you've given us your opinions on art style, can we have thoughts on the batsuit specifically? which ones are good which ones suck?
Hot damn, I love having opinions. Thanks for the excuse to hold forth! I can’t speak so much to individual iterations, but the gestalt of “best design,” heck yes.
Short form, the less the better within practical constraints. The trade-off between freedom and security is down to the ounce on the Batsuit.
Batman just getting started should be at the leotard-and-cup level with a helmet built into the cowl and maybe a chestplate, because the dude has a lifelong habit of standing in front of guns. I’m good with a Batman who sticks with that through his whole career if he wants to keep the acrobat specialization and just keeps pouring all his points into the Dodge feat. As far as I can tell, that’s what B:TAS Batman did, and he is of course the best.
I like the black and gray combinations, and dark blue variants, not just-black, for a number of reasons but chief among them is that gray is actually harder to see if you’re lurking! Really he should have disruptive camouflage patterns, but that wouldn’t suit his aesthetic as well. (brb, letting my inner Bruce go think about using color-switching fabric to toggle into disruptive camouflage mode without harshing his goth vibe when talking with people.)
While I dig the classic look, if going more practical, I figure he wore the black underwear on the outside for just long enough to realize it calls attention to a vulnerable target and then went with all-over gray, so any outlining is his armor calling attention to the fact that kicking him in the junk is not an option.
Belt and chest logo: giant and yellow. What the hell is the point of being the goddamn Batman if you can’t actually show people when you want to! I promise that one yellow circle won’t be what gives him away.
I independently made up adding white lenses to the cowl to get the comics-glowing-eyes look when I didn’t yet know that it was fanon consensus, so I felt pleased with myself there. I like it as a combination handwave for glowing eyes and Detective Vision heads-up displays. (And then I get distracted thinking about manual overrides for getting the lenses open if his suit gets fried, because relying on video feeds to always work is absurd.)
Armor: On a practical level, I like flexible (preferably sectioned or mesh so it can adjust to conditions) upper body armor once he gets old enough to grow some sense and also old enough that back and core support starts sounding like a great idea. Less flipping and twisting, but also fewer nights laid up with an ice pack under his lumbar spine. Full plate armor is a terrible, terrible idea, even if you don’t sculpt nipples or abs on it.
Christian Bale admitting on-screen that the classic cowl doesn’t let him turn his head was a great moment. Trade-offs. Flexible cut-resistant is the way to go, anywhere you can, obviously, but unless you’re writing a world where they’ve figured out nano-armor that looks like a leotard, I err on the side of stuff that can get destroyed in the course of soaking the first attack. This has the advantage of looking more graceful as well.
Boots: Up to the knees and load those fuckers with toys. Ditto gauntlets. More tiring to move in, but great for adding momentum to that roundhouse kick.
I just went and looked at a few collage images of “all the Batsuits,” and sure enough, the only live-action adaptation Batsuit I’ve ever liked is Adam West’s, which is saying something, because he looks incredibly dippy in it.
It occurs to me that 2/3 of what I’ve said is how it functions rather than how it looks, but that’s what multiple months of trying to think like Batnerd will get you.
On the other hand…
