Lee Falk’s The Phantom is widely credited as being the first superhero with blank pupil-less eyes. Is this true? I don’t know. Maybe a more educated Comics Comics reader can name a pre-Phantom pupil-less pulp hero. Falk said he got the idea from Greek statues.

Three years after the Phantom debuted, Batman appeared pupil-less. According to Batman: The Complete History: “Finger also objected to the way the eyes behind the mask appeared and urged Kane to turn them into simple white spots. ‘It looked more like a bat at night when the eyes glow,’ conceded Kane.” But maybe Bill Finger was just taking after Phantom. After Batman, the eyes caught on immediately and continue today to Space Ghost, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spawn, etc.

What makes the blank eyes so appealing? I asked my friend about it and she suggested that it’s because when you see the eyes behind the mask, it looks goofy and draws attention to the fact that it’s a human being running around in tights. When your eyes go blank, you become an inhuman, mythic force. Nobody can tell where you’re looking, which is an exciting fantasy. Of course, it’s also concealing your identity. Your expressions can only be gauged by the size of your glowing white slits and even if you’re looking at your shoes you’re going to be intimidating. As Alex Toth wrote on his Space Ghost design sheet: “Re: Ghost’s brow lines and eye lines- if an extreme expression calls for it, use variation of the normal (stern) line and “pop,” or squint the eyes.” Normal is stern.

Conversely, in live action movies the eyes are often kept pupil-ed and look sort of goofy when you wipe the pupils out. I took an image from the recent Dark Knight movie and washed out the pupils:

This looks strange, I think, because so much of the story of the Dark Knight movies are that it’s a human being, a real person, wearing the mask. If he becomes a raver God when he puts on the suit, it loses the connection to the story of the human being we’ve been following. But the comics have similar stories and when he has spotless eyes, it doesn’t draw attention to itself as much. It’s possible we (comic readers—as opposed to the wider film audiences) have just accepted that when he puts on the mask he will look that way and we stay connected to the person. Also since the comic is all drawings, all abstractions, it’s not as jarring. Alex Ross paints Batman’s pupils in because that’s his world.

When The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was translated into a children’s cartoon show, they were furnished with large bubbly pupils. I’m assuming this is because they thought the barren eyes looked scary, and the Turtles aren’t scary characters. Obviously, the pupils make them more human-looking, because we have pupils, and maybe therefore more accessible to us. But I don’t believe that argument; I think it’s specific to the character, because Dr. Manhattan has blank eyes (he did in the movie too) and part of what makes that character so moving, and accessible, to me is that those empty, vacant eyes reflect his disconnectedness from society. There’s a psychological weight behind his pupil-less eyes that’s in how he behaves as well.

In this early sketch of Dr. Manhattan, from the book Watching the Watchmen, he has pupils and it looks like an entirely different character.

If Dr. Manhattan had pupils, his disconnect wouldn’t be as emotionally charged. I wouldn’t absorb his state as strongly. If Batman didn’t have bare eyes in the comic, he’d be less of an intimidating, scary force, and therefore less exciting for me to live through. Space Ghost was resurrected for Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, due to those vacant, blind-to-others eyes; in C2C he plays a vacant, self-absorbed talk show host. It depends on the specific character. I prefer my Turtles with pupils.

Labels: Alex Ross, Alex Toth, Batman, Eyes, Space Ghost, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom, Watchmen