You know, it is almost absurd to think that there was a time before smartphones and metaverses when people truly believed in the occult. We are going to wait patiently for the ghost of Solomon to punish us for referring to him as a demon right now.
However, this ancient Abrahamic person is well known for more than merely being one of the richest kings of long-ago eras and enjoying the favour of Yahweh. As time went on, his legacy, may we say, regressed, and Solomon became linked to the occult and demonology.
King Paimon, who was the wig-splitting, tongue-clicking demon King of Hell who terrorises the Graham Family, will be recognisable to Hereditary fans. The grimoire known as The Lesser Key of Solomon contains a pantheon of 72 demons, including Paimon. It is from these pages that the monster that gave rise to Batman and his entire mythology emerged, and we do not say that lightly.
The truth is that this ancient Bat-God is to blame for everything that happened in Bruce Wayne’s life, including the fact that he even became Batman in the first place. Barbatos may have just recently gained popularity in the DC Universe thanks to Scott Snyder’s Dark Nights: Metal series.
Who is this mythical being from the past that was influenced by occult reality? What function does he serve in the huge and vibrant DC Multiverse? And why is he so fixated on employing Batman? In this video, we address all of these questions and more. This is the origin of Barbatos, the Bat God.
Barbatos existed in DC cannon way before the events of Dark Nights: Metal
Buckle up, Marvelous Viewers; this might make your head spin. Before making his first official on-page appearance, Barbatos had been a part of the Batman canon for about 30 years. That is about as mythic as a character in DC can get, yet he was not even presented like a complicated mess. Before the continuity-altering Metal Wars events, his history was meticulously woven into the story and developed through the years. And we owe Grant Morrison, a living legend, gratitude for his creation.
The one-off, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, marked Morrison’s debut contribution to the Batman franchise. The graphic novel is important for a number of reasons, including the fact that it introduced Killer Croc’s reptilian appearance before he actually mutated, revealed Mad Hatter’s obsession with Lewis Carroll, was the primary source of inspiration for the Arkham video game series, and contained the first canonical mention of the Bat-God Barbatos.
The plot goes as follows: in the 1920s, Elizabeth Arkham, the unstable mother of the future lunatic Amadeus Arkham, is plagued by the spectre of an evil bat-like being that stalks her 24 hours a day. The situation worsens to the point where she one day cries out to her son to save her from the abomination.
Amadeus kills his mother with a pearl-handled straight razor when he sees the “spectre of death,” as he describes it, and then erases all memory of the incident, attributing her death to suicide. He constructs Arkham Asylum—yes, the one you are seeing right now—as a method of remorse for his deeds.
For a time, it works; Amadeus gains respect in the psychological community for his work with the criminally insane, and even starts a family himself. But all roads lead back to darkness in the Batman-verse, so one of his inmates kills his wife and daughter, which finally drives him insane. He becomes obsessed with binding the spirit of the bat with ritual and sorcery, and is eventually confined in one of his own asylum’s cells, where he etches the runes and incantations with flesh and nail.
These spells are found by a certain Dr. Cavendish in the present, who associates Batman with the evil spirit of the bat, and takes on the personal mission of “purging him from the world.” He orchestrates a riot at Arkham and lures Bruce into the old bedchamber of Elizabeth Arkham to kick-off the ceremony. Though Batman is able to eventually deal with the situation and give Two-Face his sanity back (somewhat), this would be his first official encounter with the dark spectre known as Barbatos.
The second time Barbatos would surface would be during the events of “Dark Knight, Dark City”, written by Peter Milligan with cover art created by a pre-Hellboy Mike Mignola! This story also begins in the past, but it goes way back to the 18th century. In 1765, a man called Jacob Stockman and former US President Thomas Jefferson (who has long been associated with the mysterious Freemasons of America) tried to summon the demon Duke Barbatos (which is his official title in the Lesser Key of Solomon) into the body of a young woman.
This cabal succeeded in summoning the Bat-God, but failed to follow through on the actual sacrifice part of the ritual and ended up fleeing and sealing the temple entirely to prevent Barbatos from escaping into the known world. Stockman wrote about the entire incident in a secret confession that was eventually found by The Riddler, who planned to use it to finally get rid of The Batman once and for all.
