Saturday, February 09, 2008

Batman's Weird Transformations

Mark Engblom has a terrific post up on transformations in general, which inspired me to create this one.

As the character of Batman became more mature in the public image, the writers often had to go to great lengths to come up with something entertaining. Inevitably they hit on the idea of turning Batman into something quite different.

The obvious first step was to reduce Batman and Robin in size. This happened not once, but twice:



And:



Tiny Batman, what else can we do? In Detective #248, they hit on the obvious:



That's actually a pretty terrific little story and the third to last Detective Batman by Sprang, but it symbolized a flood of Batman transformation stories that plagued the Silver Age.

Consider these. Batman Old:


Batman Young:



And of course the Diapered Detective:



This particular story ranks as the worst Batman story of the Silver Age.

Batman the alien:



Flatman and Ribbon:



Good grief, more aliens:



Bat Kong:



Even in World's Finest, Batman could not maintain his normal body for long: