Depending On The Artist / Batman

Holy different designs Batman!^note And this is only a small sample.

Depending on the Artist in this franchise.

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Batman

• The length of the ears on his mask is never, ever consistent. Ever. You would not believe the disparity here.
• There are lots of variables in Batman's costume: the color (gray vs. black vs. grayish blue, blue highlights or no), eyes (full white vs. actual eyes), and are just a few. Some are cyclical features (especially the colors), while others are done to match media portrayals (the all-black 90s costume is intended to match the Burton films). Plus, certain artists give him specific features: Howard Porter's Batman has elaborate "hooks" on the shoulders, for instance. The chest symbol (yellow oval with a bat in it vs. none vs. black bat silhouette on an otherwise solid-gray chest plate) is explicitly a separate costume item.
• The storage system his belt uses (cloth pouches vs. rigid capsules vs. both), the fastening of his cape (under the neck vs. at the shoulders), the fins on his gloves (the length, shape and number of them vary wildly), how much of his face is revealed (The Dark Knight batsuit has a noticeably smaller opening, while Dick Sprang's drawings will have the entire lower half of his face showing), his size (ranging from a fairly normal height and build to the 7-foot-plus that was Frank Miller's Batman in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), whether or not he has stubble, whether or not his fingertips have "claws" (fairly uncommon, but not unheard of), the length and shape of his briefs (range from nigh-thong to short shorts), whether or not the bat-briefs are separate from his tights or sewn on, the shape of his cape (ranging from an even bat-wing pattern to a tattered and torn look), how much of his facial expression shows through the mask, the shape of the eyes (occasionally look like triangular slits, seen in Year One and The Animated Series) and the exact structure of his boots (whether they're smooth and tight like the rest of his costume or bulky and thick like combat boots). Batman truly is the most versatile superhero, visually, due to the large amount of detailing on his costume and the simple motif.
• The length of his cape is also inconsistent. A book on how to draw DC characters admits that this can sometimes be intentional; in an issue where he is going to be doing a lot of fighting, it is fairly short and moves easily to make his movements look smooth and dynamic. If however, he is going to be standing around or posing on rooftops it is much longer and heavier, often long enough that it would drag on the floor without the dramatic wind.
• His gloves can vary wildly, from being simple elbow-length leather gloves to full-blown gauntlets. When they're just gloves, are they skintight or do they bunch at the wrists? Are the three scallops along his forearms curved or angled, sharp or dull? Are the gauntlets simply armored plating or do they have hidden gadgets such as a hologram projector? Some versions have the knuckles of the gloves be plain while others have metal protectors to reinforce his punches.
• Behind the scenes of some film versions, it has been noted that there are several capes of several shapes and lengths depending on what looked best in any given shot. In other words, to make it look right, DOTA is so necessary that you have to replicate DOTA for the Live-Action Adaptation.
• Then there's how much of his costume is "armor". Sometimes it looks like traditional superhero tights, other times there seem to be interlocking plates and more rigid sections. Sometimes the armor is worn under the tights. Kevlar is canonically an important feature of his costume (especially around the chest), but plenty of times he has been seen removing his "shirt", with no evidence of any armor underneath or within it.
• There's also the matter of his face. In the Silver Age, he had a distinct lantern jaw (which inspired his look on Batman: The Animated Series) but in the Bronze Age, his face became much narrower with an almost pointy chin. Since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the shape of Bruce's head has been pretty much left up to the artist's whim.

