Like. We all know Batman. 1939, bat cowl and scalloped cape.

The same year, the same month, there was a pulp magazine hero named Black Bat making his debut.

He was a district attorney who had acid thrown into his face, blinding him. An eye operation enabled him to see, but only in the darkness. So he said that since he was "as blind as a bat" he "shall become a bat! The Black Bat!" He wore a scalloped cape like a bat's wings and a pointed cowl like a bat's ears, but just a regular suit other than that.

The two publishers found out about each other's characters and instantly sat down to sue each other, but Batman's editor at the time knew some of the pulp folks and worked out a deal.

Black Bat would never enter the comics and Batman would never enter the pulps.

(They weren't the first Bat hero, mind you. The Bat, from 1936, decided on his name when a bat flew through his cabin window and hovered over his lamp, casting its shadow on the walls)

(Batman, true to his origins of being steeped in plagiarism, didn't reveal his origin until 1940, combining elements of the two.)

(But they were all three of them knockoffs of the Shadow, so no one has any real right to complain.)

(Batman ditched his gun, the same pistol the Shadow carried, after his first adventure, but picked up the Black Bat's gauntlets. The Black Bat started wearing the same hat the Shadow wore over his cowl.)

there's also the Japanese hero Golden Bat, who debuted in 1930 and has a claim to being the world's first superhero.

(And only one of them never saw a year where they weren't getting published. The Black Bat started appearing recently as, I think, a part of Dynamite's attempts to use public domain heroes for their own stuff, but I think he vanished when they got the rights to the Shadow.)

Yeah, but there was zero chance Golden Bat had any factor in these guys getting created.

He was an ocean away, in another language entirely.