Dell’uomo-vespertilio. O su Leigong e Batman, tra mitologia cinese e fumetto della Golden Age americana = About a Vespertilian Man. Or about Leigong and Batman, between Chinese Mythology and Comic Strips of the American Golden Age

The Vespertilio (a term derived from Latin and already in use in the ancient literary language with the generic meaning of bat), a kind of flying mouse that lives mainly at night, has become, in the eyes of the common imagination, the animal that more than any other symbolises the world of darkness and our deepest fears. The article considers examples of human-animal hybridisation spanning cultures and eras as far apart as the ancient Mediterranean, Taoist China and the Christian West in the Middle Ages, and Wasp America in the first decades of the 20th century, highlighting their affinities and distances.