Allies

• Both incarnations of Batwoman were subjected to many artistic variations:
  • Kathy Kane's bodysuit was either a solid yellow, yellow with black trim in the front (with the top mimicking a bustier), or the darker trim depicted as yellow with black shading. The last option was presumably to make the darker part appear as a stylized gold, with the limitations of printing at the time. Her mask shifted between being colored red, yellow, or black with yellow or red trim at the top. In her short-lived return in the '70s, her batsuit gained a red bat symbol and her gloves suddenly became fur-trimmed.
  • The Kate Kane version of Batwoman started out with light auburn-red hair in 52, although her later appearances have her hair as a very saturated cherry red color (as well as her wig). Her eyes were also originally colored brown, but ever since her arc in Detective Comics and the Batwoman series, they have appeared as a bright green. Her skin tone was also lightened considerably to be a "vampire porcelain white" by JH Williams, which has stuck for all later depictions.
    • Her costume was originally colored with blue highlights, though it has since been depicted as a straight black. Sometimes her mask will cover her forehead, while other times it will leave it exposed. Her gauntlets are alternatively drawn as being separate from her gloves (as with Williams' intention) or as a solid part of them.
    • Kate's stepmother Catherine/Katherine was also shown to be a blonde in a cameo in 52, while her appearances in the Batwoman series depict her with brown hair.
  • Kathy Kane's sidekick Bat-Girl had her dress length range from being past the knee to it being much shorter and its skirt either being full or flat. Her mask also alternated between being red or black, and her gloves would tend to come and go.
• Bat-Mite's Chest Insignia can be a misshapen bat-insignia, a lightning bolt, or an M (likely the first one was the original idea).

Robin

• Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
  • In the New 52, artists seemingly can't decide what his hairstyle actually is, which is especially bad since the hair is the only way to differentiate the Bat-boys. At first, in Batman. it was spiky and at a decent length. At the same time in his own Nightwing series, it was just long. Then it became an overgrown undercut in Nightwing while Batman and Robin kept the previous look Nightwing had established ^note You can't even say Batman and Robin took place after the change in Nightwing, because his B&R appearance is explicitly shown to be after his hair changed in his own solo series. Finally, by the time of Grayson, it's consistent.
  • His Batman suit. Was it black or dark blue? Once Bruce came back, some artists made it so Dick's ears were shorter (they were originally as long as Bruce's, but he launched them... yeah), and his suit was a darker blue in comparison to Bruce's all-black suit (at this point, Bruce's suit actually became consistent). There was also some effort to have his height be consistent in comparison to certain characters, such as Superman and Donna Troy. I.e, Batman is shown to be about equal in height to Clark and taller than Donna, while Dick is noticeably shorter than Clark and about the same as Donna.
  • What did he wear as Robin: His signature shorts or pants more like future Robin's? It varies depending on the flashback and medium.
• Red Hood (Jason Todd)
  • Red Hood's... hood. Within its own series it's inconsistent, never mind the other Bat-books. Is it metal or cloth? Does it have a mouth or an Iron Man-Esque pseudo-mouth? Does it have anything resembling a mouth at all? Are the eyes whited out or not? Is there a mask-looking paint job around the eyes? In the New 52, it has never, ever been consistent.
  • Jason's eyes are either blue or green. And not as in they became green after he died, as in, since coming back, he has had both eye colors.
  • The question of whether Jason was a natural redhead or brunette was answered differently by different colorists over the years in a very inconsistent manner.
• Robin (1993) Tim Drake
  • Much like his mentor the length of his cape seems to change depending on what would look best in the issue at hand, and while he was Robin some colorists couldn't seem to agree on just how the black outer side and yellow lining were put together.
  • Some artists drew his steel-toed tabi boots as just regular boots, probably because it was a way to cut a bit of time off drawing by not putting in the separation.
  • Tim's height is incredibly variable with the only constant seeming to be that he's way shorter than Bruce when Bruce is on the panel with him, shorter than Kon-el and taller than Damian.
  • Several artists like to give him really thick eyebrows but others keep them more in line with the brows on the rest of the Batboys.
  • Whether or not Tim's green Robin mask had rounded edges or scallops drooping from the outer edges depended entirely on the artist.
  • Tim's father Jack is usually depicted with dark hair that's mostly turned grey, but some artists give him light brown hair instead.
• Robin: Son of Batman Damian Wayne had been getting a lot of this, to where some of his fans debate on who draws the best version. His height and build are relatively constant, but other things aren't as consistent such as:
  • His skin tone can be as pale as most of the other members of the Bat Family, or darker if the artist remembers he has Middle Eastern heritage through Talia. Sometimes he even looks a bit East Asian, but the East Asian facial features aren't uncalled for because Talia's usually some vague combo of Arab and Chinese.
  • Eye shape varies wildly, as does eye color, which can vary between his mother's green and varying shades of blue.
  • The shape of his face widely varies, from sharp and chiseled like his dad to being rather round and babyish to even scrunched up due to his Perpetual Frowner tendencies.
  • How spiky his hair is and how many blue undertones it has (in the first 6 issues of Batman and Robin it was straight black or only had a few blue bits due to lighting, but in issues 10-12 it was almost completely blue no matter what the lighting). In Super Sons it's slicked up in such a way that it reaches Anime Hair levels when Jorge Jiminez is on board for the art.
  • The size of his mask changes at times, from small to DEAR GOD IT'S EATING HIS FACE!

