The Centenary of BATSOWL, the British Batman of 1918

Next year marks the 80th anniversary of Batman since his debut in Detective Comics No.27 in 1939. However, the notion of costumed 'bat-men' didn't originate with Bob Kane and Bill Finger's creation. One such earlier character was Batsowl, who starred in a series of prose stories in the British comic Illustrated Chips in 1918, and who made his debut exactly 100 years ago this week.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that there was any connection of course. Bob Kane was born in 1915, Bill Finger in 1914, so it's highly unlikely they'd have seen a British comic when they were infants. However, there are some interesting similarities between the two characters, not least being the costume, as you can see from the header illustration above.

Like Batman, Batsowl's other identity was a wealthy figure. In this case, an Earl, Desmond Devance...

He also had a secret underground laboratory, not dissimilar to the Batcave...

...and his appearance struck terror into people...

Sadly, like most British comics of the time, Batsowl is uncredited. I don't know how long the serial ran as I only have one episode, which is the one I'm showing here. It's from Illustrated Chips No.1477, dated December 21st 1918. This was one of the comics presented as a facsimile in 1972 in the Six Comics of World War One collection. (More info about those comics here.) 

It's highly likely that both Batman and Batsowl were both partially influenced by The Phantom of the Opera, written in 1909, and The Scarlet Pimpernel (which was adapted as a very popular London play in 1905).

Click on the image below to see the page larger and read this chapter of Batsowl to see the 'British Batman' for yourselves...

As Rebellion bought the rights to Illustrated Chips and many other comics recently it seems they may own the copyright to Batsowl. Could he return in the pages of 2000AD as Black Max has this week? Who knows? Maybe one day...

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