Flashback Friday: Professor Gorilla

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

This week: Professor Gorilla!

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. Professor Gorilla is a bit of both.

Detective Comics #339 (March 1965) tells the story of a scientist who invented a machine that could transfer the abilities of one animal to another - he essentially invented a scientific version of Vixen's animal totem. However, the experiment didn't quite go according to plan, so he and his test subject actually switched abilities instead. He got the strength and speed of a gorilla and the gorilla, Karmak, got his intelligence. So Karmak started using the scientist to rob banks. You know, like gorillas do.

Issues 10-12 of the Batman manga (July 1966) loosely adapts this story. Although the first issue is a pretty faithful adaptation of the backstory, it then veers off into its own story for the next two chapters. Karmak dons a costume, starts going by "Professor Gorilla", and attacks people for mistreating animals. The story ends when the effects of the machine wear off and Karmak goes back to being a normal gorilla.

In 2010, Grant Morrison launched a new series called Batman, Incorporated. For about three years at this point, Morrison was telling an epic Batman story over several series that tried to make every Batman story canon in one way or another. "Batman, Incorporated" was an expansion of the Club of Heroes/Batman of All Nations idea that he brought back in 2007, and saw Bruce Wayne traveling around the world to find heroes to be their country's Batman and be funded by the Wayne Corporation. In issue 2 (December 2010), he travels to Japan, which allows Morrison to bring in some details from the Batman manga. Most of the issue concerns itself with the Japanese hero Mr. Unknown fighting Lord Death Man, but after he "dies" and is reborn as Batman Japan, we get a splash page of him fighting Professor Gorilla.