Batman Returns From The International Space Station
“Space Batman” by Bill Sienkiewicz, 2025
TL;DR, Please join us for the San Diego Comic-Con panel: Get Your Stuff to Space! How to Literally Launch Your Art, Brand, Science, and More on Friday, July 25, 2025, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm, Grand 10 & 11, Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina. Learn more about how individual creatives, educators, scientists, and entrepreneurs are getting their creations sent to space, and about the journey of a unique piece of original Batman art that recently orbited the Earth hundreds of times.
After years of navigating NASA paperwork, SpaceX manifests, and payload integration protocols, we can finally share something pretty remarkable: Bill Sienkiewicz’s original “Space Batman” watercolor has returned from its month-long residency aboard the International Space Station.
The 11 x 17-inch piece launched as part of our CRS-32 payload earlier this year, alongside a small collection of Dent Space Watches. What started as an experiment in combining art with space access has become something of a case study in how individuals and organizations can actually get their projects beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
You can see the artwork “Space Batman” at Bill’s booth, #2614.
The Reality of Getting Stuff to Space
The practical reality behind the Batman artwork project involved three years of coordination with Voyager Technologies and NASA’s commercial crew program. Every gram mattered. Every material had to pass outgassing tests. Every step required complete documentation.
But here’s what we learned: the barrier to space access isn’t as insurmountable as most people assume. It’s not impossible for individuals, artists, or small organizations willing to navigate the process.
Comic-Con as Testing Ground
We’re unveiling the returned artwork at San Diego Comic-Con this week, partly because SDCC has become our annual laboratory for exploring how emerging technologies intersect with culture and storytelling. But also because we are working with Sue Karlin of Fast Company who will be moderating the panel called “Get Your Stuff to Space” where we'll walk through exactly how this process works.
The panel features Scott Rodriguez from Voyager Technologies (who literally handled the Batman art payload), Molly Mulligan from Redwire Space, and space artist Richelle Ellis. The goal is to demystify space access for anyone with a creative project, scientific experiment, or entrepreneurial idea that could benefit from a ride to orbit.
What’s Actually Different Now
The commercial space ecosystem has fundamentally changed the access equation. Companies like Voyager Technologies and Redwire Space have turned payload integration into a repeatable service rather than a one-off engineering challenge. SpaceX’s regular ISS resupply missions create predictable opportunities. NASA’s willingness to work with commercial partners and artists through Space Act Agreements opens doors that didn’t exist a decade ago.
The Bigger Picture
Sending Batman to space represents something significant: the normalization of space access. When artists can send their work to orbit, when small organizations can navigate NASA partnerships, when the barrier to entry drops from billions to thousands of dollars, we’re witnessing a fundamental shift in how humans interact with space.
The returned “Space Batman” artwork will be on display throughout Comic-Con. But more importantly, the process we used to get it there—and the lessons learned along the way—will be shared with anyone curious about turning their own space-bound ideas into reality.
Steve Broback is co-founder of Dent the Future. The “Get Your Stuff to Space” panel takes place Friday at San Diego Comic-Con in the Grand Ballroom at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina.