around him. Batman makes an appearance to rein in Langstrom from his fantastic imaginings, suggesting that Bruce Wayne is the only person Langstrom has who could possibly commiserate with his position.
But more than that, through Langstrom's characterization in Man-Bat #1, he emerges in the liminal space between superhero and villain. While he possesses redeemable qualities, Man-Bat has no desire to help the public in the selfless way that most superheroes do. However, at the same time, Man-Bat lacks any intention to either wreak havoc on Gotham or achieve anything material for his own ends by upsetting the public. This differentiates him enormously from a great bulk of DC's villains. Therefore, Man-Bat has become Batman's strangest villain, if he can even be considered one, because he has little to no regard for how Man-Bat as a public figure impacts Gotham's populace. The motivations for his actions exist entirely outside the public sphere that dominates the mindsets of so many superheroes and villains.
Man-Bat Only Cares About His Wife's Opinion, Not The Public's.
In Man-Bat #1, it is evidently clear that Langstrom is dealing with his own demons. While that has certainly never stopped heroes from helping their city, Langstrom uses Man-Bat in very public ways in order to try to remedy the failings in his personal life. Langstrom knows that he cuts an imposing figure as Man-Bat, and that the very sight of him is cause for alarm throughout Gotham. As such, he can achieve a type of public visibility to get through to his wife even as she continues to ignore him. He is obsessed with winning back the affection of his estranged wife, Francine, and his internal monologue is filled with ramblings about how she might think of his actions at every turn. Langstrom believes that Francine will return to him if he finds success as Man-Bat in Gotham, finally recognizing the genius of his achievements.
From a traditional superhero standpoint, Man-Bat is not a hero for this because his motivations lack a sense of drive towards protecting and preserving the greater good. Rather than being stressed about not being able to protect every innocent person in the city, Man-Bat is worried that he will never win Francine back. He is trapped within a scientific mindset geared towards perfecting his own discoveries, keeping him from seeing how he might be able to remedy some of the issues plaguing Gotham. For Langstrom, it is clear that the darkness in his personal life supersedes the darkness hovering over Gotham.
Man-Bat Does Not Crave Destruction And Chaos Like Other Villains.
By the same token, Man-Bat's lack of regard towards the public's welfare does not automatically make him a villain, either. Though he is burdened with immense turmoil in his personal life, Langstrom does not use Man-Bat as a means for exacting harm onto innocents to quell the pain he feels alone inside. Revenge is not something that he seeks. This separates him from a host of villains who take out their grief by creating mayhem for the public, such as Red Hood and Black Mask.
As a result, Man-Bat is in an odd place in superhero comics because he lies outside the good versus evil moral continuum, one that is shaped by the relationships that characters have with the public. His moral ambiguity raises the question of why it is always necessary to label characters as heroes or villains, when some, like Man-Bat, are so consumed by their own problems that the welfare of the public is an afterthought. Man-Bat then provides the opportunity to showcase the limitations of binary moral thinking in comics, challenging readers to reflect on their expectations of the genre.
Ultimately, what makes Man-Bat such a strange character in DC Comics is that he does not engage with the performative aspects of the superhero genre in the ways that established characters like Batman and the Joker do. That is, his existence as Man-Bat in Gotham is not a performance of a menacing persona meant to scare of the public from ever leaving their homes. Instead, Man-Bat is a performance meant for only one person, Francine Langstrom, but is impossible to achieve as he intended due to its setting in the public arena. The city streets of Gotham will never be a suitable place for Man-Bat to act out the reasons for why Kirk Langstrom is a groundbreaking scientist and upstanding husband, making his story one marked by tragedy instead of heroism or villainy.
