VOTD: Animated 'Bat Man Of Shanghai' Transports Batman, Bane, And Catwoman To The 1930s

In the late '80s DC kicked off what became known as the Elseworlds set of stories with Gotham By Gaslight, penned by Brian Augustyn and drawn by Mike Mignola, featuring Batman as he might have existed in the late 19th century in London. Quite a few Elseworlds-style stories followed, expanding on the old comic book story tradition of creating alternate versions of and histories for popular characters, but they haven't often made the transition to animation.

Now we've got Bat Man of Shanghai (kind of a play on the title of Orson Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, I suppose) in which an encounter between Batman, Bane, and Catwoman is set in '30s Shanghai. Why? Because it looks neat. None of this really makes much sense, but the visualization of Bats as a semi-mystical warrior who can actually explode into a cloud of bats is pretty alright.

Created by Wolf Smoke Studios, Bat Man of Shanghai was previewed at Comic Con, and comes from the DC Nation block at Cartoon Network. [Topless Robot]