Bonne Jour Bissextile!

That's "Happy Leap Day" in French, for all my non-French-speaking readers (and if I happen to actually have any French-speaking readers, I apologize in advance and blame Google Translate).

Why French? Because following long-standing Internet Tradition, today happens to be the day for celebrating the one of the greatest French characters ever created by Marvel:

Batroc Ze Leapair!

Now, with a superpower that boils down to "really good at Savate" and an accent that the French Knights in Monty Python would find overdone, nobody's going to mistake Batroc the Leaper for the likes of a Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom. And yet, there's a certain refreshing earnestness about him, something that demands to be taken seriously even as he puts the "comic" in "comic book".

Not one of the Dark Knight's better days.

I mean, this is a guy whose exploits range from "helping Captain America save New York" (from an explosion he helped engineer, mind you) to "landing a kick on Batman" to "putting the Avengers on his dating website without permission".

Really, with a resume like that it's no wonder that Batroc made an appearance - albeit a restrained one - in Captain America: The Winter Solider:


Of course Mon Capitaine comes out the winner, but it's all the same for Batroc - as the saying goes, c'est la vie.