You might think of Batman as the Dark Knight, but once upon a time, Batman was far more jolly, bright, and way more kid-friendly than he has been portrayed for the past forty years or so. During the 1950’s, paranoia following the publication of the book Seduction of the Innocent, which blamed comic books for everything that was making American children into juvenile delinquents (this is before they had rock’n’roll and video games to lay everything on) forced DC Comics to makes Batman as harmless as Mr. Rogers.

One example of Batman’s super goofball 1950’s adventures took place in Detective Comics #241 from 1957, in which Batman wears a collection of different colored versions of his costume. In “The Rainbow Batman”, Batman starts wearing a different, brightly colored suit when fighting crime each night. The actual reason for this was to make people stop  looking at Robin. See, in his civilian identity of Dick Grayson, the Boy Wonder had hurt his arm, so Batman thought if people noticed Robin had a similar injury, they’d discover his real identity. So, instead of just going out without an injured child partner, Batman decided to distract people with fabulous colors. Because why not?

Now DC Collectibles, in homage to this ridiculous story from a bygone era, are releasing six action figures based on the Rainbow Batmen. Last year, DC Comics ran a poll to see if fans would be interested in these, and although they didn’t win that particular poll, DC is releasing these to fans now anyway. The Batman: Rainbow Set comes in a six-pack of action figures with Bats wearing his costume in pink, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Sure, it’ll set you back a few bucks, but you can show these off  in your cubicle at work, or on your shelf, and display you support of LGBT Pride (because HELLO, rainbows) or just your love of Batman, or both. The figures will hit stories in August, with an SRP of $70. You can check out a preview of what they’ll look like below.

HT: Cnet

IMAGES: DC Comics