Murciélaga She-Bat #8, March 2010. Daerick Gröss cover pencils & inks.

Round 2

She-Bat:

Transformation

Wings

Flight

Claws

Echolocation

Science

Cheetah:

Adaptive

Agility

Animal Control

Berserker Strength

Claws

Divine Powers

Escape Artist

Feral

Immortal

Insanely Rich

Intellect

Leadership

Sense Death

Shape Shifter

Stamina

Stealth

Super Hearing

Super Sight

Super Smell

Super Speed

Super Strength

Tracking

Unarmed Combat

After the adventures of Young Justice last issue, No Man Land goes back to the land of Chronicles.

The issue's main story, Little Boy Lost by Scott Beatty and Pascal Alixe, opens on Man-Bat's family, the Langstroms, hunting for the food in the rubble of No Man's Land. They are helped out by Aaron's Man-Bat mutations allowing him to smell out food. They are doing as well as one can to in a destroyed city.

Because the family drama of Francine Langstrom raising two children (one being a tiny Man-Bat) without her husband in No Man's Land would be dull, the story needs some conflict. And conflict might as be the name of the eye-patch wearing gangster that decides to kidnap Aaron for a higher place in NML.

After the villain beats up Francine and kidnaps her son, she goes to ask for help from the face of Gotham's underworld boss: The Penguin. Oswald says that there is nothing the Langstroms can do for him, especially without Kirk's Man-Bat serum, and he declines to help.

Thankfully this is a Batman story, so when he hears that child is danger, he threatens Penguin to give him information on the lowlife who kidnapped Aaron. And this Penguin interested in stopping the kidnapper because the crime boss does not want to face Batman's wrath for no reason.

Batman offers comfort to Francise before she can do something stupid, but it is too late because she took the Man-Bat serum already. Francise is now the She-Bat! Francise takes flight to find her baby boy!

And not a moment too soon, because Patchy has gotten annoyed with Aaron trying to kill the young bat. Francise saves her son while Penguin's goons kill the villain like he was a sea turtle on a beach. Reunited, the Man-Bat family (including a Man-Bated out daughter) fly away from Gotham... for now.

The second story, Tune On, Tune In, Freak Out is my favorite story of the issue. It is about a television host just broadcasting out to what he assumes is an empty audience because no one has power in No Man's Land. But it turns out everywhere outside is listening to his broadcast about the going-ons in No Man's Land.

This dorky host is capturing the video of people just living in No Man's Land. The existence of this man getting word about the people trapped in Gotham is so important that Batman decides that he needs to protect this host with Oracle's help.

So, when a bunch of gangsters try to break into the studio, Bats goes to beat them down. When the host comes out to be beaten by the gangsters, he finds nobody there except a Batarang. (This still at the point Batman is still an urban legend...for reasons) The TV show the world what happens is a major step to get the outside world to reopen Gotham, so it is a true story about the importance of speaking up even if you think nobody's listening.

The third story, Identity Crisis (no not that one), opens on Batman fighting Killer Croc. But this is just an excuse for Bruce's cowl to be removed, so a psychologist can learn Bruce Wanye is Batman!

Yeah, this is one of those "Person learns Batman is Bruce Wanye and dies immediately" stories. This time the guy tries to reveal the secret to Two-Face, but because this is No Man's Land, the secret identity knowledge is worthless cause Batman is just some poor dope trapped in the city.

Annoyed at the doctor's treatment of him back in Arkham, Two-Face does a coin flip to see if the doctor dies. Batman fights Two-Face's goons away from the doctor's corpse, and he remembers the doctor in past, not realizing that Batman dodged a bullet with his death.

Not my favorite bunch of stories. I think part of it is that I am not a big fan of Man-Bat and his shaky status quos, and that extends to his family. It is hard for me to care, even if the story is fine. The second story does some lifting for the issue's score, and the third story had some fine art. But you can skip this issue.

morphing my sona into new forms like she's a pokemon

Vampire!Tiffany for @twyz I did a sketch agesa ago for their birthday but lost it completely so redid it

We know DC is obsessed with Batman’s early days, so instead of having the Joker be the antagonist for the twentieth time, let Johnathan Crane have a shot.

Batman and Scarecrow have interesting parallels. Both structured their personas around their childhood fears (Bats and crows respectively), such fears being associated with family member(s) that shaped their development (Thomas & Martha Wayne and Johnathan’s grandmother). They developed these identities as a way “conquering” these fears.

Using Scarecrow’s fear toxin to show us Bruce’s origin would be much more dynamic than having the audience sit through 19 minutes of baby Bruce again.

Now, I don’t think the concept *needs* a secondary villain, but I’ve made a point that with Batman’s eminence rouges gallery that his movies should feature two. So I think that Kirk Langstrom, Man-bat (Or perhaps Francine Langstrom as She-bat for variety), could be a good partner. This could force Bruce to face his trauma on two fronts, along with the nice similarity of both villains being scientists.