Batgirl

• Barbara Gordon:
  • Barbara’s Batgirl outfit has been all over the place, not helped by the fact since her return as Batgirl she’s had four new costume redesigns which each has looked somewhat different depending on the artist.
    • Between Pre and Post-Crisis artists couldn’t decide if Babs had a black or a grey batsuit or if her cape was black, had blue highlights, or was all blue. Like Batman, the length of the fins on her gloves and the bat ears on her cowl varied greatly as well as the shape of her bat insignia.
    • Her black and yellow New 52 costume while fairy consistent overalls still looked different from artist to artist. Ed Benes giving Babs Sensual Spandex that had a noticeably shiny look, while other artists from the same tenure (e.g Greg Capullo) left her costume plain black. Additionally, there are ridges on her thighs and biceps and defined abs on her torso in some of the comics while other artists didn’t include them.
    • Later in the New 52, Babs got her wildly popular purple costume during her mini-reboot, though even that outfit was inconsistent. Firstly there’s the color as while it was mostly purple and yellow, more than a few artists seem to have it be Cornflower blue and yellow. Then there’s the size of her shoulder pads which could go from pretty small to pretty massive. The length of her cape, whether it reaches her butt or her thighs. Whether her top is a moto jacket with a zipper or not. Also, she whether or not had big gloves or gloves small enough that sleeves come over them. Additionally, around this time Babs was drawn to look way younger a lot of time while her romantic crossovers with Nightwing and her appearances◊ in Birds of Prey comics drew her as looking older and more physically mature.
  • Her divisive DC Rebirth costume. When drawn by Clay Mann Heroes in Crisis it was ridiculously fanservicey with the harness-like bat insignia conforming to the shape of her breasts and her bat ears coming out of the side of her head. Whilst in her main Rebirth comics Sean Murphy drew the bat ears coming out the top of her head instead and the insignia covering her breasts entirely. Then in 2021 they went back to the purple suit but gave her black boots and gloves, a longer cape, and white eye lenses which aside from The Batman Babs has consistently lacked before.
  • Barbara has had an infinite variety of glasses between appearances in different books.
  • As Oracle she’s had a wide variety of wheelchairs. Some artists remember she's extremely independent and still a practicing martial artist, and give her a chair that reflects that (low sides so she's got room to turn, no handles at the back). Others just draw a generic wheelchair.
  • Does Babs have green eyes or blue eyes? It's rarely consistent, though most colorists have her as blue-eyed.
  • Bab’s height has been incredibly inconsistently drawn for years. In her debut during Pre-Crisis, she was actually taller than Dick. Post-Crisis and the start of the New 52 they were about the same height, then out of nowhere during her 2014 series Babs shrinks being drawn as short as Tim if not shorter. Yet in the Birds of Prey comics she’s drawn as tall as Black Canary and Huntress and shoots up to being as tall as Dick again in Rebirth.
• Barbara's successor Cassandra Cain suffers from a HUGE version of this.
  • Her height seems to vary from average to absolutely minuscule, and she's either incredibly muscular or thin and waifish. And that's not getting into the question of her eyes. Realistically, being half-Chinese, she would have brown eyes, and many artists follow that, giving her dark brown eyes. However, she is also often shown with green, amber, and occasionally even blue eyes.
  • The nature of her scars also changes, with some artists depicting her as being Covered with Scars, and others showing her completely free of them, and others somewhere in-between.
• Stephanie Brown's costumes as Spoiler, Robin, and Batgirl were inconsistently drawn by various artists:
  • Her Spoiler costume went through various artistic interpretations over the years. Tom Lyle originally drew her with a large piece of shoulder armor that was attached to her chest sash, though it was phased out by later artists. Her boots and gloves would sometimes have armored bands worn on top of them, while other appearances would lack these. The size of her belt and the number of canisters in it also varied, along with the length and style of her boots (sometimes they'd be the same length and style, sometimes asymmetrical). Her bodysuit and cloak ranged from being colored a deep purple ("eggplant") to nearly being more of a magenta shade or reddish-violet, while the "undies" worn on top would come and go as artists pleased. The mask and leather parts of her costume were either colored black with blue highlights, or a solid blue or black. The size of the lenses on her mask also varied from being small to huge and expressive.
  • As Robin, artists couldn't decide whether her hair spiked out, or if it was a little more subdued. She sometimes was also depicted wearing green elbow pads, and while most drew her wearing a red minidress as part of the costume, Pete Woods opted to draw a more unisex costume that resembled a slightly more armored version of Tim Drake's and that had gold thigh bands. As well, she seemed to be a bit more... pronounced during this time.
  • Her Batgirl costume alternated between being colored black with purple trim or being a deep purple with lighter side trim. The number of pouches on her thigh band also varied from artist to artist, while her boots could either be colored black, dark purple or a lighter purple.
  • Stephanie's mother's appearance was subject to many different depictions whenever she showed up. She's been drawn as either middle-aged, slightly younger, as a blonde or brunette, either with a slimmer body or heavyset and with or without glasses. However, the weight changes could be justified as her having been on and off drugs (which can be Truth in Television).

