When it was recently announced that Robert Pattinson, who played the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, had secured the role of Batman, a Twitter user wrote: ‘Worst vampire ever. Took him 11 years to turn into a bat.’ This is probably Twitter’s second greatest bat joke, beaten only by @LRBbookshop’s ‘I reckon Nagel actually knows full well what it’s like to be a bat’.
It is in the nature of social media to carp, though, and in that spirit I point out that, while Twilight’s Edward didn’t become a bat (his main uncanny powers beside immortality seemed to be great cheekbones and a Mr Darcy-ish froideur), Batman isn’t really a bat either.
Shapeshifting is usually thought of as an attribute of vampires, even if not — as it is for werewolves, including those in the Twilight books and films — the essential characteristic. Dracula, in Bram Stoker’s narrative, is directly described as turning himself into a large dog and, later, a vapour, but his bat transformations are either implied or asserted as one of his powers by other characters.
According to Richard Sugg, however, real vampires not only didn’t necessarily shapeshift as bats, but need not have had any wariness of garlic, crucifixes, sunlight, looking glasses or any need to feed on the living.
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