Unlike Superman, who disappeared from the ACTION COMICS covers for long stretches in the early days, Batman took the lead on DETECTIVE almost immediately following 27, so clicking thru those covers shows the evolution of the costume quite clearly. The blue begins to become dominant quite soon, albeit a darker blue than what we would later come to think of as the correct color. The belt goes thru several style and color variants, with the holster still in evidence for a while.

Note that the "bright" and smiling Batman who would become the model for decades after, seems to appear all at once, on the same cover that introduces Robin. Not a coincidence, I'd warrant!

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Again, we come back to the question of how many of the thugs against whom Batman would contend would be TRAINED in the use of their firearms. Especially these days!

it is an interesting study to look at the early DETECTIVE COMICS covers

Hmm not to change the subject but his cape is portrayed as split up the middle as much as it is as full across the middle, never noticed that before.

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Did he have the Batman barreling down on him, swirling his cape and doing all his bat-tricks to make himself as hard a target as possible? Indeed, where any of those 30 people acrobats, leaping and diving and swinging around on bat-ropes?

All the gun training in the world isn't really going to prepare someone for a confrontation with the Batman -- who has spent the bulk of his life training to AVOID making himself a target. The bat-symbol-as-target notion is counter to the whole psychology of the character.

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I wish he did!!!

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And there you neatly underscore something that has gone very wrong with superhero comics in the past few decades. They used to be about people who made the world a better place.

The first issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA gave us Cap leaping into the middle of Hitler's headquarters and punching Adolf in the face.

Fifty years later, Marvel gives us "The Truth", which "reveals" that the super soldier project that created Captain America was part of a White supremist operation that first tested the formula on unsuspecting Black subjects.

How does this kind of thinking ADD anything to the characters?