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Topic: Bring back the yellow oval! (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 5:04am | IP Logged | 1  

On the matter of the utility belt, and the yellow accents in particular, it is an interesting study to look at the early DETECTIVE COMICS covers. LINK

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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Blair Herd
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 5:34am | IP Logged | 2  

Speaking of hoods and aiming.....I teach firearms.  There is a principle called the third-eye principle.  The pistol is naturally drawn up to your eye level and where it is focussed.  It is how we teach instinctual shooting.  A bright yellow oval on an otherwise black outfit would be a natural aim point and focus point.  Being centre mass would also be a great point of aim with less chance of missing (i.e as opposed to the exposed mouth/chin area).  It's why my police service and every other service went to black uniforms.  We had a powder blue uniform before that glowed-in-the-dark.
Just my 2 cents....Oh yeah, I'm for the more subdued non-oval....
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John Byrne
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 5:45am | IP Logged | 3  

Speaking of hoods and aiming.....I teach firearms. There is a principle called the third-eye principle. The pistol is naturally drawn up to your eye level and where it is focussed. It is how we teach instinctual shooting. A bright yellow oval on an otherwise black outfit would be a natural aim point and focus point. Being centre mass would also be a great point of aim with less chance of missing (i.e as opposed to the exposed mouth/chin area).

••

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!

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Keith Thomas
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 6:07am | IP Logged | 4  

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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Blair Herd
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 7:02am | IP Logged | 5  

Respectfully JB a lot of thugs do train, especially these days and they're very accurate.  More so, than the police.

I've done a fair bit of training and reading.  Video games seem to be one of  the culprits.  If you look at the Columbine shooters (Klebold and Harris), they were big Doom fans.  Video games are fancy simulators (army has been using them for years).  They just need to feel an actual recoil and they have made the transition from simulation to reality.

Could get in to the psychological aspect as well.  In video games the player is shooting at actual human targets with blood and carnage.  As Police officers, we shoot mainly at cardboard silhouettes (but that is changing).

The Virginia Tech shooter, Cho, had an hour of range time and killed 30 people in 5 minutes with two handguns.  Pure, instinctual, and accurate shooting......Sorry, didn't mean to get off on a tangent....
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Andy Thomas
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 7:53am | IP Logged | 6  

Paulo, about my earlier comment, I realize that blue on Batman's costume is always going to be a controversial issue, based on coloring issues as to whether the blue was every really supposed to be blue, and I'm sure it wasn't.

My comment was said a bit in jest to those who really like the non oval Batman, who may detest the blue.

I like blue in Batman's costume if, and only if the yellow oval is present. Then a yellow utility belt makes some sense in respect to color design. Some of those Neal Adams designs with this colorization are really strong in my opinion.

However, I prefer not to see blue without the yellow oval. Batman Odyssey is colored like this, and to me looks very odd.

This is the one I like the best.


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John Byrne
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 8:01am | IP Logged | 7  

The Virginia Tech shooter, Cho, had an hour of range time and killed 30 people in 5 minutes with two handguns. Pure, instinctual, and accurate shooting......

••

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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Steve Ogden
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged | 8  

JB: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?

I wish he did!!!
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John Byrne
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 8:14am | IP Logged | 9  

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?

++

I wish he did!!!

••

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?

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Steve Ogden
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 8:23am | IP Logged | 10  

Since Batman's utility belt has been brought up; I hate the pouches.  I like the streamline belt with the capsule-like parts that held everything he needed.  It looked sleeker and much more high tech.



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Steve Ogden
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 8:34am | IP Logged | 11  

Batman's chest emblem is very deliberately drawn by artists for a while.  I mean from every perspective and in every comic he is in the emblem is perfectly drawn.    There was a time were it seemed it really did not matter, I remember long time ago as some of you do; where it was drawn almost like squiggles and not very prominent at all.  It seemed the readers or the artist  were not all that concerned of how it looked.
    
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Brian Hunt
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Posted: 01 August 2010 at 9:40am | IP Logged | 12  

The little cylinders on the utility belt are more limiting on what can be carried, thus my preference for the pouches. 
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