By Sergio Aragonés, Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, George Moliterni, Dan Spiegle & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2295-6 (TPB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.
By 1968 the glory days of comic books as a cheap mass-market entertainment form were over. Spiralling costs, “free” alternatives like TV or radio and an increasing inability to connect with mainstream markets were leaving the industry to the mercy of dedicated fan-groups with specialised, even limited, interests and worse of all, becoming increasingly dependent on genre-trends to sustain sales.
Editorial Director and 30-year veteran Carmine Infantino looked for ways to bolster DC business (already suffering a concerted decline thanks to the seemingly unstoppable rise of Marvel Comics) and returned to old publisher’s maxim “do something old, and make it look new”. Although traditional cowboy yarns (which had dominated both large and small screens since the 1950s) were also in decline, fresh spins like The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969) and Italian Spaghetti Westerns were popular, and would be far easier and less problematic to transform into comics material than the burgeoning Supernatural themes which would soon come to dominate the next half-decade – but only once the repressive and self-inflicted Comics Code was re-written and publishers acknowledged that comics weren’t just for kids anymore…
Thus Spanish/Mexican cartoonist (and occasional actor) Sergio Aragonés Domenech was asked by Infantino and Editor Joe Orlando to add unique contemporary twists to a cowboy hero they had jointly concocted with the aid of legendary comics maestro Sheldon Mayer. Although many hands had already stirred the plot, irrepressible Aragonés – in collaboration with dialogue-provider Denny O’Neil – remade their world-weary, lonely saddle-tramp archetype into a something completely fresh and original… at least in comic book terms…
The result was a apparently amoral wanderer with an aesthete’s sensibilities, a pacifist’s expressed good intentions and the hair-trigger capabilities of a top gun-for-hire… all played for sardonic, tongue-in-cheek laughs…
Roguish, sexually promiscuous and always getting into trouble because his heart was bigger than his charlatan’s façade, Bat Lash caroused, cavorted and killed his way across the West – including Mexico – in one Showcase try-out and seven bi-monthly issues spanning October/ November 1968 through October/November 1969 before so-so sales and a terribly turbulent marketplace finally brought him low.
A lost masterpiece of the era and a splendid variation on traditional western fare, Bat Lash’s original exploits are criminally uncelebrated and – as far as I know – only available in this slim (a mere 240 pages) monochrome tome. It gathers all the ahead-of-their-times yarns plus later revivals from DC Special Series #16 plus the short run from the back of fellow cowboy antihero Jonah Hex.
The greatest strength of Bat Lash stories was that they took well-worn plots and added a sardonic spin and breakneck pace to keep them rapidly rattling along. It also didn’t hurt that the majority of the art was supplied by cruelly under-appreciated graphic genius Nick Cardy, whose light touch and unparalleled ability to draw beautiful women kept young male readers (those who bothered to try the comic) glued to the pages.
The drama begins with Showcase #76 (cover-dated August 1968 and on sale from 13th June) and eponymous introduction ‘Bat Lash’ by Aragonés, O’Neil and Cardy, in which flower-loving nomad Batton A. Lash wanders through the town of Welcome in search of a fancy feed, only to meet a gang of thugs and mystery poisoner in the process of driving out the entire populace. No “Suthun Gen’leman” (and isn’t that a term now loaded with all the wrong cultural connotations!?) – no matter how far he might have fallen – could evuh allow such a situation to proceed…
A little over two months later – leading me to conclude the Editorial Powers-That-Be were a mite overconfident with their western wonder – Bat Lash #1 hit the stands on August 20th, sporting a cover-date of October/November 1968/January 1969. It resumed and expanded the episodic, eccentric hi-jinks in ‘Bat Lash… We’re A-comin’ Ta Get You’, as the laconic Lothario narrowly escapes being lynched, only to stumble into the murder of a monk carrying part of a treasure map to Spanish gold. Is it his finer instincts seeking retribution for the holy man, the monk’s stunningly attractive niece or the glittering temptation of Spanish gold that prompts the rootin’ tootin’ action intervention that follows?
In #2 (released on October 29th 1968, cover-dated December 1968/December 1969 and plotted and limned by Cardy with Denny doing words) ‘Melinda’s Doll’ opens with a shotgun wedding, explores the impossible as the drifter becomes unwilling guardian to a little girl orphaned by gun-runners and brilliantly climaxes with shockingly unexpected poignancy and calamitous gunplay…
A radical departure – even for this offbeat series – occurs in ‘Samantha and the Judge’ (#3 by Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) when the easy-going Epicurean, whilst reluctantly trying out the temporary role of Deputy Sheriff, encounters a hanging judge who believes he is a Roman Emperor. Thankfully Bat has uncompromising lady deputy Samantha Eggert on his side, after which ‘Bat Lash in Mexico!’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our mild-mannered meanderer slope across the border and stumble straight into a revolutionary crisis in issue #4. Soon embroiled in an assassination plot, Lash needs all his wits and a big bunch of luck and guile in a tale as much gritty as witty wherein he truly displays hidden emotional depths to the rambling man…
Still in Mexico for #5, the impish creative team pit our dashing rogue against his near-equal in raffish charm and gunplay when he meets a deadly but charming bandito in ‘Wanted: Sergio Aragonés!’ Of course, they are both outmatched and overwhelmed by the delightfully deadly Senorita Maribel…
Mike Sekowsky pencilled most of issue #6 for Cardy to ink: a dark, tragic origin tale of ‘Revenge!’ revealing the anger and tears behind the laughter as Lash meets again swindler Preacher Ricketts and kills him for causing the death of his family. Only after being arrested for murder and subsequently on the run does Lash realise his sisters Bitsy and Melissa are still alive and sets out to find them…
Bat Lash #7 offers a final family foray as ‘Brothers’ (Aragonés, O’Neil & Cardy) sees our far-from-heroic protagonist on the trail of a younger sibling he had also believed dead for a decade. Sadly, Billy Lash is amnesiac and deeply traumatised by the actions of Preacher Ricketts and has become a ruthless bounty hunter. His current quarry is a total stranger and wanted man called Bat Lash…
And that’s where it was left until 1978 when giant sized anthology comic DC Special Series (#16) produced a Western-themed issue for which O’Neil and artist George Moliterni crafted a slick, sly murder-mystery set in San Francisco. Here an older if not wiser Batton Lash is getting by as a professional gambler until the idyllic life disappears, enveloped in a deadly war between Irish gangs and Chinese immigrant workers.
The compelling, enjoyable yarn eventually led to a 4-issue run as back-up in Jonah Hex #49-52 (June – September 1981) wherein our charming chancer wins a New Orleans bordello in a riverboat card game. Despite numerous attempts to eliminate him, Lash eventually takes full possession of the Bourbon Street Social Club. Is he that hungry for lazy luxury and female companionship, or is it perhaps that Bat knows a million dollars in Confederate gold was hidden there in the dying days of the Civil War and never found?
Scripter Len Wein and the incomparable Dan Spiegle continued and concluded this utterly under-appreciated character’s solo exploits in fine style; which only leaves it to you to hunt down this brash and bedazzling book or – if you are a truly passionate quality-fun-starved fan – bombard DC’s editors with (polite) requests and enquiries until they are convinced to give the foppishly reluctant gunslinger a comprehensive curated compilation he so deserves…
Enchanting, exciting, wry and wonderful, this is a book for all readers of fanciful fun fiction and a superb example of comics’ outreach potential.
© 1968, 1969, 1978, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.