Bat Lash
1857 - Bartholomew Aloysius Lash is born on a farm in Texas.
1868 - 11-year-old Bartholomew Lash’s family is swindled of their land, and when he tries to go to the sheriff, he discovers that he is in on the conspiracy. Their argument escalates until Bart accidentally shoots him, making him a fugitive. He tries to hide his parents, but they are killed by deputies. He is taken in by a traveling gambler, Martin Lemuel, and begins going by the name Bat Lash.
1874 - 17-year-old Bat Lash’s mentor Martin Lemuel is gunned down in a card game. He goes on to travel alone.
1878 - 21-year-old Bat Lash, tracking his mentor's killer, rides with Justice Riders stop Vandal Savage from ruling vast stretches of Colorado like a king and track him back to his gold mine in Mexico, where he is gunned down by Jonah Hex.
1886 - 29-year-old Bat Lash finds the men responsible for the death of his mentor. He plays a long con, playing lawmen and outlaws against each other, but has to change his plans when he falls in love with Dominique, the daughter of the man he hopes to take revenge on. He is able to get out of the ordeal alive, but Dominique chooses to join a convent.
1888 - 31-year-old Bat Lash takes in Tallulah Black while she is pregnant, but she leaves when she loses the baby.
1905 - 48-year-old Bat Lash wins a small fortune in a poker tournament, and is finally able to clear his name. He retires in Mississippi.
1911 - 54-year-old Bat Lash travels to New York City, where he meets and works with the Crimson Avenger.
I have a distinct sense that modern readers don't quite get Bat Lash. We're just too far removed from the all-encompassing scope of the Western at it's height to quite understand the innovation of a character with a whole different approach to that traditional story. Bat Lash predates a whole history of similar non-traditional heroes in film, like Warren Beatty in McCabe & Mrs Miller, Terrence Hill in They Call Me Trinity, and of course, Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Having a character like Bat Lash in the mix is a wonderful way to show just how diverse DC's West can be.
Bat Lash's Comic HistoryBat Lash debuted in Showcase #76 in 1968. within a few issues of the first appearances of Anthro, Angel & Ape, and Dolphin. Bat is introduced in the middle of making out with a woman behind a saloon, and turning to shoot the gun out of the hand of a man sneaking up on them, only to discover it was the woman's boyfriend. Bat declares himself a pacifist throughout the story, just trying to get a nice dinner cooked for himself and the company of the beautiful innkeeper, but continues to have to set down the flower in his hat as he defends himself in situation after situation, none of them EXACTLY his fault... until it's revealed that even the innkeeper had it in for him.
It could have played like a farce (not the least because artist Sergio Aragonés of Mad Magazine did the initial thumbnail sketches) But played with a level of earnestness he was instead a charming rogue, a character trope that you actually didn't often see in the Western format. He would go on to star in seven issues of his own series and have several stories appear in Weird Western Tales, becoming a regularly appearing backup character. |
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Our Bat Lash StoryOne of the main things you have to do for Bat Lash to work is just allow him to be there. I think a lot of modern takes on the character seem to rely on the idea of him being a churlish anti-hero or a dandy, but I really don't think that's the direction you need to go. If Bat Lash has any predecessor, it's Bret Maverick from the late 50s tv series about a riverboat gambler played by James Garner, which he reprised in several following series and the movie spinoff from Richard Donner... if you can get THAT tone, you have Bat Lash.
Other than just give him space to be who he's always been, we really only did two things. The first was to play up the fact that he's one of the last heroes of his era to be active well into the 1900s, having adventures with the Crimson Avenger, and even ending his story with him crashing on Dinosaur Island. The second is probably a little more subtle, because it's a reference to a specific character from a specific movie. In addition to Maverick ,we blended in a little bit of James Caan's character Mississippi from the movie El Dorado, in that he's a young gambler looking for the man who killed his mentor, but who really doesn't have a clue how to go about it. It was just a fun blend of tropes and we think it fit nicely. |