He followed the “6 Steps of Preparation” that would prime Bruce’s body to become a vessel for Barbatos: kissing a person hanging from a noose, bathing in human blood, doing the danse macabre, you know, general satanic ritual stuff. Once he had done this, he lured Bruce into the same temple where the woman had been captured for sacrifice centuries ago. But the spectre of death that was Barbatos spoke to him and scared him so bad, he fled the scene and locked Batman inside to face the demon.
Barbatos revealed to him in their final confrontation that he was the spirit of Gotham City itself, and that it was by his hand that Batman had been created, but given the fact that Bruce didn’t much care about gods & demons and even lesser about the ones who cared about him, Batman went on the defeat the Duke of Hell and save the day as he always does. But don’t worry about that connection we just mentioned; because you’ll see it re-surface soon enough.
Dark Knight, Dark City ran through Batman Vol. 1 issues #452-454 as well as Detective Comics Vol. 1 #629-633 and saw one minor upgrade from Grant Morrison that changed the perception of the event and its overarching effect on the mythos of Barbatos himself; he introduced another character to the ceremony that was being performed that night. That character would be Thomas Wayne- 18th century ancestor of Bruce Wayne, a deluded occultist in his own right, and the future immortal Batman rogue known as Dr. Simon Hurt.
Morrison made Wayne the main offender of the ritual as opposed to Jefferson, and made him interact with what everyone thought was the Bat-God himself at the time. How? To put it simply, he mistook the Hyper-Adaptor for Barbatos. When Darkseid turned Batman into a ticking time-bomb that could destroy all creation when it went ding, and pushed him back in time, he also sent an entity known as the Hyper-Adaptor to chase after him and ensure he “fulfilled his purpose.”
When Bruce arrived in the 18th century, this entity was what Simon Hurt ended up summoning through his ritual, and by taking a bite out of its flesh he gained the immortal powers he is now renowned for. Just to be clear though: the Hyper-Adaptor is NOT Barbatos. You will find many sites online claiming that they are one and the same, but that is a simple case of too many retcons spoiling the continuity.
The Hyper-Adaptor is the entity that the Justice League ended up using the contain all the Omega Energy Bruce’s body had accumulated during his tumble through time. Barbatos isn’t a creation of Darkseid; if anything, Darkseid is a creation of Barbatos in a sense. What do we mean by that? Why don’t we just tell you instead?
The True Origin of Barbatos: The Bat-God that Created Batman
So for a long time, the concept of the DC Multiverse was set in stone: there were 2 halves to it, the Positive Matter Multiverse overseen by The Monitor, and the Anti-Matter Multiverse overseen by the Anti-Monitor. For decades, it was believed that these 2 entities and their domains were the only plains of existence in DC and that a mysterious “Hand”, witnessed by the Maltusian scientist Krona, was The Presence that created everything that the comic book publisher had to offer.
But then in the very first issue of Dark Nights: Metal, Kendra Saunders aka Hawkwoman aka Black Hawk (wow, she has a lot of cool nicknames) literally flips the script when she reveals that underneath the Multiverses they’ve already known, there exists a third: an entire sea of cosmic chaos where the worst nightmares and brightest hopes give birth to worlds so twisted, they should never even exist in the first place.
And that’s where Barbatos comes in. Over the course of the events we now know as the Metal Wars, we get the actual origin of the DC Multiverse and are exposed to the fact that, just like our own universe, we’d barely even begun to scratch the surface of its scope. Thanks to Scott Snyder and his team, then, for giving us an explanation for all of it in the most cliff-notes fashion possible.
So, the Multiverse was created by an entity called Perpetua who works for The Judges of the Source in-canon, making her kind of like a cosmic assistant manager. Her job was to create this Multiverse, ensure its stability, and then leave, so it could grow and figure itself out by itself. You know, like any normal Multiverse. So to accomplish this, Perpetua gave birth to three sons.
We’ve already spoken of two of them: Mar Novu the Monitor and Mobius the Anti-Monitor. But while their roles were more observatory, Perpetua’s third son got arguably the hardest job in the Multiverse: that of fashioning entire universes from the cosmic essence of sentient life, represented by the fears & hopes of the populations that will arise within them. This 3rd son was called Alpeus, but you might know of him as the World Forger.
