It is no secret that superheroes are the direct offspring of the pulps. Before skintight spandex and superpowers, there were masks, capes, and barking .45s. However, few know just how much of our favorite superheroes are glorified pulp rip-offs. Chief among them is Batman. The “caped crusader” debuted in a comic that blatantly plagiarized The Shadow. Even the art is an almost 1:1 copy. Neither Bill Finger nor Bob Kane admitted to this. At best, Kane admitted in his autobiography that Batman was born after a viewing of the 1930s crime caper, The Bat Whispers.
But The Shadow did not influence Batman alone. In fact, two other masked vigilantes from the pulps also inspired Batman. Both are far less known than The Shadow, and yet they both enjoyed long careers that lasted into the 1950s.
The first, The Phantom Detective, debuted in February 1933. This fact makes the character older than Doc Savage, who did not hit the newsstands until March 1933. Published by Thrilling Publications, The Phantom Detective would appear in 170 issues between 1933 and 1953. Like The Shadow and The Spider, The Phantom Detective had his own pulp magazine complete with full novelettes and other short tales. Thrilling Publications gave The Phantom Detective a house writer named “G. Wayman Jones,” who was in actuality multiple authors, including Norman A. Daniels, Paul Chadwick, and other pulp specialists. The magazine did have some heavyweight writers too. Paul Ernst, who created The Avenger and Doctor Satan, penned stories for The Phantom Detective. Norvell W. Page, best known for his excellent Spider novellas, did likewise. Even the great science fiction writer and Lovecraft disciple Henry Kuttner put pen to paper for the masked vigilante.
Beneath his trademark jewel-encrusted domino mask, flowing cape, and formal evening wear, The Phantom Detective is a wealthy and sophisticated playboy named Richard Curtis Van Loan. This archetype was already familiar to pulp readers by 1933, and as such The Phantom Detective conformed to expectations. Van Loan is described as possessing above-average strength and intelligence, in-depth knowledge of criminology, and a warrior pedigree as a veteran of the Great War. Known only as The Phantom in the pulps, the character is a master of disguise who only trusts his secret identity to a select few. One of these select few is his girlfriend, the elegant Muriel Havens. Another Havens, Frank Havens, also knows Van Loan’s secret. He aides Van Loan’s vigilante activities via his role as the publisher of the New York Clarion newspaper. Whenever there is a crime worthy of The Phantom Detective, Haven races to the top of the Clarion building and deploys a red light as a signal. It does not take too much imagination to see this as a precursor to the more famous “Bat-Signal.”
The Phantom Detective never reached anywhere near the popularity of The Shadow or The Spider. Despite debuting well before the masked vigilante genre became stale, and despite lasting well past pulp’s golden years, The Phantom Detective never quite caught fire. Plain criminals, uninspiring storylines, and overused tropes pulled down the character to the B-tier. That said, no pulp is truly bad pulp, and The Phantom Detective novellas are two-fisted reading worthy of your time.
Six years after the debut of The Phantom Detective, a new, much darker masked vigilante appeared in the pulps. The Black Bat and Batman both came to life in 1939, and oddly enough, both took to the mean streets dressed head-to-toe in black, with the nocturnal bat as their animal avatars. But unlike either Bruce Wayne or Richard Curtis Van Loan, The Black Bat, another Thrilling Publications character, is not a wealthy man-about-town. The Black Bat is actually former New York District Attorney Tony Quinn. Prior to becoming a masked vigilante, Quinn was blinded by an acid-throwing crook employed by crime lord Oliver Snate. Quinn’s sight is restored when a surgeon implants the peepers taken from a murdered policeman. With these new eyes, Quinn finds that he can see in the dark. Armed with this quasi-supernatural ability, Quinn dons the black cowl and becomes The Black Bat. Quinn also makes use of a ribbed cape, wrist gauntlets, a .45 automatic, and a bat symbol that he leaves behind on the bodies of slain criminals.
The Black Bat has help in the form of Carol Baldwin, the daughter of the slain policeman who donated his eyes; “Butch” O’Leary, a tough and streetwise ruffian; “Silk” Kirby, a confidence man with a conscience; and NYPD Captain McGrath. With these individuals by his side, The Black Bat battles arsonist gangs, Nazi and Soviet fifth columnists (one issue has Russia starting World War II), murders cut loose on legal technicalities, and other pedestrian crooks and criminals.
Because of the close proximity in publication dates between the first Batman comic and the first Black Bat story, lawsuit threats abounded. DC editor Whitney Ellsworth, a former Thrilling Publications employee, managed to find common ground between both parties, thus ensuring peaceful co-existence. The Black Bat managed to survive on until 1953. In that year, Batman was a moderately successful comic book character. Nowadays, Batman is arguably the most popular fictional character in the world, with critically acclaimed films to his name. The Black Bat, on the other hand, did better than almost every other masked crimefighters of the pulps, with exceptions for the true titans like The Shadow and The Spider.
Without question, both The Phantom Detective and The Black Bat “donated” much to Batman. From his look to some of his characteristics, Batman is very much a child of pulp vigilantes. This is not to say that The Phantom Detective and The Black Bat only matter because of Batman. These characters and their stories are part of the pulp cauldron of stories, and these stories are all-American folklore. So yes, these characters—one a wealthy playboy with an urge to defeat crime, and the other a surgically-enhanced DA out for vengeance—are important, with or without old Bruce Wayne.