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After years of abusing the Man-Bat serum, Kirk Langstrom’s luck has finally run out.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Man-Bat # 1 by Dave Wielgosz, Sumit Kumar, Romulo Fajardo Jr., and Tom Napolitano, on sale now.
Kirk Langstrom has always been addicted to the Man-Bat serum. While he’s constantly claimed that he could one day perfect it and ultimately turn the Bat-Man into a true force for good, it looks like Langstrom is finally running out of time. During perhaps his most destructive rampage of all time, Man-Bat is captured by Batman. After performing a few tests, Batman confirmed that Kirk Langstrom was dying from the Man-Bat serum and that he only had a short time left.
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In Batman # 1, before Langstrom joined the Justice League Dark, Kirk had once again succumbed to his addiction to the serum. This particular relapse was the worst yet as it seemed like the last nail in the coffin with his wife Francine, who couldn’t stop Kirk from using the formula. But his anger and his departure only served to fuel Kirk’s illusion that his serum could benefit the world. Wanting to prove that Man-Bat could be a force for good, Kirk fled and began looking for a crime to stop.
Man-Bat quickly discovered the Blackout Gang stealing a sonic cannon from an unknown source. Man-Bat stormed in, certainly scaring criminals off, but inadvertently set off a high-speed chase through the streets of Gotham that put many civilians in the crossfire. Even Batman’s arrival could not prevent the inevitable catastrophe that was to follow. The Blackout Gang, desperate to get rid of the winged beast that pursued them, used the weapon against Man-Bat. The resulting fight destabilized the core of the weapon and unleashed a huge sound explosion, knocking out Man-Bat.
When he woke up next, he was in Batman’s care. The Dark Knight explained that after performing tests on Kirk, he discovered that he only had weeks to live. But while Kirk died, Man-Bat would live on. His years of exposure to the Man-Bat serum had mutated his cellular structure, Man-Bat would soon take over Kirk’s body completely, and Kirk Langstrom’s humanity would vanish altogether. Kirk refused to accept this, still believing he could perfect the serum, but Batman informed Kirk that the blast injured over a hundred people and left those closest to the detonation deaf.
This blow seemed to take Kirk’s fight off. He had originally developed the Man-Bat Serum to restore people’s hearing, but his experiments resulted in the creation of a monster that has terrorized Gotham for years. Now, this same monster has afflicted people with the condition that Kirk himself was trying to overthrow. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Kirk Langstrom started out as a promising scientist with a bright future, both professionally and personally. Now his obsession and addiction have cost him his family, his morality and, soon enough, his life. But maybe he still has time to do one last good thing before being taken back by the monster he gave birth to.
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