A closer look

Because when you're creating a moody vigilante who punches clowns in alleys, you obviously turn to Renaissance art. In 1939, Bob Kane wanted a hero to rival Superman, but he didn't want him to just fly. He remembered seeing Leonardo da Vinci's sketch of an 'ornithopter'—a flying device with bat-like wings. Kane adapted those rigid, scalloped edges into a massive, brooding cape. So technically, the Dark Knight owes his aesthetic to an Italian polymath from the 1400s.