Legends Of The SuperHeroes!

The success of the 60's Batman TV show was a wonderful boost to the lifeblood of the comic book industry. It was a short-term shot of adrenalin which pushed the comic book into the public consciousness in a way more positive than the witch hunts of the 50's hand done. 

In the public imagination comic books lost that atmosphere of creepy attempts to subvert children and instead became goofy and rather lighthearted attempts at entertainment. It was a positive change, but alas a lasting one. For decades and to this day still at times a story in the broader media about comic books is marked by a sense of frolic and frivolity. In the 70's superheroes were goofy nonsense for most folks and maybe that explains NBC's The Challenge of the Superheroes. 

This peculiar special event was done in two parts. The first is an adventure which has the heroes seeking a doomsday device built by Dr. Sivana (Howard Morris). The villains are led by Mordru (Gabriel Dell) and include the Riddler, Sinestro, Giganta, Weather Wizard and Solomon Grundy. The Riddler is performed by Frank Gorshin reprising his role from the Batman TV show. Also from that show are Batman (Adam West) and Robin (Burt Ward). Also among the heroes are Captain Marvel, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Black Canary and the Huntress. Charlie Callas gives a singular performance as Sinestro and Jeff Altman is a snarky Weather Wizard. NBC created a new old hero called both Retired Man and the Scarlet Cyclone played by William Schallert. It's a goofy misadventure made on the cheap in and around the backroads of the area and is harmless fun. The laugh track is painful though at times. 

Ed MacMahon joins the heroes and villains for a Superherores Roast the following week.  (Celebrity roasts were all the rage for a short time back then.) The Riddler is gone but most of the rest of the original cast reappear in a goofy event which is neither fair nor foul. It's harmless nonsense which is easy to ignore. 

It was fun in the late 70's to see superheroes in pretty much any format so I remember these shows. But watching them again on DVD reminds of how far we've come in the the societal view of superheroes. It would've seemed ludicrous for these costumed types to have been taken seriously back then. The Superman movies helped somewhat but it would decades before the after-effects of the Batman show would wear off. I can't recommend this one really, but it is harmless. 

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Batmania Classics - Batman 1968!

So at long last I have finished watching every episode of the vaunted Batman television series, the series which simultaneously saved the character if not the industry and condemned it to decades of derision. Adam West and Burt Ward are joined in the third and final season by Yvonne Craig .

The addition of Batgirl to the show was at once an admission the show needed an injection of some kind to keep itself fresh and a way to draw yet more attention to a show which had enjoyed an unprecedented amount of scrutiny.

The third season was a letdown for me. I knew that the standard two-episode format had been largely abandoned since the show itself had been reduced to a single showing each week. There were still stories that continued but they more or less meandered from episode to episode rather than being tautly tied by the imminent demise of one or both of the heroes.

It was a pleasant surprise to see Frank Gorshin return as the Riddler, but it was disappointing that he only put in one final appearance. Burgess Meredith's Penguin gets four more shows and Caesar Romero's Joker gets three. Eartha Kitt shows up to play Catwoman in three shows, replacing Julie Newmar and doing a fantastic job. Vincent Price gets three appearances as Egghead though each seemed a repeat of the other as he's teamed with Anne Baxter's one-joke Olga of the Cossacks every time. Joan Collins as Siren is beautiful as I must say is Zsa Zsa Gabor as Minerva. Surprisingly entertaining to me were Cliff Robertson as Shame and Dina Merrill as his cowgirl Calamity Jan. Rudy Vallee as Lord Pfogg and Milton Berle as Louie the Lilac were okay, but their stories were pretty weak.

Generally the writing was weaker overall. The presence of Batgirl and the need to interpolate elements of Barbara Gordon's life really seem to weigh the show down. Long stretches of action were set at her rather modest and dull apartment (despite its spinning wall) or the library where every baddie turned up it seemed, and Batman and Robin seemed rarely to talk to one another save to ponder Batgirl's identity. Later she became more a regular thing and the trio worked better together.

