Nick Cardy was born on this date in 1920. Cardy worked tirelessly for DC Comics and made his mark on Aquaman, Teen Titans among other titles. He was DC's go-to cover artist in the early Bronze Age and created some stunningly fine images. He worked with Sergio Aragones on Bat Lash, a different kind of western hero.
Bat Lash and I chanced upon the DC Universe at almost the same moment. Not that I actually read any Bat Lash comics, but I did see in the DC books I found here and there a fascinating ad which told that Bat Lash was at once a most mysterious and most disruptive desperado and called into question whether he would "Save the west? Or ruin it!" The ad (drawn by Joe Orlando I assume) set into my imagination what the dangerously named "Bat Lash" must be.
It turns out I was mistaken, but it would be many years before I was disabused of the errors of my imagination.
My first Bat Lash story was not really one at all.
Bat Lash debuted as did so many DC characters in the fabled pages of
Showcase. Showcase became a long running title reaching its one hundredth issue and in that very special edition drawn by an exuberant Joe Staton, the many characters from its pages were jammed together into a wild and raucous adventure which blended times and genres to utterly entertaining effect. I like to consider this comic almost like the zero issue for
Crisis on Infinite Earths which did the same thing a decade or so later.
In his brief appearance we see Bat Lash putting the moves on the lovely Angel of
Angel and the Ape fame. So, I immediately realized that Bat was only dangerous if you were an unsuspecting damsel. And he wore a flower, that didn't make sense.
I ran across a few more Bat Lash tales here and there in the pages of
Jonah Hex and whatnot, but I never took the chance to read the original run until it was reprinted some years ago in the much-missed Showcase editions. Here in glorious black and white was the saga I'd been teased to read so many decades before. And despite not being what I expected, it was still a ton of fun.
The Bat Lash of the early episodes is an unabashed womanizer and is so confirmed in his selfishness that he's hard to root for at times. He's not especially trustworthy, even to those who appear to have earned some measure of trust.
But somehow Aragones, O'Neil and Cardy find a way to keep Bat just above water in terms of our admiration. He's not good, but he's not exactly bad. He's a cad but not a villain, though we wonder from moment to moment when he might let us down.
The stories are light and frothy and that keeps the reader from investing too deeply in the antics. They have that same tone as comedies of the silent era which thrust the hero into all sorts of dangerous situations but never allow him to come to real threat since we know it will come out in the end. That's the one of Bat Lash, danger and death loom but he is immune.
But these lightly toned episodes give way in the end as the origins of Bat Lash are more seriously explored.
We learn that Bat Lash is a man who has lost most that meant much to him. He is a man who has no home and who has taken vengeance on those who robbed him of it. We learn he has a sister who has suffered as much as he has and a love who has done likewise. They have not become rogues but have taken their misfortune and made lives with a positive character.
This makes Bat Lash feel more pathetic than he has in earlier stories. Bat Lash had that devil-may-care attitude which made him impervious and he was a dashing hero, but now we learn he is a tragic figure filled with regrets and remorse.
He even has a brother who has been lost in the most baroque of ways. Their meeting is a stranger event in the story and takes the series into a strange place just before it finds its somewhat abrupt ending.
Bat Lash lingers on in the DC Universe, a part of the western landscape and he shows up in some entertaining yarns after his initial run, but despite some fine craftsmanship the magic has slipped away somewhat. The wacky nature of the early tales has been lost a bit and he feels more conventional somehow.
I always wanted to read about Bat Lash, and I finally got to do it. He was everything I imagined and nothing I imagined.
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