Alpeus’ role was as simple as we’ve described it here; he’d created stable planets out of the aforementioned ingredients and observe them for a while, before deciding whether to send them to the Positive Matter Multiverse or the Anti-Matter Multiverse. The World Forge itself was located in a realm of pure creation & possibility; but with the prospect of hope, comes the prospect of corruption, and to keep that corruption in check, Alpeus created a great Cosmic Dragon who would devour any worlds that he deemed to be too unstable for ascendance.
Anybody want to guess this dragon’s name? That’s right, folks; Barbatos was the dragon. For eons, Alpeus laboured at his forge and created stable universes, while Barbatos devoured the ones that didn’t pass the standard. But then the creation process became halted at 52 universes because the devourer’s appetites for destruction had outgrown mere worlds; he wanted to feast upon the flesh of cosmic creation itself.
So Barbatos slew his master and took his place, albeit with no intention of taking on his roles for himself. With Perpetua sealed behind the Source Wall for her transgressions against the Grand Cosmic Order and Mar Novu & Mobius engaged in their own, endless rivalry, Barbatos allowed every world that rose up in that unnamed sea of creation to go unchecked; to rot, fester, and destroy itself within the place from which it was supposed to ascend.
That’s how this 3rd realm of Perpetua’s creation came to be known as the Dark Multiverse, and also how Barbatos, the Grand Cosmic Dragon, became its daemon ruler. He decided to take on a symbol that humanity has long associated with fear, disease, & death; he made the Bat his personal sigil. But that’s Barbatos’ origin story explained. His connection to Bruce Wayne and why it is important is what our next section is going to address.
Batman Tries to Go Back in Time and Fails Miserably: Barbatos’ First Proper Appearance in DC
The events of Dark Nights: Metal issue #2 make you feel like you’re watching an action-flick but with superheroes; the Justice League has split off into teams and is hunting down a mark who stole something very important- and very deadly- from the Hall of Justice. Superman does a comms check with every member of the League, but no one has found their target yet, not Diana, not Hal, not Arthur or Barry.
It’s when Clark calls in to Cyborg that we find out the bigger picture: The Justice League is on the hunt for Batman himself! It looks like Batman has been having some premonitions and picking up on signs leading back to the events of Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting that have driven him paranoid to the point where he’s literally acting crazy. Superman reminds Cyborg that Bruce is “just one man”, but this is Batman we’re talking about!
If you think he doesn’t have his Family backing him up, you’re gonna be as sorry as the League. Case in point, when Diana asks Robin to stop driving his behemoth of a truck and says there is no winning here, he replies by saying, “Listen, lady, I’m 13 years old and driving a Bat-Hog through the Amazon on a Tuesday morning. I’m already winning! Family…evasive actions, now!” We imagine Bruce shedding a tear of pride looking at how far his boy has come since the time he was sent to kill him.
After the League manage to piss off The Parliament of the Trees and Superman punches through Clayface’s chest (we couldn’t tell you which one, even if we wanted to), we see where Batman really is; at the Valley of the Kings, in the Tomb of Prince Khufu, aka Carter Hall’s Ancient Egyptian incarnation, aka Hawkman. Gotta love these multiple nicknames of the Bird Tribe members! Bruce calls out to Dream, who has been guiding him towards his goal all this while, and asks him if he’s doing the right thing; and he’s answered by his fellow Trinity members.
Superman and Wonder Woman plead with Bruce to return the weapon he stole, arguing that it had destroyed entire worlds and killed their friends; to which Batman replies, “I know, and I’m here to use him! Now, stay back!” Revealing the weapon he stole to be Baby Darkseid himself! Clark & Diana are confused by this egregious insult to the memory of their friends and Bruce himself; how could he be willing to use a being so evil, so vile as Darkseid?
But as the adage goes, Batman’s plans have plans hidden within them, and so Bruce explains to his closest friends just why he is doing what he is doing. He had already spoken to them about an ancient tribe called the Judas Tribe, which evolved into what we now know as the Court of Owls.
