The Dark Knight Rises will be coming out on July 20, 2012, and regular readers of CQ know that I’m a super huge Batman nerd. So, I’m pretty excited about it. Sure, I’ve never been a fan of Bane in the comics, and I’m even less of a fan of whatever Christopher Nolan did to his weird mask, but it’s Batman. It’s Christian Bale’s Cookie Monster-voiced Batman. I’ll take whatever excuse I can find to say “Batman”.

Today’s coolest Batman / Dark Knight thing comes from Ata-Boy. Even if you’ve never heard the name, you’ve seen their stuff: neat magnets with goofy catch phrases and visual jokes, pop culture keychains, mugs, and my favorite kind of quick-’n'-easy collectible, buttons.

Ata-Boy showcases a huge range of Batman logos in their 1″ button line, many of which express the Bat-logo throughout its comic history. As someone whose man-purse has been adorned with a hundred different Batman buttons (many at the same time), I really appreciate what Ata-Boy is doing with this particular line of logo pins.

The image above is a small part of assortment of the huge range of these buttons, but you can see a handful of Warholian pop-colored logo pins, a Batman-and-skull logo from an indeterminate storyline, a weird Xeroxed logo, a digital wavelength logo from another obscure story, a graffiti-like logo which uses the letters of ‘Batman’ to form the bat, and (finally) two familiar ones as well: the Batman logo launched with Batman #241 (May 1972) and the squarish-lettered Shadow of the Bat #50 (May 1996) logo font.

As you can see in the above image, there are many more logos from different eras, from the original Golden Age to the Silver Age’s Brave & the Bold, and stuff from the ’70s, ’80s, and beyond. It’s a pretty solid (though not 100% complete) evolution of the logo as it appeared on DC Comics covers. For a long time, I made a point of having a Batman from every decade plastered on my bag, so these are a perfect accent to the whole nerdly ensemble.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy these from Ata-Boy directly, but you can compel your local comic shop to carry these. I don’t think I’ve been to a reputable comic shop which is without Ata-Boy’s awesome stuff, but these Batman pins are what I want to see behind the counter. And all over my body. And I have a lot of body to cover.

[Product graciously provided by Ata-Boy!]