Batman: Rogues Gallery

• The Penguin's appearance can vary wildly from issue to issue. How obese and grotesquely deformed he is can never be made consistent. Sometimes he is a squat spherical creature with a two-foot nose and sharp piranha teeth, and sometimes he just looks like a perfectly ordinary mildly chubby man in a suit.
• The Joker ain't far behind. Originally, he was a relatively normal-looking man, with his skin and hair color (white and green, respectively) being the only things to make him stand out. Since then, artists such as Jim Aparo and Neal Adams have portrayed him as being extremely tall and thin, with a Thin Chin of Sin (probably to contrast with Batman's Lantern Jaw of Justice). People such as Marshall Rogers, on the other hand, portray him with a more squarish chin; Rogers also believed the character was physically incapable of not smiling. And let's not even get into Jim Lee's... highly controversial design.
  • The Joker sometimes is drawn as though he were wearing makeup as well, even though his appearance is canonically the result of a chemical accident. In Batman: The Dark Knight Returns he permanently has pale skin and green hair, but he enhances his lips with lipstick that is somehow poisonous to everyone else but not him. Oh, and does he give it a workout.
• Mr. Zsasz is sometimes lean and muscular and has a buzz-cut hairstyle like Henry Rollins with crazy eyes, and other times he's scrawny and looks like a balding, emaciated, meth addict with vacant eyes. Artist Cliff Chiang also gives him a standard skinhead appearance for some reason, with a white tank top, suspenders, Doc Martens boots, and a shaved head (though the last of these is hardly unusual for Zsasz).
• Nobody can decide whether Killer Croc is a big strong guy with a skin condition or a crocodile man anymore. It's 50/50 that he'll be depicted either way.
  • Despite the company using the same designs for characters. Killer Croc looks different than to how he was drawn in Batman #1 just a few months before he appeared in Red Hood and the Outlaws. The design for Mr. Freeze by the book's artist also appears different from how he looks on the Batman Annual cover, though the version that appeared in RHatO seems to have been adopted as the official one now.
  • Similarly, Marvel's Tiger Shark keeps alternating between a costumed guy with shark powers and more shark than man because people don't care enough to keep track of what he's supposed to look like. Frankly, it's amazing that people ever remembered something like the Beast becoming a blue gorilla; You can be sure that if something like that happened now, it would never last.
  • In some cases, where the character's powers are the result of deliberate alterations to their body (Tiger Shark's powers were caused by experimentation, Killer Croc started as a "natural" genetic mutation but was later artificially enhanced), cases have been made that the character's biology is in flux, with their natural/original genetics and the altered state each struggling for dominance. In Tiger Shark's case, after his powers were enhanced to the point of appearing to be a man/shark hybrid, there actually was a distinct progression in later published appearances where his human features seemed to be slowly re-asserting themselves.
• Bane's mask varies between luchador and S&M. Also, does it only have eyeholes or have an opening for his mouth and/or nose? If it has an opening, is it zippered?
• Poison Ivy's skin tone ranges from standard Caucasian, to slightly olive, to bright green, to white as snow depending on who's designing her each time. For some reason Jim Lee draws her without toes, making her look rather like a green-painted Barbie doll. Ivy's degree of stripperificness varies a LOT; one issue it's the traditional green leotard, the next it's a bikini made of leaves, the next it's nothing but a few vines covering her naughty bits...
• Similarly, you're lucky if Two-Face's skin color and hair on his damaged side are consistent throughout a single arc. Even on his undamaged side, he can look like a completely different person. The color of each side of his suit is also rarely the same.