This tribe has been worshipping Barbatos since the Dawn of Man. Now, they were preparing a vessel to accomplish his arrival into their world, because as we’ve noted before, Barbatos is a resident of the Dark Multiverse, and he cannot travel into the “world above” without “mantling” a certain person with “heavy metals”: Electrum, Dionesium, Promethium, the Nth Metal, Batman had been exposed to them all, and if he touched the last forbidden metal that lies beyond the periodic table, he would turn into something that would unleash Barbatos onto the world.
Batman has this idea, that Barbatos saw him when he went back in time after the events of Final Crises, so he plans to do it again using Baby Darkseid’s Omega Effect and nip the problem in the bud. But, there’s only one problem, as pointed out by Kendra Saunders who radios in as she flies to their location; they weren’t in the Tomb of Prince Khufu, they were in the Tomb of Hath-Set, a worshipper of Barbatos and an ancient affiliate of the Judas Tribe himself.
Batman is taken unawares by the Court of Owls, who infect him with the Final Metal- Batmanium- and prepare for the arrival of their dark overlord, who they’d hoped would deliver them riches and luxuries beyond measure. When the portal opened, they thought their God was reaching through; instead, they were massacred by a band of Rabid Robins, their hopes of “salvation” dashed with the dust.
Barbatos did emerge, but he didn’t come alone. As Superman & Wonder Woman called out for their friend Bruce Wayne, they were met by not 1, but 7 of them- 7 evil, twisted versions of their closest ally who were born on the worst hellholes of the Dark Multiverse. 7 Dark Knights- whose origins we’ve discussed in detail on our channel before, links in our description- who represented the worst nightmares of Batman come alive, led by the Demon Bat-God Barbatos.
As these evil Batmen prepared to sap the life out of the positive matter universe and pull Earth Prime into the darkness, we asked ourselves the same question that Superman & Wonder Woman had; where is Batman? The answer was revealed in the pages of the one-shot Dark Nights: Metal tie-in Batman Lost.
Old Man Bruce’s Nightmares Live Tortured Lives in the Dark Multiverse: How Barbatos is connected to Batman
Batman Lost opens with an apparent time skip. Bruce Wayne is much older here, nearly 80 years old, and has managed to create a family of his own; though the only person we really meet is Janet, his granddaughter. Janet asks her grandpa Bruce was a Batman story. Bruce casually remarks that half of them contradict each other, but all of them happened, nonetheless.
Janet picks out her favorite Batman adventure to listen to: the Case of the Chemical Syndicate, which, fun fact, is also the very first appearance of Batman, ever, thanks to it being included in Detective Comics issue #27 which was released all the way back in 1939! Bruce starts reading the story, but he notices that some of the details don’t add up at all. For instance, he doesn’t recall there ever being blood on the window of the house he was investigating, but it was mentioned in his own personal records here.
His granddaughter urged him to read on, so he shook it off and attributed it to the fog of old age and continued. As the comic goes on to describe a rather Hitchcockian scenario with the birds, Bruce realises that everything he has been “recalling” so far is an illusion; and then he gets pulled into another. He’s transported to the Dawn of Time, just as he was during the events of The Return of Bruce Wayne issue #1.
In that issue, Bruce encounters a tribe of man called the Deer People, and inspires them, alongside rogue elements of the Bird Tribe, to create a brand new tribe of humanity. As the Man of Bats, he became the inspiration for the Bat Tribe/The Tribe of Judas, and it was during his exploits through the Stone Age that Barbatos first glimpsed him. Intrigued by the fact that this human, displaced through time, had made his sigil of fear into a symbol of hope, Barbatos selected Bruce to become the wagon upon which he would arrive into the Known Multiverse.
Now, Bruce watched his ancestors kill members of the Bird Tribe in a battle, and he saw Hath-Set and Hawkman collide in the first of their many eternal encounters. A mysterious woman touches Bruce with the hide of a giant bat, and he’s transported to an alternate reality where he somehow became a villain and his own son Damien tried to kill him. He breaks through the illusion and enters another part of journey through time; this time, he re-visits the events of Dark Knight, Dark City and is playing the role of Simon Hurt himself.
Jefferson begs him to not go through with it, but the sacrifice their order had prepared for the Ceremony of the Bat rises and tries to compel Bruce to “open the window.” When he breaks through this illusion, he ends up in a reality where Batman went all-in on his contingencies and the people turned on him, electing The Joker as their mayor and killing anyone affiliated with the Bat Symbol.
