Richard W. Sprang (July 28, 1915 – May 10, 2000) was an American comic book artist and penciller, best known for his work on the superhero Batman during the period fans and historians call Golden Age of Comic Books. Sprang was responsible for the 1950 redesign of the Batmobile and the original design of the Riddler, who has appeared in film, television and other media adaptations. Sprang's Batman was notable for his square chin, expressive face and barrel chest.

Sprang was also a notable explorer in Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, whose discoveries included "Defiance House", a previously unrecorded ancestral Puebloan structure. Sprang's voluminous correspondence, journals, and thousands of photographs are archived at Northern Arizona Universities Cline Library Special Collections in Flagstaff, Arizona. A small amount of material is at the Utah Historical Society in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dick Sprang was born in Fremont, Ohio, and became a professional illustrator at an early age, painting signs and handbills for local advertisers. According to comics historian Jerry Bails, Sprang worked throughout the 1930s for Standard Magazines, "screening scripts" as an editor, as well as contributing artwork to Standard, Columbia Publications and Street and Smith, while still in high school. He joined the staff of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in Toledo, Ohio, shortly after graduating (circa 1934), continuing to produce magazine work concurrently. Sprang described his early career and work ethic, in 1987:

I was in the art department, where we had to meet five deadlines a day. We had five editions on the street that, in part, carried different advertisements for jewelry stores, furniture stores, and so on. We had to draw the items they sold, plus editorial cartoons, and editorial illustrations. I had to work with engravers, and I mastered the technology of printing. I learned the value of meeting a deadline.

He left the newspaper in 1936 to move to New York City, where he began "illustrating for the pulp magazines—the Western, detective, and adventure magazines in the era of the late 1930s".

From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Sprang continued to work as a freelance illustrator, primarily for such pulp magazines as Popular Detective, Popular Western, Phantom Detective, G-Men, Detective Novels Magazine, Crack Detective and Black Hood Detective/Hooded Detective, for which last he also wrote some stories. Between 1937 and 1938, Sprang provided assistance on the King Features Syndicate comic strips Secret Agent X-9 (layouts) and The Lone Ranger (pencil assists). In 1938, he also wrote briefly for the Lone Ranger radio series.

Late in the decade, with the pulp magazines in decline, Sprang gravitated toward comic-book illustration. With Norman Fallon and Ed Kressey, he co-founded the studio Fallon-Sprang at "a little studio loft on 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Grand Central" Terminal and with a contact address of 230 West 101st Street in Manhattan. A promotional flier advertises the studio as comics packagers for such "supermen" features as "Power Nelson" (introduced in Prize Comics #1, March 1940) and "Shock Gibson"; "human interest" features such as "Speed Martin"; and the "interplanetary" feature "Sky Wizard" and detective feature "K-7" (both introduced in Hillman Periodicals' Miracle Comics #1, Feb. 1940, and attributed to Emile Schurmacher).

Continuing to seek comic-book work, Sprang submitted art samples to DC Comics editor Whitney Ellsworth, who assigned him a Batman story in 1941. Anticipating that Batman creator Bob Kane would be drafted to serve in World War II, DC inventoried Sprang's work to safeguard against delays. Sprang's first published Batman work was the Batman and Robin figures on the cover of Batman #18 (Aug.–Sept. 1943), reproduced from the art for page 13 of the later-published Detective Comics #84 (Feb. 1944). Sprang's first original published Batman work, and first interior-story work, appeared in Batman #19 (Oct.–Nov. 1943), for which he penciled and inked the cover and the first three Batman stories, and penciled the fourth Batman story, inked by Norm Fallon. Like all Batman artists of the time, Sprang went uncredited as a ghost artist for Kane. In May 1944, Sprang married commercial artist and photographer Lora Ann Neusiis in New York City. The couple moved west to Sedona, Arizona, in 1946. They were divorced in 1951 and Lora returned to New York City.