Size matters to Batman fans. Especially when it comes to his pointy ears.

But for many of them, it’s the inverse of conventional wisdom that applies: Bigger isn’t always better. In fact, the bigger the Dark Knight’s ears are, the creepier he appears. (Although not quite as creepy as actually having a discussion about the varying size of Batman’s ears.)

Reddit Prooffread3r user made this observation in the Comic Books community, citing artist John Bolton’s interpretation of Batman’s headgear from the 1997 Man-Bat miniseries.

User Flying__Penguin, however, took an otherwise ridiculous topic and offered some well-thought-out commentary that gave the subject of the length of a fictional superhero’s cranial accoutrement an air of sophistication and legitimacy:

“My theory is that the length of Batman’s ears correlates to how ‘human’ he is supposed to appear in any given story. When the writing leans more towards Batman as this archetypal Gothic-Horror-Mythical-Protector-type figure, the ears get elongated in the art to emphasize this.”

The redditor points to Dave McKean’s depiction in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which accentuates the bat characteristics in a tale that’s about insanity and perception.

Tim Sale’s Caped Crusader in Batman: The Long Halloween is another example Flying_Penguin mentions, because the series “emphasizes the sort of fairy-tale storybook roles of the villains and the hero.”

The user then compares those renderings to David Mazzucchelli’s earthier approach in this scene from Batman: Year One, which “just screams ‘look at this dork in a rubber bat suit! He’s not a superhero, he has no idea what he’s doing.’ And the short ears are visually enforcing that viewpoint.”

With that in mind, check out these five artists who are masters when it comes to long-eared Batman.

Bob Kane

Batman’s co-creator actually gave the character devil-like ears extending almost diagonally from the cowl thanks to suggestions from his thoroughly underappreciated collaborator Bill Finger, the real genius behind the creation of the Dark Knight. Under the pens of later Batman artists, such as Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang, Batman’s ears began to shorten.

Bernie Wrightson

Known primarily as a horror artist, Wrightson gave Batman an almost supernatural aura while drawing him a few times in the early 1970s. In 1988’s Batman: The Cult, he didn’t hold back on giving the ears some height.

Simon Bisely

The phrase “over the top” seems like it was invented to describe Bisley’s art, and he went to town on the twin top pointers in Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgment on Gotham.

Sam Kieth

Kieth, best known for his creator-owned series The Maxx, has a reputation similar to Bisley when it comes to illustrating “extreme” versions of popular comic book characters. His Batman ears, however, are much thinner and needle-like than most other artists’ depictions.

Kelley Jones

Arguably the artist most associated with the long-eared look for Batman. Like Wrightson, Jones was known as a horror comics illustrator, and that pedigree came through in series like Batman: Red Rain (Batman fights vampires!) and Batman: Unseen (Batman fights an invisible man!). Sometimes, though, that exaggerated style can make Batman look less like a larger-than-life heroic figure and more like, well, a certain Internet sensation: