In case you haven’t heard there’s a new Batman movie coming out — and last night Matt Reeves, director of The Batman, released a first look at Robert Pattinson in his costume from the film. It was brief, the lighting was bad, and it only showed about 15% of the suit, so of course fans (and we include ourselves in this statement) are getting incredibly granular in breaking down every little detail about the costume. Whether it’s ties to Batman: Earth One or the Adam West show from the ’60s, everybody seems sure they have the influences figured out. But here’s a new one for you.
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If that raised collar reminds you of The New 52, then congratulations: you’ve been reading comics long enough to remember the literally thousands of jokes about collars that happened when DC relaunched their line in 2011 with a line-wide redesign by Jim Lee and Cully Hamner that seemed to give almost every superhero a collar (even Wonder Woman, whose top didn’t go above her shoulders, was given a choker necklace). So you can start with that era of publishing if you look at that image and think “hmm…where’d that come from?”
The closest example was probably one of the Earth-2 costume redesigns that Batman had. The Earth-2 of The New 52…well, it went through a lot. And Batman didn’t necessarily look like that when the era started, but by the time his suit got a Jorge Jimenez, it got a collar that’s pretty spot on for the one that appears on the new movie Batman costume…and on a costume that very much had an unconventional look, complete with a lot of lines and seams rather than the solid one-color top that fans would usually associate with the Dark Knight.
It seems clear that there is no one magic bullet in terms of saying “oh, the costume comes from here.” Even Jimenez, in spite of the jokes above about The New 52’s penchant for collars, seems to have taken the inspiration for his look from Mike Mignola’s Gotham By Gaslight, which got an animated movie recently and could easily have been spotted by the creators of the film.
Still, it’s interesting to take stock in what influences from the comics — especially recent and not especially huge comics stories — manage to make their ways into these things.
The Batman is set to premiere in theaters on June 25, 2021.
What do you think of Pattinson’s look as the Caped Crusader? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
