Batman’s general appearance is instantly recognised as a pop culture masterpiece: the long black – or blue – cape. The modular Bat-symbol strapped onto his chest. It’s hard to think of a more recognisable pop culture character. But the famous design of Batman’s ‘costume’ – the Batsuit in his traditional comic book livery – has undergone many variations. Over the years, the Dark Knight has worn many, many different Batsuits. And some of them are … definitely not good.
Regardless of how odd the situation in which he finds himself, Batman always has a contingency plan. Due to his peculiarly excessive planning, he tends to own hundreds of different versions of the Batsuit, constantly requiring him to have a costume that’s just right for the occasion. Obviously, some of these are occasionally wearing – think of Tim Burton’s Bat-eared Hellfire Batsuit, or the ridiculous Zebra Batsuit – but universally they’re very, very fun to look at, Bollywood dance routines from Bruce Wayne or no. The one consistency that links the costumes of Batman through history, no matter the era, is their undeniable desirability for the super-nerd.
10 Absolute Batman
Absolute Batman #1 by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta
Batman has always hulked a little more than his colleagues, but Absolute Batman turns him into one of the most ludicrously huge men to ever wear the title. This is the Batman of another DC universe altogether: he’s a brick house. And speaking of bricks, several design details have attracted the ire of some of his biggest fans – including the shockingly ponderous bat on the Batman’s chest. It was a stretch for people to complain about the girth of Zack Batsymbol, but Absolute Batman’s bat symbol is basically a brick-shaped bat.
This character is one of several DC Universe counterparts who re-introduced in Absolute Universe, a new line set to launch next year in Fall 2024.
Absolute Batman
#1 by Snyder and Dragotta is available October 9th, 2024 from DC Comics.
If his Batarangs (bat-shaped throwing weapons) are still shaped like that, Bruce will literally be throwing bricks at criminals of Gotham, which sounds pretty badass. This isn’t the weirdest look that readers have been left to grapple with, but it’s a pretty weird digression from the traditional look of the Caped Crusader.
9 Batman versus Predator Suit
Batman versus Predator by Dave Gibbons, Andy Kubert, and Adam Kubert
Batman is sometimes referred to as the perfect predator, or the ultimate hunter. He creeps along rooftops at night, snuck into the lairs of criminals, and subdues them with little trouble. He’s one of the best ninjas (and fighters) on the planet, so inevitably his character was due to come into contact with a real-world predator at some point. This manifested itself when Batman crossed over with the legendary 80s movie character by the same name – the Predator.
Batman was vastly outclassed the first time they fought, but it’s always Batman’s fortune that he learns from his mistakes. He creates what is, in effect, a Judge Dredd outfit: a bizarre armoured helmet that almost entirely covers his eyes. On the face of it, they do represent your standard, run-of-the-mill, resourceful space villains But given how dangerous the Predators are, it makes sense that he’d want some fancy new armour. Still. Weird outfit.
8 Batman One Million
JLA #23 by Grant Morrison and Val Semeiks
This Batman wasn’t used much, but he certainly made an impression when he appeared.
His cowl always leaves his chin exposed. This has been the look of the character for decades, so absolutely anything that’s going against it will automatically look weird. And that was the case with the far-future Batman from DC One Million, an 853rd-century vision of the DC Universe.
Here we find your usual prison-planet Batman, shepherding most of the DC Universe’s worst villains into the prison planet Pluto. The original timeline Batman himself was beaten only once, by this Batman, and with a single punch, no less. But no amount of badassery could make up for a costume look so wrong on Batman, and more suited for Black Panther. He didn’t appear much in the story and yet, when he did, he hit like a sledgehammer.
7 Azrael’s Batman Costume
Batman: Sword of Azrael #1 by Dennis O’Neil and Joe Quesada
Drop ‘Bat-Man’ into ‘-man the torpedo’ or ‘- or any of Hawksmoor’s other lines, and it just doesn’t fit — it doesn’t create quite the same alliterative thrill. Batman’s replacements in the storyworld of the comics seem to have the same realisation. When Dick Grayson became Batman after Bruce Wayne’s apparent death, he just donned the classic Batsuit — he didn’t try to emulate all the other Bat ‘-man’s’, he just picked up where Bruce left off. But Azrael certainly doesn’t feel that way. When Azrael becomes Batman and goes out for his first night as the Dark Knight, he doesn’t wear the Batsuit, or anything like it. Thing is, there’s really very little in this suit to indicate that it is the Cloak of the Bat at all. Sure, it has some batears on the cowl, but aside from that, there’s nothing here to suggest Batman.
Azrael took over the role of Batman during the iconic
Batman: Knightfall
subplot from the 1990s. This epic story – by many different authors – is available both digitally and in collected editions from DC Comics.
Blue and gold. Massively mechanical. Really, it looks more like Gargoyles than Batman. To be honest, it was a weird suit, and it certainly made Azrael’s Batman instantly recognisable, but there was still no real excuse for why a religious zealot dresses up like some sort of techno warrior.
6 Citizen Wayne
Batman: Legends of the Dark Night Annual #4 by Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn
This Citizen Wayne Batman was, as it turns out, not really even Citizen Wayne. He was, in fact, Harvey Dent. Harvey had no compunction whatsoever against using his gun, and was all too happy to methodically track down criminals and kill them as some semblance of the ‘real’ Batman. It read as Citizen Kane meets Batman. The story ended with a battle between Bruce Wayne and Harvey, trying to convince Harvey to stop being Batman in that kind of scary violent way.
