When Bob Kane and Bill Finger presented the Batman to the world (okay, pretty much just the U.S., but eventually…) in the lead story in issue 27 of Detective Comics, Finger had already convinced Kane to give up his original idea for a costumed adventurer to help capitalize on the craze started by Siegal and Shuster’s Superman in the sister magazine Action Comics. As Finger recalled:
…[Kane] had an idea for a character called ‘Batman’, and he’d like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane’s, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of … reddish tights, I believe, with boots … no gloves, no gauntlets … with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign … BATMAN. (Wikipedia, “Bob Kane”)
Of course, most readers will recognize the germ of another character, Robin, in that description.
At any rate, Finger convinced Kane to go with a full cowl and scalloped cape. He also suggested Kane leave the eyes blank white with not visible pupils in order to add a sense of mystery (one of the best things animated films have over any cinematic form of Batman, I think, is that they retain those blank, somewhat-creepy eyes).
Those blanked-out eyes became heavily influential; while masked characters in comics before Batman had clearly visible eyes, many characters such as the original Atom (Al Pratt) and Green Lantern (Alan Scott), and even Mr. America, the character created when rock ’em-sock ’em adventurer Tex Thompson turned superhero, also had blank white eyes, and it has continued as a tradition in comics drawn by all artists to this day (although some character like the second Green Lantern [Hal Jordan] only have blank eyes when he’s drawn at a distance, and even some Batman artists occaisionally show his eyes through the mask in close-ups).
Besides these changes, the revised Batman costume dropped red in favor of black and gray colors befitting a mysterious creature of the night and added gloves, although, as we’ll see, Kane wasn’t initially sold on that part. And thus we have this:
Two issues later, though, we see these:
Not only gloves, but the Batman’s utility belt is closer to the more modern version: the same vials (which the Batman initially used quite frequently to spread gas, acid, etc.) but with a square buckle instead of a rounded one:
…right up until Frank Miller got hold of it and stuck some Rob Liefeld style pouches on it (no, I’m still not happy about that). Also, whoever is doing colors is using blue for highlights instead of coloring the cape and cowl completely in black. This was done because the coloring limits of early comic books made details impossible to render without a highlight color. Wikipedia simply chalks the change up to ‘coloring schemes,’ but I, having read a great many 1940’s and later vintage comics, am inclined to respectfully disagree, or at least go into more detail. Abandoning black-on-black was not simply a ‘scheme,’ but absolutely necessary. Given the coarseness of the cheap printing used in comics at that time, all black was simply not going to supply the ability to make the images two-dimensional; a more distinguishable contrast color was needed for that. It is improvements in printing tech, up to and including our own digital age, have made the return to black I will mention later possible without drastically raising the printing costs.
Some things still remain the same, such as the Batman’s cape flaring into a ‘real wings’ shape.
Then, in issue #31 of Detective, in “Batman vs. the Vampire, Part 1,” a story with a script freely cribbed by Gardner Fox from Mathew ‘Monk’ Lewis’ 1796 novel The Monk, (if you ever wonder about the Batman’s Gothic origins, since Fox was a frequent writer of his exploits over the years, look no further) Kane has the gloves extending up the Batman’s arms. I can only assume we’ve Bill Finger to thank for that. Also, Kane is veering away from the ‘spread’ ears of the cowl to the more vertically oriented ones we’re familiar with today.
Pictured are (r-l) the Monk, The Batman, and Bruce Wayne’s first flame/fiancé, Julie Madison.
By Detective #33, the costume’s vertical ‘ears’ and full gauntlets are here to stay:
In the last panel you can see that Kane has drawn the cape closer to the manner with which most Batman readers will be familiar, as stylized bat wings, whether it makes any physical sense or not: a suggestive but not quite so obvious effect, as opposed to the ‘stiff,’ possibly wire-supported ‘points’ Kane had previously been drawing. Also, note that while the Batman has a hot-rodded car—what is that, a V-16?—it’s by no stretch of the imagination a ‘Batmobile,’ although we have seen a ‘bat autogyro,’ one with robot controls that is capable of crossing the Atlantic, in “The Monk” by this point.
And finally, in Detective #36, behold! we have bat scallops/spikes on the outer edges of the Batman’s gauntlets instead of the flared cuffs. Also, the blue tones are now being used on the cowl and upper side of the cape instead of just the underside, the boots, and the gloves. That coloring will last until 1986 in The Dark Knight Returns, (which was printed using a ‘high end’ process that made this work) during which Batman will revert from a costume with blue tones to one with the original black. After that, black will again become the norm for more and more of his appearances.
That pretty much completes the Batman’s costume as we will see it for some time, although at some point (fairly soon, actually, in Batman #2) the ‘ears’ will get shorter. I never have understood the reasoning behind that, except that Kane was being pushed harder and harder to keep up with demand, and he insisted on doing all the pencils until, of course, he couldn’t. Perhaps shorter ‘ears’ made drawing faster? Or did Jerry Robinson, who was doing the inking by then, shorten the ears over Kane’s pencils?
Of course, twenty years later during editor Julie Schwartz and legendary comics artist Carmine Infantino‘s tenure, the blue tones will have both lightened and pretty much taken over the dark parts of the costume, and yellow circles will suddenly surround the bat on the Batman’s chest, but it may take me some time to get there.
I do not claim ownership of any of the partial image representations posted here