The comedy seemed also to be broader. That may be my imagination, but the show had always had a satirical and absurdist edge on top of legit adventures which while often dumb projected real menace at some level. The plots in the third season seemed often poorly motivated, if at all, and the actors seemed to project more of an awareness of the weirdness of it all. The fourth wall was thin indeed. 

On Batgirl in particular let me say that I'd forgotten many things about her. I either never knew or forgot that her Batcycle had lace and such frills on it. Regrettable bit of sexism there for a character who though under the thumb of the male society around her did indeed strike back. Her fighting too seemed to really louse up the choreography of the wonderful brawls as her dancing moves were singularly unconvincing in fights which already hovered on the edge of obviously faked. But she was pretty for sure.

The double entendres were rich in this season though for certain as women and their place in society was often a source of satire. The Nora Clavicle episode was a strain for sure with women reduced to idiotic parodies of themselves with little redemption offered by the creators. They seemed quite content with the minimized status of women and gave them less respect as a protest movement than say the hippies got, who were there and made fun of but not utterly mocked.

Overall the show's final season was a letdown, though I note that it improved mightily as it headed to its end. The Shame two-parter was a lot of fun and the Joker-Flying Saucer episode was something right of the sharper earlier seasons. But it's clear why the show ended, it was running out of ideas and the audience was appropriately growing bored.

On a somewhat different note, after this last live-action season Batman and Robin joined Superman and Aquaman and other DC heroes in the animated world. I've long resisted getting these adventures, but recently got hold of both the 1968 cartoons as well as the later 1977 series which featured the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward. These are not exactly like finding lost episodes of the famous live-action series, but these cartoons are delightful wayback machines for an era when superheroes were "kid-stuff".

It took me over a year to watch all of the live action stuff and I don't know when I'll get around to the cartoons, but it's nice to know they are at my fingertips at least. (Note: I have since watched all of these cartoons and loved them.)

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Batmania Classics - Batman 1967!

Finally got around to watching all of the immense second season of the vintage Batman TV show from 1966 and 1967. This is the core of the series, a full sprawling season in which the popularity of the rocket ship-like show ascended and began to descend.

The second season is one full of vivid satire as some pretty decent names agree to appear on the show as villains, not full-blown A-Listers but rock solid B-Listers of the time. Liberace as Chandell, Art Carney as The Archer, Van Johnson as The Minstrel, Maurice Evans as The Puzzler, Shelly Winters as Ma Parker, Walter Slezak as Clock King, and most memorably Vincent Price as Egghead.  Lots of others, but the regular villains were not forgotten (save for Frank Gorshin's Riddler who was in conflict with the producers -- John Astin's turn in the part was not successful). We get a heady dose of Julie Newmar's Catwoman and Cesar Romero's Joker and quite a large helping of Burgess Meredith's Penguin.

It was the Penguin I most enjoyed in these episodes, not one of my previous faves. Meredith really seemed to love the part, frolicking relentlessly and waddling ferociously into and out of scene after scene. Cesar Romero's Joker too seemed to be honed to a fine edge as he showed up time and again, his best outing the lampoon of modern pop art. I did get a bit weary of Catwoman as while Newmar is lovely and funny the romance between her character and Batman was lame on TV, though spicy in the comics. I did rather like how she was a power unto herself, often adopting male poses to reinforce her lack of needing a man to tell her how to live. 

David Wayne's Mad Hatter is a lot of fun, though he chews scenes with gleeful vigor. I've never cottoned to Victor Buono's King Tut, though I appreciate what he's trying to do and he does it raucously, it all seemed a bit to complicated to me. Cliff Robertson's Shame is fun at first but the joke gets old too quickly. Where they dug up Talulah Bankhead to play the Black Widow I'll never know, but it was an atmospheric is weird outing. We even had two different Mr.Freezes, first Otto Preminger and later Eli Wallach - both had something though neither was a really creepy as had been the original George Sanders.

