Man-Bat Pt. 31: Batman #361

After telling Alfred he was going to kill Man-Bat, Batman now explains his comments,

Don’t worry – what you just saw was frustration with myself.

Jason Todd finds himself in a precarious situation:

When he tries to escape and the police arrive, circumstances create a conflagration:

Later, in his “roost,” Man-Bat has turned all-out super-villain. He rambles for a full page about his diabolical plan…

Batman visits the museum and locates Man-Bat and Jason in the basement. As Man-Bat prepares to administer an injection that will turn Jason into a creature like him…

As he’s done before, Batman is able to subdue Man-Bat and give him a dose of the antidote.

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Notes

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What a way to neutralize a cliffhanger! Batman’s extreme reaction at the end of Detective Comics #527 is reversed at the bottom of page one in Batman #361. Well, it wasn’t much of a cliffhanger… we know Batman doesn’t kill. Later, he acknowledges this once again:

I was wrong to want the Man-Bat’s blood – and I knew it the moment I looked into Francine Langstrom’s eyes.

This is a full-length, 23-page story featuring Batman’s hunt for Man-Bat and the fallout for the entire issue. However, there's an epilogue in which Harvey Bullock returns for the first time since he last appeared in Detective Comics #441 nearly a decade earlier.

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It’s a small panel, but I’ll end what may very well be the final “real” story for Man-Bat in the pre-Crisis DC universe, with one of my beloved transformation panels:

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Title: Batman

Issue #: 361

Cover Date: July 1983

On Sale Date: April 14, 1983

Writer(s): Doug Moench

Penciller: Don Newton

Inker: Pablo Marcos

Editor: Len Wein