The Bat-Cow: Batman Goes To The Moo-vies

Dwayne Johnson announced earlier this month that he would voice Krypto, the Superdog, in the upcoming DC animated movie “League of Super-Pets.” Johnson will be joined by Kevin Hart, voicing Ace the Bat-Hound, Batman’s trusty canine sidekick.

The cast will also include Keanu Reeves, John Krasinksi, Kate McKinnon, Jameela Jamil, Natasha Lyonne, Diego Luna and Vanessa Bayer, although DC didn’t specify who they’d be playing.

They have plenty to choose from. Aside from Krypto and Ace, there’s Comet the Super-Horse, Streaky the Supercat, Flexi the Plastic Bird, the aliens Proty and Proty II (if they count as pets), and Wonder Woman’s kangaroo Jumpa, as well as Harley Quinn’s hyenas Bud and Lou. It’s a bit redundant to talk of Aquaman pets, since he can communicate and control nearly all sea life, but he also has an octopus Topo and a seahorse Storm.

Not to mention DC’s non-pet animal characters like Detective Chimp and the squirrel-like Green Lantern Ch’p.

But for many Caped Crusader fans, the biggest question will be whether the movie will mark the cinematic debut of the Batman family’s weirdest member—the Bat-Cow.

Like my beloved Condiment King, the Bat-Cow seems like it must be a crazy relic from the 50s or 60s, but it’s actually a modern joke. In this case, a joke from the mind of mad genius Grant Morrison, who often found unexpected ways to mix the archaic and modern aspects of Batman during a six-year run as the series’ head writer.

Morrison was obviously playing on not only the Bat-Hound but other animals who received the privilege of the “Bat” prefix during the earnest Silver Age, such as Mogo the Bat-Ape. The Bat-Cow was also, perhaps, poking fun at the elaborate backstories which DC’s writers had to spin to explain these pet sidekicks.

Take Krypto and Ace, who were both created in 1955, as comic books were under fire from moral crusaders for allegedly promoting delinquency. In Krypto’s debut issue, we learn that he was actually Superman’s family pet as a baby on Krypton, which his father Jor-El shot into space to test the rocket he would eventually use for Superman himself. The poor thing spent years trapped in space before landing on Earth.

And Ace, while a normal German Shepherd, accompanies Batman on select missions due to his canny crime-fighting and tracking skills, often wearing a black mask to conceal his identity. What identity could a dog have? The mask covers a distinctive scar on Ace’s face, which Batman fears could link him to Bruce Wayne due to “Dog Found” signs he posted throughout his neighborhood after finding him.

Tom King recently won an Eisner Award for a poignant story re-introducing a modern version of Ace, a vicious attack dog abandoned by the Joker (like the card, get it?) who Alfred persistently retrains—mirroring the care he gave young wounded Bruce years ago.

The Bat-Cow also has a complicated backstory, connected to the vast plots and conspiracies which populated Morrison’s stories. The Dynamic Duo rescue the Hereford from the abattoir after they discover a plot by the vast, evil Leviathan organization to poison Gotham’s meat in a 2012 story. They take the cow—which happens to have a bat-shaped patch of fur across its face—to the Batcave for testing. But Damian, Batman’s son and the current Robin, feels a connection to the bovine.

“As of now I’m a vegetarian,” he declares. “And this is the Bat-Cow.”

It’s not just the concept but the context that makes the Bat-Cow a memorable in-joke. While it recalls the corny era of Batman, the Bat-Cow’s explanation is logical enough—another example of Morrison stacking weird but plausible plot points together to reach something truly absurd. And while the Bat-Cow itself is silly, it’s first seen in a gruesome slaughterhouse shootout, and doesn’t feel so out of place in Morrison’s epic tale of time travel and apocalyptic battles between good and evil. It demonstrates Morrison’s conceit that all of the elements of Batman are secretly connected.

There had been a Bat-Cow a few years earlier in “Tiny Titans,” a DC kids book, but Morrison said that was a coincidence.

“It was an idea that’s time had come,” Morrison said during the 2013 Edinburgh Book Festival. “Like steam engine time, it’s Bat-Cow time.”

The other part of the joke is that the Bat-Cow doesn’t really do anything, except live—which I guess is an impressive feat for a cow. For some reason Batman keeps it in Batcave, or in the nearby barn on the Wayne estate. Maybe it keeps Ace happy, like Seabiscuit’s companion pony. At any rate, it’s stuck around, showing up in more recent stories now and then.

“It’s absurd and comics are a fertile playground for absurd ideas,” said comics writer Jimmy Palmiotti, who included the Bat-Cow in a 2020 alt universe story where the DC Super Pets become ravenous zombies. “People love the ‘what if’ aspect of comic storytelling and having a super-cow is a perfect example of that.”

Former DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio was especially enamored with the concept, writing three Bat-Cow stories himself, including one where it stands off against a vicious bull with a Joker grin.

But mostly it’s a bit of weird background for the Batcave, like the T-Rex and giant penny in Batman’s trophy room. A nod to history and canon, as well as a reminder of Damian’s love for animals—perhaps due to a feeling of kinship as someone born in a test tube and raised to be a warrior.

And that’s ultimately what all of these furry friends are about, a way for writers to humanize characters that can often become too fantastic to be relatable.

“We really get to see the humanity of a character in how they treat their animals,” Palmiotti said.