The highlight of the season was the crossover with Green Hornet (Van Williams) and his appearance along with Kato (Bruce Lee) was tons of fun. I want that series on DVD desperately. It's a real gap that it doesn't exist. Roger Carmel's Colonel Gumm was very rich.

We get some of the more famous wall-walking cameos in this season with lots of cross promotion for other ABC series, indicating the power of the Batman TV show and its rather unique position in terms of breaking the fourth wall of narrative. Most I knew (Howard Duff, Werner Klemperer, Art Linkletter) but several I had to look up like Cyril Lord.

This season also saw Alfred develop into a more interesting character, being called upon many times to dig their behinds out of trouble. He donned the costume more than once and even debuted his own "Alf-cycle".

All in all the second season is a whopper, and as I watched I realized that I'd probably not seen a few of these ever and none for many many years. Now on to Season 3 and Batgirl!

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Batmania Classics - Batman The Movie!

As difficult as the vintage Batman TV series has been to obtain (finally in 2014 after decades of frustration) that's just how easy the 1966 Batman movie has been to get. It was one of the very first things I bought on VHS for my home library and I've since replaced it on DVD of course.

But now at long last I've been able to view this flick in the context it was intended, a summer big-screen offering between the first and second seasons of the original TV show run. Created to entice foreign distribution of the TV show, the movie has all the elements of the show, just turned up to eleven.

Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin are just as straight-faced and corny as they are in the TV show. The satire of the movie might be a bit more pronounced in the movie as the yarn unrolls over a leisurely one hour and forty-five minutes or so. That has a lot to do with the gaggle of villains (Cesar Romero as Joker, Frank Gorshin as Riddler, Burgess Meredith as Penguin, and debuting Lee Meriwether as Catwoman) who cavort with bristling energy whenever they hit the screen.

The plot (such as it is) rambles all over, supplying opportunities for Batman and Robin to use some of their here-to-fore unseen equipment such as the Bat-Copter, the Bat-Boat, and a new improved Bat-cycle with detachable sidecar.

Great moments abound such as the attack of the leg-munching shark, Batman's classic dash about the pier to try with little luck to dispose of a bomb, the outlandish romance between Bruce Wayne and Miss Kitka, the dehydrated henchman who pop like balloons in the Batcave, and many more.

The movie is a giant episode, not unlike one of those outstanding 80-Page Giants or summer annuals the comic book companies used to produce which had truly special over-sized adventures. If the episodes of the TV show are the regular issues, then this movie is the 100-Page Spectacular--brimming with extra value. 

Now I'm properly ready for Season Two of the regular series.

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Batmania - Bats-Man!

The sign in the 60's that a thing was indeed worthy of serious consideration was whether it made it into the black and white pages of MAD Magazine. If Alfred E. Neuman found it interesting, then I knew I should also. In fact most of what passed for popular culture in the 60's and early 70's was filtered to me through the "Usual Gang of Idiots". And so it was with Batman the TV show. It hit like a shooting star onto the streets of America and blazed out almost as quickly but not before MAD took a crack at it. It rates a spot-on cover by Norman Mingo. 

The story is called "Bats-Man" and it was written by Lou Silverstone and drawn magnificently by Mort Drucker. It makes a glancing blow at the premise of the show by sowing discord between "Bats-Man" and "Sparrow the Boy Wonderful". It seems all that crimefighting is crimping poor Sparrow's love life so he plots to end the partnership in some mighty ferocious ways. To read this blast from the past check out this handy Bat-Link to Crivens! Comics & Stuff   operated by Kid a longtime reader and responder of this here Dojo. 

I personally read this story this time in MAD About Super Heroes from a few decades back. It sports a delightful Alex Ross cover but inside are all the Batman parodies done to that point along with Superman and others as well. It features an introduction by Batman himself, the late great Adam West. 

