Flashback Friday: Lord Death Man's Name and Location

Each Friday, I take one of the entries from my old Super Posts and expand it into its own featured article.

This week: The name and location of Lord Death Man!

In 1966, at the height of Bat-Mania thanks to the hit tv show starring Adam West, DC released a Batman manga in Japan called バットマン (Battoman), and colloquially known as Batmanga in the West. It only ran for a year and featured a mixture of original material and material based on Batman comics of the time. One of the the examples of the latter category is Lord Death Man.

In Batman #180 (March 1966), Batman faces off against a foe known as Death Man, who dies as he's about to be brought to justice, only to later return. After this happens several times, Batman realizes he is simply faking his death each time, and at the end of the issue, he's struck by lightning and dies for real.

In the first three issues of the Batman manga (April 1966), Death Man appears as Lord Death Man, but otherwise follows the same plot as Batman #180.

Lord Death Man was later brought to comics by Grant Morrison in Batman, Incorporated #1 (November 2010). Grant Morrison's goal with his run on Batman was to make as much of his history as canon as possible. That included bringing back the Batman of All Nations, aka the Club of Heroes, and then expanded that idea into Batman, Incorporated in the series of the same name. Thus, Lord Death Man appeared as a villain of Mr. Unknown, a potential recruit as the Batman of Japan. Batman, Incorporated #2 then established that he and Death Man are the same person, although Batman suspects he's gotten some sort of upgrade in the years since they first fought.