RIP Adam West

[JasonPratt]

...uh, I should clarify, he's praising not damning the show.

[JasonPratt]

Worth noting perhaps: after the success of the Bat66 animated film recently, West reportedly finished recording dialogue for a new animated movie featuring a '66 Two-face voiced by... WILLIAM SHATNER!!

[Sir Slash]

Holy Prime Directive, Batman!

[mirth]

Heads...or tails...Bat Man!

[Barthheart]

[JasonPratt]

Nice movie-batman homage in dark-deco style.  8)


I'm going to go on record that while I liked B66 as a kid, I always thought it could be a lot better: mainly because I felt like the people making the show were making fun of Batman. And that wasn't cool. It undermined a lot of the moral center of the show, too.

It's proper to recall that Batman comics were light-hearted affairs at the time the show was made, and had been for a long time. Okay, but that could be done without constantly mocking the property. Exhibit A, even at the time: the Batman comics at the time the show was made! Exhibit B would be Batman: Brave and the Bold long afterward of course.

This problem was magnified when I was a boy, because in the 70s up through the Crisis reboot event (mid-80s), Batman was barely like the comics the show was mocking. I mean, it still could be -- the format was highly flexible at the time -- but Batman had grown up a lot as a property. Some of the villains were still silly, like the Riddler, although even he got to be a real threat occasionally, but the villains were all meant to be colorfully threatening. The Joker, to give the prime example, had long since gone back to being a crazy murderer. There were also real thugs in the comics. The stories, especially the covers, intended to evoke real peril, with Batman facing and overcoming fatal fear. (It's no accident that the Scarecrow's dominant portrayal started at this time.)

Against this, Batman was portrayed as a competent threat for villains to take seriously. Even in the 70s and early 80s, before Frank Miller crushed all the fun and adventure with his (admittedly genius) Dark Knight Returns, Batman had gone back to scaring the crap out of thugs. Robin didn't -- he was a college age guy still running around in the classic Robin suit, and this was acknowledged, but this was played as part of his fun persona and also to make the villains underestimate him. Batman, still in the classic blue-and-grey-with-yellow-batsignal, could stand out as colorfully nonthreatening when he needed to, but at night all predators look grey -- and he by God was a predator, more like the modern Black Panther perhaps, or hearkening back to Doc Savage. Thugs might make fun of Robin because they didn't know better, which was a tactic. They didn't make fun of Batman, except to mask their own fear. A kid's book on the history of comics which I had at the time, summarized him as a shark in a swimming pool. That wasn't Batman 66 (a few very rare exceptions aside).

This was the era when Ra's Al Ghul was introduced, too, and his daughter Talia. Also very much NOT B66. (Anyone who thinks of "Deadshot" at all nowadays, like in the recent Suicide Squad film? Also 70s Batman.)

Which isn't to say that 70s Batman was a mentally unstable loner who clashed with other heroes; he got along fine with Superman and everyone else. He had his methods, he respected theirs, they respected his. (The 90s Justice League storylines, widely lauded for their quality, hew back to this time.) All aspects of his character were equally stressed: supreme scientist and detective and inventor; world's greatest escape artist; world's greatest martial artist (arguably); adventurer; crusader; the terror that flaps in the night; and a man who, despite his sometimes gruff exterior, valued human life, even his enemies, striving to protect people from violent crime, so that no little boy would ever have to see his parents gunned down again.

When people talk about how great the DCAU's Batman was (starting with BTAS, despite some uneven eps scattered) -- that show (and its followups in the same continuity) was borrowing VERY VERY DIRECTLY from the 70s Batman, with a few touches from Burton's films. When internet commenters talk about how to 'fix' Batman today, to rebalance him, they inevitably call upon what amounts to the 70s version (if filtered without them realizing it through the DCAU main continuity).


None of which is meant to take away from Adam West. I always liked his performances; but growing up in the 70s I wished he (and Burt Ward) could play the 'real' Batman, the best Batman could be; the Batman from the main comics of the time.

(Which he did get to play, very briefly, in a way; as the Gray Ghost character who inspired young Bruce in BTAS.)

[besilarius]

The fix is in.

[Sir Slash]

Holy Hat-Trick Batman! That's brilliant.

[besilarius]

Los Angeles to have a special honor for Adam West.

https://www.newsarama.com/34925-bat-signal-to-be-lit-over-los-angeles-in-honor-of-adam-west.html

[DoctorQuest]

Los Angeles to have a special honor for Adam West.

https://www.newsarama.com/34925-bat-signal-to-be-lit-over-los-angeles-in-honor-of-adam-west.html

Ok. That's cool!  O0

[JasonPratt]

Holy sniffle, Batman...

[besilarius]

https://www.facebook.com/ABCNews/videos/10155908530608812/

[mirth]

[Sir Slash]

That was great! Thanks for the post Mirth.  O0