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Batmania Classics - Batman 1966!

Just enjoyed again viewing the first season of the legendary Batman TV show from the halcyon days of the swingin' 60's. Of course I've seen the show off and on over the decades but I was not much of a fan at the time of its original airing, though I did catch a few here and there. Mostly I came to the show in reruns, but this is the first time I've been able to watch the show with an eye for its tropes and how they developed over time.

Several things surprised me. Batman looks better than my memory suggested, in fact despite the distinct lack of muscles Adam West nonetheless came across as a reasonably fit guy who had the misfortune to wear a costume which begged to showcase weaknesses in physique. In the first season at least, he comes across reasonably well, though poor Burt Ward did have a downright goofy costume to manage.

The secret to this show is that despite its humor, which is played a little bit down in the first season, the heroes are absolutely not in on the joke. There's no winking from the far side of the tube as Batman and Robin face up against the usual gang of villainy.

I was surprised how much Frank Gorshin's delightful Riddler dominated the first season, showing up for four stories (even one originally designed for the Joker) and eight episodes of the thirty-four produced. Penguin and Joker tie for second place with three stories and six episodes each. Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter, and False-Face all clock in with one story and two episodes each, while created-for-TV-villains Zelda, King Tut, and Bookworm do likewise. The biggest surprise to me aside from the Riddler's dominance was that the iconic Catwoman (called "The Catwoman" I noticed) played by Julie Newmar only had a single story, a mere two episodes.

I noticed that as the season progressed the humor started to broaden just a bit, with more overt social commentary coming into play. Only one of the famous window cameos showed up in the debut season, by Jerry Lewis. That might well be the marker for the show beginning to lose the little bit of pure action edge it retained.

The jokes of the show in these early stories is that the comic stories adapted to the screen (as they might've been done in the comics) really do come off as wildly absurd on a fundamental level, but these episodes don't work unless the players all buy in. The earliest episodes have little of the famous irony, though it does twinkle a bit here and there (Batusi anyone?).

This first season led directly into the feature film, and I have that queued up to watch next.

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Pop Action At Its Best!

The page from Beware the Creeper by Steve Ditko and letterer Gaspar Saladino (perhaps)  above is a marker of a time and place when suddenly comic books and comic book characters were wildly popular. The iconography of the comic had filtered into the broader culture in a new way, it had quietly slipped into the salons and parlors of the intelligentsia, those blokes and dames who determine what is cool and what is not for the rest of us grunts. For a sweet moment in time comics were cool. (They've since become mainstream, but perhaps not as "cool".)

One of the reasons was Batman, a TV show that took the country by storm and filled our imaginations with all manner of new yet somehow vintage sights and sounds, translated tongue-in-cheek from the pages of decades of yellowing comics. 

The simple "Pow!" became the marker of a sound that never was save in the imagination along with its brothers and sisters like "Zap!" and "Crack!" and such. The sound effect "Foom" achieved such a charm that it became the title of one of Marvel's many fan clubs magazines. 

The museums became a repository to the stuff of the newsstands and celebrated for its potency in a culture which already felt that life was draining from it a bit. It's at once a celebration and an achievement, but also sad in one sense because the "trash" had become "treasure" and that makes it of significance to those who don't love it for its own sake. 

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The Million Dollar Debutante!

Love Batgirl! Thought she was beautiful in the comics and downright luscious on the little screen. As personified by the vivacious Yvonne Craig, Batgirl added some much-needed punch to the Batman TV show of the late 60's, a fun counterpoint to the often hapless Robin.

Batman's reaction to her was always fun to watch as his utility belt often seemed more stirred than he'd have preferred. I know she got my utility belt to jumping, that's a plain fact. 

Here's a link to a simply amazing assortment of Batgirl images featuring the beautiful Ms.Craig. And below are some of the Dominoed Daredoll's earlies appearances in comics. Enjoy!

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