Warning! Spoilers ahead for Batman: Urban Legends #12

While Warner Bros. is releasing a DC League of Super-Pets animated film with Superman’s dog Krypto assembling a team of heroic animals, there’s no way it will be like the team formed by Batman’s dog Ace the Bat-Hound in the comics. In the latest issue of DC’s anthology series Batman: Urban Legends, the Dark Knight has been taken hostage while his dog Ace is taken to an underground kennel. Filled with animals who have been darkly experimented on, it’s clear that the team of pets the Bat-Hound has recruited won’t be featured in an animated family film anytime soon.

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Appearing in Batman: Urban Legends #12, the second chapter of “Hounded” comes from writer Mark Russell and artist Karl Mostert. Having been taken to this secret kennel and lab at the Gotham Pet Cemetery, Ace the Bat-Hound has joined several other discarded pets who are now the experiments of Herbet Schwann, a supposed humanitarian who secretly runs the illicit operations behind the scenes. However, it seems as though Ace is as loyal as ever, determined to save Batman who was taken hostage by Russians following an explosion that separated them in the first chapter.

Prior to his escape, Ace the Bat-Hound encounters several different pets who’ve received enhancements and modifications against their will, like a cognitively enhanced chicken. Not only can it play chess but its legs were cut off and replaced with a wheelchair to test her motor control (along with a voice synthesizer she’s yet to use). There’s also a turtle who has no choice but to become quite fast while running on a treadmill with a grinder at the end, a thieving squirrel named Li’l Nutz and an abused bear named Ursa who used to be a bouncer at the same club where Batman is now a hostage. Thankfully, Ace frees all of these poorly treated creatures who use their abilities to help him escape, avoiding what would have been a dark future of being incinerated as soon as they lost their usefulness to Schwann.

Now, Ace has his own “League of Super-Pets Dark” to save Batman. They certainly seem to be a formidable collection of animals, escaping the lab and taking out several guards along the way. However, it’s unlikely that Schwann will just let them go free as he’ll no doubt try to make them his captives once more to continue his twisted experiments. As a result, it seems as though saving and getting support from Batman will be this new animal team’s best chance of securing freedom for good, perhaps finding homes with Bruce Wayne or even with some of his allies.

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All in all, Ace fits right in with these mistreated animals seeing as how he was saved by Batman from a life of being an attack dog for the Joker himself. As such, Ace is a smart enough Bat-Hound who knew that action needed to be taken to save these animals in a similar predicament. In any case, it should be pretty exciting and comical to see Batman’s reaction when he’s saved not only by Ace the Bat-Hound, but a whole team of Super-Pets at his side to help save the day.

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About The Author


Kevin Erdmann
(2538 Articles Published)

Kevin Erdmann is one of Screen Rant’s staff writers. With a major in Cinema Studies and a minor in Comics and Cartoon Studies from the UofO, Kevin is pretty sure he’s writing for the right site. While Kevin is a huge Marvel fan, he also loves Batman because he’s Batman and is a firm believer that Han shot first. Disney also shares a big part of his fan patronage. Kevin lives in Oregon with his wonderful wife and sinister cat who is no doubt currently plotting his demise.

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