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Being as popular as he is, Batman has worn an awful lot of suits over the years. Sometimes, like the Rebirth suit Matt Fraction’s new blue and grey look, these new costumes are great and beloved by fans. Sometimes, however, they miss the mark completely. Others just slap you in the face. So today we’re going to look at seven of the worst Batman costumes that the Dark Knight has ever worn. Get ready to wash your eyeballs, because some of these are just gross to look at.
7) Batman Beyond Rebirth
When Terry retook the mantle of Batman for his 2016 Rebirth series, his old Bat Suit was torn up in a scuffle. Thankfully, he found the prototype version that was even stronger than his original. Unfortunately, it looked like this. I can work with the giant, glowing Bat Symbol, but there’s just too much going on over the rest of it. The red lines at random places all over the suit are really distracting, and the eyes are just uncomfortably big. It’s like someone blended Batman and Spider-Man’s eyes together and dipped them in blood, which is not a great look. Where the usual Batman Beyond design is elegant in its simplicity, this one is deafeningly loud. This new-old suit takes everything that made Terry’s original suit great and throws it in the gutter, which makes this one look even worse in comparison.
6) Azrael Bat Armor
When Azrael briefly took the mantle of Batman after the “Knightfall” storyline, one of his first orders of business was replacing the normal suit with an edgy armored version. Admittedly, that design was still pretty cool, and given that the writers behind this switch intended this to be a near-parody of the ‘90s trope of replacing classic heroes with gritty anti-heroes, they decided to up the ante. As Azrael’s mental state deteriorated, he upgraded from an armored costume to an actual suit of armor, complete with an entire arsenal inside. We’ve got a huge amount of gaudy gold, a Power Rangers-style mask, and wing cape that looks like he’s dragging the entire scaled-up wingspan of an actual bat around. That’s not even mentioning the giant claw-gauntlets, which have both a Bat Shuriken gun and flamethrower inside, both of which he used liberally. This costume is purposefully over the top to the extreme, and only gets more so with its red paint job later on. It’s meant to embody the extreme nature of comics in the ‘90s, and boy does it ever.
5) Jim Gordon’s Bat Suit
After Bruce’s supposed death in the “Endgame” storyline, the Caped Crusader was actually briefly replaced by none other than his chainsmoking buddy Jim Gordon. He was given a pretty awesome robot battlesuit, but we’re focusing on his actual Bat Suit, which was less cool. It’s too basic and not stylish enough, which is a deplorable combo. The spandex is so tight we can see the outline of his ear, which is something I’ve never wanted to say about Jim Gordon. Beyond that, the black space in his unique Bat Symbol just makes his whole chest feel empty, and the random yellow on only one shoulder doesn’t work. Instead of a utility belt, we have holsters, which look a bit out of place on the otherwise very sleek design. But the worst part of all is the lack of mustache. Jim Gordon is defined by that stache, and taking it away is a travesty. He already looks weird as Batman, so let the man at least look like himself too.
4) KnightGallery
Batman: KnightGallery was an Elseworlds one-shot from the ‘90s that was presented as historians having found Bruce Wayne’s journal ten years after Batman’s last disappearance, in which he detailed several designs for Batman, Robin, and the Batmobile. Most of these designs are a lot, to say the least, with the entry before this one being totally red and having a Doctor Strange-looking cape that was way too big, but out of all of the potential Bat Suits, this one stuck out to me as the most insane. Every single inch of this Bat Suit is spikey. I do not say this lightly, but every available inch is jagged edges, with massive gauntlets with spikes as long as his forearms. This is utterly insane to imagine, and it’s pretty clear why this one remained solely in the design phase.
