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"Night of the Bat": After arriving in the Victorian era world of Earth-19, the Challengers are suddenly blown separated over a sea due to an unknown interference during their transition.

Quote1 But how do we find anything on a world where they won't invent Google for another century?! Quote2
Jason Todd

Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Gotham by Gaslight #1 is an issue of the series Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer (Volume 1) with a cover date of January, 2008. It was published on November 24, 2007.

Synopsis for "Night of the Bat"

After arriving in the Victorian era world of Earth-19, the Challengers are suddenly blown separated over a sea due to an unknown interference during their transition.

Jason Todd was then rescued from a torrent sea by a frigate. Having lost eight hours on the sea, Jason is then reunited by the rest of the Challengers and they fly to their destination in Gotham City. During the night in Gotham's streets, Batman saves a woman from a large man-sized bat (Man-Bat). After a brief struggle the creature immediately knew Batman and fled. Confused, Batman then ask a blue cloaked figure in helping in stopping Man-Bat.

In the next morning, the Challengers are searching a lead to Ray Palmer, but feels strangely aggressively to each other lately but shrugs as minor stress in their journey. Jason then suggests of finding this world's Batman in helping them, and as he said this he notice Bruce Wayne but lost him.

Bruce Wayne visits Gotham Museum of Natural History and meets Daniel Garrett. Dan helps Bruce in contacting cryptozoologist Kirk Langstrom in helping solving the Man-Bat. However, Langstrom is highly skeptical of a giant sized bat and reconsider Bruce and Dan of their search. Despite without any leads, Bruce considers what he saw is real and Dan swears he will help him.

That night in Gotham, Donna, Kyle and Jason search throughout the city. Jason suddenly hears the cries of the Man-Bat's victims and fight the creature. Jason is then aided by Batman and Dan Garrett as the Blue Beetle, in which the latter scares the creature away with the power of his mystical Blue Scarab. Jason and the Challengers then introduce themselves to Batman and Beetle, and explains their search for Palmer. After hearing this, Beetle reveals to the Challengers that Ray have visited him days ago before leaving to the next reality. When the Challengers learns of the Man-Bat, they are alarmed that the creature may have come from their recent adventure in Earth-43 but reconsider of their assumption and focus on stopping the creature.

The next night, the group venture Gotham's park. Kyle suddenly collapse and a swarm of Man-Bats appear and set upon the group. Blue Beetle, Batman and Jason headlong attack the Man-Bats while Donna and Bob see's to Kyle. Despite having an upper hand over the Man-Bats, the creatures are attract to Kyle and reveals themselves to be apparitions of Kyle's Green Lantern Ring as they "possessed" him turning into a monstrous bat-like creature. This lead to the Challengers to strongly believe that Kyle was previously tainted in Earth-43. The heroes then fight the changed Kyle. Bob analyze Daniel's Blue Beetle Scarab as the only way in curing Kyle's condition and directs Dan in aiming the mystic energy of the scarab into Kyle's ring. The Blue Beetle directs the Scarab's energy at Kyle's ring, purging the tainted vampiric essence from Kyle in a magnificent burst of light, reverting him back to normal. After recovering, Kyle explains to everyone that he was previously attacked and bitten by a vampire in Earth-43 and believed that his ring had protected him but only for it to be tainted and causing to manifest the "Bat-Demon" despite Kyle's efforts in containing the creature within him. Furthermore, it is suggested earlier that the unexpected explosion on the Challengers' arrival was the cause of the ring, and that the continuing episodes of frequent fighting outburst among the team was the cause of the energy from the tainted ring.

By the next early morning, the Challengers gives thanks and goodbyes to Batman and Blue Beetle as they depart for the next universe. As they left, Batman and Beetle wonder on traveling through the multiverse, in which Dan believes that he himself may some day discover soon, and suggests of accelerating his training in his latest career as the Blue Beetle.

Appearing in "Night of the Bat"

Featured Characters:

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Notes

Trivia


See Also

Recommended Reading

Links and References

Tangent Supermans Reign Flashes
Multiversal Crossover
The events from this issue or series involve a Multiversal Crossover between Post-Infinite Crisis worlds and characters. This template will categorize articles that include it into Post-Crisis Multiverse Crossover.
See also Pre-Crisis Multiverse Crossovers.


DC Universe
Countdown Crossover
The events from this issue or series are related to the Countdown to Final Crisis. Countdown was a weekly series spanning exactly 52 issues, and tying in with plots across many story arcs all over the DCU. This template will automatically categorize articles that include it into the Countdown Crossover category.
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