It is also a nod to the film Citizen Kane, referred to via the movie’s distinctive last word ‘Rosebud’, which in the comic refers to Batman’s traumatic childhood.
All in all, this is the kind of outfit that makes you wonder what the hell it is Batman is wearing, with the massive golden bat symbol on his torso the only real hint that this is in fact the Alley Cat of Gotham, and arguably the most instantly recognisable human being on Earth. It’s not the first time Harvey Dent has been a Batman, but it’s certainly the strangest.
5 Zur-En-Arrh Batman
Batman #113 by Ed Herron and Dick Sprang
A Batman who is inherently weird just because of his very conception, Zur-En-Arrh first appeared as a Batman, and presumably a version of Batman inspired by the Batman of Earth. His uniform was bright orange and dark purple with yellow to boot. Offensively hideous. The tradition was carried forward when Batman created his own Zur-En-Arrh personality during the pre-Flashpoint timeline.
Check out Zur-En-Arrh’s recent exploits in the
Batman
run by Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jiménez, which begins with
Batman
#125, available now from DC Comics.
Here, Zur-En-Arrh is a parallel personality that wanders around inside Batman’s head – a pure Batman-self that would ‘survive’ if his mind was ever shattered. Needless to say, this slippery Buddy Holly-style persona created quite a number of apocalyptic plot problems by trying to take over Batman’s life. Fortunately, the corrupt personality didn’t return his host to the silly costume.
4 Stan Lee’s Batman
Just Imagine: Batman #1 by Stan Lee and Joe Kubert
Whenever you talk about the greats of comic book history, Stan Lee is usually part of that group. He was a titan of the industry, but he helped create iconic characters of the highest order – Iron Man, Hulk – and even one of the most popular comic book franchises of all time, Spider-Man. But what if Stan had been with DC instead? What would a Stan Lee-inspired Batman look like? The question had been asked many times over the years until it was finally put into action with the Just Imagine series.
It was in these pages that readers first glimpsed a Batman as envisioned by Stan Lee, and as is often the case when it comes to Stan, he pulled no punches when it came to Batman and took the lawman’s codename either literally or metaphorically or – in this case – both. Rather than outfit Wayne Williams in an outfit vaguely resembling a bat, Stan Lee took the name literally and wired Wayne Williams into a full bat suit and made him a literal Batman of Gotham.
3 Mummy Batman
Detective Comics #320 by Dave Wood and Sheldon Moldoff
Golden Age are always in a lemon because crazy things happen all the time. One of the nuttier things happened to Batman and Robin when they got splattered with green energy from an alien device so that both of them gained green skin. This is pretty much the exact opposite of ‘bat-like’. That shouldn’t happen, right? So, if Batman and Robin had emerged from the day wearing green skin, and then Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne had emerged from elsewhere wearing green skin, that might not be too difficult to figure out.
Because of this, the pair must make do with giant mummy bandages to keep themselves covered in reserves of their skin. It’s an absurd idea, but it ended up working. No one took the time to figure out that the burly muscled masked mineral man was Gotham’s Knight and its Boy Wonder, it was entirely thanks to this completely insane outfit.
2 Rainbow Batman
Detective Comics #241 by Edmond Hamilton and Sheldon Moldoff
On a nightly crime-busting expedition, Dick Grayson jars his arm. Worried that Robin and Dick Grayson will have the same injury, Batman dons the spotlight. Every night, he goes out dressed in a bold and luminous colour, because he understands that if he’s wearing cotton-candy pink, no one will look at Robin.
It’s very simple reasoning, but it’s also completely insane. And in the end, because it works, this plan, the one where Batman dresses up in bright colours and sends Robin out in the rain to attract gangsters’ attention while he cleans up the ones who came after Robin and then collapses from the shock, it works, and everyone is so befuddled by the rainbow-coloured comic-book outfit that they don’t notice that Robin is down and out. Why didn’t Batman just have Robin stay at home, though?
1 Zebra Batman
Detective Comics #275 by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff
none of them can compare to the pure absurdity that was the Zebra suit.
One reason Zebra Batman nearly levelled Gotham City. During a battle with a colour-crazy villain called Zebra-Man, Batman is hit by a flash from the machine that has transformed Zebra-Man, giving him a full-body zebra stripe. Unknown to Batman, someone has also given him a full-body zebra stripe; unfortunately for Batman, he doesn’t also get Zebra-Man’s belt. Without the belt, Batman cannot regulate his newfound Zebra powers, and he starts magnetically repelling all matter within a one-block radius.
From turning Gotham City to rubble, Batman was saved on the final panel, once again by Dick Grayson, who ended up helping him use his newly acquired powers to steal Zebra Man’s belt, and then steal his powers himself so he could revert back to regular Batman, ending the curse of Zebra-Batman. For as absurd as Batman’s many years worth of wacky batsuits may be, the Zebra suit is the wildest of them all.
Batman
One of DC’s most prominent heroes, Batman is the costumed vigilante alter-ego of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. Traumatised by witnessing the murder of his parents as a boy, Bruce went on to become the planet’s finest martial artist, detective and tactician. He has assembled a familial posse of allies and sidekicks, and aids in the fight against evil as the dark knight of his home city, Gotham.
Created ByBob Kane , Bill Finger
AliasBruce Wayne
AllianceJustice League, Outsiders, Batman Family
RaceHuman
FIRST APPDetective Comics #27 (1939)