Green Arrow and Batwoman urge him to run away, but by now, Batman has realised that these are mere tricks being played on him by the Dark Multiverse and Barbatos, so he decides to continue climbing. This time, he ends up in the timeline of Alan Wayne, and observes the mysterious metal that has been lining all of Gotham through an owl-shaped telescope. He’s killed by a Talon and again, he tumbles into a reality where he is escaping Earth in a rocket alongside Harley Quinn.
Batman has had enough of Barbatos’ sick games by this point, so he claws his way back into the study we see at the beginning of this issue and confronts his “dear granddaughter” who is revealed to be an aspect of Barbatos that was manipulating Bruce into staying in the Dark Multiverse. Batman confronts Barbatos and demands that he show himself, screaming “Where are you?!”
But the Bat-God simply answers that he has been everywhere. He reveals that ever since he first glimpsed Batman, he has been influencing his life for this very moment. He tells Bruce that he is the reason behind his greatest tragedies, and his greatest triumphs. He tells the World’s Greatest Detective that all his investigative triumphs were not because of his inhuman wit, but because of Barbatos’ will. He tells Bruce that he was the bat he saw that night he decided to become Batman.
And when Bruce Wayne refuses to believe what he perceives to be Barbatos’ lies and finally breaks through the window, he realises to his deep personal horror that he was, in fact, right. Every alternate reality we mentioned here isn’t a possible future that Bruce was experiencing; it was a real world in the Dark Multiverse, and Barbatos gave him but a taste of his true undoing.
Barbatos revealed to Bruce that there were thousands of worlds- whole galaxies- that existed in the Dark Multiverse thanks to Batman’s paranoid and fearful nature. He tells Bruce the ultimate truth that he doesn’t want to hear; that he is the reason for his invasion, and that no matter how hard he tries to deny it, this thing will always ring true for Batman; he is a predator holding himself back with extreme caution and prejudice. When those restraints break, he will transform into a being of unfathomable evil and destruction.
Bruce is traumatized by these cosmic revelations as Barbatos revels in his pain & suffering. He begs the Bat-God to send him “back to his dream”, which he happily obliges. The last few panels of Batman Lost show us “Grandpa Bruce” back in his study with Janet waiting for another story from him, as the real Bruce Wayne is strapped to a device in the Dark Multiverse that saps him of his very life essence.
Batman Lost, Batman Found, Batman Too Late: How Barbatos Conquered Prime Earth
While Bruce was being used as a battery in the Dark Multiverse, the rest of the League was searching for all traces of the Heavy Metals he’d spoken of to prepare for the eventual conflict with Barbatos. Well, the rest of them except Superman, who travelled into the Dark Multiverse to save Bruce but became trapped as an energy source himself.
Now that Batman had realised what Barbatos had done to him during the events of Batman Lost, he was wide awake, pissed beyond measure, and surrounded by evil Supermen; one of whom had killed Bruce in his world and taken on his mantle as Batman! But Bruce knew his best friend better than he knew himself, and managed to escape with Supes in tow thanks to Daniel the Dreamer.
Meanwhile, the JLA was converging on every known location of Nth Metal in the Multiverse: Atlantis, Thanagar, The Rock of Eternity, basically any place you can imagine being super-secretive within the scope of DC. Each of them reach their marks, but something terrible unfolds when they do so.
Aquaman finds the Tomb of Arion desecrated with murder when he arrives to the “secret spot” with Deathstroke. Green Lantern, Mister Terrific and Plastic Egg are held captive by Starro the Conqueror and Onimar Synn on Thanagar, who plan to use their Phoenix Cannons to obliterate the Earth instead of saving it. And Wonder Woman & Dr. Fate are forced to fight Black Adam and Kendra Saunders at the Rock of Eternity in a duel over the cosmic brain of the Anti-Monitor. The common thread connecting them all? You guessed it; Barbatos.
The Bat-God had managed to infect the very people who were trying to save the world from him. And that was something Batman & Superman would find out as well. Daniel took them into his own Library and told them the story of the Multiverse and the creation of Barbatos.
