Batgirl in a Graffiti-Style Pop Art Splash — Print & Oil Painting

Seven letters run down the whole left edge of the panel in thick white paint, tilted, uneven, obviously made with a loaded brush in a single pass and left to run where it wanted to. That lettering is the first thing the eye lands on and it sets the terms for everything else: this is a wall, not a page.

Behind the figure the artist has laid down a grid of regular black dots over grey and blue spray, the printing screen of an old comic blown up until the dots are the size of coins. Blue overspray drifts across the upper left, a wash of acid yellow-green sits behind the shoulder, and along the bottom edge white paint has been flicked hard enough to leave a spatter of droplets across the lower quarter.

The figure herself is drawn in the flattest possible way: heavy black outline, unmodulated colour inside it, a little airbrushed shading at the ribs and the arms and nothing more. Red hair swept up and back, a blue-black cowl with two short ears and a domino cut into it, a cape opening behind both shoulders, a yellow bat spread across the chest, a yellow belt with a small bat buckle, and blue briefs. The bottom edge cuts her at mid-thigh, so the whole costume is reduced to five shapes and a colour scheme.

Colour is limited on purpose. Yellow, blue and red on the figure; grey, white and black everywhere else. Nothing in the background is allowed a hue that competes, which is why the chest emblem reads from across a room.

Barbara Gordon built her first suit for a policemen's masquerade ball, ran into a crime on the way there and simply carried on, which is a genuinely unusual way to begin a career in Gotham and part of why the design has always looked more improvised than the men's. It belongs to our DC Universe collection, next to the same character painted beneath the Bat-Signal and a glossier study of the suit from behind.