Legend of the Dark Knight

Bob Kane and Bill Finger's comic-book hero, Batman, builds on the powerful attraction people have toward bats, back to Dracula and before. Like Bram Stoker's fictional creation of over a century ago, the real-life bat is both fascinating and repellant. It flies by night, sleeps upside down, does not see, and is both delicate and deadly. The way it can appear and disappear suggests it moves easily from this world to another world--invisible and dangerous. No wonder mankind has an intense, sometimes obsessive relationship with bats.