It's important to remember Why Things Happen. In comics, a lot of what happens has to do with the process by which the comics are manufactured, and not any conscious decisions by the talent involved.

This is how Batman's cape (as well as portions of Spider-Man's and the X-Men's costumes) turned from black to blue. Artists are forever chasing deadlines, and spotting blacks (as filling in black areas is called) is time consuming. Unconsciously, artists will start leaving out more and more black and, since blue is most often the default highlight color, what was black will become blue -- and often literally. That's how the Beast became blue. He was gray, he turned black, the blacks were slowly dropped, and eventually writers started referring to him as blue.*

And it doesn't stop there. Batman in his early days, as the blacks started to disappear, at least had DARK blue highlights. But dark blue requires the separators to make more than one pass. The standard CMYK palette can only create darker shades by mixing gradients of the four basic colors. Again, time consuming, and so it begins to disappear. What was dark blue, becomes a much lighter blue, because that lighter blue is a single color.

It's not just blue/black, either. Flip thru early issues of FANTASTIC FOUR and watch as Sue's hair goes from pale yellow to just yellow. Watch the Thing's hide change from red/brown to orange. And watch as everybody slowly develops blue eyes! Its all about less work for the colorists and the separators. And when deadlines are an issue, "less work" is a driving force.

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*This is deeply ironic. The Beast's original gray coloration required the use of a K tone (CMYK), and K tones cost more. So he turned black, as a story element, in order to be able to use the cheaper blue highlights. Those who insist that blue is always blue in comics, need to check that scene, where Hank awakens to find his fur colored blue, and the copy declares that it has turned black!

JB: your small digression is a fascinating post!

BTW, 'your' Batman (which I take to be pretty much a Dick Sprang Batman) is so the polar the opposite of mine! But that's how these things work... it's like everyone has 'their' Doctor (Who).

Is the mixing colors thing the reason why Superman seemed to be a "light" blue to me, in one comic, and "dark" blue in others.

What is Superman's proper blue? I always loved the lighter version, if that's accurate:

It's funny to me about "the first version is Your Version." The reason is, as a kid, I didn't notice any difference except a nominal one between Adam West Batman and SuperFriends Batman. I mean to say, it never bothered me in the least. In fact, I was surprised in adult life looking back on Batman how different the television Batman is. In my mind, he was "just" Batman.

I also didn't think West Batman was stupid, a snide comment about superheroes or derogatory. Nor Robin for that matter. I don't get disgusted as so many Batman fans do. Dick Sprang Batman is The Batman, to me. The gap between Sprang, West, Adams and Timm does not seem gargantuan. I accept the character on the quality of his stories, not on whether the details match what I believe they should be.

I will say, however, that artists can actually distract me with their deformed takes on Batman. Redundancy in the emblem, bizarre quirks to satisfy an arteest's desires, that gets to me in my adult world.

Maybe I just wasn't very observant as a kid, but I feel like Batman was pretty much accurate by artists most of the time. There was a standard and it was respected, most of the time. Even Adam West.

Without a standard, you get interpretation. And that leads to some moronic-looking comic books.