• The Riddler started in a wacky green body suit until the actor playing him in the old Adam West series decided he hated it and made his own costume, which came to be the standard depiction: a nice suit with a bowler hat and a question-mark on the tie. That's more-or-less his DC Animated Universe depiction to this day, (except in Knight Time) although he often looks a lot like Art Carney. But back in the comics, compare the Riddler in The Long Halloween — a lanky old guy in a loose suit — to the Joker miniseries by the guy who did "100 Bullets": the Riddler looks like a young, club-footed pimp with Elton John glasses. In The New Batman Adventures, on the other hand, he wears the body suit again, but in a lighter color and with only one large question mark, rather than many small ones.
• Scarecrow. Dare to compare the versions where his head/mask is just as thin as the rest of him with the versions where his head/mask is oddly bulbous and probably the roundest part of his body. And then there's the debate about whether or not his mask is even supposed to have any eye and/or mouth holes... and the oddly popular "noose necktie". Not to mention that his mask sometimes has straw "hair" attached to it. And that's just when he's in the mask. When it's off, these questions arise — is Crane's hair blond, brown or red? Also, is he simply an average-looking guy or "dear God keep the mask on Scarecrow"? And exactly how old is he? (The last probably overlaps with other factors.)
• Additionally, Ra's al Ghul is usually an Arab, but sometimes appears more European. Officially, he's supposed to be of indeterminate ethnicity, but not many artists can pull that off.
  • The same applies to his daughter Talia al Ghul. Even in comic stories set in the same continuity, her physical appearances can hop from one race to another, whether it's looking more European, appearing East Asian, or even being drawn to look like a darker shade of Middle Eastern.
• The Mad Hatter has it as bad as Killer Croc. Artists have drawn him from average looking to John Tenniel's illustrations. He has had brown, blonde, white, black, and red hair. His height is highly variable as much as The Penguin's. But artists of today have been drawing Tetch with an overbite and red hair, but his height still ranges from Wolverine short to a dwarf.
• Mr. Freeze has also been subject to this trope, and it not only applies to the design of his armor, but also his skin color. Over the years, Mr. Freeze's skin has been depicted as either blue or grey, icy/snowy white, or standard European. In addition, when he does have unnaturally-looking skin tones, it is often unclear if that is a side effect of his Freak Lab Accident, a reflection of his helmet, or both.
• The Batman Who Laughs is sometimes depicted as his concept suggests: a Jokerized version of Batman, whereas others make him inhuman-looking, lacking a nose, sporting a wider-than-possible grin with jagged fangs, and an Overly-Long Tongue, and then there's some that's somewhere in-between.

Locations

• Gotham City itself varies a lot on the artist. It's managed to look like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Budapest, etc. Sometimes it's a realistic-looking city, sometimes it's a stylized city, and sometimes it's just flat-out dark fantasy. That's not even getting into its Geographic Flexibility and location...
• Arkham Asylum seems to change design and location depending on what era, artist, and book you're reading. One of the biggest lampshadings about this is during Grant Morrison's Animal Man when Buddy sees almost five buildings in the same place, all looking radically different.
• One thing that has never remained consistent ever is Thomas and Martha Wayne's gravesite that Batman visits every other week. It regularly switches between being a tomb and a grave, or possibly two graves, having an angel on it, and/or placed near a tree. Even the way the names are displayed changes, it could be their individual names or just their last name, and there might be an epitaph.