In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

A few years back, reader Josh wrote in to ask, "With the new movie coming out next year and the recent trailer for Batman V Superman, I've been seeing a lot of comments about Batman's Thrasher suit being an Ironman knock off. (Although probably necessary to telling that story and not an attempt to outright copy Iron Man) It brings up the question of when did Batman first wear a power suit of any kind. Was it Dark Knight Returns? Was it sooner? Did it predate Iron Man?"

Interesting question, Josh!

One notable example of Batman donning a suit of armor was pretty much LITERAL in 1957's Batman #111 (by Edmond Hamilton, Sheldon Moldoff and Stan Kaye), where Batman and Robin are wearing literal suits of armor on the cover!

The issue has an odd set-up, where a crook seemingly leaves a threatening note for Batman and Robin and they instantly start wearing protective armor...

The armor appears to hamper them more than it helps them, but eventually we learn that it was one of Batman and Robin's beloved clever ruses! The suits of armor were covering up radiation suits so that they can track down some villains who stole some radioactive fuel...

Now, of course, it is worth noting that Moldoff clearly drew the suits of armor in such a way that there was no place for the radiation suits, but, well, shut up! He's Batman! He's worn latex masks over his cowl and it worked, so this worked somehow, too! Maybe it's like the Marvel Comics explanation for everything - the cowl went to another dimension!

Amazingly enough, the one that I think really counts even more so than this would be 1950's Detective Comics #165, also by Edmond Hamilton, only with art by Dick Sprang and Charles Paris. This is the famous, "The Strange Costumes of Batman!," which also does not have a very logical ending.

The issue opens with Batman looking at some of his specialty costumes that he has worn over the years...

I think that the space suit counts for the purposes of this discussion. It's literally something that allowed Batman to not only survive the rigors of outer space, but obviously it propels him, as well, so I think that that has to be considered high tech enough to count as a power suit in the traditional sense. Note, though, that suits of armor were very rare in comic books before Iron Man for the very reason that transistors were a very new technology and thus miniaturized systems were still so out of the ordinary that it took only a major science fiction writer like Edmond Hamilton to even kind of sort of conceive of it.

Now, are you curious as to what the mystery of that costume is? It's really dumb. You can find out on the next page, where we look to see where the classic Batman power suit first showed up...

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Okay, first off, the secret Batman suit was a special foam costume that allowed Robin to pretend to be Batman...

Now, if you're thinking, "But wait, Brian, why would the costume that Robin wears to convince people that he is Batman have a symbol on its chest to make it pretty clear that something weird is going on with Batman?" then, well, I have no answer for that. It's just silly.

Reader Curt C. wrote in to note that Batman had a sort of exo-skeleton in World's Finest Comics #175 (by Leo Dorfman and Neal Adams), but he didn't actually use it in the comic...

Okay, so 1986 brought the classic Batman power suit to bear with Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's The Dark Knight Returns. This would be the answer if you don't like my outer space bat suit answer...

Then, six years later, the suit was brought into modern times with its appearance in Dave Gibbons and Andy and Adam Kubert's Batman Versus Predator...

And Batman has been rocking power suits ever since.

Thanks for the question, Josh!

If anyone has a comic book first that they were wondering about, please drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!