Batman and Robin Costumes for High School Play

UTILITY BELT

Conventional wisdom holds that The Batman utility belt is either styled as an ammunition pouch belt OR as the more modern tube vials belt.

I saw no reason why the belt could not be both. Certainly, the costume designers of the 1960’s Adam West Batman costume, and 1980’s artist Norm Breyfogle felt the same way.

My goal was to create a utility belt that was VERY faithful to the comic book belt, combining design elements from the various belts that appealed to me over the years. But at the same time, I wanted a belt that reflected some of my subtle creative license. I knew I wanted the belt and all of its accessories to be colored in a bright golden yellow, just like in the comics. In this instance, I found it un-acceptable to “interpret” the color of the belt’s hard items (Re; belt buckle, tube vials) as polished brass or metallic gold in tone (as with Adam West’s buckle).

I built everything upon a basic golden yellow pleather waistband that would fasten from behind. The pleather ammo pouches were cannibalized from a different source and then re-colored to match the golden yellow of the waist band. I purchased plexiglass tubes and half-moon end caps from a local supplier and got to work on building the storage vials that are so characteristic of The Batman’s belt. After sanding, and priming the assembled tube vials, I coated each one with 10 coats of Tamiya Chrome Yellow spray enamel, and two clear gloss coats.

The Batman’s classic Bronze Age square utility belt buckle featured a latch tab off to one side that never really appealed to me. I preferred a simpler, slicker, more streamlined buckle, and therefore employed some creative license to create a gently curved, large rectangular buckle with a thick, prominently raised border edge. I hand-fashioned the main buckle shape out of sheets of ABS hard plastic. I then used white styrene strips to build the buckle’s thick outer border with fine styrene rods as the border’s raised lip. White squadron putty filled the seams on everything. And after a good sanding prep and primer, I shot the buckle with 12 coats of the Tamiya Chrome Yellow, and 2 coats of gloss clear.