He then told them that the answers they sought were at the Forge of Worlds. Batman wonders if it’s the Nth Metal that they seek, but Daniel tells them it’s something much more; the metal of all creation itself. He opens a portal for them, but Bruce hesitates. Barbatos and his experiences with the Dark Multiverse have left him a broken husk of a man.
Clark asks him to look for inspiration wherever he can, and that’s when he recalls his son Damien and his Family whom he has lifted up with him over the years. He is filled with wonder when he thinks of them, and says to Clark that they will be better than he ever was. Superman says it’s good to have him back, to which Bruce replies “Don’t get sappy on me, Kent. I’m Batman. Let’s do this thing.”
But perhaps it would have been better if he had taken a moment to allow his emotions to be expressed to their fullest extent; because when they arrived at the Forge of Worlds, they found it dead cold; and to their ultimate horror, they weren’t alone. Batman remarks that Carter Hall’s Journals swore that the Forge was a place of creation, but as it turns out, he was wrong.
The long-lost Hawkman emerges from the shadows, mutated into Barbatos’ Dragon of the End, and confronts his two old friends as the world above continues to fall to the Bat-God’s Dark Knights. Coast City, Central City, Amnesty Bay, Metropolis; they had all fallen to his evil Batmen, and Barbatos himself lounged upon Challenger’s Mountain, getting periodic updates from The Batman Who Laughs, waiting patiently to release his Anti-Music and sink all of creation with him into the darkness. Again, to find out more about these Dark Knights, check out the links we have provided in this video’s description; we promise you, you won’t be disappointed!
What makes Barbatos a God-Like Entity?
As we have mentioned before, Barbatos is one of the very first beings to populate the Multiverse. He came before even the Maltusians did, and so, that automatically makes him one of the strongest beings in existence at the time of the Metal Wars. What makes him a God-like entity? Well, the simple fact that he was created by a God, as a God, for a Godly purpose.
Barbatos was fashioned out of the essence of creation by Alpeus The World Forger as a guardian and a check-and-balance system for the endless potential of sentient life. But his role as a devourer of world eventually ended up corrupting him, and he killed his own creator, ostensibly replacing him in his role as a Creator God. But Barbatos himself never tried to Forge a world; he simply let the chaotic creations of the Dark Multiverse grow, fester, and decay in an endless cycle of making and unmaking.
As a cosmic dragon, his physiological limits are far greater than any before him; he can withstand blows from any being in the world, and isn’t vulnerable to the Nth Metal that is lethal for most residents of the Dark Multiverse. In fact, even Element X, which is supposed to be the pure metal of all creation, isn’t enough to take him down; as evidenced by Hawkwoman’s failure to kill him by ripping through his supposed heart. On top of that, Barbatos is nigh-omniscient and can peer across the veils that separate universes.
His hand can corrupt even the purest of souls, as witnessed by his temporary binding of Kendra Saunders. Barbatos’ Anti-Music produces a vibrational frequency so incomprehensibly powerful, that it almost sunk Earth Prime- the literal fulcrum of all sentient life in DC- into the Dark Multiverse. Had it not been for the combined efforts of an Element X-empowered Justice League and the trace amounts of this purity that they harnessed from all lives populating Earth Prime, they might never have been able to overwhelm the evil Bat-God at all. There is something to be said about a being so powerful, only chains fashioned from the metal of the Forge of Worlds can hold him back; and that something, is the word terrifying.
Marvelous Verdict
And that’s it for this video, Marvelous Viewers. Trust us; if you think that this is already way too long to digest, we could have easily turned this into one of those 4-hour-long iceberg videos and it still wouldn’t be enough; that’s how important and integral Barbatos has become to the mythos of Batman himself. He doesn’t make a lot of appearances himself in the comics; mostly, he’s depicted as a spectre, a shadow, an ominous presence to be so scared of that you lose your mind in a Lovecraftian fashion.
And indeed, that is why we stop here. Barbatos is an entity that has been carefully woven into the very fabric of Batman stories, and going forwards, everyone will realise this one dark truth about their great Caped Crusader; no matter how heroic his actions might get, his identity itself was forged in the dark, and as Barbatos always says, all roads lead into darkness.